[a10t2]

The death toll in this case is very misleading because we are now seeing, through widespread antibody testing, that orders of magnitude more people have gotten it while showing no symptoms/low symptoms, etc. This translates to a fatality rate on par with/less than the seasonal flu.

Obviously I'm not a doctor, but from the data I've seen the key differences between this and most flus are a sharp inflection in IFR (two orders of magnitude or more) somewhere around age 50, and an R0 of roughly 5-7. So even for younger populations for whom the fatality rate isn't significantly different from typical seasonal flus, many times more people could be expected to become infected.

[dmtaylor]

I think a "Deaths above baseline" number (with rolling 7, 14 and 30 day averages) would be a better metric for analysis.

Yes, we need this.  At this time I am not aware of a site that maintains this information.  However I have seen it reported in some news articles, which I don't have saved for easy access unfortunately.

The other important stats would be related to "healthcare saturation" - this is the whole premise/need for "flattening the curve". Basically, we have a limited amount of healthcare resources. Once we surpass that, then quality of healthcare takes a nosedive and people (including healthcare workers) start getting sicker and dying at an accelerating rate. This would be stats like % ICU beds filled, % vents in use, and healthcare worker overtime above baseline. Ideally, this would be available at the state, county, city and individual hospital level. This would not only provide a good report card, but granular detail would also assist in determining where resources are stretched thin and where there is availablity to take overflow.

This information is in fact available down to the state level here:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Unfortunately I find their projections have been consistently overly optimistic over the past couple months by approximately a factor of two, at least for Wisconsin.  About a month ago they had predicted 300 deaths maximum from the first wave in Wisconsin.  Now they are anticipating closer to 800 deaths and up to 1000 by August.  Personally I think we will hit 1000 sometime in mid to end of June.  Time will tell whose predictions are more accurate.  Not all my own predictions have come true.  But do I know this site was overly optimistic.  It's a source of data regardless of their predictions.

[Big Monk]

The death toll in this case is very misleading because we are now seeing, through widespread antibody testing, that orders of magnitude more people have gotten it while showing no symptoms/low symptoms, etc. This translates to a fatality rate on par with/less than the seasonal flu.

Obviously I'm not a doctor, but from the data I've seen the key differences between this and most flus are a sharp inflection in IFR (two orders of magnitude or more) somewhere around age 50, and an R0 of roughly 5-7. So even for younger populations for whom the fatality rate isn't significantly different from typical seasonal flus, many times more people could be expected to become infected.

My main concern would be those who get it (and survive) and show medium to severe symptoms while they have it as well as lingering effects we don’t know about yet.

Obviously many, many more people will be getting it and:

a.) be asymptomatic or very mild cases;
b.) be medium to severe cases and recover;
c.) be severe cases and ultimately fatalities;

It stands to reason the large majority of people will be a.).

c.) is terrible no matter what illness it is.

b.) is where the jury is still out for me. We don’t know yet what kind of lingering after effects recovering patients might exhibit.

I’ll continue to stay home and practice distancing when I do have to go out because I’d rather be cautious and find out there are no lingering effects than be in situation b.) and realize I’ll have lingering respiratory issues.

[erockrph]

I think a "Deaths above baseline" number (with rolling 7, 14 and 30 day averages) would be a better metric for analysis.

Yes, we need this.  At this time I am not aware of a site that maintains this information.  However I have seen it reported in some news articles, which I don't have saved for easy access unfortunately.

The other important stats would be related to "healthcare saturation" - this is the whole premise/need for "flattening the curve". Basically, we have a limited amount of healthcare resources. Once we surpass that, then quality of healthcare takes a nosedive and people (including healthcare workers) start getting sicker and dying at an accelerating rate. This would be stats like % ICU beds filled, % vents in use, and healthcare worker overtime above baseline. Ideally, this would be available at the state, county, city and individual hospital level. This would not only provide a good report card, but granular detail would also assist in determining where resources are stretched thin and where there is availablity to take overflow.

This information is in fact available down to the state level here:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Unfortunately I find their projections have been consistently overly optimistic over the past couple months by approximately a factor of two, at least for Wisconsin.  About a month ago they had predicted 300 deaths maximum from the first wave in Wisconsin.  Now they are anticipating closer to 800 deaths and up to 1000 by August.  Personally I think we will hit 1000 sometime in mid to end of June.  Time will tell whose predictions are more accurate.  Not all my own predictions have come true.  But do I know this site was overly optimistic.  It's a source of data regardless of their predictions.

Thanks for sharing that site. I definitely missed this amid the flood of information over the past few months. I have to admit that I've tuned out a bit over the past few weeks. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has started going numb due to information overload.

[pete b]

https://www.theonion.com/wisconsin-bars-reopen-following-state-supreme-court-dec-1843482399

[BrewBama]

Interesting read: https://coronavirustruths.godaddysites.com/?fbclid=IwAR2b0s9X20MJNL7W1Hb2KkeDoyDyvE6qR8dT-091qhqRhiLjofYxy1lS5xU


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IMHO - That website can it be trusted. Who sponsored the person or organization who put this together?  Who gathered the information?  I didn’t see a By Line. I will take the information from that website with a grain of sand and a cold beer.

