In tracking COVID-19, keep your eye on this number

General Discussion
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And I think that trying to prematurely open the economy is not going to do a damn thing to actually get the economy back on track.
Keeping the economy locked down is to choke it to death. Businesses stop running means taxes stop coming in to run states, counties and towns and incorporated villages. Nationwide, more than 250,000 teachers are going to be laid off. Farm animals are being gassed in their hundreds of thousands and plowed under.
It doesn’t matter what I will lose, or have lost. Opening up bowling alleys and beaches and nail salons or anything without a working plan, is going to have almost no effect on the economy but may well give our enemy, C-19, aid and comfort, and a fresh start.
There is no such thing as a working plan that covers all the bases. You face certain death if you don't start up. The only chance of survival is to get going and improvise and innovate as you move on. Time is of the essence.
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Sree: "You face certain death if you don’t start up."
No. Death will come if we open too soon. If the USA can't survive a few months of isolation in order to protect the lives of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people, maybe it should consider changing how it does things.

I predict this pandemic will save lives in the long run. If our society learns how to treat each other better, pay our healthcare workers better (especially those on the low end, like care-givers in old-age homes), and just generally value humanity more and money less, we’ll come out of this a more enlightened and happy society.

 

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Sree: "There is no such thing as a working plan that covers all the bases. You face certain death if you don’t start up..."
 

The working plan to open the economy should be to

  1. starve c-19 from transmitting by maintaining social distance (our only sure fire weapon so far) until the transmission rate has been lowered long enough to get the active hidden cases in the public to few enough that we might be able to manage them with the following:

  2. Broad and continuing testing among critical groups, like all first responders and direct care staff, nursing homes, prisons, meat packing plants, etc.

  3. Testing and contact tracing to identify all possible active cases and quarantining them.

  4. Ensuring that we have adequate medical personnel and all medical equipment and medicines that MIGHT be needed if another spike in contagion happens. That includes having more than sufficient of all PPE’s, and tests.

  5. KEEP Headlong into the search for remedies that help without causing harm and for a good vaccine.

  6. Have a leader who is not an incompetent, nor a dealer of LIES and mixed messages. (This could be optional, if he would just butt out and shut up. But he ain’t gonna do that.)

Trying to open the economy without a working plan is simply a way to fail at opening the economy. It won’t work!!! And the people that you are worried about dying from this economy that T rump and his pandemic have given us will die anyway, because the economy WILL NOT BE SAVED BY T RUMP’S lying narratives about how great he is, and how great America is doing in this time of over 61K dead and counting, probably 40 million unemployed, food supply chains beginning to break down.

 

 

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In this thread, I have been trying to keep everyone apprised of the apparent inaccuracy of the Wash. Model that projected 60K deaths by Aug. from C-19. That was a wee bit over a week ago.

And since then, as the actual numbers inevitably impinged on that false projection, they raised the number, to 66K, then they raised it AGAIN, as reality impinged, to 74K. Now they have raised their projection, yet again to 134K by “early” August.

It seems to me that the model that they used were biased by political leanings. I have heard that elements in the WH, like Jared Kushner, influenced their baldly “optimistic” projections of less harm from C-19.

BTW, my own projections have been steadfast and pretty darned on target, getting the number of deaths by certain dates both essentially correct.

Also, I haven’t done the math yet, but I can tell you now, that the death total will reach the 134K number, well before August.

 

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Looks like we’ll pass 70,000 US deaths sometime today, May 5th

I don’t have the time to spend digging into these trends and number, I find a glance is enough to last days, its out of my hands.

I’m blessed enough to already live offsides enough that it’s actually possible to forget about what’s unfolding throughout our country and world.

My wife dodged the San Francisco infections and our landlord is back, his quarantines are finished, so life is almost normal around here and spring is wonderful, water in the ditch is higher than any of us can remember and life is good. Not that that’s a very good sign, just mean that’s it very warm up in the mountains and it merely means that water will run out sooner. I’m betting we’ll be luck to still have water in the creek (ditch will dry sooner) by mid June.

