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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

#101

Post by 34679 »

nabla9 wrote: post #68

Francois Balloux Computational biologist, director of Genetics Institute at UCL had interesting twitter post: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12388371580074475... > Predictions from any model are only as good as the data that parametrised it. There are two major unknowns at this stage. (1) We don't know to what extent covid-19 transmission will be seasonal. (2) We don’t know if covid-19 infection induces l…

Why don't we know the extent of seasonal transmission? At the very least, we have data from areas that are in opposite seasons, even if we've yet to collect data on the transition from one season to another. Can't we get some insight from comparing the rate of transmission in Australia, where it's summer, to the UK, where it's winter?

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#102

Post by gvjddbnvdrbv »

nemo44x wrote: post #53
emmelaich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related, there's also the distinct possibility that many had Covid-19 well before it was in public consciousness. Look for ILI (Influenza-like Illness) stats which were appreciably higher in January. The obvious inference is that many had Covid-19 before it was recognised as such. This might be a good thing.

I think this is underrated. This thing must have been spreading since November here. I know a person who back in January acquired something like pneumonia and a bad fever, went to the hospital for awhile and tests were negative for flu, etc. doctors just didn’t know what it was. The person has COPD however. But anecdotally I’ve noticed quite a few more colleagues over the last few months out sick “with the flu or som…

You are in denial.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#103

Post by takeda »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #17
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

This 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…

> the USA curve is fearsomely steep This analysis is difficult because it is related to testing capacity. We all know testing capacity was limited early on. It remains limited, but is growing. The faster capacity grows, the steeper the curve will be. Want to have a less steep curve? Lower the amount of testing. In another comment, you claim looking at the curves leaves out politics completely, but it doesn't. Any pol…

I am worried that we are choosing the second route with articles like this one: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-20/coronavi...

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#104

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

andrepd wrote: post #69
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

This 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…

>I've been graphing the exp curve As you can imagine, there's more to epidemiology than this. I'm a big fan of letting the qualified people do their work, while we do ours: shut up and do not spread misinformation. In fact, at the risk of being rude ill even go so far and say that it's quite arrogant to pretend to pontificate about this when your knowledge about this issue is 0, and also when one major problem in com…

And I am having serious misgivings about posting it, nonetheless, many people have expressed deep concerned, and I'm doing the same, only with actual data.

I made it clear the limits of my knowledge - which may still not excuse me, however I have to ask if you are an epidemiologist and if so, please tell me how to model the data better. And I don't mean randomly google up some papers to dump here and pretend you are an expert (unless you are).

How far can I extrapolate e^x before it becomes useless? What are the confidence limits I can use in the extrapolation? How much can I approximate the logistic function with an exponential, when as now, the cases are currently a small fraction of the population? Why is this site http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ done by experts using log axis any different from mine using curve fitting with exponentials? Why does http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#w say the USA is 11.5 days behind Italy whereas my amateur attemp suggest ~9 days? (and yes, I wish I'd seen these graphs before I posted) What else have I missed? Criticise freely, with reason, don't just accuse me of misinformation because I posted my fears, which others have done too, only I did the maths.

Now please excuse me while I look at the logistics curve and compare its early stages with exponentiation.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#105

Post by fma »

nemo44x wrote: post #53
emmelaich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related, there's also the distinct possibility that many had Covid-19 well before it was in public consciousness. Look for ILI (Influenza-like Illness) stats which were appreciably higher in January. The obvious inference is that many had Covid-19 before it was recognised as such. This might be a good thing.

I think this is underrated. This thing must have been spreading since November here. I know a person who back in January acquired something like pneumonia and a bad fever, went to the hospital for awhile and tests were negative for flu, etc. doctors just didn’t know what it was. The person has COPD however. But anecdotally I’ve noticed quite a few more colleagues over the last few months out sick “with the flu or som…

If you haven't heard about the Seattle Flu Study - this is a great read. Coronavirus was in Seattle before officials confirmed it. The federal government also prevented the researchers from doing more testing, delaying valuable time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#106

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

Lewton wrote: post #80
acqq wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of distinct outbreaks happening at once makes a big difference in the steepness of the curve in the beginning. How come? "Distinct outbreaks" just means the older state was underdiagnosed, not that the characteristics of the pandemics change.

