Let’s talk about “exponential growth” once more
All you math people out there, correct me if I’m wrong – as I’m sure you will.
Arithmetic or linear growth means that a number increases by addition. Here’s an example in which the number 2 is added to a number to get the next one: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10…
Exponential growth means it increases through multiplying. For example, doubling each number to get the next one: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…You can see that the numbers increase much faster that way, and if you continue it out, you will also see that it doesn’t take too long for the numbers to get huge: 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576, 2097152…
But that’s the world of numbers, and COVID-19 is not a number, although we can express things about it in numbers – and it has the number “19” in it.
When we talk about the exponential growth of COVID-19, the questions are: how fast? And for how long? A disease can spread exponentially at first at a certain rate and then have the rate slow down. One reason this happens is because, unlike numbers, diseases involve people. With a disease such as COVID-19 that kills perhaps 1% (or some other relatively small percent) of its victims, the vast majority will recover and become immune. Then it becomes harder to spread the disease as more and more people become immune.
Or a vaccine is developed. Or people are given some preventive immunity with plasma from survivors. Or more and more of the population practices social distancing, or increases its handwashing behavior. Or a better test comes out and identifies more carriers and they self-isolate for a prescribed period. All of these things can slow down the rate of transmission and therefore the rate at which doubling occurs, until that curve is flattened and then even starts going down.
neo: You’ve got it right.
In the real world exponential curves don’t remain exponential forever. They either plateau into S-shapes or plateau then decrease into bell-shapes.
You might look into Farr’s law, which relates the progression of infectious disease from the initial exponential curve into a bell.
https://douglaswinslowcooper.blogspot.com/2020/03/corona-virus-and-farrs-law.html
Trump is taking a chance by speaking with guarded optimism and considering a shutdown to the shutdown. If he is premature and the numbers go up and the hospitals overflow, it will be bad for him in November. (Though against Zombie Joe, maybe not too bad.)
Still I think he is betting on the right side. I suspect the number of infected/immune is far greater than the confirmed cases numbers we see and the other side of Farr’s Law is closer than we realize.
We see frequent talk of exponential growth, but see little talk about exponential decay (or decrease, in this instance). Seems like illness resolution would begin to look that way eventually. What about that, mathematists? Something, or nothing?
Well technically, what Neo cited is a geometric progression where each term is in a specific ratio to the preceding term, but I’m sort of picking math nits.
For what I’ve been doing I’ve been fitting the data with an exponential function of the form y = a*e^x, which can also be inverted in the form of a natural log. One could also use y = a*10^x, and the invert using log base 10. Plotting such functions on a log graph where the exponential part shows up as linear. All of these, e^x, 10^x and the geometric progressions will grow to infinity with increasing x, or further along the progression (if it is a “growing” progression).
What we are hoping to see with this virus is a sigmoid function which “flattens” the exponential part of the curve; y = a* ( e^x/ 1+ e^x). By just adding 1 to the denominator insures that it will “catch up” with the numerator and thus retard the exponential growth. After flattening, we hope to see a decrease or hopefully the function will follow a sort of Gaussian curve: y = a e^-(x^2/c^2).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=Kas0tIxDvrg&feature=emb_logo
That’s a link to a video I’ve recommended before. Hope nobody minds the repetition.
The video is very good at illustrating exponential growth, inflection points, logistic growth, and why exponential growth doesn’t go on forever. It’s also good at showing the effect of travel among population clusters.
I think I first saw this video recommended at the blog “Marginal Revolution,” but my memory’s a bit hazy on that. Tentative hat tip?
That’s right. My introduction to the logistic curve, Lotka-Volterra equations, and other population models was The Struggle for Existence by G. F. Gause, a classic text. In college I asked one of the biology professors about Gause and he said that he had seen him at a conference in ~1953(?) looking old and worn. Lysenkoism had forced him to pursue other topics.
How is Betelgeuse doing, you ask?
Back to 63% of normal brightness from a low of 36%, thank you very much!
https://mobile.twitter.com/betelbot
At work, can’t get to YouTube. The channel 3Blue1Brown has a very good video on viral growth and limitations to that growth. It may be the video linked above by Cornflour.
It helped when talking with my kids about the CCP virus.
I’m gonna apply some basic maths and the R0 model (which is extremely basic but works quite well). According to that model, each person will transmit the virus to R0 people on average:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
The R0 numbers considers that everyone could be infected. If some of the people that person was going to infect were already infected or immune, he won’t infect them. That means that, once x% of the population is infected or immune, the actual R0′ will be R0’=R0(1-x). Once this number is less than 1, we’ve reached herd immunity, which means the illness will die out. What’s the percentage required? x=1-(1/R0).
Since the original R0 in the case of the coronavirus is around 2.5, that means that herd immunity is reached once 60% of the population is already infected or immune.
A Vaccine? Unrealistic. Not until 2022 if FDA has its way.
