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Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

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Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think travelling by car is a safer option, both for me and others around me. I thought about it because I'll need to drive a long drive in two days (across France). I'm taking throwaway gloves with me... Inside the car I'll be fine (and people outside the car too) but... A gas station has to be one of the riskiest place to catch the virus because you are forced to touch the gas pump. And that's the same for…

SARS-CoV-2 has a viral envelope, which reduces the transmission possibility via objects[0]: "The lipid bilayer envelope of these viruses is relatively sensitive to desiccation, heat, and detergents, therefore these viruses are easier to sterilize than non-enveloped viruses, have limited survival outside host environments, and typically must transfer directly from host to host." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral…

Corona viruses can survive on surfaces for up to 9 days.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019567012...

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#132
post #66

Unfortunately garbage-in -> garbage-out. That chart shows US at 233 confirmed cases. According to NYT, over 10x that number are self-quarantined in NYC alone [1]. Now it's technically true that those cases aren't medically 100% factually confirmed, because NYC has only performed 35 tests total so far. But it gives a very inaccurate picture of reality. Garbage in, garbage out. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/nyr…

And the CDC itself says there are only 99 confirmed cases. What a shitshow. As of 3/6/2020 8:22 am PT: https://imgur.com/a/D0ICvoP Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

164 now, though note that "numbers close out at 4 p.m. the day before reporting" so that page is basically the count as of yesterday.

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#133
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't realistically track "actual cases" accurately anyways. For example, people might not go to the hospital. This is a well known challenge with population estimation e.g. domestic violence numbers) What you seem to be getting at is that a) this chart doesn't display the total number of tested cases and b) external reports of number of tested cases point to very low number of tests in the US But that's not a re…

This is just a straw man. No one is suggesting that they test everyone in the US, but at the level that epidemiologists and the WHO says is absolutely necessary to understand and respond to the spread of the disease. That they’re not doing testing at anywhere near the necessary levels, while countries like South Korea are, is not “debatable,” but evidence of their failure. Also your supposition about tracking actual…

It's not a straw man, the spectrum goes from no testing to testing everyone, and _measuring_ "actual cases" accurately (especially after community transmission stage) requires one to be on the latter end of the spectrum. I did say that it's unrealistic to go that far, and you're right that more aggressive testing will obviously lead to better visibility. My point merely was that the rationale for not ramping up testing to the wazoo could be attributed to risk/cost analysis. Incidentally, that might even explain why Singapore with a population half the size of Wuhan's would be able to respond more elastically than the US with a ~300M population and high levels of bureaucracy and government fragmentation.

Btw, I should clarify that when I said the word "debatable", I was using an euphemism.

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#134
post #10

I really dislike these maps that use circles. The circles overlap, are hard to reason about spatially and the size seems to be an arbitrary scale without meaning.

If you didnt see this when it showed up on HN a week or so ago, you might enjoy it: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/ma...

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#135
post #58

This ( https://ncov2019.live/map ) started as the best, most (practically, conveniently) informative and updated "dashboard" I've found. It was posted to HN several times (where I discovered it), but underwent some curious changes over the last few days. Initially, it showed all known events and included links for additional information. Then, peculiarly, all the cases in Florida disappeared with no trace, and now th…

Thanks for sharing, color coding used by this map is clearer than circles with different radii.

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#136
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market and the current administration both benefit from a low count of confirmed cases. The administration has already been criticized for repeatedly attempting to slash the CDC budget[1] and terminating the epidemic response team[2]. Trump also keeps attempting to downplay the severity of the virus so it would not be a good look if the true spread of the disease was widely known. Knowledge of the spread would al…

That just doesn’t make sense to me. Uncontained, this disease will grow exponentially until tens of millions are infected at once, and it eventually burns itself out. But by then, the disaster will be obvious and we will have the same result. Only with more casualties. Certainly anyone who had that sort of ulterior motive would understand this.

Making sense is not a priority for this administration.

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#137
post #96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dashboard is not intended to visualize computed estimates from models. It tracks the official confirmed cases, which is a very different and useful piece of data. You are unfair by stating it is garbage and misrepresenting what it shows (confirmed cases vs. estimated cases).

What's garbage is the US response to it. Italy is running 2500 tests a day. Oregon has the capacity to run a total of about 40.

The WHO fact-finding mission to China reported that they ran 350,000 tests in the province of Guangdong alone (though it must be noted that its population is 110 million) ...

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#138

This map seems effectively useless in the US, given absence of meaningful testing. Frontline nurses, treating COVID-19 patients , are having their tests stonewalled and delayed by the CDC: https://act.nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/graphics/N... I’ve seen multiple people referencing it to prove the absence of real threat in the US, which seems beyond absurd at this point.

The problem with wide scale testing is that it makes the CFR incomparable to seasonal flu or previous outbreaks. CFR is by definition deaths/confirmed cases. It's not a measure of infection lethality or mortality rate, even though that's what most of us think it is and what we're most curious about.

For crisis management and planning, you want a CFR that is comparable to something like the seasonal flu or previous outbreaks. "Confirmed" cases of respiratory illnesses are roughly equivalent to the number of people who present to a hospital with severe respiratory symptoms, minus the base rate. We don't go out and run an assay for any person suspected of having the flu, for example, especially not asymptomatic people. If you do that for SARS-CoV-2, the number of "confirmed" cases will sky rocket and the CFR will drop. But that lower CFR can't be meaningfully compared to anything else, and is pretty much useless except as a curiosity.

So it's understandable that the CDC isn't keen on widespread testing; it'll ruin the data, or at least ruin the characteristics of the data most important for crisis management. What matters now from a public health perspective is knowing whether SARS-CoV-2 is circulating. If you know it's circulating in an area, then you should just assume any respiratory illness is a SARS-CoV-2 and quarantine. Test if and only if it becomes severe and you need to know the cause for treatment.[1] You can calculate a more accurate and consistent CFR later by subtracting the base rate of presented respiratory infections from the outbreak rate.

Identifying a local outbreak does request testing, but the major problem there was a temporary problem with getting assay kits out. But going forward, it doesn't help to test people who aren't presenting with severe symptoms. At least, it doesn't help from an epidemiological perspective.

[1] However, SARS-CoV-2 causes primary viral pneumonia. By contrast, severe symptoms from seasonal flu are caused by secondary, bacterial pneumonia. There's not much that can be done for the former; for the latter you can prescribe antibiotics. So for severe cases it might just make sense to prescribe antibiotics, which would be benign for the viral infection (COVID-19) and even possibly a prophylactic for secondary bacterial pneumonia. In other words, in terms of treating a severely ill patient with a clear case of pneumonia, positive or negative COVID-19 identification might not provide any benefit.

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#139
post #58

This ( https://ncov2019.live/map ) started as the best, most (practically, conveniently) informative and updated "dashboard" I've found. It was posted to HN several times (where I discovered it), but underwent some curious changes over the last few days. Initially, it showed all known events and included links for additional information. Then, peculiarly, all the cases in Florida disappeared with no trace, and now th…

The data page seems to be more up to date than the map.

https://ncov2019.live/data

Re: Johns Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 Global Case Dashboard

#140
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Seems like people in Oregon choose to mostly ignore the issue

It's not just Oregon; that's just a number I saw this morning in the local paper, but I suspect it's similar everywhere. The US did not use the advance warning we had to prepare.

Yesterday, I read the US had 100 confirmed cases, and had tested 500 people.

Trump fired the a big part of the CDC that deals with pandemics back in 2018 and hasn’t replaced them. I don’t think the US government will make any serious effort to contain it, despite the recent theatrics from congress.

Not testing sick people will inflate the official mortality rate. If the disease hits 70% of the population (projection from yesterday), there will be more panic than there should be. Last I heard, WHO (poor testing on average) estimated 3.4%, but in areas with thorough testing, it looks closer to 0.6%.

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