D&D and the rising pandemic

[NotAYakk]

We had 2795 new cases and 175 dead today. So it seems that slowing trend of the last few days is continuing, but we are still a hair's breadth from the edge.

Oh thank god. The rate of new cases going up is going down. I mean, the second derivative isn't positive, which is good.

Still awful. It is great news for the parts of the world that hit the panic button a bit earlier, it gives hope that they won't suffer what you have.

I am so very sorry for what is happening in Northern Italy. <3 Stay strong.

Untrue. You are one super sensationalist.

I mean, if you are going to disagree with someone's considered and backed opinion, you could actually say more than "no you are wrong". But I guess that is work.

Anyhow, if you want to see math on why a "lower the curve" that ends with 30%-70% of the US population having been infected and recovered, and hence immune, needing to take about 10 years:

About ~5% of cases need respirator care. The USA has 30,000 respirators that aren't used to save people's lives every second. 30,000/5% is 600,000 -- if you have more than 600,000 active cases at once, you run out of respirators. People need those respirators up to 6 weeks -- we'll be generous and say 3 weeks. So no more than 20,000 people per day can get sick with this, or you run out of respirators. The population of the USA is 300,000,000. Divide 300,000,000 by 20,000 and you get 15000 days. Or, in other words, 41.1 years.

10 years is an order of magnitude estimate. It seems reasonable. I mean, we can assume 30% infection instead of 100%, and that there are 30% more respirators. That gets it down to 10 years to "flatten the curve" below health care capacity.

And again, you can choose not to have enough respirators. It is pretty clear that people who "need" them and don't get them mostly just die. So you go from ~1% to 5%+ fatality rate, as demonstrated by every region that has overloaded their health care system's death rates.

Now you could build more respirators. If you had about 1 million respirators (15x as many as the entire USA has right now), you could afford to have 20 million every 3 weeks, or about 1 million new sick people per day. Then if you spread the infection over 1 year. So that is another solution. Delay the epidemic, start mass producing respirators. To clear the epidemic in 2 years, worldwide, you need 7 billion / 365 days * 21 days / 20, or about 21 million respirators.

Oh, and you also need doctors who are experts in using them, or at least technicians trained in it. So maybe more than a year, people don't learn that fast. And you have a ramp up time as you mass produce them.

It does look like a good plan. I hope someone is mass producing them. Maybe Germany or China is.

 

[FrogReaver]

Interesting article on why the higher morality rates are probably wrong.

The WHO Estimated COVID-19 Mortality at 3.4%. That Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

Why the real number may be much lower

time.com

 

[NotAYakk]

I think we may be talking past each other.

Yes, general quarantine and lockdown practices are, in fact, a good solution... But the reason that SK's handling is working is, in part, massively different starting assumptions and environment. That works great if you can start it right away, but once you've missed the window for it, you've missed it, and we missed it, here in the US.

SK has more cases per capita right now than the USA has. By a large factor.

Their epidemic is worse, it is more widespread.

They are still clamping down on it and reducing its growth rate.

You can give up and let millions die, or you can do something challenging. It isn't too late for the USA to stop it.

You just need to get R0 as close to 1.0 as you can, ideally under 1.0, and then start aggressive testing and contact tracking to make it even lower. Get R0 down to 0.5 and exponential growth works for you.

This isn't Polio or Measles with an R0 close to 10; it has an R0 of 2.something. It can be beaten without a vaccine. I can provide quotes by epidemiologists if you want, but they basically say "this can be beaten without a vaccine".

It doesn't appear to be very infections pre-symptoms. So if you keep social distancing going and start testing everyone with a flu, and get people to self isolate at the first flu symptom, you can get R0 well below 1.

At R0 of 0.5, a 20,000 person per day epidemic (way worse than the USA has right now, at the limit of your health care system: basically, where Italy is right now) dies in 14 reproduction cycles (around 6 days) -- 12ish weeks.

Then you just have to start defending against reintroduction.