Plasma from survivors infused into others as prevention is an extremely unrealistic notion. Plasma from survivors infused into those quite ill may make sense. If that works, which it may not.
Hell, most infecteds do survive and only an extremely small minority need ICU care. Most are like Tom Hanks, if they have any symptoms at all. It is tougher if one lives in the Progressive ideals of very close quarters, highest human density, and mass transit dependence, like NYC.
We have to have herd immunity, the sooner the better. Which means the shutdowns must end, people who are healthy and under 60 get back to work now. Now. Yes, some of those will sicken and die, as with any infectious outbreak, but they will be numerically rare.
The vulnerable and elderly must shelter in place until such herd immunity has developed.
Finally, we have to stop the daily tabulation of “worldwide total” cases. It’s entirely absurd, given the planetary scarcity of test kits. We are too number-conscious, and this data tells us nothing useful.
Even if it decreases as a harmonic progression, it will sum to infinity. Z=1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5…
And of course some geometric progressions have finite sums. Z=1+1/2+1/4+1/8….=2
The news anchor today said in an exasperated voice that an infected person can spread it to two or three people and then they could spread to another two or three people; and that by the end of all of this, we will know at least one person infected by COVID-19. She urged the people to stay indoors. She was scared shitless.
Cicero:
I have seen and heard a great many medical people talking about plasma from survivors both as a treatment for critical patients and also as a preventative to confer at least temporary immunity to health care workers – doctors, nurses, those at high risk like that – not to the general population.
The two things that I find most impressive about this virus are as follows.
1. It is amazing how many people who have never taken a math course beyond high school now casually drop R-nought into the conversation.
2. This is the first time I have seen something made in China last so long.
“The channel 3Blue1Brown has a very good video … ”
________________________________________________
Mark: Yes, that’s the one I was talking about.
1. It is amazing how many people who have never taken a math course beyond high school now casually drop R-nought into the conversation.
Which looks like a good excuse the quote the ILOH.
You can’t take partial data sets of questionable accuracy from a super complex system, and extrapolate out realistic estimates of what’s going to happen in an entirely different super complex system. Some folks, that’s their actual literal job they’re trained for, and they still can’t get it right. When you, Internet Rando, do this, you just sound like a dork. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you don’t know what’s going on and that you can’t predict the future.
Neo:
the half-life of infused imunoglobulins is about 21 days.
The people at highest risk of catching the Wuhan virus are the docs, resp. therapists, and nurses working in ICUs full of virus-laden patients. They should get the immune infusion first.
How do we find “survivors” without enough test kits, much less get them to volunteer to donate plasma once they have been identified ? Or must they be drafted for the greater good?
Even if it decreases as a harmonic progression, it will sum to infinity. Z=1+1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5…
OTOH, physicists assure me that 1 + 2 + 3 + … = -1/12, so you never know 🙂
Cicero:
That was my point in my comment above – it would be for the people dealing with the critically ill.
Of course they wouldn’t be drafted – unless, of course, the left gets in charge of things.
It would be done in the way blood is donated or anything else. Many survivors probably would be very eager to donate, and soon there will be enough survivors that a fair amount of plasma could be obtained from the volunteers. There is precedent for all of this with ebola, although of course ebola was on a much smaller scale.
They are close to having a test for this (see this, for example). I’ve read several articles on the subject but don’t have time to search for them at present.
Andy: “This is the first time I have seen something made in China last so long.” Thanks! I needed a laugh!
Deja vu all over again. Every year a new influenza comes along periodically and kills millions. It happens, and we don’t shut down the economy and issue decrees to take away basic civil liberties.
Parker,
We do now!
If the gov. paid $1K per pint of blood from recovered survivors, then a million pints would cost $1B, and according to early numbers would provide 3M treatments or a bit more. $1B would not even be a rounding error on the legislation currently in congress. Heck, make it $5K per pint of blood.
Although, I believe a big chunk of the fed. “spending” coming down the pike are actually loans. Then Pence said many of the small bus. loans would be forgiven. Oops, that’s spending again. I think or hope that most of the big corp. handouts are loans.
____
The daily death numbers out of Italy are relatively flat for the 6th day. I hope that number (~700/day) isn’t just the maximum they can process per day.
parker:
Every year the flu comes along. Every now and then it kills a million or more. In 1918 something between 50 and 100 million, in 1957 2 million, in 1968 1 million. H1N1, which is a form of flu, is estimated to have killed 200,000 in 2009 (I believe that figure was over and above the regular flu that was also circulating).
Most years, flu kills between 290,000 to 650,000. It’s rare that it reaches the million mark. COVID-19 is shaping up to be something like perhaps one of the flu pandemics I mentioned such as that of 1957 (“Asian flu”). The fear (and the possibility) is that without intervention it could reach much higher levels than that – possibly even approaching that of 1918.
Whether that level of apprehension is correct I cannot say. Whether or not what we’re doing to slow it is worth the cost is a very valid question, one Trump et al are facing right now. I’m assuming your main point is whether the cost-benefit analysis justifies the measures.