And life will be good until COVID-19’s cascading consequences start knocking on our doors.

 

TimB since you are tracking all this much closer than I can, I am curious what impact do you think those right wing nut “Lets Spread Trump’s Virus” demonstrations, are having on the curve of new cases that’s looking more like waves than an anticline?

 

 

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My best guess is that the T rump urges to his followers to open up the economy, while the rates of infection nationally, is still above the Rt of 1, can do nothing other than to increase the Rt, thus more tens of thousands of deaths will be coming to add to the current tens of thousands.

We had actually gotten to a plateau, nationally. That meant the Rt was essentially 1. If we had held the full social distancing measure, it would have most likely continued to go down, albeit, slowly. But while it was continuing to go down (while we were finally having a decrease in the total numbers of new cases) we could have been preparing to be able to do testing, contact tracing, quarantining for the smaller number of cases we would be faced with.

It would have taken a strong leader, like A. Cuomo as POTUS to have held the American people to the scientific path. But our DOTUS is only a strong leader when it comes to what his personal political and economic interests are. So it was just a matter of time until he sabotaged the proper national course of action.

So to answer your question I expect the Rt to increase in another week or so. Then it is just a matter of how much it increases. We may increase back to a plateau level for a while, but we could easily start another upward slant. Note this is still the 1st wave. I don’t know about other waves that may come.

At some point, the idiots trying to open the economy without the proper timing and without proper preparation, will hopefully figure out what should be done, re: testing, tracing, and quarantining, and will come up with the resources to do it, despite T rump’s refusal to ever get adequate testing truly made available. Then, maybe we can get the curve to start flattening again. But if the Rt gets above, say 1.5, the curve will be going up rather dramatically.

T rump’s constant LIES about how we have the greatest and best most beautiful tests and that we are testing more than all of the rest of the world combined, is in STARK contradiction to reality. While he and anyone near him, get tested regularly for C-19, there are populations where people are dying who can’t get tested.

(Frontline healthcare workers, nursing home residents and staff, prisoners, meat workers, anyone considered an essential service - Why aren’t they given testing like our DOTUS and his cronies are getting regularly?)

 

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On April 24th, on THIS thread, I predicted the following:

"I am guesstimating that it will take 23 days from tomorrow to double from 52,000 to 104,000. That would be around May 19th."
I was wrong. The doubling time, thank goodness, has turned out to be longer than 23 days. But now at this approximate time of day, 23 days since April 25th, the total is less than 100K. I will now check the current total and report it here. A hair under 92K. That means the 104K mark is 12K away.

Looks like my prediction was off by maybe 10 days. We will see. It seems very likely that we will reach the 104K number by the last day of May, at most.

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We will see. It seems very likely that we will reach the 104K number by the last day of May, at most.
Don't let a crisis go to waste. If you're looking for a business venture that lets you help people in their darkest times, you might consider starting a funeral home, also known as a funeral parlor or mortuary. It can be a rewarding business, but it's not a cheap one to start. I will bankroll you.
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I already spent some money in March with a funeral home. I asked the woman who helped me if they would be looking forward to a lot of business this year (due to COVID-19). She said “We hope not.” What else could she say to a customer?

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Post 328614, posted on May 19, 2020:

On April 24th, on THIS thread, I predicted the following: “I am guesstimating that it will take 23 days from tomorrow to double from 52,000 to 104,000. That would be around May 19th.” I was wrong. The doubling time, thank goodness, has turned out to be longer than 23 days. But now at this approximate time of day, 23 days since April 25th, the total is less than 100K. I will now check the current total and report it here. A hair under 92K. That means the 104K mark is 12K away. Looks like my prediction was off by maybe 10 days. We will see. It seems very likely that we will reach the 104K number by the last day of May, at most.
Okay. Looks like tonight will be the 104,000 mark, which is double the toll as of April 25th. Today is 35 days since then. So that is the "doubling time" since then. Since I have been tracking the doubling time, it has grown in duration. So going by that alone, I would suspect the doubling time to continue to become longer. IOW, the time for the death total to double again, to 208,000 should be significantly longer than 35 days.

