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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

#121

Post by chris_f »

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…

One hopefully positive indicator is that yesterday new daily deaths in the US were lower than the day before (49 vs 57) [0].

Obviously it's only one day so time will tell if that means anything or a pattern occurs. As others have said, the stats for number of people affected is so closely linked to testing rates which have been increasing that this could be a more indicative metric to follow.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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

#122

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #104
andrepd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>> 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.

There is no "actual data" in your comment above. There is a claim that you make that you have graphed some data, but no graphs and no data.

Also, it doesn't take an epidemiologist to know that a non-epidemiologist should not play at epidemiology. The other poster doesn't have any responsibility to tell you "how to model the data better".

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

#123

Post by marvin »

chris_f wrote: post #121
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…

One hopefully positive indicator is that yesterday new daily deaths in the US were lower than the day before (49 vs 57) [0]. Obviously it's only one day so time will tell if that means anything or a pattern occurs. As others have said, the stats for number of people affected is so closely linked to testing rates which have been increasing that this could be a more indicative metric to follow. [0] https://www.worldome…

I'm sorry to say it, but that's just noise in the data. The death numbers in the United States will follow an exponential curve for a long time yet. Two weeks would be the absolute minimum before the shutdowns have an effect, but I think a month or two is a more realistic hope.

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

#124

Post by devmunchies »

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…

> 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

That’s exactly what happened to my dad in February.

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

#125

Post by travisporter »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #67
mnl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh heck yes. ISWYM and that's the way I treated it - seriously, starting 2 months ago, for exactly those reasons. I just don't get it either, it's like head-meets-wall every time you try to tell anybody. It's so depressing. (what I thought you might have meant was a criticism of me misusing maths and you were getting pissed off telling people it was a sigmoid not an exponential).

ISWYM - I see what you mean?

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

#127

Post by marcosdumay »

34679 wrote: post #101
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?

This virus has spread just like you would expect it to if airplanes did not exist (probably because most flights are short range). And it started at the North Hemisphere.

The southern countries are all on the initial stages, and I doubt any one has any reliable number for transmission speed, due to both test limits and low numbers overall.

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

#128

Post by danmaz74 »

georgeek wrote: post #119
yread wrote: post #72

165M deaths actually sounds plausible for covid19, if it overwhelms health care in India and developing world countries...

Yes: as usual with disease the poorest countries are going to be hit the hardest. If you think that Lombardy's medical facilities are bad, this will be quite the next level.

Lombardys health facilities are excellent, but there is only so much you can do when you're overwhelmed

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

#129

Post by mrfusion »

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…

Keep in mind that all the actions we’ve taken won’t show up for 14 days or longer since the already infected take time to show up.

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

#130

Post by mrfusion »

simonh wrote: post #49
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.

If that were true, we should see a much higher proportion of tested people showing positive. Also we shouldn't see the proportion of people tested being positive shooting up, but we do. Those ILI stats were probably just Flu.

I believe that most of the current testing only shows active infections?
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