However, regular flu doesn’t kill “millions” worldwide each year.
I’m gonna apply some basic maths and the R0 model (which is extremely basic but works quite well).
I’ve read that SARS had an R0 of 3.5. Yet it was so deadly (and therefore obvious who was getting it) that it was stopped in its tracks, and only 8,000 people worldwide ended up infected (770 deaths, almost 10% fatality rate).
COVID-19 has an R0 of 2.5, but harder to know who has it because it’s not so deadly. So deadliness matters more than R0 in predicting the share of the population that will get it, due to the ability to respond via isolation, tracking, etc.
parker:
By the way, in 1918 they shut down plenty, although not quite as much as now. I have a post coming on that one of these days. So much to process I have trouble keeping up, so it could be a while.
In 1918 the population of the US was about one-third what it is now. The death toll from the 1918 flu in the US was about 675,000. We had it easier than many nations, although far from easy. That would be the equivalent of about 2 million Americans today. And it was a big big big deal.
If you want to read about the government reaction in terms of closings, you can start with this.
y = a(1 + r)**x is exponential growth.. or y = ab**x
a = initial value (the amount before measuring growth or decay)
r = growth or decay rate (most often represented as a percentage and expressed as a decimal)
x = number of time intervals that have passed
Continuous Exponential Growth or Decay
A=Ae**kt
[the second a has an 0 under it so its the A from before, that yields new A]
A = ending value (amount after growth or decay)
A0 = initial value (amount before measuring growth or decay)
e = exponential e = 2.71828183…
k = continuous growth rate (also called constant of proportionality)
(k > 0, the amount is increasing (growing); k < 0, the amount is decreasing (decaying))
t = time that has passed
[e is euler… a beautiful number in math… sooooo beautiful!!!!!!!]
A strain of bacteria growing on your desktop doubles every 5 minutes. Assuming that you start with only one bacterium, how many bacteria could be present at the end of 96 minutes? 602,249 rounded
i missed physics guy picking nits
a the multiplier would be exponential if it was greater than ab…
but not for long as it would not grow, and the exponent of ab^x would…
math is fun…
NEO: is that without intervention it could reach much higher levels than that – possibly even approaching that of 1918.
with or without.. it doesnt have a steep enough trajectory…
if you plotted the 1918, it was WAY steeper… way way way steeper…
The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.
convert that to a linear number… would be about 2000 a day in the US for 1 year.. or about 824 a day since its start for two years..
world wide 68493, a day for two years…
it is in now way THAT STEEP a trajectory..
not even close… not even almost close..
The data sucks. We don’t know squat. Every single number cruncher I have read is abusing his math skills to cover up massive IGNORANCE.
Still waiting for one of these folks to explain the Princess cruise ship experience with their number crunching. Oops. Can’t do it. Why? Because we don’t know squat!
We don’t have any usable data for the exposure rate. Or the infection rate. Or the percentage of people who are infected but aren’t symptomatic? Or why? We don’t have accurate info for the death rate. We don’t know what, if any, impact social distancing will have (in part, because we don’t know how well people will actually do it — my kids are getting invitations to go play volleyball at the lake from their friends who are also home from college!) We don’t know what, if any, impact from pharmaceutical developments. We don’t know what impact our vastly superior healthcare system will play relative to the experience of other countries.
We are grossly ignorant of damn near every variable we need to do any intelligent forecasting.
New York gets all the attention, while the death rate in the other 49 is worse.
(Slightly off-topic, but I started it in a different post, and wanted to provide today’s update, in case anyone is following this.)
March 23, 2020
Worldometer reports 43,718 cases in United States, 552 deaths.
43718/552 = 0.0126 or 1.26% national death rate
NYTimes reports 20,875 cases in New York, 157 deaths
20875/157 =0.0075 or 0.75% state of New York death rate
Subtract New York from the nationwide data
Rest of country 22,843 cases, 395 deaths
22843/395 = 0.0173 or 1.73% remaining 49 states death rate
March 24, 2020
Worldometer reports 52,878 cases in United States, 684 deaths.
52878/684 = 0.0129 or 1.29% national death rate
NYTimes reports 25,665 cases in New York, 184 deaths
25665/184 =0.0072 or 0.72% state of New York death rate
Subtract New York from the nationwide data
Rest of country 27,213 cases, 500 deaths
27213/500 = 0.0184 or 1.84% remaining 49 states death rate
Today: March 25, 2020
Worldometer reports 65,797 cases in United States, 935 deaths.
65797/935 = 0.0142 or 1.42% national death rate
NYTimes reports 30,811 cases in New York, 285 deaths
30811/285 =0.0092 or 0.92% state of New York death rate
Subtract New York from the nationwide data
Rest of country 34,986 cases, 650 deaths
34986/650 = 0.0186 or 1.86% remaining 49 states death rate
I’ve been keeping an eye on New York’s numbers today. As I speak it is Wednesday night 8:45pm Eastern Daylight Time. Worldometers closes its daily numbers at 8pm each night and begins the tally again for “new cases” and “new deaths”.
