Coronavirus pandemic

[ixnay]

^ I've seen some anti-lockdown protests reported in a few European countries, but they were nowhere nearly as widespread.

The Brazilian Trump joined a such a protest back in April.

There seem to be some tweeters in the UK pushing back.

https://twitter.com/samisam147/status/1282796400795951104

[link is from another mb]

ixnay

[Scott5114]

Why anyone is gambling in a pandemic at any time at games at are overwhelmingly in the house's favor in the first place, though, is beyond me.

Casino games are MUCH closer to fair than lottery tickets are. I would not call it "overwhelmingly" at all.

If you're going to repeat the activity for any significant amount of time, a 3% house edge for a 10 second event is pretty overwhelming.

Lotteries are of course worse odds, but you can have fun playing $5-10 on the lottery once or twice a week. Hard to have much fun at a casino on $10-20.

I mean, you can stretch $100 out all day if you bet horses. (If you bet a single 10¢ superfecta each race, with 20 minutes between each race, you're down 30¢/hour for each track you bet on. Even if you box it, it's only $7.20/hour.) Another good option is playing $3-$6 limit poker. A slot machine will eat it up in a couple of hours no matter what you do, though.

For someone with a healthy outlook on it, it is a pastime rather than any serious attempt at making meaningful amounts of money.

[kalvado]

Of course, medical liaison... How well surveillance systems worked within US and what makes you think it would work any better outside of the US?

There are no guarantees it would have worked, but it would have given us much more of a fighting chance.  To win the game, you have to go to the locker room and suit up.

How  exactly it would help?
What kind of information could such liaison provide which was not published otherwise?

People somehow assume that China got the virus with the standard datasheet - which was apparently not the case. And apparently US virologists and epidemiologists are not way more qualified than Chinese specialists. If anything, its the other way around

[wxfree]

A federal response wouldn't be based on shutdown orders.  The federal government doesn't have that kind of direct authority over people (unless they want to claim it affects interstate commerce, in which case they can do whatever they want).  Such orders come from the police power of the states.  The federal response would be more strategic, such as issuing guidance and coordinating the importation, production, and distribution of supplies.  That's an executive function.  The only thing Congress would be needed for is paying for it.  The state and federal governments each have their place.  The states are in direct contact with the people, while the feds are more in contact with the states.  A better federal response would have coordinated the supply chain and would have issued guidance and then actually recommended that states follow the guidance.

[kalvado]

I mean, you can stretch $100 out all day if you bet horses.

Reminds me how I was gambling in Vegas...  Long story short: By the time I lost my third dollar....

[kalvado]

A federal response wouldn't be based on shutdown orders.  The federal government doesn't have that kind of direct authority over people (unless they want to claim it affects interstate commerce, in which case they can do whatever they want).  Such orders come from the police power of the states.  The federal response would be more strategic, such as issuing guidance and coordinating the importation, production, and distribution of supplies.  That's an executive function.  The only thing Congress would be needed for is paying for it.  The state and federal governments each have their place.  The states are in direct contact with the people, while the feds are more in contact with the states.  A better federal response would have coordinated the supply chain and would have issued guidance and then actually recommended that states follow the guidance.

And that is exactly where CDC failed miserably and probably criminally.

[tradephoric]

Back in April Florida was testing 10,000 people a day.  Now they are reporting 15,000 positive cases a day (among ~100k daily tests).  That means the test positivity rate in Florida would need to be 150% (an impossibility) for the increase in cases to be attributed entirely to the virus spread.  The reality is roughly 85% of the daily cases can be attributed to increases in testing.  You are going to find a LOT more cases when you are testing 100k people a day as opposed to 10k.

[kalvado]

Back in April Florida was testing 10,000 people a day.  Now they are reporting 15,000 positive cases a day (among ~100k daily tests).  That means the test positivity rate in Florida would need to be 150% (an impossibility) for the increase in cases to be attributed entirely to the virus spread.  The reality is roughly 85% of the daily cases can be attributed to increases in testing.  You are going to find a LOT more cases when you are testing 100k people a day as opposed to 10k.

In your dreams maybe... on a more solid base - FL was reporting 40-50 virus deaths a day in april-early may, and up to 80 last week. With a clear improvement in treatment... 

