Coronavirus pandemic

[SEWIGuy]

If the daily positive tests are increasing, it means that it is more widespread.

To be fair, that statement isn't actually true.  Positive tests are only a subset of total tests, and therefore they are not an absolute measure of how widespread the virus is.

I'm not saying tradephoric is on the right track, though.

You snipped my quote.  It was in the context of his example of increasing number of tests and increasing number of positives.

[tradephoric]

This is the same guy who believes that you can predict stocks by drawing flagging pennants on them or whatever the fuck. Best to not take him seriously, especially now that he's spreading dangerous misinformation.

It's called technical analysis.  You can focus on fundamentals but with all the tricks the FED is doing I'd argue the fundamentals are fundamentally flawed.  This is definitely a crazy world we live in.

[kphoger]

If the daily positive tests are increasing, it means that it is more widespread.

To be fair, that statement isn't actually true.  Positive tests are only a subset of total tests, and therefore they are not an absolute measure of how widespread the virus is.

I'm not saying tradephoric is on the right track, though.

You snipped my quote.  It was in the context of his example of increasing number of tests and increasing number of positives.

I know the context.  But increasing daily positive does not, in fact, necessarily mean the virus is more widespread each day.  The number of total tests each day needs to be factored in as well.

I'm sure you know that full well.  I just wanted to point it out for clarity.

[NWI_Irish96]

Here is the national overview of new tests, new cases, current hospitalizations, and new deaths.  While daily cases are 83% higher today than they were during April's peak, hospitalizations are down over 10% and deaths are down by over 70%.  Ultimately deaths are nowhere near where they were back in April which is really good news.  As bad as thing are in Florida right now, at least we aren't seeing 1000 deaths a day like we were in New York back in April (and both states have similar populations). 

Hospitalizations are only down 10% from the peak but are steeply on the rise right now. Many more people are suffering/dying right now than a month ago.

[RobbieL2415]

Do we have any stats on reinfection in the US?

[wxfree]

Your point that you can't get more positive results than tests is obvious, but to assume that means that the increase in positives is because of the increase in tests is incorrect.  If the virus weren't spreading, we wouldn't be finding those positives.  If you increase testing and the positives go up and the positivity rate goes down, that increase may be attributable to the increase in testing and may not reflect faster spread.  If you test more, and get more positives, and the positivity rate goes up, that means the actual increase in spread is more than the increase in testing.

Keep the math simple and assume the virus isn't spreading.  The public hears cases have gone up from 1,000 a day to 10,000 and they assume the virus is 10X worse than before.  The public is duped into believing the virus is out of control because the media focuses nearly all of their attention on daily case counts.  In the scenario below, 100% of the additional cases is due to increased testing.  That's why news headlines like "37 states are seeing rise in cases" is totally ambiguous.

April:
10,000 tests a day
1,000 positive cases
10% positivity rate

July:
100,000 tests a day
10,000 positive cases
10% positivity rate

The question is about whether the increase in testing reflects an increase in actual spread.  Your point is that the numbers are higher because of increased testing.  But the question remains: Is the virus spreading faster?  The answer is Yes.  The positive results reflect an increase in spread.  It's true that you can't have more positives than tests, but the increase in spread is greater than the increase in testing.  If we had no increase in testing, there would still be an increase in positive results because the positivity rate would go up.

[wxfree]

IHME seems to be projecting stay at home orders in Florida and Texas (and possibly other states I didn't see).  The projection calls for a sharp drop in mobility in Texas starting August 14.  The projection says there will be 35,000 new infections and 226 deaths that day.  The number of daily infections immediately starts dropping, and the number of deaths starts dropping about two weeks later.

In Florida, they show in drastic decrease in mobility starting October 24.  On that day it shows 21,000 new infections and 169 deaths.  New infections start dropping, but the projection ends November 1, too soon to show a drop in deaths.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

The governor of Texas has been mentioning the possibility of such an order.  What he seems to be doing could be seen as either testing the wind or softening the ground.

[tradephoric]

Michigan reported 666 new cases yesterday which is higher than the cases reported on April 19th.  Now the governor is talking about closing down the economy again.  The reality is the positivity rate in Michigan has dropped by 80% since April 19th (from 16.6% down to 3.3%).  The fundamental point is you can't just look at daily cases to determine how bad the situation is but that's all the media seems to focus on.  If Michigan had testing 3172 people yesterday they would have only reported 104 cases.  That's a lot less daunting sounding than 528 cases or 666 cases. 

April 19th :
3172 tests
528 positive cases
16.6% positivity rate

July 14th:
20,359
666 positive cases
3.3% positivity rate

[kalvado]

If Michigan had testing 3172 people yesterday they would have only reported 104 cases. 

What makes you think so? I would say if they tested 3000 people, they would get  450 positives. Any reason to think otherwise?

[hotdogPi]

If Michigan had testing 3172 people yesterday they would have only reported 104 cases.  That's a lot less daunting sounding than 528 cases or 666 cases. 

1. As I said before, 6× as many tests means fewer than 6× as many positives. With fewer tests, the more obvious ones get tested.

2. They could have tested more people in order to avoid getting the Number of the Beast.

[wanderer2575]

Michigan is back to its semi-regular practice of posting highway death counts.  This message was on VMSs today.  Interesting that with three months of emptied roadways earlier, year-to-date highway deaths are down only 21 compared to last year.

[webny99]

Actually, I haven't really been hearing much about China at all in at least a month.  Not about under-reporting the numbers, not about the virus leaking out of a lab, not about hygiene, not about anything.  This thread is the first I've heard about China in quite some time.

Same here. However, in this case I don't necessarily think no news is good news. We've just been pre-occupied with our own COVID situation.

[webny99]

The idea that we wouldn't have already had a recession with 135,000 consumers suddenly removed from the economy over the space of five months is absurd. If your primary concern is the economy, you should favor virus containment issues, because the dead spend no money.

That's not the main reason the economy is bad.  In fact that is a very small reason it is bad.

Second that.

Not even close to the same numbers.  Weekly unemployment claims in the USA average between 200k and 250k per week.  These days, California alone exceeds that in initial claims.  For week ending 27-JUN-2020, there were 1,421,058 initial unemployment claims nationwide.

Not to mention that (a) there were about 2.9 million deaths in the US in 2019 (more than 20x the current COVID death toll), (b) many of those who have died were retired or not in the workforce to begin with, and (c) may have died anyways even without the pandemic.

I don't want to sound dismissive of the massive problem on our hands, but the actual reduction in population is a minuscule factor in the economic impact. Still important to note, though, that the death toll would have been much, much higher if we continued completely as normal, almost certainly to the point of meaningfully contributing to a recession on its own.

But let's not kid ourselves: there was literally no way to avoid a recession when this hit.

[NJRoadfan]

Keep in mind that in the states where things are "under control" (mostly the northeast) have test positivity rates under 2% and R0 under 1. Lower daily case counts allows for effective contact tracing and containment.

Under federal guidelines, states shouldn't be reopening if their case positivity rate is over 5%, one reason why Michigan was concerned. Most of the places that are out of control are well above 5% and some close/at 10% at this point and should be rolling back into stage 1/lock down. Yeah, it sucks, but its clear folks in these states didn't take this seriously like the folks in areas that got hit hard early on.

[wxfree]

Keep in mind that in the states where things are "under control" (mostly the northeast) have test positivity rates under 2% and R0 under 1. Lower daily case counts allows for effective contact tracing and containment.

Under federal guidelines, states shouldn't be reopening if their case positivity rate is over 5%, one reason why Michigan was concerned. Most of the places that are out of control are well above 5% and some close/at 10% at this point and should be rolling back into stage 1/lock down. Yeah, it sucks, but its clear folks in these states didn't take this seriously like the folks in areas that got hit hard early on.

In Texas, the positivity rate is nearly 17%.  The highest it got in April was nearly 14%.  The Beaumont trauma service area, which has a population of 1.3 million, has no ICU beds, zero, available.  They have another 145 ventilators, but can't expand their ICU capacity because they don't have enough people to staff those beds for labor-intensive patients.  The Houston area with its 6.7 million population and 2,900 covid patients, has fewer than 100 ICU beds.  ICU availability in other areas, each with hundreds of thousands of people, are on the range of 14, 15, 2, or 1.  The Austin and San Antonio areas, with a combined population of 5.3 million and more than 2,000 covid patients, have a total of 136 ICU beds available.  The only stronghold is DFW, which is the most populated area because the two cities are combined, and has vast medical resources.  That 8 million plus region, which is backing up the rest of the state, is down to 263 ICU beds.  The patient load in that area is steady to moving slightly downward, although the ICU availability is also ticking downward (possibly because of importing patients from elsewhere).  The whole state is down to ICU capacity for another 853 people, and nearly a third of that is in one area (which is close to a corner and far from much of the state).  We are already right at the edge of a disaster, and if we were able to stop all transmission today, the numbers would keep going up for weeks.  That's what people don't understand.

[Duke87]

Does anyone here know what caused the following:

Alaska – After having about three weeks of really low numbers in May, subsequently bouncing back up ever since then?

Hawaii – After having about four weeks of really low numbers in May, subsequently bouncing back up ever since then?

Montana – After having about four weeks of really low numbers in April-May, subsequently bouncing back up ever since then?

I don't know definitively, but the rebound in cases seen in these states may be attributable to one or more infected individuals traveling to the state from elsewhere and seeding a fresh outbreak.

Do we have any stats on reinfection in the US?

No, because in spite of panicked media not missing a beat in bringing the idea up given the opportunity, there has yet to be an actual confirmed instance of reinfection occurring anywhere.

What there have been have been cases where someone, after testing negative and being deemed recovered, has subsequently tested positive again at a later date. But this doesn't necessarily indicate reinfection. Some of these cases of positive test after being ruled recovered are simply false positives triggered by harmless leftover virus debris in the body. Others may be relapses, where the initial infection never actually went away, it just dropped below the threshold of detectability.

The virus is less widespread in this country today than it was back in April.  We just think the virus is so much worse because the daily numbers are so high (due to the fact we are testing 7x more people today than we were back in April). 

https://i.imgur.com/jsHKmYa.png

Yeah, look at your own graph. You may have drawn a nice little downward slope connecting the April peak to today with a straight line, but this completely ignores what the curve itself is doing. Notice how the national positivity rate bottomed out around June and has been going back up since. That's not the direction we want that trend to be going in.

[Bruce]

Since the mask mandate (and empowerment to businesses to kick people out for not wearing them), I have noticed a major improvement in mask-wearing ettiquette in Seattle and surrounding suburbs. Some stores were down to under 50% of patrons wearing masks, and now non-maskers / virus-spreading heathens are very rare indoors.

Though even the rare ones get antsy about being told to wear masks. Perhaps instead of direct confrontation, a triple charge on any products or services they attempt to buy and a written message about mindfulness of others and basic public decency would be useful.

[Scott5114]

Not to mention that (a) there were about 2.9 million deaths in the US in 2019 (more than 20x the current COVID death toll), (b) many of those who have died were retired or not in the workforce to begin with, and (c) may have died anyways even without the pandemic.

So what? That's still 137,419 people that, this time last year, were buying food, gas, and clothing. Now they are spending nothing. Assuming they spent only $4 per meal, that's 137,419× 3 × $4 = $1,649,028 per day or $601,895,220 per year that is no longer being spent by these people because they are no longer in the market for food.

Is it a good idea, economically, to allow the food sector take a $602 million hit? Even if that's not a substantial percentage of the economy, that's still $602 million that can't end up in other people's paychecks. People will lose jobs, and then they cut back their spending, meaning other people lose their jobs, and...

That's just the total for the 137,419 people that have died so far. If you do nothing, and the death toll doubles, so does the economic hit; now you're up to $1.2 billion/year in money not being spent feeding dead covid patients. Again, this is only food, these people were also driving cars, and buying socks, and paying taxes, and all the other usual non-discretionary spending every American engages in.

Clearly it's a better bet to go through short-term economic pain and institute sensible policies to keep people alive, so that when all is safe again, as many consumers are around to rejoin the economy as possible.

This is not the point I am making, but if you want to get really morbid about it, a 2016 USDOT memorandum values one human life at $9.6 million, for the purposes of calculating when a safety project is worth the cost. Using this figure, COVID-19 has cost the US $1,319,222,400,000 ($1.3 trillion) in human resources so far, or about 65% of the total amount spent on the war in Iraq.

[hotdogPi]

Keep in mind that in the states where things are "under control" (mostly the northeast) have test positivity rates under 2% and R0 under 1. Lower daily case counts allows for effective contact tracing and containment.

Massachusetts seems to have R0 above 1 now, but just barely.

[kalvado]

Not to mention that (a) there were about 2.9 million deaths in the US in 2019 (more than 20x the current COVID death toll), (b) many of those who have died were retired or not in the workforce to begin with, and (c) may have died anyways even without the pandemic.

So what? That's still 137,419 people that, this time last year, were buying food, gas, and clothing. Now they are spending nothing. Assuming they spent only $4 per meal, that's 137,419× 3 × $4 = $1,649,028 per day or $601,895,220 per year that is no longer being spent by these people because they are no longer in the market for food.

Is it a good idea, economically, to allow the food sector take a $602 million hit? Even if that's not a substantial percentage of the economy, that's still $602 million that can't end up in other people's paychecks. People will lose jobs, and then they cut back their spending, meaning other people lose their jobs, and...