The number of daily deaths was only +14 today. This is a remarkable improvement over +114 yesterday and the day before that.
It would seem that the results of Trump’s Pills, as Scott Adams calls them, are having a positive impact. Either that or Worldometers is having troubles with data acquisition.
Has anyone seen a news story? Trials of Trump’s Pills began Tuesday, less than 48 hours ago. S&P 500 futures continue their climb upwards.
From Instapundit link, — antibodies, data, Britain, let’s roll
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/game-changer-britain-days-away-from-releasing-millions-of-coronavirus-finger-prick-tests-20200326-p54dyy.html
@Brian Morgan
Looks more like +75, which seems more reasonable. Can’t make a direct comparison between sites because of differences in timing and, perhaps, data sources.
Chuck, what site are you looking at?
How can anyone say what the actual death rate in other states is? They aren’t testing as much as NY. Without testing, we have no idea.
stan, I agree. I am looking at NY as a bellwether. It is/was the epicenter of cases. If we see a continual decline in deaths then that bodes well for other states. Hopefully the pill regimen will prevail and can be rolled out to other states.
Exponentials? How about Euler’s identity: e^i*pi = -1
When does an exponential not produce limitless growth or decay? When the exponent is imaginary. Euler’s formula: e^i*x = cos(x) + i*sin(x)
____
There is another coronavirus exponential that I’ve been interested in. Unlike old fashioned infections and epidemics where the CDC processes all of the testing, we now have a couple or a few different brands of testing methods. Thermo-Fisher, Roche, and eventually Cepheid brands of tests. Are they all the same, or are some more sensitive or very much more sensitive than others?
The Thermo-Fisher and maybe all of them convert the virus RNA to DNA and then use PCR thermal cycling processing to amplify the DNA. About 30 or 40 thermal cycles should do it, but which is it? 30 or 40 or something else?
From Wikipedia on Polymerase Chain Reaction:
But the difference between 30 and 40 cycles is another factor of 1,000 in amplification.
Cap’n Rusty is concerned that New York’s death rate is much lower than the rest of the country. Some of that can be explained by the notion that the spread in NY is much faster than elsewhere and the deaths haven’t caught up with the infections.
The part I find strange is that NY is doing more testing than most places (is that true on a relative population basis?), yet the percentage of positive test results is very high at roughly 27% compared to 5 or 10% elsewhere. More testing should lower the percentage of positive results, like in S. Korea; so why is so high in NY?
Are the tests used in NY very much more sensitive than those used elsewhere?
Or maybe the NY area is just much more infected than elsewhere and the lower death rate is entirely explained by the time delay between infection and death.
I see that more governors are doing the wise thing of prohibiting the use of reusable shopping bags. Now if we could just convince Gov. Cuomo. He’s been doing an admirable job handling CV but I wish he would change his mind on the use of plastics. I continue to see a lot of unhappy customers at the checkout. A lot of them, including myself, bypass bagging and dump their purchases back into their cart. I have a stash of plastic bags in my trunk that I use to bag my purchases. It’s a royal pain in the arse. Am considering moving out of the state for this reason. I’ve been a resident of NY for 35 years. This could be the proverbial straw.
TommyJay: “More testing should lower the percentage of positive results”
The data that I see does not list the “number of tests performed” just the number of “active cases” and rates per 1M population. If you ask me, the rates per 1M is not useful since it is guaranteed to only go up.
Perhaps there are some sites that list “number of tests performed”. If you or anyone else know of a site that lists it please let me know, thanks.
@Brian Morgan
https://covidtracking.com/data/state/new-york/#history
Chuck, super! Scott Adams went on a rant about this today. Too many websites.
So, from the covidtracking.com website:
US numbers:
Positives: 64,180
Negatives: 357,405
Positives + Negatives: 472,820 (why not 421,585 ??)
Deaths: 900
Death rates:
1.4% of Positives
0.19% of Positives+Negatives
I figure that the 0.19% figure is your chance of death if you just walk into the doctor’s office exhibiting flu-like symptoms. So, you’ve got a 1 in 500 chance of dying of COVID-19 just showing symptoms. It could be that you have the regular flu. There ought to be a different death rate for it.
Things we should watch:
1. Repeat the genome occasionally to see if different strains are evolving.
2. Do the RNA trascriptome to see if it is transcribing the same over time. There could be epigenetic additions of methyl or ethyl groups that would change transcription rates.
3. Do quantitative viral load studies on recirculating air in hospitals and quarantine locations. There may be some viral particles in air. After all, everything has a vapor pressure.
4. Do exhaustive clinical pathology on blood and serum, stool, urine, and breath through laser spectroscopy of unequivocal exposed survivors compared to patients with clinical disease survivorship. Check especially cytokines, leukotrines, CRP, viral antigens, micronutrients, antigen-antibody immune complexes, complement..