[tradephoric]

Back in April Florida was testing 10,000 people a day.  Now they are reporting 15,000 positive cases a day (among ~100k daily tests).  That means the test positivity rate in Florida would need to be 150% (an impossibility) for the increase in cases to be attributed entirely to the virus spread.  The reality is roughly 85% of the daily cases can be attributed to increases in testing.  You are going to find a LOT more cases when you are testing 100k people a day as opposed to 10k.

In your dreams maybe... on a more solid base - FL was reporting 40-50 virus deaths a day in april-early may, and up to 80 last week. With a clear improvement in treatment... 

My larger point is that if Florida was testing 10k people a day like they were back in April, it would be impossible to see 15k daily new cases today.  With 10k daily tests and a 20% test positivity rate, they would be reporting about 2k daily cases.  That's a far cry from the 15k daily cases Florida is reporting today (due to the increased testing). 

[Duke87]

Well that's exactly how it would work. Quick tests already exist that can produce results in 15 minutes. Not instant, but fast enough to make it part of the process of clearing security at the airport.

15 min is a lot - and is there enough of such 15 min kits? And who's paying, btw?

I mean airport security lines are already so long, so what is 15 more minutes?

15 extra minutes per TSA clearance does not yield an extra 15 minutes for every passenger.  If there are eight people in line in front of you, and each one takes an extra 15 minutes to clear TSA, then you don't get to the front of the line for another two hours.

If done correctly it's 15 extra minutes for each person. There is no sane reason why you would need to wait for the person in front of you to get their result before you can start the process. They can do multiple tests in parallel.

Could even be less than 15 minutes - have people get swabbed or whatever at the desk where IDs are being checked. Then the time they take to put their bags through the X-ray machine and get scanned overlaps with the time waiting for test results to come back.

Back in April Florida was testing 10,000 people a day.  Now they are reporting 15,000 positive cases a day (among ~100k daily tests).  That means the test positivity rate in Florida would need to be 150% (an impossibility) for the increase in cases to be attributed entirely to the virus spread.  The reality is roughly 85% of the daily cases can be attributed to increases in testing.  You are going to find a LOT more cases when you are testing 100k people a day as opposed to 10k.

In your dreams maybe... on a more solid base - FL was reporting 40-50 virus deaths a day in april-early may, and up to 80 last week. With a clear improvement in treatment... 

My larger point is that if Florida was testing 10k people a day like they were back in April, it would be impossible to see 15k daily new cases today.  With 10k daily tests and a 20% test positivity rate, they would be reporting about 2k daily cases.  That's a far cry from the 15k daily cases Florida is reporting today (due to the increased testing). 

Yeah the logic here is completely backwards. Florida is doing more tests because they keep finding more cases and thus there is cause to keep boosting the capacity. Not the other way around.

Compare to Connecticut: Connecticut is doing 4 times as many tests per day now as they were in April, but is finding 10 times fewer cases.

It is true that lack of testing capacity can and has obscured the true number of cases, but this doesn't mean apparent increases in case counts aren't real. If you suspect there is a testing capacity constraint messing with the numbers, look at the trend on hospitalizations - Florida has a lot more of those now than they did in April. More tests aren't the reason for that.

[wxfree]

People are hospitalized and die because of virus tests as often as they get pregnant because of pregnancy tests.

[SSOWorld]

Nope. The unemployment is being caused by the pandemic.  Not your governor.

Wrong. The virus didn't order businesses to shut down or operate at reduced capacity. Each individual state's governor issued those orders. More governors could have chosen to do what South Dakota's did -- not order closures, and let people and businesses make their own decisions about whether to stay open and at what level of service, whether or not to patronize open businesses, etc. The virus didn't cause any of this. The response to the virus did.

You are wrong. several states chose not to close or open way too early. that led to the businesses trying to make money at the expense of health issues and people not giving a shit whatsoever about the pandemic and states turning a blind eye to it all.

[kalvado]

People are hospitalized and die because of virus tests as often as they get pregnant because of pregnancy tests.

I wouldn't be surprized there are quite a few heart attact related to pregnancy test. Probably more than related to virus tests... 

[tradephoric]

It is true that lack of testing capacity can and has obscured the true number of cases, but this doesn't mean apparent increases in case counts aren't real. If you suspect there is a testing capacity constraint messing with the numbers, look at the trend on hospitalizations - Florida has a lot more of those now than they did in April. More tests aren't the reason for that.

