The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
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Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#2Earlier discussion:
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#3This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below)
The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skewing it. If we take the last 10 data points, they fall very well onto the curves for all 3 countries, and that curve for the USA is horrific. I'm not an epidemiologist nor statistican so it would be irresponsible to put my predicted figures here, but christ, if I'm right the US is going to be reeling in just a few day.
Edit: @mnl below has pointed out that infection is not an exponential but on the whole a logistics curve (s-shaped curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function). He is correct. However in early stages I believe an exponential MAY be a decent approximation (and I'm reading up on it now). However, the inflection in the 'S' (where new infections would start to slow down) would be expected to be at far higher figures than those I'm looking at - a few tens of thousands of reported infections per country currently - and it's not even close to that (populations of multiple millions in each country).
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#4Most people (and most people who advice the public in the US) doesn't take this serious enough.
One of the foremost experts in epidemiology in the US Michael T. Osterholm said on Joe Rogan (AFAIKR) 6-12 months for the virus to go away, up to 5 years for a vaccine and that it would return in China when people start behaving normally again. This isn't something that will go away in a few weeks or months.
In "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs" he also predicted a Corona virus coming from China.
In a months time the US will take the place of Italy and see the healthsystem crash.
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#5This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below) The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skew…
But how much of the US’s growth is due to us finally having some (albeit not enough) testing?
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#6From what I read in this article and other sources, performing more tests seems to be a very promising approach to get this pandemic under control.
The number of positive tests and death rates are published every day on all channels. I wish the number of performed tests would be also published daily. What gets measured gets managed.
I wonder what limits the number of tests that can be performed. How much would it cost to ramp up testing capabilities so that every person with symptoms can be tested? How much to increase it to a level that everyone can be tested?
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#7This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below) The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skew…
Yes - absolute criminal negligence in the US and UK. Possibly Australia too.
The problem isn't just that a lot of people will die because the health system is swamped. That's hardly good news, but when you have a high peak you have a lot of people ill at the same time. And that means you run the risk of losing a significant percentage of critical workers in essential services including food, utilities, logistics, and IT.
Some will die, some will "just" be very ill and unable to work for 2-4 weeks. If you're lucky the numbers of seriously ill will be low enough to keep things running. Beyond that you're on a scale from frightening inconvenience and breakdown in some locations to the economic equivalent of critical organ failure.
Pushing any country through this is a huge and utterly irresponsible risk.
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#8This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below) The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skew…
But how much of the US’s growth is due to us finally having some (albeit not enough) testing?
Good question, I don't know. If it helps, a quick search got this https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/test...
See table at bottom.
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#9This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below) The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skew…
Worth linking to this page, which is regularly updated with the sort of analyses you refer to: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/
Scary that the US (especially some areas) and Switzerland are starting to track above Italy:
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/20mar2020/covid-us-norm....
Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
#10This is bad. I've been graphing the exp curve for Italy, UK and USA and the USA curve is fearsomely steep. Italy has more cases now but the USA is growing fastest and looks like it will match Italy's on ~March 28th (looking at the most recent 10 points, see below) The rate of growth in the USA, extrapolated, is just huge. Looking at the whole curve it does not match an exponential well, I think the early part is skew…
But how much of the US’s growth is due to us finally having some (albeit not enough) testing?
That's a very good point, and the lack of tests had a secondary effect. Nobody here took it very seriously at first, because the numbers were very low.