5. Keep searching for animal reservoir permanently or until we find one or are satisfied.
6. Look for viral particles in saliva, sweat, sewage, food in restaurants, semen, all biological materials and all objects in contact with biological materials.
Brian Morgan,
Using Chuck’s linked data, from March 18 (kinda old) NY cumulatively did 38% of all testing done in the U.S. CDC data says 37,824 tests from all sources were performed across the U.S. by March 18. But NY state is only about 6% of U.S. population.
My point is about the percentage of positive test results in NY as a fraction of all testing done in NY, is really high at around 25 to 30% positive. Other states are getting 5 to 10% on the same measure.
The other point is that if a state is being very restrictive in their testing, then only those folks with the full range of serious covid-19 symptoms will get tested, and the positive results percentage would be very high. On the other hand, if a state is testing everyone who might possibly or remotely conceivably could have the virus, then they will collect tons of negative results. NY state seemingly defies that logic.
So either NY state is super infected, or they’re using super sensitive tests, or some other reason. I think the 1st explanation is the most likely, but these tests are not all standardized that I’m aware of, so that could cause issues.
Dnaxy,
It was in tonight’s news that scientists in Italy are looking at possible mutations in the virus genome using samples from large numbers of Italian patients.
Their good news was that the genome seems to be very stable. So a vaccine developed and shipped on one date will have a good chance of working well into the future, at least for a while.
Dnaxy,
“5. Keep searching for animal reservoir permanently or until we find one or are satisfied.”
Do you just really want to know where it came from? Or do you think this reservoir will keep leaking into the human sphere as time goes on?
TommyJay; “So either NY state is super infected or…”
If one could break down the NY State data into two sets: one that includes the NYC metropolitan area and another excluding it then we would see that the NYC metropolitan area is highly infected. Why is that? Gov Cuomo hinted that it is because it is a transportation hub. The rest of NY State, outside NYC, is like most other states in terms of infection. I am making this distinction because a lot of people think of NYC as NYS but it is far from the truth. If you travel 40 miles away from NYC it is a totally different world in terms of core values, etc.
NYC metropolitan area:
New York City: 17,856
Nassau County: 3,285
Westchester County: 4,601
Total Positive Cases: 25,742
Total positive cases in NYS: 30,811
NYS excluding NYC metro: 5,069*
Compare that to other states:
New Jersey: 4,402
California: 3,154
Washington: 2,588
Michigan: 2,295
*Note: I could reduce that figure by a couple thousand by including Rockland and Suffolk County. A good portion of their population commutes to NYC. They become infected and then bring it back home to their communities.
So, yes, New York City is highly infected. Why? It’s anyone’s guess.
Brian Morgan,
I think you’ve got it. I’m moderately aware of how different the upstate is compared to the city. But it means that NYC is very, very infected. Of course, it could be both moderately more infected AND they are using a more sensitive test. A more sensitive test would help bring in more federal help.
I have a relative living in Manhattan. It wouldn’t be my choice for a place to live.
Straying a little off topic, although still virus related – I’ve seen articles complaining that the US ought to be able to control this virus the way Singapore and Japan do.
Most people point out that both of those countries could be tucked into Texas with room left over.
However, another aspect is not ever mentioned: people in those countries have a far higher level of personal discipline in social behavior because of their traditions and their laws.
America: not so much.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/03/25/man-charged-with-terrorism-after-licking-supermarket-shelves-to-mock-coronavirus/
And that’s just one of the stories that have become so familiar, of people not just ignoring the new epidemic guidelines, but actively flouting them (and then flaunting their flouting).
In Singapore, they might stop at caning you for things like that.
@Brian Morgan
Also bear in mind that deaths are a lagging indicator. People who die today were probably found positive at least a week before. My very rough estimate is that you need to multiply by somewhere between two to four to get closer to the true rate. Maybe even more. These estimates are all very rough, of course, and there will be lots of variables that affect death rates. What I don’t know is the average time between diagnosis and death and the doubling time. One could make more complicated models, but it is probably wasted effort given the data.
Brian Morgan: I like the way you think. If you decide to leave New York, you’d be awfully welcome in Texas.
Well, thank you Wendy. I know I would feel at home there!
The country is beginning to see an exponential growth of unemployment and enterprise death. Where are the frightening graphs of that looming disaster being promoted and displayed in media? These job loss data, business failure data cascading in, by the way, will be solid as a giant boulder falling on our heads. They won’t be sketchy or vaporous. Hundreds of thousands of lives and families will be ruined; some destroyed.
Get the blessed country back to work. Now. End the insanely overwide-spread government ordered closures.
Continue the newly habituated sanitary measures, sure; self-isolation in suspected illness, etc., but open up the shuttered businesses today. Put people back to work.
Closely monitor any outbreaks as they arise; make exceptions for diseased stews like NYC, SF, LA, et alia; continue to generate greater treatment capacities, equipment, p.p.e’s, pharmacologics, etc. Do what needs doing apart from idling the workforce unnecessarily.
Stop the panicked madness.
Chuck,
I am hopeful that the anti-malarial drug + antibiotics will have have an immediate effect on dampening the daily death rate. NYC is the test tube. If the authorities are satisfied then they green-light it to other parts of the country.
sdferr, I couldn’t agree more!
Brian,
I have mentioned before here that she’s an NP. She is also in a position with a NY county currently seeing an increase in patients.
After she did the math, it came out to a smaller percentage of positives in the overall tests than she had been led to believe in other reports.
I think it was a wake up call. I think she had a touch of what my dad calls ‘foxhole’ vision. Being stuck in the middle of the fight, seeing nearly the worst cases, it just skews her perspective.
That’s not to say the perspective isn’t valuable but it’s limited. And she, of course, didn’t appreciate me- as non-medical a person as one can be- pointing that limitation out.
But I think after she saw those numbers, she became more receptive to the idea of getting the country back to work. Before that she was incensed by Trump’s comments regarding getting the US opened back up for business. She thought the disease was too dire, the “reopening” too soon, too cavalier.
There are now over 40 strains of covid-19 for those interested..
in fact, the first person to be infected with two strains happened recently
Patient Infected With Two Strains of COVID-19 In Iceland
https://grapevine.is/news/2020/03/24/patient-infected-with-two-strains-of-covid-19-in-iceland/
left press just wont stop scaring with wrong info
many people above mentioned why the numbers are not valid
especially R0..
Vox dont care, they think its a good thing to scare people
[however if Covid was easier to get than flu, and deadlier, the numbers would be much higher – and not restricted to elderly or people with prior health problems]
Why Covid-19 is worse than the flu, in one chart
It’s more contagious, more deadly (particularly for older people), and it has a greater potential to overwhelm our health care system.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/18/21184992/coronavirus-covid-19-flu-comparison-chart
there is no one mention of asymptomatic..
which if is as high as 83% would put covid below the flu easily
Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mining-coronavirus-genomes-clues-outbreak-s-origins
Covid 19 strains interactive chart
https://nextstrain.org/ncov
Fractal Rabbit: “I have mentioned before here that she’s an NP”
Sorry, it’s early in the morning and my mind isn’t working 100% yet. Who is ‘she’?
I haven’t kept up-to-date on Neo’s site for a couple days. Apparently I missed a lot of good conversation.
A valetudinarian nation is a contemptible thing. Don’t become that, don’t let the progs induce it in you, America. Throw them off.
O/T: How is this affecting Greta’s handlers? She’s been out of the limelight for so long.
Sorry Brian! My wife is. And I edited that part out accidentally while making sure there was nothing to identify her or I.
Fractal Rabbit, understood, thank you very much.
sdferr:
I see you have dipped into Emma, What we need as a nation is some gruel and arrowroot.
Ha! But no, I picked that one up from study of Plato’s Symposium. Still, love Emma though.
Morning update: the number of active cases is still exponential, but slightly below the fit. Projected cases by the end of today is around 90,000. I just started subtracting out the NY cases from the US cases; we’ll see how that goes in a few days.
New cases is showing a deviation from exponential on the lower side. I strted plotting this due to a referenced article from Art which said this is a good initial indicator, we’ll see if this continues. If so, a dim candle down the tunnel??
Serious cases at 856, where I predict they should be around 2700 for 2 week recovery and 11,900 for 1 week…this parameter is way too low again.
CT is now fully exponential. There are a large number of NYC expats now fleeing to CT and the Cape, and no doubt bringing the virus with them. Many coastal towns with a large NYC summer population are trying to put these people under 14 day quarantine as they arrive.
In my 35 years living as a downstate NY resident, and 60 years living in the NYC metro area, this is what I see:
NYC goes through secular periods of grime and gleam. Now is grime time. The last low was 30-35 years ago. Rudy Giuliani ushered in the Age of Gleam as mayor from 1994-2001. His predecessors squandered it. NYC residents seem to like grime but maybe now post-CV their attitude will change as it did 35 years ago.
Brian… in good times they get all upset over social issues and then elect stupid finding what brought them the gleam is evil… it takes a lot of stupid and bad for them to say, we need evil to fix it… and try something else…
On March 13, 1964 Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her Queen’s apartment. It was a long and tortuous ordeal. Several people heard the screams but did nothing. I know that the story rocked the city but I was too young to recall if voters changed direction.
Twenty years later another crime crushed the city. In fact a close relative of mine was there in Manhattan when it happened. A woman was brutally raped in an alley. Many people heard the screams but decided to not get involved. That would have been around 35 years ago. Perhaps that, plus numerous other factors, pushed voters to elect the young, brash NY Attorney General Rudy Giuliani as Mayor.
Let’s hope that COVID-19 changes the electorate’s mind next time at the ballot box.
On March 13, 1964 Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her Queen’s apartment. It was a long and tortuous ordeal. Several people heard the screams but did nothing. I know that the story rocked the city but I was too young to recall if voters changed direction.
A number of people called the police.
Artfldgr…Other large American cities appear to be prone to these secular cycles. My theory is that the masses are controlled much more effectively when there are few sources of information. For example, NYC has the NY Times, the Daily News, the Village Voice, and the NY Post, and some other small players. All but the NY Post is left-wing. Now look at broadcast news: ABC, NBC, CBS, all left-wing. It is much easier for a Progressive city government to hold millions of people hostage when they have a compliant media. Woe be to the right-of-center candidate. The media will crush you. Unfortunately most people believe the talking heads on TV… New York’s “Hometown team” of talking heads. They look like such nice people.
Art Deco, tis true but the murderer came back to finish the job when the heat died down.
I must admit that there is something appealing about the “anything goes” attitude of Progressive government. The problem is that they criminalize the great equalizer: personal protection afforded by firearms. Had Kitty Genovese been allowed to carry she’d likely be a great-grandmother now.
Brian Morgan:
Art Deco will beg to differ? 🙂
om, disagreement is fine. The point I am trying to make is that Progressivism is not workable unless people are given the right to defend themselves against criminals who don’t believe in the Progressive ideal. This is what is infuriating about their response to gun ownership: banning all guns will make us safer. No, it won’t. As my deceased BIL said: “take away the guns and they’ll kill you with a knife; take away the knives and they’ll kill you with a screwdriver; take away the screwdrivers and they’ll kill you with a baseball bat…”
Ugh…
I really don’t want get into this (he says, getting into this), but this is a classic example of ‘fake news’. A young woman murdered by a psycho is horrible enough, but the press had to turn it up to 11:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040207134951/http://www.oldkewgardens.com/kitty_genovese-001.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese#Accuracy_of_original_reports
I think one of the things people these days don’t realize is that there was no 911 system then. Do you know the phone # of your local police station? Want to look it up at 3:30 AM?
One way to reduce the exponential is to wear masks outside.
Even masks that are less than 100% (99%+) effective – a level not even reached by some 75% N95 masks, due to sub-optimal fitting.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
If all the sick people wear masks when outside, but stay in their own homes mostly, and all the other people outside also wear masks, but avoid leisure outside forays and meeting — the spread will slow down. Hugely.
HongKong, Japan, Korea; China, all use masks. Slovakia does too, now, but accepts the fairly comfy “surgical mask”, without requiring the N95 mask. Slowing the spread, waiting for treatment & health system adjustments to get better.
Still a few weeks away from – lesser level of care.
The old “normal” will not be fully returned to.
Sonny Wayz: Recollections from my youth, all of my friend’s moms had a sheet of paper taped to the refrigerator’s door with the name and number of the Police, Fire, and Doctor. I think that people were generally prepared, pre-911 system.
Wife switched over to local news. I heard Gov. Cuomo’s voice on his latest press briefing. I went to my browser and refreshed Worldometers:
New York State:
New cases: +4,292
New deaths: +19
I am aware that these sites use the press briefings as a data source.
The +19 new deaths is very encouraging!!
Also:
USA Deaths: 1,061
USA Recovered: 1,837
This is the first time in weeks that I’ve seen Recovered > Deaths
We have someone prepare evening meals for us who operates a food truck for the morning and mid-day trade. In mid-February she was unable to get to us because she experienced for several days a fever, loss of sense of smell & taste, etc.. Shortly after she next supplied us with several days of meals, I contracted an upper respiratory infection, followed by my wife having the same experience. Z-packs seemed to take care of the illnesses. I am starting to wonder if our chef hadn’t contracted the virus back in late January or early February and passed it on to us. I guess we would need serology to determine whether we in fact had the coronavirus. Others likewise suspect it was here a lot earlier than thought, perhaps mistaken for the seasonal flu.
Stuart, I am thinking that something similar happened to me in January. There was a period of time where I felt feverish. I was coughing up a lot but I attributed that to my sinuses. Each time I went to the store everything would drain. I was miserable. Didn’t go to the doctor. Got better over a couple weeks. I had the “regular” flu once in my life and it knocked me out for three days, so I didn’t think much of this recent episode. Now I am wondering if I was exposed to CV and my immune system took care of it.
It’s not just exponential thinking, but also dynamic thinking. You can’t get to attached to numbers when the situation is dynamic. By the time you’ve calculated them or thought about them, they are old. They can give you a snapshot and a few can show the trend. But if they show the expected trend, such as more cases as testing expands, more deaths as severe cases run their course, that isn’t so valuable. You have to think about what has changed, is changing, will change in response.
Things are close aboard so they loom and the all hands response is just 3 weeks old. Barely time for the identified cases at the first of the month to reach conclusion, much less the recent ones.