According to Johns Hopkins testing dashboard, on April 3rd Florida reported 1,575 cases among 14,426 daily tests (test positivity=10.9%).  I picked April 3rd because it was the highest number of cases Florida reported in March and April.  On July 12th, Florida performed 98,708 tests and reported a record 15,300 cases (test positivity=15.5%).  Assuming the same test positivity rate of 10.9% back in April, you would have expected to see 10,776 daily cases on July 12th (which is 70% of 15,300).  So the increase in testing (from 14,426 on April 3rd to 98,708 on July 12th) account for 70% of the increase in daily cases while 30% is due to an increase in the test positivity rate (from 10.9% on April 3rd to 15.5% on July 12th). 

Ultimately if Florida performed the 14,426 daily tests on July 12th that they tested back in April, they would have reported 2,236 daily cases (as opposed to the 15,300 they actually reported).  Can we agree that 2,236 daily cases would sound a lot less daunting to Floridians than 15,300 daily cases?

[hotdogPi]

Ultimately if Florida performed the 14,426 daily tests on July 12th that they tested back in April, they would have reported 2,236 daily cases (as opposed to the 15,300 they actually reported).  Can we agree that 2,236 daily cases would sound a lot less daunting to Floridians than 15,300 daily cases?

If Florida only tested 14,426 people per day now, over 50% of them would be positive, as the people getting tested would be the ones who more obviously have it.

[vdeane]

If you don't have one on you, they will happily sell you a disposable one for $3

Wow, at Tim Hortons I saw them give one away for free!

[tradephoric]

If Florida only tested 14,426 people per day now, over 50% of them would be positive, as the people getting tested would be the ones who more obviously have it.

That may be true.  We saw 50% positivity rates in New York early in this pandemic when testing was scarce.  But 7213 daily cases would still be a lot less than 15,300. 

[Scott5114]

If you don't have one on you, they will happily sell you a disposable one for $3

Wow, at Tim Hortons I saw them give one away for free!

It's not a terribly popular policy with the customers. This has never stopped management, though.

[Duke87]

Assuming the same test positivity rate

Yeah, see, the problem is this is a flawed assumption, because who gets tested is not chosen at random. When fewer tests are available they are rationed in a way that reserves them for people more likely to test positive. So no, you can't just linearly scale this and assume Florida would have been finding 10,000 daily positives in April if they were testing as much then as now.

And again, look at hospitalizations: the 7-day moving average of covid hospital admissions in Florida was hovering a bit over 150/day back in April. It's now up to close to 350/day. (source) This suggests real daily case counts have more than doubled, at a minimum, in the past few months. In reality the percent increase is even higher than this, since newer cases are skewing more towards younger demographics who are less likely to warrant hospitalization.

Even if we assume the ratio is 350/150 though, this means that the April counts normalized to current testing rate would be about 6,557, not 10,776. This would leave us with 36% of the count increase being attributable to increased testing, and even that is a highball number because of the aforementioned demographic skew.

[tradephoric]

Assuming the same test positivity rate

Yeah, see, the problem is this is a flawed assumption, because who gets tested is not chosen at random. When fewer tests are available they are rationed in a way that reserves them for people more likely to test positive. So no, you can't just linearly scale this and assume Florida would have been finding 10,000 daily positives in April if they were testing as much then as now.

A safe assumption is that Florida would never be reporting 15,300 daily cases today if they were still only testing 14,426 people a day.  Here is a simple scenario (somewhat similar to Florida):

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

July:
100,000 tests a day
30,000 positive cases
30% positivity rate

In this scenario, cases jumped from 1,000 a day to 30,000.  Assuming 10k tests a day with a 30% positivity rate, that would equate to 3,000 cases not 30,000.  That means the remaining 27,000 cases (90%) can be attributed to the 10X increase in testing.

[kalvado]

A safe assumption is that Florida would never be reporting 15,300 daily cases today if they were still only testing 14,426 people a day. 

It is not a safe assumption. It is an explicitly wrong one.
If there is limited means of diagnostics - as it was February-March, other diagnostic approaches would be used. CT and MRI present a characteristic "ground glass" image of the lungs. MRI is slow, CT means significant dose, and both are fairly expensive - but that is definitely a possibility that was used. The worst case scenario is symptomatic diagnostics, where pneumonia is assumed to be COVID related if there is no reason to believe otherwise.
You know, they didn't have PCR or MRI in 1918 -still, people were diagnosed...

