Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 1)

[Purplecat]

US secures world stock of key Covid-19 drug remdesivir

This is just asking for patent suspension in response.

[74hc595]

@LutherBlisset

He said the crops are to be dead in the fields, because his family can’t leave the house due to the lockdown.

That’s depressing. People will starve because of such badly thought-out countermeasures. And this isn’t even effective at all - nobody would get infected while working in the field.

[anon29537550]

Seriously??? WTF kind of assholery is this? And from what I hear, ~$4k/treatment. Yeah, there is serious chicanery going on here.

[smulder]

@anon29537550

WTF kind of assholery is this

COUGH _{jared kushner}

[d_r]

Could you patent the sun?

[DukeTrout]

@kennykb

Another thing that’s pretty dicey is that recoveries tend not to be reported, since the patients drop out of the system. I’d bet at this point that if people are recovering, most of them are listed as ‘still ill’ because nobody got around to closing the cases. (‘Discharged from hospital’ is possibly a surrogate for those who were hospitalized to begin with, not for those who were ill at home.)

Only in areas that have completely inadequate contact tracing. Part of the contact tracing process is frequent follow-up with known cases all the way through resolution of the disease.

[Ratel]

@DukeTrout

Only in areas that have completely inadequate contact tracing.

So…the US? I don’t actually know how things stand with other States, although I don’t hear much about it happening. But I do know that it simply isn’t happening at all in AZ.

[ficuswhisperer]

@mr_raccoon

people wearing masks without covering their nose

Goddamn is this ever a pet peeve of mine. Since about the only reason I go out these days is to get take-out or to go to the grocery store I’ve become really sensitive to this. It especially sickens me to see food service workers doing this – it seems like they should be held to a higher standard since they are handling people’s meals.

[DukeTrout]

@gatto

but that’s simply not true. the math is not that hard. it’s subtraction on the front edge numbers not what happens to each case later.

There are four categories in contact tracing: open cases, recovered, death, and contact. The figures @anon29537550 are quoting are limited to the middle two: recovered and dead. At the current time, due to the spike, there are huge numbers of open cases which haven’t resolved. Contacts aren’t in the analysis, either, because they aren’t a tested or presumed positive.

Here’s the thing: while the typical duration of symptoms is about two weeks, the long tail of the distribution is really long. Like, months. So there are still some open cases from March-April who are self-isolating at home and still have symptoms. They don’t fit either of the resolved categories, so they aren’t in the analysis.

[DukeTrout]

@Ratel

So…the US?

Many states have at least decent contact tracing. There’s no excuse for failing in that regard - there’s a ton of funding for it in CARES, with an emphasis on hiring and training new contact tracers from the huge pool of available, currently unemployed people.

@ficuswhisperer

Goddamn is this ever a pet peeve of mine. Since about the only reason I go out these days is to get take-out or to go to the grocery store I’ve become really sensitive to this. It especially sickens me to see food service workers doing this – it seems like they should be held to a higher standard since they are handling people’s meals.

I’ve just started telling people “It’s not a magic talisman!” outright. I’ve no patience for it. (Thanks to the person here who shared that meme!)

[anon48584343]

@gatto

large gatherings. life shouldn’t be returning to normal.

unless a business has established verifiable safety measures, it shouldn’t re-open. period. people shouldn’t be forced back into the office. factory workers shouldn’t be put on the line. restaurant workers shouldn’t be forced into close quarters with staff and customers.

My wife’s workplace has basically informed employees that a return to the office is contingent on having a vaccine or viable treatment for the virus. So, basically everyone works from home indefinitely.

[kennykb]

@gatto

@kennykb seems to be trying to say it’s not as bad as we think by some hand waving about categorizing recovered cases.

I’m saying that our contact tracing and patient followup is so bad that we don’t know what’s happening. Even the estimates of short-term case fatality rates vary by an order of magnitude, and long-term mortality and morbidity is (perforce; the disease is new) a complete unknown.

It’s almost surely not as bad as we think - read on before you flame me.

Since I do believe that the modelers are aware of the effects, I think it’s probably equally likely that it’s better and worse than we think. The best case - it’s a very bad epidemic, and will continue to leave a trail of death and disability but will eventually settle to being an endemic disease (and possble eradication if a vaccine turns out to be effective). The worst case is human extinction - if the virus is as contagious as it is, and turns out to be even a fraction as good at evading the acquired immune system as HIV, then people are simply going to catch it over and over, with more morbidity on each episode. The truth is somewhere in between - and that’s a huge range.

[subextraordinaire]

Same with my work. To my astonishment, our Fox-watching, Trump-loving CEO told us last week that we’ll be working from home at least through the end of the year.

[gatto]

@kennykb

I’m saying that our contact tracing and patient followup is so bad that we don’t know what’s happening.

again, we don’t need per-patient follow up to estimate mortality. statistics of the leading edges over time is all we need.

individual cases don’t matter for those numbers. the more people infected, the more people tested, the more people who die – the more bigger the statistical pool and the more accurate the numbers get – but the estimates are just fine now because we are more than six months in.

@DukeTrout

At the current time, due to the spike, there are huge numbers of open cases which haven’t resolved. Contacts aren’t in the analysis, either, because they aren’t a tested or presumed positive.

yes! exactly. and in a month, we’ll still won’t need to know who individually recovered. all we will need is the aggregate number of people who died, and we will know how today’s spike is related to tomorrow’s deaths.

we do not need to track the individual case studies and recovery stories to accurately know the mortality rate.

@kennykb

The worst case is human extinction… The truth is somewhere in between - and that’s a huge range

the truth is overall it seems to be a 0.2-1.5% mortality rate with many sources believing it to narrow in around 0.3-0.4% with greater and lesser differences by age.

this is assuming that hospital capacity isn’t overwhelmed, and then all bets are greatly off.

[anon29537550]

Already not looking forward to flu season, then this crosses my feed

Dr. Anthony Fauci says new virus in China has traits of 2009 swine flu and...

[DukeTrout]

@gatto

yes! exactly. and in a month, we’ll still won’t need to know who individually recovered. all we will need is the aggregate number of people who died, and we will know how today’s spike is related to tomorrow’s deaths.

we do not need to track the individual case studies and recovery stories to accurately know the mortality rate.

That’s fine, on it’s own, but you’re getting further and further from the stats that @anon29537550 was quoting and which started this sub thread. What Doc quoted were statistics on mortality that exclude open cases, only counting illness that has resolved, one way or another. Which is why he called it a “dicey stat” with an artificially high mortality rate of 11%. Note that the two percentages for “recovered” and “dead” add up to 100%. That’s not an accurate snapshot.

[Purplecat]

Fauci: US could see '100,000 Covid cases per day'

[kennykb]

@DukeTrout

What Doc quoted were statistics on mortality that exclude open cases, only counting illness that has resolved, one way or another. Which is why he called it a “dicey stat” with an artificially high mortality rate of 11%. Note that the two percentages for “recovered” and “dead” add up to 100%. That’s not an accurate snapshot.

You, Doc, and I seem to be in violent agreement that computing a case fatality rate that excludes open cases is an incredibly weak stat - particularly when the problem is compounded with weak patient follow-up. It does inflate the mortality rate, particularly since cases with an uncomplicated recovery drop out of the system, and you need to wait weeks or months for the numbers to catch up the way @gatto keeps harping on. (Yes, I know that you can estimate the CFR quite well ex post facto if you have an idea what the case rate was going in. You don’t have to tell me again.)

@gatto

the truth is overall it seems to be a 0.2-1.5% mortality rate with many sources believing it to narrow in around 0.3-0.4% with greater and lesser differences by age.

And if it doesn’t confer lasting immunity, how many times does each of us have to roll those dice?

[gatto]

@DukeTrout

That’s fine, on it’s own, but you’re getting further and further from the stats that @docosc was quoting and which started this sub thread.

im only continuing, as i did from the beginning to state “we do not need to track the individual case studies and recovery stories to accurately know the mortality rate.”

that’s been my only point.

i don’t know where worldometer gets its numbers or how it got to 11% mortality in “cases with a known outcome.” since we don’t need to know [eta: individual] outcomes to assess overall mortality, it doesn’t seem that useful a number.

The mystery behind the data aggregation site Worldometer

[DukeTrout]

@kennykb

And if it doesn’t confer lasting immunity, how many times does each of us have to roll those dice?

While we still have a lot to learn about this virus, especially as it mutates over time, for similar viruses (and viruses in general) the mortality rate drops to negligible numbers upon reinfection (like less than 1 per million kind of rate).