That's just the total for the 137,419 people that have died so far. If you do nothing, and the death toll doubles, so does the economic hit; now you're up to $1.2 billion/year in money not being spent feeding dead covid patients. Again, this is only food, these people were also driving cars, and buying socks, and paying taxes, and all the other usual non-discretionary spending every American engages in.

Clearly it's a better bet to go through short-term economic pain and institute sensible policies to keep people alive, so that when all is safe again, as many consumers are around to rejoin the economy as possible.

This is not the point I am making, but if you want to get really morbid about it, a 2016 USDOT memorandum values one human life at $9.6 million, for the purposes of calculating when a safety project is worth the cost. Using this figure, COVID-19 has cost the US $1,319,222,400,000 ($1.3 trillion) in human resources so far, or about 65% of the total amount spent on the war in Iraq.

A billion here, a billion there - and suddenly we're talking almost about some real money!
Human life cost is a touchy subject, you would drift into quite controversial things, borderline to criminal.
But 9.6M is too high of a number here.

[Scott5114]

Human life cost is a touchy subject, you would drift into quite controversial things, borderline to criminal.

And yet I know there's at least one person on this forum who makes these calculations as his day job!

For what it's worth, the $9.6 million figure is not really meant for the purpose I used it there, but instead the figure is

defined as the additional cost that individuals would be willing to bear for improvements in safety (that is, reductions in risks) that, in the aggregate, reduce the expected number of fatalities by one.  This conventional terminology has often provoked misunderstanding on the part of both the public and decision-makers. What is involved is not the valuation of life as such, but the valuation of reductions in risks.

So a proper use of the figure would be that it would have been considered, in USDOT's eyes, cost-effective to spend $1.3 trillion on safety improvements to eliminate this crisis.

[kalvado]

Human life cost is a touchy subject, you would drift into quite controversial things, borderline to criminal.

And yet I know there's at least one person on this forum who makes these calculations as his day job!

For what it's worth, the $9.6 million figure is not really meant for the purpose I used it there, but instead the figure is

defined as the additional cost that individuals would be willing to bear for improvements in safety (that is, reductions in risks) that, in the aggregate, reduce the expected number of fatalities by one.  This conventional terminology has often provoked misunderstanding on the part of both the public and decision-makers. What is involved is not the valuation of life as such, but the valuation of reductions in risks.

So a proper use of the figure would be that it would have been considered, in USDOT's eyes, cost-effective to spend $1.3 trillion on safety improvements to eliminate this crisis.

Of course there are people who do this professionally. That doesn't mean this is not a delicate issue.
And again, even in US $2-3M is more realistic for average population sample.
However (and this is an example of touchy questions) covid mortality is not uniform. More than half of US deaths are in 75+ age group, and a metric health insurance would apply is $50k per year of quality life estimate. That still translates into millions per average life, but kids are more valuable than grandpas. That is true for rescue operations as well - kids saved first.
But in covid case such approach would cut total numbers big time.

[SEWIGuy]

Not to mention that (a) there were about 2.9 million deaths in the US in 2019 (more than 20x the current COVID death toll), (b) many of those who have died were retired or not in the workforce to begin with, and (c) may have died anyways even without the pandemic.

So what? That's still 137,419 people that, this time last year, were buying food, gas, and clothing. Now they are spending nothing. Assuming they spent only $4 per meal, that's 137,419× 3 × $4 = $1,649,028 per day or $601,895,220 per year that is no longer being spent by these people because they are no longer in the market for food.

Is it a good idea, economically, to allow the food sector take a $602 million hit? Even if that's not a substantial percentage of the economy, that's still $602 million that can't end up in other people's paychecks. People will lose jobs, and then they cut back their spending, meaning other people lose their jobs, and...

That's just the total for the 137,419 people that have died so far. If you do nothing, and the death toll doubles, so does the economic hit; now you're up to $1.2 billion/year in money not being spent feeding dead covid patients. Again, this is only food, these people were also driving cars, and buying socks, and paying taxes, and all the other usual non-discretionary spending every American engages in.

Clearly it's a better bet to go through short-term economic pain and institute sensible policies to keep people alive, so that when all is safe again, as many consumers are around to rejoin the economy as possible.

This is not the point I am making, but if you want to get really morbid about it, a 2016 USDOT memorandum values one human life at $9.6 million, for the purposes of calculating when a safety project is worth the cost. Using this figure, COVID-19 has cost the US $1,319,222,400,000 ($1.3 trillion) in human resources so far, or about 65% of the total amount spent on the war in Iraq.

A billion here, a billion there - and suddenly we're talking almost about some real money!
Human life cost is a touchy subject, you would drift into quite controversial things, borderline to criminal.
But 9.6M is too high of a number here.

The average household spends $3,000 a year in restaurants per year.  So that's about $400,000,000 less the dead would have spent in restaurants.

There are 660,000 restaurants in the United States.

So that's about $600 a year per restaurant.  In an industry where the average restaurant grosses over $1 million per year, it's not even close to being an issue.

[kalvado]

Not to mention that (a) there were about 2.9 million deaths in the US in 2019 (more than 20x the current COVID death toll), (b) many of those who have died were retired or not in the workforce to begin with, and (c) may have died anyways even without the pandemic.

So what? That's still 137,419 people that, this time last year, were buying food, gas, and clothing. Now they are spending nothing. Assuming they spent only $4 per meal, that's 137,419× 3 × $4 = $1,649,028 per day or $601,895,220 per year that is no longer being spent by these people because they are no longer in the market for food.

Is it a good idea, economically, to allow the food sector take a $602 million hit? Even if that's not a substantial percentage of the economy, that's still $602 million that can't end up in other people's paychecks. People will lose jobs, and then they cut back their spending, meaning other people lose their jobs, and...

That's just the total for the 137,419 people that have died so far. If you do nothing, and the death toll doubles, so does the economic hit; now you're up to $1.2 billion/year in money not being spent feeding dead covid patients. Again, this is only food, these people were also driving cars, and buying socks, and paying taxes, and all the other usual non-discretionary spending every American engages in.

Clearly it's a better bet to go through short-term economic pain and institute sensible policies to keep people alive, so that when all is safe again, as many consumers are around to rejoin the economy as possible.

This is not the point I am making, but if you want to get really morbid about it, a 2016 USDOT memorandum values one human life at $9.6 million, for the purposes of calculating when a safety project is worth the cost. Using this figure, COVID-19 has cost the US $1,319,222,400,000 ($1.3 trillion) in human resources so far, or about 65% of the total amount spent on the war in Iraq.

A billion here, a billion there - and suddenly we're talking almost about some real money!
Human life cost is a touchy subject, you would drift into quite controversial things, borderline to criminal.
But 9.6M is too high of a number here.

The average household spends $3,000 a year in restaurants per year.  So that's about $400,000,000 less the dead would have spent in restaurants.

There are 660,000 restaurants in the United States.

So that's about $600 a year per restaurant.  In an industry where the average restaurant grosses over $1 million per year, it's not even close to being an issue.

A different estimate of the same: we're talking about 1 of 2000 lives lost - 150k of 300M population (rough back of envelope values). That is 0.05% loss of customer base for an average business, or $500 of $1M.
Loss of disposable income, however, would be a much bigger problem for restaurants.

[kphoger]

It's now quite likely that some pretty good husband-and-wife friends of ours have COVID-19.  The wife's mom works in health care and was unknowingly exposed to someone with it at work.  Before she found that out, though, our friends spent time over at their house.  Now our friends have several telltale symptoms–including cough, loss of smell, lethargy, fever.  Their symptoms are mild:  the wife, a teacher, even said there have been days in the past she's gone to work feeling worse than they do now.  They got tested for COVID-19 yesterday and are awaiting the results.

In between that time spent with family and finding all of this out, our friends were at church.

Before worship services were first shut down back in March, their daughter always used to run up to my wife when we walked in the door and give her a huge hug.  They have a special bond because my wife was her childcare provider when she was little.  Last Sunday, she said to my wife, "I told my parents I didn't want to come back to church because I can't give you a hug anymore".  My wife told her, "We're both wearing masks, so let's both go wash our hands and then we can hug".  And that's what they did.

The husband plays electric guitar in the church band, so I was up in the front with him on Sunday (I'm the drummer) but not really near him.  And everyone in the band had masks on the whole time we played music.

Because of all this, it was just announced that worship is canceled for this Sunday.

I've been saying for a while now that singing in church is probably the riskiest behavior we do during the week.  At a grocery store, we only briefly pass by people and most of our time is spent away from others.  But, singing in church, we're surrounded by people for a prolonged time–people who because they're singing are naturally expelling more breath than usual, people whose Monday—Saturday social interactions we don't really know much about.  Sure, the rows are now spread six feet apart, but still.

Well, our friends' COVID tests came back negative.  However, they're still going to complete the rest of their 14 days at home before venturing out again, just in case the tests were false negatives.  Their symptoms were just too striking to ignore.