It looks like the official daily death toll for the U.S., dropped below 1,000 a day for a short while. In the last few days, it seems to be back above 1,000. The virus may have gotten most of its easy targets from among our efforts at social distancing. We have learned more about it and “should” be able to combat it more effectively. However, since some States are opening without adhering to CDC recommendations, I don’t see the daily death count dropping from the 1,000 deaths average per day, anytime soon. Even with the advantage of people being outdoors more in the summer, getting more vitamin D, and having the natural sunlight as a disinfectant of surfaces, I am guessing, the press for economic opening will probably not allow the death toll to go down much more. Unless, maybe the RepugLIARS and the federal govt get behind the provision of N95 quality masks and convinces those ignorant deplorable masses to wear them. (That ain’t gonna happen. Not with T rump around.)

Thus I am guesstimating that the next doubling time will be about 100 days. That would put us at 208,000 at about the 8th of September. That is getting close to the regular flu season so who knows what will happen then.

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Thus I am guesstimating that the next doubling time will be about 100 days. That would put us at 208,000 at about the 8th of September. That is getting close to the regular flu season so who knows what will happen then.
You are counting the dead? It's macabre. You are like a greedy grim reaper.
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I suppose you would rather forget the dead. Or pretend that people are not continuing to die, due to the incompetence and personality disorder of the scumbag that you worship, the T rump.

I fear we have not yet seen the extent of the macabre that he will bring upon America, and the world.

I don’t intend to lose track of they dead and dying from COVID-19. I may have to soon start counting the dead from the cops and the National Guard and maybe even the military, urged on by the T rump to kill American citizen protestors. He only needs to enact the Insurrection Act of 1807, in order to Command the military to kill Americans.

Talk about the Boston Tea Party, there appears to be an emerging rebellion that is happening in cities all across the country. Chickens are coming home to roost. > 40 Million unemployed. When there is nothing left to eat, I have heard it said, that the poor will eat the rich.

But it shall not distract me from the mass of death that T rump has, already, brought to America, and which he seems to be trying to promote around the world, if he can get away with defunding the W.H.O.

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The R0 (or R naught) is the transmissibility rate. It is another good number to attend to, if you can find a good calculation of it. If it is less than 1, then that means that anyone who gets the virus infects fewer than one other person on average. That would also mean that the viral infection would be dying out, unless more fuel is given to it.

Right now, the R must be well over 1. This is clear since the number of newly identified cases is increasing dramatically and this increase cannot be explained solely due to increased testing.

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The daily death total was trending downward, until recently. It looks like it is plateauing. But it may well go back up soon. The daily death total lags behind the high rates of identified infectees and behind the high rates of hospitalizations. So we will soon see (in the next week or so) if it starts going back up again.

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Gary Markstein, Durango Herald, Colorado

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I don’t know how to get an accurate R0 number.

I do see in my last post in this thread that I said “AND why the hell is it not yet mandatory for all to wear a face covering in public?”

That was 3 months ago. So I wonder

Why the hell is it still not yet mandatory for all to wear a face covering in public?

 

 

 

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On May 30th, I made a prediction that:

... I am guesstimating that the next doubling time will be about 100 days. That would put us at 208,000 at about the 8th of September.
I tell you that I was wrong this time. Thankfully the death toll is not 208,000 as of today. We are almost 18,000 short of that. It looks like the doubling time from May 30th, will be more like 120 days rather than 100. I am expecting the # of new daily cases to pick up any time now. But it is not showing up in the data, yet.