Right now, there’s are rocks right ahead. The helm’s been ordered over, the rudder is mostly over, and now we wait for the water on the rudder to start the bow swinging. It can be a gut wrenching wait till you see the jackstaff swing off the rock, but once it starts, it keeps starting to swing faster. Then, your task is to make sure you don’t swing around into more rocks, especially that you don’t swing the stern into the rocks from the turn and flood the engineroom. At some point you have to bring the rudder back to the center line, perhaps even apply a bit of counter rudder to stop the swing. Every bit of that is a judgement call and sometimes you have to start over when you corrected to early.
Whiffs of guesses: It does smell as if there are several strains that are clinically causing severe and mild cases. It smells as if it is being passed in the air a little, not only as droplet nuclei. It smells as is if there are people who never get it but are carrying it and passing it. It seems contagious almost beyond belief but benign statistically with a tremendous variation in outcomes.
Strains dont necessarily differ in how sick they make you given its your response to them that makes you sick, not what they actually do… what constitutes a strain in informatics does not necessarily make a difference with distinction
Exponential growth is related to compound interest.
Which is how most wealthy investors got wealthy.
Measuring wealth is tricky. Most measures do NOT include social insurance.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/social-security-and-trends-in-inequality.html
SS wealth has been
growing from over $4.6 trillion in 1989 to $34.0 trillion in 2016. Consequently, by 2016, Social Security wealth represented 58% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution
I’d guess it’s over 90% of the “wealth” of those many who never bought/ don’t own their own house/ condo. They’re retired, and live month to month on the US gov’t SS checks.
My own savings was hugely reduced (%, not amount so much) because I knew I’d be getting SS payments. Lots of folks are depending on SS; on the gov’t. But once you depend on them, you don’t have to depend on yourself.
I’m sure that the fact SS really does provide working class consumption, or more, for retired US workers, means folks save less for retirement. Worry less about getting old.
Worry less about most problems.
When folk worry less, they prepare less. Even tho there are a lot more ways to prepare, if one wants, most folk prepare less.
This comment is about 1) the “wealth” of poor and normal folk is mostly Social Security. 2) Not having to worry & prepare for retirement reduces having the habit of preparation for the future.
Brian Morgan:
You are relying on the original NY Times lies about the story of Kitty Genovese. Please see this.
“My own savings was hugely reduced (%, not amount so much) because I knew I’d be getting SS payments. Lots of folks are depending on SS; on the gov’t. But once you depend on them, you don’t have to depend on yourself.
I’m sure that the fact SS really does provide working class consumption, or more, for retired US workers, means folks save less for retirement. Worry less about getting old.”
Well, I must be some exception to your rule. Way back in 1981, I had already started planning for retirement taking into account that SS would not even exist…yes they were talking about it growing broke even back then. I calculated how much I would need in my account to keep my same salary using a standard 3% inflation rate. I then had a goal which I met about 6 years ago. I retired last year, and the SS check I get now just puts less pressure on my retirement account, but if it went away I would be fine. Even with the loss the last few weeks, I’m betting the part that I have in equities, money market, real estate and bonds will bounce back. I have about 40% in those and 60% in an annuity that is guaranteed. Thanks to my TIAA advisor with whom I worked all this out starting about 2 years ago.
Neo: “You are relying on the original NY Times lies about the story of Kitty Genovese.”
Well how do you like that? I got my information from documentaries. How does the NY Times have any credibility at all? I know some people who swear by it (not at it.)
Still it might have turned out differently if she were allowed to defend herself. I remember the time following JFK’s assassination that the gun-grabbers kicked into high gear. It’s not what we needed.
Commenter at PowerLine has the same opinion as some people here on our leaders “missing the boat” in re restrictions, or, as it were: letting some people get on the plane while the rest of us can’t even go to the hair salon.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/forecast-of-british-coronavirus-deaths-revised-um-downward.php
Tom Grey on March 26, 2020 at 11:46 am said:
One way to reduce the exponential is to wear masks outside.
Even masks that are less than 100% (99%+) effective – a level not even reached by some 75% N95 masks, due to sub-optimal fitting.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
* * *
That was a very interesting analysis of the studies and realities of using masks.
It’s an easy read, but I was interested to see a discussion in the comments on the advisability and efficacy of home-made fabric masks, as there are so many individuals and companies turning those out now, and even our local nurses are asking a group of friends to drag out the sewing machines.
Maybe they will have some positive effect, even if it’s small, but a lot of the motivation to craft them is the “doing our part to help” feeling that may make the situation more bearable.
The mask article included a link to this one, which was also very interesting, and perhaps more relevant to the general topic of estimating the efficacy of any kind of medical treatment, given the debate over chloroquine; and even the debate as to whether or not any experts can judge the efficacy of a political policy.
In other words, when do we know we’ve ended the threat of the virus, and can go back to business as usual?
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/08/doctor-there-ar.html
Here’s another video about the math models used for the pandemic (Numberphile): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6nLfCbAzgo.
Here’s another video from 3Blue1Brown, where he uses the same type of model to simulate a number of variables pertaining to pandemics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs
Finally, a video about how to know when the pandemic is turning the corner (minutephysics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc