There is no escaping some basic epidemic math.Trump, the Covidiot governors and the "let people die" caucus are going to cost 100,000 people their lives by the end of the summer.
In the absence of a vaccine, stopping the spread of the virus requires about two-thirds of the population to have been infected. And some experts have argued that before what is known as herd immunity kicks in, the number of people infected nationwide could reach a staggering 90 percent if social distancing is relaxed and transmission rates climb. (It is also not clear how long immunity will last among those who have been infected.)
But damn the death toll, Trump's going to make sure everything is reopened.
As President Trump presses states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in coronavirus infections and deaths over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1 — nearly double the current level.Heckuvajob, Trumpie!
The projections, based on data collected by various agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and laid out in an internal document obtained Monday by The New York Times, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of May, up from about 30,000 cases now. There are currently about 1,750 deaths per day, the data shows.
They are not the only ones forecasting more carnage. Another model, closely watched by the White House, raised its fatality projections on Monday to more than 134,000 American deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, by early August. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington more than doubled its previous projection of about 60,000 total deaths, an increase that it said partly reflects “changes in mobility and social distancing policies.”
Meanwhile:
Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech announced that their potential coronavirus vaccine began human trials in the United States on Monday. If the tests are successful, the vaccine could be ready for emergency use here as early as September.I think it's amazing that so much work is being done. But I am also leery as fuck. Speed in this sort of research indicates to me that corners are being cut, that testing is being rushed and that nobody has a clue whether or not these new vaccines are safe.
Remember, NASA saved a few million dollars in building the Hubble by cutting out some testing. That cost them over a billion dollars to fly a repair mission, not to mention the years when the damn thing wasn't fully usable. Science is not terribly forgiving of shortcuts.
Many errors are self-correcting. It is entirely conceivable that Donnie’s need for crowds and rallies, applause and adulation, cheers and (yes) jeers, will result in a COVID-19 outbreak traced directly to a rally. We will know the end is near when the Fox talking heads actually suggest that ill Biden supporters attended the rally into infect people. You heard it here first.
ReplyDeleteYou are being uncharacteristically generous. We'll break 100K deaths by July Fourth, not the end of summer.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers from CDC assume a lot, like people will maintain distance.
ReplyDeleteIF they do not the curve accelerates up ward and the delay is about 7-14
days to get a measure that we are reinfecting people.
We have a double conundrum. We need infrastructure and business working
or we may literally starve people. That same act will increase Covid
related deaths. So its a real balancing act at best.
That is further complicated by two things:
Vaccine actually works without causing other medical issues
and we have some by maybe fall.
It also expect there is a immunity granted if you survive it.
Right now that is still and open question with no proof if it
either way.
One little maybe to all this is that there appears to be a
spread of virus in the Convid 19 gene pool. Genetic testing
of virus samples from NYC region suggest there are as many
as 5-7 flavors or Covid-19 and the flavor traced back to Italy
seems to be connected (loosely, not enough info) with the high
death rate in NYC. IT MAY be why some get sick and others
get acute disease. Again we do not know near enough.
Opinion: Medicine is not science as in studying cause and
effect. It is the applied practice (an art!) of connecting
disease and treatments. We need both one to keep people alive
and the other to understand how and why it kills so better
treatments are developed.
The bottom line is 100 years later we know a lot about
the Spanish flu but we are only maybe 4 months into
this bug. Think of what they were thinking at 4 months
into the the Spanish flu outbreak.
We do not know what we don't know.
We do know from the Spanish Flu and before that TB
the following:
Physical distance reduces infection rate.
Sanitation especially hands is very important.
Also surfaces!
Masks and gloves do help from spreading it,
maybe helps avoid getting it.
Fresh air, sun, is good, exercise, its about health!
Maintain distance.
Track infections...
Isolate those suspected ill, 14 days seems the right time.
Quarantine for those known ill or test positive, again 14 days.
Eck!
A couple of points. NY state governor required old folks homes to take in recovering COVID 19 patients. Spread of death in NY heavily shows residents of old folks homes as dying from COVID 19.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia has more people than NY. Also lower death rate, in spite of huge homeless populations in city centers.
People dying 'of COVID' are dying of many different causes but because the fedgov is paying more for treatment of COVID patients, particularly COVID patients on respirators at $50,000.00 a pop, people who are shot, run over by a truck, set on fire, and then stomped to death by mules are being listed as COVID deaths and massively inflating the statistics.
You are afraid.
You are being made to be afraid.
You should think about how much liberty and how much of your rights you are willing to give up for a disease that will prove to be much less deadly than is being said to be.
