[spdrun]

Hopefully, they’ll watch hospitalization/positive test rates carefully over the following two weeks to avoid spread becoming exponential. Problem with this bug is that one person can pass it to between 2 and 6 people (depending on whom you ask and local conditions) and generation time is about 5 days. Time to hospitalization is about 12 days. So one new positive test in hospital means many new cases coming down the line in a week or two.

[spdrun]

legallyblue: Italian gov’t appears to be claiming 23200 deaths and 10% of their population infected in the past (via antibody survey?) Total pop is 60 million, so 23200 / 6.0 million = about 0.39%.

[spdrun]

Will war bring back the people who died of this, or will it just cause more death?

[spdrun]

^^^

What about the 2009-10 H1N1 flu that was supposed to be similar to 1918? Turned out, it infected 25% of the world without us knowing it and ended up being about 20x less lethal than predicted?

[spdrun]

Italy is showing a death rate of about 0.35% when antibody prevalence is considered in the population. Ours will likely be lower due to a functional medical system, lower average age, lower smoking rates, and better treatment in the future. We’ll need some measures to keep this from spreading too quickly, but if we’re lucky, we’ll end up with a death rate similar to a bad flu year. This is looking less lethal and more contagious rather than vice versa.

[spdrun]

If I were to bet, I’d bet on 2-4x higher than a seasonal flu (0.2% to 0.4%), not over 1%.

[spdrun]

(1) NYC’s response was virtually identical to CA, some aspects were delayed by a few days, others happened earlier (closures of public gathering places in New Rochelle). I suspect that the outbreak was seeded there by people returning from Europe and China … a lot of the cases are around JFK, likely coming from airport employees. Density also didn’t help.

The good thing is that there’s some news that an insanely high number of people have active infections where testing is universal (~15% of women coming in to the delivery ward in some hospitals) … since we’re not counting cleared infections, the true attack rate could be much higher. If we’re at 50%, we’re well on the way to herd immunity. Only antibody testing will tell for sure…

(2) Antibody testing’s accuracy still stinks (60% if you’re unlucky, 90% if lucky). It’s not useful as a tool for telling people to go back to work, but it is a useful tool in telling POPULATIONS how close they are to mass immunity.

(3) One idea would be not to reopen schools, but reopen summer camps early for healthy kids, and maybe subsidize tuition. Use staff that are young and/or already recovered. The kids (~20% of the population) can pass the virus around, move towards herd immunity, while not risking infecting grandma and grandpa. Of course, it’s an open question whether kids shed virus after recovery, and for how long…

(4) Assuming most people develop immunity and clear the infection, why would infection be a scarlet letter?

[spdrun]

If that’s the case for NY state, that means that 50 to 85% of the state has been exposed, since testing has uncovered about 1% positives for virus. Strangely, I find that plausible since 15% of pregnant women coming into one hospital were testing positive for active infection, with more likely infected in the past and no longer shedding viral RNA…

If serology shows this, we likely distanced too late, but hindsight is 20/20.

[spdrun]

Do you really want to get in a car crash when hospitals are filled to the brim with COVID patients?

[spdrun]

^^^

Agreed. We should move to something like Sweden’s model after local epidemics are brought under control. Areas with uncontrolled spread and which are approaching herd immunity could likely do with even looser restrictions.

[spdrun]

We’re not protecting only the elderly and the sick … we’re protecting anyone who needs hospital care for other things from overwhelmed hospitals. This thing spreads extremely quickly, and one case diagnosed now likely means 50 diagnosed two weeks later without social distancing measures!

The goal needs to be to prevent uncontrolled spread until we reach herd immunity or a vaccine is found. Of course, this point may come faster or slower in different cities — I suspect that the majority of NYC has already been exposed!

[spdrun]

Probably more like a rat or mouse. A pest that’s relatively unlikely to kill you but multiplies very quickly.

[spdrun]

So instead of spending half a trillion a year murdering people in countries not worth our time, we’d be spending money on healthcare, education, infrastructure, and other nice things? if that’s socialism, count me in.

[spdrun]

Here’s the question … if the government allowed banks to utterly shaft their debtors, do you think they’d take advantage?

[spdrun]

On the plus side, 15% of pregnant women coming to the maternity ward in one NYC hospital were COVID positive for active infection. They didn’t test for antibodies/previous infection, so the true figure for infections is likely higher than 15%, assuming pregnant women represent a population sample.

Of that 15%, only about 1 out of 15 had overt symptoms. This is more evidence that this thing isn’t particularly horrible for most people — it’s super-contagious rather than being very lethal. Best case scenario, 50% or more of NYC has already been exposed, and we’re looking at a much smaller death rate than previously predicted. 10000 / 4 million means an 0.25% death rate, not 3% as some models predicted. 50% immune in a population will also slow the growth of new cases dramatically, since 50% of people are no longer viable viral hosts.

The delirium thing seems like a general consequence of being on a vent and sedated for a long time, not of some form of viral encephalitis, but who knows?

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