PhineasC

It's possible someone you know had it for a while and was asymptomatic. There are some estimates of 50% or more being asymptomatic. It's also possible it isn't COVID-19 and instead the flu or another respiratory illness, which are still around. But this is a good example of how entire families can have this virus and barely even realize it, which is why the total infected numbers are probably far higher than estimated. I think that's a much larger effect than the idea many people are dying at home in their beds without being counted. That idea doesn't make much sense beyond some outlier cases.

They are the target demographic for this virus. That’s exactly why you can’t extrapolate these daily death counts across the country!

That further supports my point...

I don’t think you understand what I am saying. I am not advocating a national reopening. I am saying county by county. In that scheme, nation wide daily death counts are totally unhelpful.

Have you looked at where the majority of those deaths are coming from? NY area and nursing homes. There are some other smaller hotspots around but the majority of the country is at a far lower level. The death hot spots are not at all spread out evenly. Maybe that’s causing the confusion?

LOL ok back to saying nation wide numbers should drive local decisions.

Have you guys been locked down?

OK, so you just made the case for why many localities in the US can start to reopen. Last time I brought that up, your retort was that “thousands are dying every day!”

Plenty of respected scientists believe the total infected number is far higher than we thought. There are some great articles you can read out of Stanford, for example. Scientists across the globe are starting to say this now. That’s why we are even discussing reopening. If social distancing was all that stood between us and millions of US deaths, reopening wouldn’t even be on the table. This isn’t my idea. I didn’t come up with it.

The local numbers. That makes perfect sense. Why would the model in Idaho use national numbers? Why would anyone?

Yes, this kind of depends on where you place the R0. You can be an “iceberg guy” if you think this has already spread very widely and the IFR is around 0.4%. That’s where I am (clearly). US will certainly be unique, as was Italy.

It can also mean the denominator (total infected) is far, far higher than initially assumed which would drive the fatality rate way down and also start adding in herd immunity as a factor. There are multiple factors at work here.

For his state. You keep posting the nation wide death numbers for each day as if they should be driving policy decisions in individual counties.

It dropped precipitously from its prior highs of 100k-200k deaths. Some wobbling at the new high point is expected. But the model is no longer predicting peaks in August with 200k dead last I checked.

Public health experts are not using daily death numbers and skewed nationwide testing averages to make decisions. You really can’t use those rolled up numbers for real policy decisions. They really are meaningless for a disease that must be managed at the state and local level. Even the Feds are looking county by county.

You sure that is CFR and not IFR? That CFR is far lower than the CFR numbers from Italy used to justify the lockdowns, nevertheless. It’s also an average. CFR for those under 50 will be much lower than for those 70+ with COPD and obesity. Other studies from China, Germany, and Iceland predict IFRs ranging from 0.2 to 0.9.

I hope you understand that those numbers are very, very affected by how much testing we decide to do, when, and where. I think some people are going to be shocked when we have widespread serum testing and we find out millions already had this disease. I can’t imagine still looking at the daily test results and assuming that’s every case for the day. Come on.

The overall goal is to minimize deaths and prevent the country from spiraling into a depression that will also kill hundreds of thousands. We could minimize deaths from the virus to very low levels simply by staying closed forever. Clearly, that won’t work so the public health experts look for the best case scenario balancing all the needs. They definitely have more variables to look at optimizing than just the daily death rate. IFR and CFR by region will be very important in knowing when to reopen. The nation wide death numbers are pretty meaningless to deciding if a county in Nebraska is ready to open some businesses back up. I hope you see that.

How many times in the last 24 hours have you asserted I’m being cavalier and calling this just the flu and being an armchair epidemiologist?

The IMHE model being used by the Federal government and most of the states. It has been pushing totals deaths downward and peak dates earlier with each update. If you watch the Cuomo briefings, he posts data from the model and he is saying NY is at peak, or perhaps even slightly past now. That’s the epicenter in the US right now.

The “rates” are what those public policy experts you trust so much are using to make these decisions, you know. They don’t just stare weeping at the death numbers and then make emotional decisions. Estimates of CFR and IFR are very important to decision making per region, along with testing rates, hospitalization rates, etc. all adjusted for age, underlying conditions and other factors. Total sadness levels have nothing to do with it.

Clearly some strongly invested doom porn fans in this forum. Kinda can see how’d there be an overlap with people who are obsessed with getting the strongest storms, hurricanes, etc. and want to see the biggest, baddest virus possible. Just like we all feel let down when that line of thunderstorms peters out, we feel sadness when COVID-19 ends up being less impactful than we had built it up to be in our minds. Now I know how CAPE feels when he throws cold water on snowstorm threats.

We have very good data on IFR for the flu because we have tons of historical data and widespread global testing with which to make inferences. Clearly you haven’t read the latest studies coming out that show the estimated IFR dropping. It will always be estimated because we cannot test 7.7 billion people. They test a sample group and extrapolate. Basic stuff I’m sure you understand. Maybe read some of the studies on this before assuming I am pulling this all from my ass. I posted one here yesterday, for example.

People will definitely say we overreacted, that’s just human nature. But it might also be fair to say we misjudged the point at which hospital capacity would be overwhelmed which caused us to set the target curve too low. I understand the Dr. Fauci argument that it is better to overreact, but we need to acknowledge we destroyed a bunch of lives and businesses across the globe at the same time.

I think it’s telling when people get defensive over someone questioning the narrative that this disease is a massively deadly killer we barely have under control and arguing things are going to be OK sooner than expected (which is good news). Seems some are emotionally invested in the doomsday scenarios.