Eainsdad, you might want to think of how many people are going to die because their fellow countrymen cannot stay six feet away from them, nor wear masks in public.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia has more people, true. California also has three times the area of NY, while only having twice the population. NYC has 28,000 people per square mile. San Francisco has a density of 17,000 people per square mile and LA has a density of 8,500.
I have seen zero reports of people being stomped by mules.
Maybe you should put down the tea-party crack pipe.
About that New York nursing home thingie...
ReplyDeleteNursing homes are the single most vulnerable population for infection and death by this virus. More so than prisons because of the fragility of the health of the residents.
Areas with meat packing plants with covid outbreaks have devastating co-outbreaks in nearby nursing homes because the virus travels through populations and gets everywhere, especially in places with no distancing restrictions.
New York has done something I don't think any other state has done to at least attempt to stop the wave of death currently overwhelming its nursing homes: the governor has issued a statement advising any nursing home, public or private, that has any covid patient it can't properly or safely care for to call the state health department who will then take the patient to dedicated facilities for the treatment of covid patients from nursing homes.
Other than that, not much is being done for nursing homes, ALFs, SNFs, and any other long term care facility, despite the horrendous numbers of illnesses and deaths sweeping through them like a wildfire through dry grass.
If Fergus wanted to turn his entire image around with the least possible effort he could start a program to protect and save the residents of those facilities and make a big deal out of it.
And if he doesn't do anything at all, as is likely, this one single issue may cost him his job, as more and more people begin to find out the conditions that contributed to the death of an older family member.
And don't even get me started on what's happening in our prisons right now.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
First they killed off the weak, the infirm ...
ReplyDeleteI don't often pull out the tin-foil, but this is starting to smell like genocide.
I'll probably hold out for herd immunity.
Ever since this started, I've wondered at these, to my untrained mind, unrealistically low death estimates. If 70% or more of the population is infected, and the mortality rate is... what? In Italy and Spain, where health care was overwhelmed, about 8%. This would imply, to me, a layman, 18 million dead. I hope I'm very wrong, but the estimates of 100,000 to 240,000 dead seem like wishful thinking to me.
ReplyDeleteSave for... 70% of the population is not infected.
ReplyDeleteThat means about 98 million may have the bug.
Change that 5% and that roughly a 16 million change for
better or worse.
Fact, Diamond Princess Cruse ship had about 5000 occupants
the Captain when they saw a bug spreading imposed quarantine
to quarters. result was 73% managed to NOT get the bug, the
crew who isolated less were more significantly impacted.
Of the testing done here in the USA about 26% are positive.
However there is more testing is hot spot areas than sparse
or those not yet infected. That is with about 8 million
tested. With 328 million people here 26% of that means
about 8.5 million infected (minimum likely). So about
4% of those get acute respiratory illness from it and die.
that 340,000!
If the death rate is 3% its 255,000.
If the death rate is 5% its 424,000.
Only takes a .1% change to make thousands of lives continue or end.
That's not even trying to get fine grained with the math or even
fancy.
So avoidance does work. It doesn't sneak into your room and bite ya.
It also means even a small change in isolation and quarantine to
more or less can have a significant change in those numbers.
Also USA is not uniform population. NYC is 28,000 per square mile
some of the other big cites like Chicago is far less, LA less dense.
Density counts! More people in NYC take the subway than some
cities contain. If you in the middle of no and where with a
population of 5 per square miles your also less likely to get
the bug until you got to big city and pick up your cousin that
flew in from the east.
Bottom line is physical distance. Sanitation/handwash. Limit
population movement to what is needed. The latter is what
spread it so well. It was in Washington and Italy then NY,
why, NY regional has Newark, Laguardia, and Kennedy all
large international airports serving all. If it was to
arrive it was a hub like that to bring it in. Now look
at the infection map for early March. See the hot spots,
not here is a list, San Francisco, LAX, Seatac, Chicago,
LasVagas, Miamai, Atlanta..... coincidence, no it is not.
Eck!
Eck!, don’t forget the hotspots in meatpacking and other close contact facilities. Look where the newest hotspots are...Utah (essential business and a giant birthday party), South Dakota (meatpacking), Georgia (ditto), Nebraska (ditto), et al.
ReplyDeleteCP,
ReplyDeleteThat's later. After the bug migrated with friends to those areas.
Note the time delay. How did it get to some areas like that?
Early March, it was around or near the big time airports.
With this bug and slow testing we have to look at events in
time chunks of about a week. We have a mass rally a week
later look at the numbers, two weeks to confirm them. By
then its too late. one person is now 50 or more.
Eck!
The first cases have made it into these hills, so we're gonna be extra careful now.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine