showmethesnow

Thought I would also mention that your projected 3-6% infection rate as of now would argue other wise as well when you consider peak is, I believe, still probably 1 1/2 to 2 weeks away. I forget the formula for the doubling of the infection so this will be somewhat vague but I believe on the front side of the curve approaching the peak we are looking at a doubling of the infection roughly every 2 to 3 days. If someone has a more accurate figure I would love to hear it.

10% infection rate for NY? Are these thoughts yours or a studies? Last I saw, which was a week or so ago, were of projections from 25-40% infection rate nation wide. I'm sure they have since changed but to the degree you are predicting? Your projections to me sound like an extreme outlier especially when you are considering we are talking a major metropolitan area with high population density.

Really was conflicted on whether I wanted to add this or not to the above post. People are scared enough as it is and this is just another worry to pile on the crap heap. But after reflecting on it for a few minutes I thought it was better to be educated to the possibilities as opposed to being caught totally flat footed. One thing we have to consider is the possibility of a mutation. We see that and all bets are off. Don't know enough to know if this would put us back to square one with dealing with this virus but it sure would be a hell of a setback. That said, and I am going by what I have read from the professionals who make a living off these studies, this is an extremely stable virus with a very low mutation rate. Odds are strongly against this scenario even playing out.

As supernovasky brought up. We will be better prepared at that point. But another factor that may play an even bigger part is that we will see nowhere near the infection rate we are currently seeing. This first round will be the biggie by far as I expect we at the very least see an infection rate of 15-20% throughout the States (think herd immunity starting to kick in somewhat as potential hosts have been taken out of the equation). I just don't think we are going to be able to escape this. That alone will dampen a decent amount the infection rate on any secondary go round. But that isn't the biggest thing to consider. If you note where the major hot spots are generally located they are for the most part centered on major metropolitan areas and they have been spreading outwards into the suburbs. These high density population centers are fertile breeding grounds for spreading this disease. We will see by far the highest infection rates within these cities. As they spread out the infection rates will continue to lower as the population density decreases until you get out into the rural areas where the infection rates will be very low. As far as the cities I really cringe when I consider some of the infection rates we may actually see especially with what we are seeing within NY. If I hear some reports approaching 35-40+ I don't think I would be that surprised. So what does that mean as for a possible followup? It means that there is a good chance that many of the major cities will approach if not achieve achieve herd immunity where the worst we see is sporadic cases here and there. This pretty much would take out these fertile breeding grounds that were pretty much the catalyst for spread. That leaves the areas outside of the cities to consider. They will have seen smaller infection rates but they also have lower population density. So the herd immunity factor is lower then the cities. So they may not achieve true herd immunity but they are probably getting close as to where it will have a fairly significant impact on infection rates. Then you get out into the rural regions. The rural regions will have the lowest infection rate probably by far of all as the population density just does not support a major flareup. So all that said. If we do see a secondary peak come next year what would it look like? Well I wouldn't rule out some cities flaring up that are mostly spared this go round. But I think the focus will be more so centered on the suburbs which will probably mostly be composed of much smaller flareups that can be contained. Then in the rural areas we probably see sporadic cases or even possibly very minor flareups here and there. I doubt very much that we would need to see a major shutdown of the whole US again. It will be more in the way of shutting down smaller regions around these much smaller flareups. So really, I don't think any secondary surge with this virus will even sniff what we are currently in the middle of. It would probably be magnitudes lower in impacts.

Never really know what to say when it comes to tragedy because no matter what I say it always feels like it is never enough. But my heart goes out for you and your family and I will keep your other two family members in my prayers. Something like this really drives home that what we discuss on these boards is not just an abstract subject but in fact a subject that will impact so many at a personal level. Again, love and prayers your way.

Mappy, please tell me you didn't delete my comment on the WHO post I had. I spent quite a bit of time writing that up and I thought it brought up key information on why we didn't use this vaccine. And I am pretty sure it wasn't political or at the very most minimally political.