[SEWIGuy]

Well that's exactly how it would work. Quick tests already exist that can produce results in 15 minutes. Not instant, but fast enough to make it part of the process of clearing security at the airport.

15 min is a lot - and is there enough of such 15 min kits? And who's paying, btw?

I mean airport security lines are already so long, so what is 15 more minutes?

15 extra minutes per TSA clearance does not yield an extra 15 minutes for every passenger.  If there are eight people in line in front of you, and each one takes an extra 15 minutes to clear TSA, then you don't get to the front of the line for another two hours.

If done correctly it's 15 extra minutes for each person. There is no sane reason why you would need to wait for the person in front of you to get their result before you can start the process. They can do multiple tests in parallel.

Could even be less than 15 minutes - have people get swabbed or whatever at the desk where IDs are being checked. Then the time they take to put their bags through the X-ray machine and get scanned overlaps with the time waiting for test results to come back.

Back in April Florida was testing 10,000 people a day.  Now they are reporting 15,000 positive cases a day (among ~100k daily tests).  That means the test positivity rate in Florida would need to be 150% (an impossibility) for the increase in cases to be attributed entirely to the virus spread.  The reality is roughly 85% of the daily cases can be attributed to increases in testing.  You are going to find a LOT more cases when you are testing 100k people a day as opposed to 10k.

In your dreams maybe... on a more solid base - FL was reporting 40-50 virus deaths a day in april-early may, and up to 80 last week. With a clear improvement in treatment... 

My larger point is that if Florida was testing 10k people a day like they were back in April, it would be impossible to see 15k daily new cases today.  With 10k daily tests and a 20% test positivity rate, they would be reporting about 2k daily cases.  That's a far cry from the 15k daily cases Florida is reporting today (due to the increased testing). 

Yeah the logic here is completely backwards. Florida is doing more tests because they keep finding more cases and thus there is cause to keep boosting the capacity. Not the other way around.

Compare to Connecticut: Connecticut is doing 4 times as many tests per day now as they were in April, but is finding 10 times fewer cases.

It is true that lack of testing capacity can and has obscured the true number of cases, but this doesn't mean apparent increases in case counts aren't real. If you suspect there is a testing capacity constraint messing with the numbers, look at the trend on hospitalizations - Florida has a lot more of those now than they did in April. More tests aren't the reason for that.

tradephoric is trying REALLY hard not to see something that is pretty f**king obvious.

[hotdogPi]

A safe assumption is that Florida would never be reporting 15,300 daily cases today if they were still only testing 14,426 people a day. 

It is not a safe assumption. It is an explicitly wrong one.
If there is limited means of diagnostics - as it was February-March, other diagnostic approaches would be used. CT and MRI present a characteristic "ground glass" image of the lungs. MRI is slow, CT means significant dose, and both are fairly expensive - but that is definitely a possibility that was used. The worst case scenario is symptomatic diagnostics, where pneumonia is assumed to be COVID related if there is no reason to believe otherwise.
You know, they didn't have PCR or MRI in 1918 -still, people were diagnosed...

15300 > 14426

However, this is only because if you have a low number of tests, you're guaranteed to have a low number of positives regardless of how many there actually are. You're artificially limiting yourself by doing that.

[NWI_Irish96]

A safe assumption is that Florida would never be reporting 15,300 daily cases today if they were still only testing 14,426 people a day.  Here is a simple scenario (somewhat similar to Florida):

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

July:
100,000 tests a day
30,000 positive cases
30% positivity rate

In this scenario, cases jumped from 1,000 a day to 30,000.  Assuming 10k tests a day with a 30% positivity rate, that would equate to 3,000 cases not 30,000.  That means the remaining 27,000 cases (90%) can be attributed to the 10X increase in testing.

That's not even close to how math works. There is a 30% positivity rate now compared to a 10% positivity rate back in April, so real infections have tripled, regardless of how many people are tested, and that's a massive failure on the part of Federal and state governments to get to that point.

[GaryV]

Why anyone is gambling in a pandemic in the first place, though, is beyond me.

It's just a bigger gamble, all the more exciting.