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Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

reuters.com

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Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#81

Post by seppin »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #30
anon84598 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden isn't performing a lot of tests for one: https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-figur...

Why do they need to perform a lot of tests if their strategy isn't dependent on testing?

Every strategy is dependent on testing, because every strategy requires an accurate assessment of sickness rates. If you don't know the extent of the problem, how can you even formulate a plan to fight it?

If by "strategy" you mean herd immunity, Sweden isn't doing that. No one is publicly claiming to be trying that anymore.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#82

Post by soneca »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #76
romwell wrote: post #3

Good luck to all Brazilians. They'll need it.

Heat is providing a lot of natural defense. Things are already going way better than predicted.

One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#83

Post by sebastianconcpt »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #59
save_ferris wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s absolutely no guarantee that the economy will make a quick recovery if the lockdowns are lifted. If the death toll starts to spike, people are going to stay home anyway, and businesses will be bleeding cash hoping for a recovery that isn’t coming quickly enough.

At this moment, full recovery is expected to happen no sooner than December 2022. Small business already bled out. If governors extend the lockout for another month, it will make it pointless to go back to work, as there will be no work to go back to. People will stay home until something else happens.

"Something else" being not necessarily external, much less staying passive. Example: post-WWII Germany. People rebuild everything from scratch by goverment just not being an obstacle to them.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#84

Post by [deleted] »

seppin wrote: post #74
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. Sweden is worth observing in terms of number of deaths and how overloaded their hospitals get. But their number of cases , like in a lot of countries, is essentially garbage data that can't possibly help our understanding of the situation to consume.

Right, but in planning for a hospital overrun you can't see it coming if you have no idea how many sick you have, if you don't test. Are you suggesting that as long as your hospitals aren't overrun, inflection rates aren't worth knowing ?

[deleted]

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#85

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

seppin wrote: post #74
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. Sweden is worth observing in terms of number of deaths and how overloaded their hospitals get. But their number of cases , like in a lot of countries, is essentially garbage data that can't possibly help our understanding of the situation to consume.

Right, but in planning for a hospital overrun you can't see it coming if you have no idea how many sick you have, if you don't test. Are you suggesting that as long as your hospitals aren't overrun, inflection rates aren't worth knowing ?

If your hospitals aren't overrun, and you don't expect them to become overrun in the future, improving your estimate of infection rates doesn't seem like a high-leverage activity. The argument for doing a lot of testing is that it enables good contact tracing, which Sweden doesn't seem to be planning to do anymore.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#86

Post by sebastianconcpt »

tinus_hn wrote: post #69
spamizbad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this kind of thinking. Earlier in the year it was this was a bad flu, no cause for alarm, no lockdown necessary. This has switched to the virus being too contagious to contain so you might as well do nothing major to address it and let it run its course. Truth is countries that took this seriously and acted swiftly controlled it. They’ll be reopening soon (Singapore already has, right?). I’m guessing the US wi…

Singapore got a 20% increase in cases today, they have not controlled it and they have not reopened.

The only thing that stops this biological contamination is developing community immunity. Treatments help a bit. Almost all else makes it worst.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#87

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

seppin wrote: post #75
2019-nCoV wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is honestly handling the crisis better than most of the western world. They've done >1.6M tests with a positivity rate of 1.7%.

That positive rate is far too low. If you get < 15% anywhere with a proven widespread outbreak you aren't doing enough testing.

That doesn't make sense to me. If you have a proven widespread outbreak and test everyone in your country, the number's still going to be below 15%.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#88

Post by marklacey »

mchusma wrote: post #14
mikepurvis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already happening in Sweden: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as-swedens-deat...

I don't understand the Sweden example. Their daily % increase in deaths is well below California. I don't know if there is a difference in counting deaths but Sweden seems to be doing ok relative to other countries. I have heard that they are effectively shut down voluntarily, so government action was not needed but the effect has been the same. Maybe a Swede can weigh in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavir…

Sweden has 1/4th the population of California. It looks like the total deaths is around 50% higher than California although of course California might have deaths that should have been attributed to COVID-19 that weren’t.

It looks like it was estimated to have arrived in Sweden two days earlier.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#89

Post by roel_v »

perl4ever wrote: post #57
roel_v wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands (for March) mortality for all age cohorts is up, average of about 10%. Lower cohorts mortality is down but not enough to offset the others. Causality is by definition impossible to ascertain at this aggregate level, but no reasonable person would come with another explanation.

As others say or imply, you'd want to get data for a seasonal curve and then use it to adjust.

Yes, the numbers I am quoting are as compared to other years, adjusted for macro changes in population makeup, etc. The gold standard for reporting on this.

Re: Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy

#90

Post by sebastianconcpt »

soneca wrote: post #82
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat is providing a lot of natural defense. Things are already going way better than predicted.

One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this virus [1].

There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like comorbidity and demographics.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727

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