I might PM you a little later. I did start looking into it until we got somewhat sidetracked with are civil's class. Then my boss told me to jump. So I jumped. My wife can be pretty assertive when she's in the mood. Just getting back to the computer right now and will probably have to step away again shortly as I will most likely be doing most of the day. Really, I like to spend time looking over everything and thinking it through before I like to commit. But I promise, I will make every effort to look into it at some point today.

Sounds like you are having a hankering for some wings from the local buffet.

Some morning thoughts. Just my opinion but looking at the infection rate increase charts is probably a not a good way to get a read on where we stand as far as the virus. The fact that we had very little testing initially and we are now continuing to increase testing is going to skew these charts. Now maybe there is a way to mathematically get a more accurate read considering all the variables but that is way above my pay scale. Think a far more accurate read, though faulty in its own right, would be to look at the deaths and those I would look at over several days as we will see a waxing and waning from day to day. And even this method will start to become skewed as doctors become better able to treat their patients through trial and error, if the malaria drugs/aids drugs actually are found to work or God forbid we see our hospitals crash. We are seeing guesstimates that a vaccine will be available for mass distribution in the US in 1 to 1 1/2 years. This would be far to late to help if we see a secondary flareup in the Fall/Winter if this virus ends up being of the seasonal variety. Now I haven't really looked hard into this at this point so this is pretty much guesswork on my part from what little I have read. But from what I have seen so far the major hangups with the delay seem to be with our own internal regs/red tape as well as the mass production of any vaccine. I will make a prediction here. I bet we see a vaccine available for in the US in under a year. We will more then likely see a cutting of the red tap/regs. And as far as the mass production, after China's threat of with holding the vaccine I think we will see a concerted effort to put in place in-house production so we are not relying on outside players. Now really the question in my mind is can we get this done quickly enough in time for the flu season? After all we are talking roughly 8 months from now and it may be asking too much.

Is that sort of like a Sharknado?

6 months? Not really expecting that myself. Think a more realistic time frame is more like another 4-6 weeks from this point in time, maybe upwards 8 weeks max before we can really start relaxing things. But that is just my opinion for whatever that's worth.. As far as the testing I will have to try to go back and look into the details. Been some time since I researched this so details aren't as clear as they were before. This was pretty much a jumbled period of time with multiple tests, multiple failure rates, multiple abilities on be able to getting the product out in the numbers needed, multiple testing requirements etc..., etc..., etc... But really, this is all pretty much water under the bridge at this point. Something to go back to after the fact and research the failures we saw. Systemic failures across the board put in place over the last 15-20 years. But I will throw one thing your way as far as the WHO test. This is an excerpt from Mikka Luster, PhD Medicine and Healthcare, European University Cyprus. First, the WHO test is a lab based test. One that requires special labs. It works well in China, where it’s OK to force people to work 48 hours en bloc and where every city has one of those labs. It doesn’t work so well in most of Europe and the US, where we have one or two of those labs to 20 to 80 million people. The FDA, as did Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and many other countries, decided that it would not be implementable to have this test run. It’s still not OK to force people to work 48 hour shifts or to work them to death (https://news.joins.com/article/2... and http://www.donga.com/news/articl... are two examples of this). The two I just linked come from South Korea, a country usually mentioned as the great place that managed to test so many people. That’s a price the US (or Germany, etc.) won’t pay. Two lab workers have died, not from COVID but from overworking in those labs. The test requires a dedicated lab tech for six minutes per sample and five more at the end. That’s 11 minutes, plus 12 minutes of physician/nurse time to sample it. This does not scale. The full transcript can be found here. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-other-countries-able-to-do-Coronavirus-COVID-19-virus-tests-numbering-in-the-hundreds-of-thousands-while-the-U-S-can-only-do-a-few-thousand?share=1

I wasn't calling you out by any means. Well maybe a little. You did take a quick pot shot at Trump after all. But your point is pretty much on target. We have some very polarizing figures on both sides of the aisle that are focal points for the wide almost insurmountable chasm we now see between the two different ideologies. But I would probably argue that these figures aren't so much the cause of the issues more so then they are a product of this deep ideological divide. Take out the underlining issues (the divide) and we wouldn't have these polarizing figures as there would be no need for them. In other words, they are nothing more then a product of our times. Just my thoughts.

I am sure @WxWatcher007 was stirring the pot.

Boy, that tornado is so huge and imposing that it makes the picture look almost surreal. Almost like it was a fake picture or something.

Trump? You really do believe in throwing the elephant into the room. I think we might be better served by focusing on the pros and cons of the corona virus policies themselves when it comes to it rather then taking shots at the Trumps, Pelosi's, McConnell's, Schumer's or whomever else brings strong polarizing reactions. Otherwise this thread will quickly turn ugly with no meaningful discussion. But that is just my opinion.

It is what it is unfortunately. I quite often used to have debates with others and actually enjoyed them. I have always felt that you needed both sides of a story to get a healthy perspective on the issues. But I have found now-a-days that fewer and fewer are even interested in civil discourse let alone trying to get an understanding of differing views. What we have now is pretty much an echo chamber on both sides of the aisle where like minded people scream their like thoughts back and forth to each other and any differing opinions are squashed. It sort of reminds me of what you see with a group of people psyching each other just prior to a brawl/riot. And I tremble to think of where our country is heading when I see this type of behavior. As they say, ''A house divided falls' and that is exactly what I see across the board in America. Which is shocking when you consider our current crisis. You would think that at least now we could put aside our differences for a common cause. But I guess not.

Basically where I am at. Really am trying hard to not cross the line and keep my comments subjective but so many of the issues are just out right polarizing. I know I have been saying I was going to try to stay out of the conversation because of this fact but to be honest I am bored as hell with being shut in so for better or for worse I have been tipping my toe in. Of course I guess I could go to some political boards and start trolling people, but that lost it's fun a long time ago.

Think Fauci had a good response when asked his thoughts on this and whether it was a mistake. Sort of mirrors my thoughts. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake. I would say we worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office was still there,” he said. With my wife working for the government I have found that internal reorgs are the norm and not the exception. Seemed that every year through the various administrations we were seeing a reshuffling of resources throughout the various government agencies in an effort to stream line the processes. These changes are normally implemented by the heads of the different agencies as they felt best met their needs. Changes that most times fell under the radar of the various presidents. But back to the original issue. What we saw here wasn't a dissolution of the teams functions but more a reshuffling of the different portions of the team into more area specific areas. So the apparatus in place under the Global Health Security team still exists, it is now just dispersed with no central organization. That said, as Fausi stated above, I think we would have better served having this unit intact to handle our current situation.

This brings up an interesting point. Do you use a test that has a known failure rate of 40+% with false negatives? One could argue yes, as it gets known cases off the streets so they don't continue spreading the disease. Those that would argue no, would point out that we would being giving a false sense of security to the 40+% who received the false negative. People that would more then likely continue socializing. But really it isn't quite a simple as I have stated above. As it really depends on the circumstances at any one particular point of time and what other actions may or may not be be putting in place concurrently. Given the circumstances we were facing at that given time I would probably favor no. I think we would have been seeing many of these false negatives still out on the streets (false sense of security) even if they were under voluntary quarantine because of the uncertainty. After all we have seen how well the self quarantine has worked or hasn't worked in so many cases. Now we could have forced the quarantine on the recipients but then you are facing a whole new issue with rights and freedoms. To further complicate the issue throw in Social Distancing or even Shelter in Place. We see that concurrently with the above test and I would probably favor releasing the kit. At that point I think the numbers favor getting known cases identified. Now some may ask 'So why we didn't we at least start social distancing at that time?' Well even that becomes somewhat complicated. But the quick answer to that is that it was far to early. If we put that in place so early in the process we are looking at flattening the curve so much that we extend this 6 months or even more. There is just no way in hell our economy nor our citizens could handle being shut down for that length of time. Now this is assuming that the virus is of the non-seasonal variety. If we are talking a seasonal type virus we run into another issue that could be even worse. What we see in that case is we have such a low level of infection rate this go round that we are nowhere near reaching what we need to see for herd immunity to start kicking in. This would portend another out break incoming next fall and winter where we once again have to shut everything down for an extended period of time unless we have a vaccine at that point. But unfortunately the projections on that being released in mass quantities is projected for a year to a year and a half at this time. Far too late to have a meaningful impact. Like it or not we are probably in this for the long haul until we start reaching herd immunity. Now given that we more then likely have to wait for this to burn out on its own that brings up the next important question. How do we get there? Too flat of a curve and we prolong the agony so long that the economy and/or the citizens break. We don't want to exit this with riots in the streets and/or an economy that is so broken it can not recover. But then again if we steepen the curve too much we are then looking at crashing the healthcare system where the mortality rate probably doubles, triples or even more. The optimal possible solution probably rides just a little under the capacity for our healthcare system to handle. Gives us the shortest time to get us through this with a little room for our healthcare system to handle any sudden spikes. We are pretty much in a balancing act at this time, a balancing act that will determine how we exit this pandemic and head into recovery.

There is one thing that I probably should have mentioned but didn't. Been quite a few years since I read a study/report so I am a little fuzzy on the details. But the general gist was that highly deadly viruses very rarely were massive spreaders. Had to do with the fact that they incapacitated then killed the victim very quickly giving very little time for the virus to spread. So you are looking at quick burning fairly localized flareups. Ebola comes into mind as a good example.

Italy and the US banned flights virtually at the same time. Italy on Jan 31 and the US on Feb 2nd. (Mis-posted with the Jan time frame when I actually meant Feb for the US ban.) But I think we might be comparing apples to oranges when comparing the two countries when it comes to the bans. First off, from what I understand we saw a large influx of Chinese nationals from the Wuhan region into Italy just prior to Wuhan being shut down on Jan 23. An influx that we never saw within the US. Now as to why, if we in fact saw this, I have my theories considering Wuhan was deep into the crap at that point. Second, how these bans were implemented probably played into things as well. The US keyed not only on flights out of China but also as well on international travelers themselves and their prior destinations on their trips. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case with Italy where there are indications that there were quite a few bypassing the restrictions by taking connecting flights from other countries. Now the above doesn't even take into account the multitude of differences with both countries in other areas. Genetic makeup, implementation of mediation internally, healthcare, populations density, age, etc..., etc..., etc... So I am not so sure I would look at Italy's ban and their results then maybe try to argue that the ban in the US had no impact.Think that is flawed logic. There are just far too many unknown factors to consider to make that leap at this time. Now we might find after the fact when the numbers are crunched that the ban did have little effect in the US. But I am not expecting that. When all is said and told I think we are going to find it made a significant difference to the outcome as it helped to significantly flatten the curve. As far as the rest of your comment? I really have made a point of trying to avoid any discussion involving the US. Some of my points of view would not be popular on these boards and would more then likely be met with derision if not open hostility. I prefer not to start a flame war so... I will say though, I thought mentioning the travel ban was a safe enough topic considering there is a growing consensus among the professional field that it has made a significant impact. Guess I was wrong.

Horrible news. Really hits home when friends you know are having to deal with this first hand. Stay strong, will be praying for you and yours.

Wish I had your optimism but I think the odds have actually increased if anything. If we were talking in past times when the spread was limited to the speed of foot or horse (barring animal transmission such as birds, bats, etc...) then I would definitely agree given our current technology and resources and the amount of time we would have because of the slow spread. But I fear we are now looking at globalization where travel between countries is very prevalent. Where many travel from one side of the globe to the other in mere hours. So we could have a contagion in it's infancy just breaking out being spread world wide before we are even aware of it. In fact that is what we are pretty much seeing now. We were very lucky with the Corona virus, if you want to call it lucky. We had almost the perfect storm as far as world wide spread of this disease as the Chinese sat on the outbreak for a month plus before they were forced to acknowledge that there was a problem. Then they waited a month plus to quarantine and shut down all travel in and out of Wuhan. Through this window of opportunity we were seeing millions in the way of international travelers moving from in and out of China to all parts of the world. In fact I think the saving grace for our country was the limited ban put in place to restrict travel from China Jan 1'st. Didn't go far enough as far as I am concerned as it did still allow a small flow of of travelers into the States through various loop holes but it did mitigate a great deal the influx of the virus being carried in. If it were me I probably would have also instituted a limited ban on all international travel in particularly from Europe at the same time. Without that initial ban that bought us much needed time to start preparing I feel quite strongly that we would be looking at a scenario in the States more closely matching that of Italy at this time instead of what we are now seeing. Now I mentioned that we were lucky as far as this pandemic. Let me explain why. Now this is a nasty bug, no denying that. But it could have been so much worse. The mortality rate is very low compared to some bugs we have seen recently. Though it does spread fairly easily it is looking as if it isn't a true airborne which is the last thing we want to see. Also it is a form of virus (corona) we are familiar with so we don't have to start totally from scratch into deciphering it as we already have a foundation to build off of. Think that is one reason why we have seen the move to try the various malaria drugs to mitigate the impacts of the virus as they are working off of previous experiences/knowledge. Time will tell if this is a fruitful endeavor on their part but right now it does look somewhat promising in my eyes. Now back to your bolded statement above. Now picture the rapid world wide spread of a virus that we are now seeing as mentioned above. A virus that shares many of the characteristics now displayed by the corona virus. But lets add the mortality rate of Ebola (90+%). Now with Ebola we had factors in play that very much limited its scope. Both its somewhat remote location limiting spread and the rapid onset of symptoms and death (a matter of days) which basically kills off the victims before they are able to widely spread the disease. But take those two factors out as we see with the Corona virus. Where travel in and out of the region is extensive and world wide. Where victims don't become symptomatic until roughly day 5 on average and then take many days if not a week+ to pass away after initial onset. Where the symptoms start off slowly where most are not even aware they are sick and slowly worsen over days. Where there are some indications that people are infectious even before the onset of symptoms. To add a further twist make this virus a true airborne. Throw in a virus that isn't of a seasonal variety where it waxes and wanes. And also add in that it is of an unknown pathogen where we had no foundation to work off of as seen with Ebola in the early days. Essentially we are talking a perfect storm in the way of viruses. Throw all this together and we are probably looking at 50+ % of the population gone within a couple of months even before herd immunity can start playing a part. Hell, even taking out some of the ingredients above still probably results in 25+% gone in a short period of time. And hoping for a rescue from mass immunizations is a fantasy as we are not afforded near enough time.

I really don't understand your need to underplay this. Is it the big one where we see mortality rates of 25 even 50+% as we saw in times past in Europe and elsewhere? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But none the less it is still a very serious situation in both the number of deaths and the impact to the worlds economies. And when all is said and told I would not be surprised to see the far bigger impact may actually be in the aftermath of the virus as we probably see a general restructuring of certain aspects of society, governments and the general world order to fit the new reality. So you dismissing this for the most part defies logic. *** I wish you would quit dismissing corana virus deaths because the victims had underlying health issues. The Corona virus was the initiating reason for these people dying and without them contracting it these people would still be alive. So they count. END OF STORY.

I know this is an outlier opinion from many on these boards but I have felt for a couple of weeks now that we were probably talking a .75-1.25 % mortality rate in the States (With true infection rate and not just tested) as long as we did not allow our healthcare system to become substantially overwhelmed. Other wise we probably double that, 1.5- 2.5%. The next couple of weeks will be key in that regard.