Here’s another point of view.

https://www.aier.org/article/stand-up-for-your-rights-says-bio-statistican-knut-m-wittkowski/


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[pete b]

I am sorry to say that we, myself included, have reached the “post the scientific-ish article that supports my worldview” stage of the pandemic.

[Wilbur]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC305318/


https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-18/sars-coronavirus-china-epidemic

Interesting to hear someone say herd immunity is the way to go, even though more will die. A company has a providing vaccine. On the comparison to SARs, SARs was more likely to be deadly and more severe, and people weren't a infectious until they got such enough to notice. If they infectious people all look and act sick, it's easy enough to test, screen, and contain until herd immunity is developed.

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[narvin]

I am sorry to say that we, myself included, have reached the “post the scientific-ish article that supports my worldview” stage of the pandemic.

Ha, so true.

I will say that even the best scientific minds are not treating things as black and white.  And yet, when the news goes to report on a reopening in Wisconsin, they fail to mention that it's a town of 10,000 with no cases so far.

https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/roadmapsupplement_final_1.pdf
 

[KellerBrauer]

Interesting read: https://coronavirustruths.godaddysites.com/?fbclid=IwAR2b0s9X20MJNL7W1Hb2KkeDoyDyvE6qR8dT-091qhqRhiLjofYxy1lS5xU


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IMHO - That website can it be trusted. Who sponsored the person or organization who put this together?  Who gathered the information?  I didn’t see a By Line. I will take the information from that website with a grain of sand and a cold beer.

Here’s another point of view.

https://www.aier.org/article/stand-up-for-your-rights-says-bio-statistican-knut-m-wittkowski/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Whenever I visit a website I’m not familiar with - especially when the information the website is posting is controversial - I immediately visit the “About” page to learn more about the motives of the group presenting the information.

In this case, my suspect was very accurate.  The American Institute of Economic Research is a Right-leaning / Libertarian bias organization.  I saw it in the opening statement before the Doctor began his rant.  I went further and found a Fact-Check website called “Media Bias / Fact Check” to get the low-down.  According to this Fact Check organization, The American Institute of Economic Research is, in fact, a Libertarian organization.

For those who don’t know what a Libertarian is: A Libertarian is a person, or group, that does NOT believe in government of any kind or of any size; they want free markets with no regulation, no taxing, no control, no policing, etc..  So it stands to reason why this organization (the AIER) is in support of never shutting down the markets in the first place.

I won’t go any further; I don’t want denny getting angry with me. 

[KellerBrauer]

Ha, so true.

I will say that even the best scientific minds are not treating things as black and white.  And yet, when the news goes to report on a reopening in Wisconsin, they fail to mention that it's a town of 10,000 with no cases so far.

https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/roadmapsupplement_final_1.pdf

Fascinating information from a very reliable and trusted source.  But it’s HUGE!  That’s a lot of information.  I downloaded it to read when time permits.

[a10t2]

A Libertarian is a person, or group, that does NOT believe in government of any kind or of any size;

No, that's an anarchist.

[BrewBama]

I believe the lesson here is each side has a story to tell with motives for their version.  The point is there are other points of view than what we are experiencing.

...the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

If we only hear an issue from one side or the other — regardless of the issue — we live in an ‘echo chamber’ (to coin a phrase from another post).


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[erockrph]

Interesting read: https://coronavirustruths.godaddysites.com/?fbclid=IwAR2b0s9X20MJNL7W1Hb2KkeDoyDyvE6qR8dT-091qhqRhiLjofYxy1lS5xU


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

IMHO - That website can it be trusted. Who sponsored the person or organization who put this together?  Who gathered the information?  I didn’t see a By Line. I will take the information from that website with a grain of sand and a cold beer.

Here’s another point of view.

https://www.aier.org/article/stand-up-for-your-rights-says-bio-statistican-knut-m-wittkowski/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Whenever I visit a website I’m not familiar with - especially when the information the website is posting is controversial - I immediately visit the “About” page to learn more about the motives of the group presenting the information.

In this case, my suspect was very accurate.  The American Institute of Economic Research is a Right-leaning / Libertarian bias organization.  I saw it in the opening statement before the Doctor began his rant.  I went further and found a Fact-Check website called “Media Bias / Fact Check” to get the low-down.  According to this Fact Check organization, The American Institute of Economic Research is, in fact, a Libertarian organization.

For those who don’t know what a Libertarian is: A Libertarian is a person, or group, that does NOT believe in government of any kind or of any size; they want free markets with no regulation, no taxing, no control, no policing, etc..  So it stands to reason why this organization (the AIER) is in support of never shutting down the markets in the first place.

I won’t go any further; I don’t want denny getting angry with me. 

I won't attempt to escalate things here other than to interject that I am a Libertarian, and I DO believe in government. And though free-market economy is a lynchpin of the Libertarian economic views, we are not all anti-establishment, right-wing whackjobs.

[denny]

All I'm gonna say is be very, very careful this doesn't go off the rails.