"Beginning" might be the wrong term, as it's a bit into the beginning that it starts to make a difference. Local saturation happens fairly quickly. Having 100 infected in one place is very much different to having 1 infection happening 100 different places when you look at it after a week When you're looking at the "country" view, the "older state" gets lost in the transmissions happening from people crossing borders…

Oh my. Thanks for that explanation. Given the indifference of the US administration it suggests things may be spreading even faster over there than I realised. We'll know in a week or so.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#107

Post by elorant »

mnl wrote: post #63
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just can't believe this. No one listens and this is in-your-face obvious Can you clarify. I can modify the top post (mine) if you're saying I'm overstating things. Happy to be wrong here.

I mean, it's just frustration. You have to expect this from a novel disease once you realize its R0 has been characterized, it's greater than 2, it's airborne and asymptomatic patients can transmit it. What have been people expecting? I'm a physicist, I've seen this kind of growth. We also have this totalitarian principle which states that "Everything not forbidden is compulsory", I see no fundamental difference, it…

OK but how much larger than 2? Is it 2,5 or is it something like 5? Because the narrative so far doesn't fit the reality.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#108

Post by logicchains »

ethbro wrote: post #98
logicchains wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America at least, the functioning, advanced health care system is a barely accessible to people who are unemployed, and the government doesn't look like it's going to do anything to change that soon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_debt#United_States

"Studies have found people are most likely to accumulate large medical debts when they do not have health insurance to cover the costs of necessary medications, treatments, or procedures"

In most cases, no job = no health insurance

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#109

Post by snewman »

w1ntermute wrote: post #78
DennisP wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The death curve is also quite steep. Seven days ago we were at 57 total deaths, now it's 276. Daily deaths has gone from eight people seven days ago to 49. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ Here's a good article on estimating current number of cases from number of deaths: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...

The death curve is also deceptive - there were likely many patients who were recorded as dying of the flu, or of influenza-like illness, that actually died of COVID-19, due to a lack of testing. The bottom line is that it’s very difficult to make a conclusive statement based on the data collected prior to widespread testing. As for that Medium article, it’s written by a tech exec with zero education or professional e…

Fivethirtyeight has been surveying epidemiologists:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe...

Responding on March 16 and 17 to the question, "how many cases will the US report by March 29", their median prediction was 19,000. As of this moment, early on the 21st, that figure has ALREADY been exceeded (per Worldometer). Based on current growth rates, it appears virtually certain that the actual figure on the 29th will exceed the "best-guess" prediction of every single expert surveyed, and the "high-end" prediction of all but one or two. They've completely whiffed a prediction just a few days out.

This is a novel (no pun intended) situation, even for epidemiologists. To understand it, critical thinking skills are at least as important as subject matter expertise. My read is that the Medium article represents some of the best critical thinking on the subject so far.

Re: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming

#110

Post by magicsmoke »

nemo44x wrote: post #53
emmelaich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related, there's also the distinct possibility that many had Covid-19 well before it was in public consciousness. Look for ILI (Influenza-like Illness) stats which were appreciably higher in January. The obvious inference is that many had Covid-19 before it was recognised as such. This might be a good thing.

I think this is underrated. This thing must have been spreading since November here. I know a person who back in January acquired something like pneumonia and a bad fever, went to the hospital for awhile and tests were negative for flu, etc. doctors just didn’t know what it was. The person has COPD however. But anecdotally I’ve noticed quite a few more colleagues over the last few months out sick “with the flu or som…

If COVID19 was spreading in the US since November then the US hospital system should have been overwhelmed by now with intensive care patients. The first infection in China was traced back to November and they were building hospitals by early February.

The only places I've seen the first US infection being dated that early are conspiracies on Chinese social media that claim the origin of COVID19 to be the US instead of Wuhan. The only way that theory works is to date the first infection in the US and claim that Americans bought it into China during the Wuhan Military games. That theory is easy enough to debunk with common sense because if the US had COVID first the hospitals would be completed overwhelmed before China's was, but it's not the first time wishful thinking's buried common sense in Chinese history.

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