This isn't "flattening the curve". "Flattening the curve" is accepting that everyone will get sick, and trying to get them to get sick slower to reduce mortality. This is using social distancing to buy time to eliminate the epidemic via tracking and containment.

 

[Zardnaar]

Only 6 cases here. No deaths. Wondering what it means.

1. We've dodged the worst of it. Good food, health system, low population density.

2. It's at the start here and there's worse to come

3. We have a lot of undiagnosed cases.

Panic buying is nothing serious, toilet paper is still on the shelf. Hand sanitizer sold out.

 

[The Green Hermit]

Only 6 cases here. No deaths. Wondering what it means.

1. We've dodged the worst of it. Good food, health system, low population density.

2. It's at the start here and there's worse to come

3. We have a lot of undiagnosed cases.

Panic buying is nothing serious, toilet paper is still on the shelf. Hand sanitizer sold out.

Whether it ends up being 1 or 2, my guess is that it is definitely 3.

 

[Zardnaar]

Whether it ends up being 1 or 2, my guess is that it is definitely 3.

We're a tourist country. Going with 3 as well but they closed the border to China Feb 2.

Means it might be 2. In 2-3 weeks USA will be Italy, we'll be where USA is.

We don't really do apartment living here though so might slow things down. There's none locally and there's no drastic upsurge in flu symptoms.

Backyard next door. Italian street scene doesn't really exist here.

 

[Umbran]

Then you just have to start defending against reintroduction.

This winds up being.. an interesting problem. If you just say, "Okay everyone, back to normal!" the risk of reseeding the epidemic is high - especially when having had the disease does not seem to give you much immunity. There's a question of which behaviors do you reintroduce first to get your economic movement rolling, without starting the thing all over again.

This isn't "flattening the curve". "Flattening the curve" is accepting that everyone will get sick, and trying to get them to get sick slower to reduce mortality. This is using social distancing to buy time to eliminate the epidemic via tracking and containment.

Thankfully, the basic actions individuals take for both are pretty much the same.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Slightly off-topic, but I think the world is going to be really passed-off at China if their wet markets lead to another outbreak of this magnitude. This really cannot turn into an every few years thing.

I doubt they will change their market setup, especially considering there are now stories coming out of China of government officials blaming the US military of planting the virus in Wuhan.

And there are also the stories/conspiracy theories that this whole thing was engineered by the Chinese government to crash the world economy and give them their advantage back. After all, history shows that Communist governments have no qualms about sacrificing their own people to gain more power.

Oh, and on another ironic note, it has been reported that Mexico is thinking about closing it's border with the US to try and keep the virus out. lol

 

[NotAYakk]

Only 6 cases here. No deaths. Wondering what it means.

1. We've dodged the worst of it. Good food, health system, low population density.

2. It's at the start here and there's worse to come

3. We have a lot of undiagnosed cases.

Panic buying is nothing serious, toilet paper is still on the shelf. Hand sanitizer sold out.

Any community transmission?

Are they "person came from cruise ship that was infected, arrived in isoluation", or are they "person came from overseas, monitored self for symptoms"?

6 community transmission caught when they went to hospital because they needed oxygen, means approx ~150 actual. 6 that where brought over in isolation from a cruise ship means maybe ~6 actual. Arrived on flights from areas with an epidemic, self isolated, got flu symptoms, got tested? Somewhere in between.

 

[Zardnaar]

Any community transmission?

Are they "person came from cruise ship that was infected, arrived in isoluation", or are they "person came from overseas, monitored self for symptoms"?

6 community transmission caught when they went to hospital because they needed oxygen, means approx ~150 actual. 6 that where brought over in isolation from a cruise ship means maybe ~6 actual. Arrived on flights from areas with an epidemic, self isolated, got flu symptoms, got tested? Somewhere in between.

5 have been in self isolation, 6 came from USA and is in good health. Number 6 was tested Thursday, got results Friday.

University put returning Chinese students in isolation weeks ago.

All cases were from overseas afaik.