Thursday, May 07, 2020

Excluding NY City, US Cases are Increasing

This is from yesterday's NY Times:


Excluding New York City:


Also excluding two other hotspots, Detroit and New Orleans:


Something similar in Texas and Oklahoma:


Someone in the comments makes a point about different rates of testing -- it doesn't seem possible to link to it:

The second paragraph explains why there might be more cases in cities, especially dense cities like NYC, but I don't see how the first paragraph changes the overall picture. Granted that the cities have seen more testing and therefore more cases...but if the rest of the country (excluding NYC, etc) had the same testing rate as NYC etc they'd see more cases too. Maybe not more at the same proportion, but more. So it's not obvious to me the second graph can be easily explained away. 

14 comments:

David in Cal said...

One theory is that due to the huge number of asymptomatic sufferers and high contagion, the disease will continue to spread everywhere, no matter what we do. In places outside NYC, where it spread slowly at first, it will continue to spread, despite our best efforts.

Cheers

Ned said...

David A:

Have you seen this site? It looks good to me, but I'm not an expert. The nice thing is that you can see the impact of various scenarios:

https://modelingcovid.com/

For example, for Oregon:

*Continuing current social distancing until August, then relaxing would yield the following:

Recovered 47,009
Exposed 1,516
Infectious 1,960
Hospitalized 195
Deceased 474

*Immediate relaxation to zero social distancing:

Recovered 2,385,060
Exposed 59,085
Infectious 122,870
Hospitalized 22,652
Deceased 20,996

*Gradual decrease in social distancing to 30% (ie, 70% of normal activity)

Recovered 128,495
Exposed 17,421
Infectious 19,779
Hospitalized 1,492
Deceased 1,049

etc. etc. There are a variety of scenarios to choose from.

David Appell said...

Is there an estimated percentage of those who are asymptomatic, i.e. carry the virus but have no symptoms?

David in Cal said...

David - There's a lot of information about the % of asymptotic infected people. An Icelandic study found that 50% of those who were infected were asymptomatic. A study of the Diamond Princess cruise ship showed 17.9% of those infected were asymptomatic (if I understand it correctly.)

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/50-percent-of-people-with-covid19-not-aware-have-virus

http://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/id/documents/COVID/AsymptCOVID_TransmissionShip.pdf

Cheers

Layzej said...

It may be good news if there are a large percentage of asymptomatic cases. If so then we may reach herd immunity much more quickly.

David in Cal said...

BTW testing appears to have risen to around 300,000 per day, based on the last 2 days. This was what Dr. Birks and the Task Force predicted, based on all they had done. I hope this holds up and continues to increase, as they projected.

Layzej said...

I notice that the wife of one of Trumps staffers has been getting regular access to tests.

Trump: "She tested uh, very good for a long period of time and then all of a sudden she tested positive"

I suspect she has access to the tests because of her proximity to the president.

He used this as an example of why you don't need tests: "This is why the whole concept of tests aren't necessarily great. The tests are perfect, but something can happen between the test where it's good and then some thing happens and all of a sudden she was tested very recently and tested negative and then today I guess for some reason she tested positive."

It may be a cultural difference between Canada and USA. USians expect that their president will be regularly tested, as well as those around him - even while tests are not readily available to the general public.

In Canada, the Prime minister's wife tested positive after becoming symptomatic. The Prime Minister self isolated, but was not himself tested. Same rules apply to the PM as to the public.

David Appell said...

Yes, I suppose that Americans accept that the President, VP and close staffers should have ready access to Covid testing.

In this case the staffer is Katie Miller, a spokesperson for the White House, also wife of Stephen Miller, administration honcho and Nazi.

What's funny is that Trump thinks tests are useful up until they show someone is positive.

He said something similar earlier, when he didn't want people coming ashore from a ship in San Fran because it would raise the US's numbers.

It's abundantly clear that all Trump cares about -- and I do mean *all* -- is how this will affect his reelection chances, and he's willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives to make that happen. Literally. He clearly thinks nothing at all about doing that.

Trump proves he's an idiot each and every day. A very dangerous idiot.

David in Cal said...

David - your dislike of Trump may cause you to misunderstand some of his comments. Trump accurately said that bringing infected people ashore would raise US numbers. He never said he didn't want to bring these people ashore. Perhaps he was just trying to avoid being blamed for the bump in cases.

Trump's desire to gradually re-open the economy is a way of dealing with a dilemma. We can't stay closed forever. Trump's policy might or might not work well. We're all guessing here. But, you have no basis to impugn his motives.

BTW I don't see how an unsuccessful policy would help Trump get re-elected. If tens of thousands of people are dying in October because of Trump's wrong-headed policies, how would that help Trump get elected?

One tiny bit of happy news. In a telephone interview this morning, Trump said the White House is now requiring people who meet the President (and I think the VP) to wear masks. This policy should have been adopted long ago. Apparently, Trump finally appreciated the implication of the fact that testing negative, even a day ago, doesn't eliminate the risk that a visitor might now be positive. In fact, my wife speculates that an infected person with a low viral load might test negative and yet be contagious that day or soon afterward.

Cheers

David Appell said...

"Trump accurately said that bringing infected people ashore would raise US numbers. He never said he didn't want to bring these people ashore."

Oh please David. That's exactly what he meant.

Why do you keep excusing this cretin?

David Appell said...

"One tiny bit of happy news. In a telephone interview this morning, Trump said the White House is now requiring people who meet the President (and I think the VP) to wear masks."

Why isn't *TRUMP* wearing a mask, an N95 mask? Is he not crucial to solving this problem? Apparently not.... If he is, he should be wearing a mask. But he's too vain, too stupid to do so. He thinks as long as he tests negative he's ok.

David Appell said...

"Trump's desire to gradually re-open the economy is a way of dealing with a dilemma. We can't stay closed forever."

Trump doesn't have the basic discipline to even follow his own message. When about 2 weeks ago he laid out guidelines, then he saw that a few people were starting to revolt, instead of enforcing his decision and standing behind it he tweeted out "Liberate Minnesota! Liberate Wisconsin! Liberate Virginia!" That right there gave away his game. He didn't really mean to enforce social distancing -- he saw people revolt and thought, he, why not, that's in my best interest, getting the country opened up as soon as possible, so I'll back them despite what I just said 2 days ago.

And that's what he did.

That's not what a leader does. That's how a child reacts, impulsively.

Trump has no plan now. None whatsoever. How is he protecting senior citizens, David? How is he ramping up testing? How is he doing ANYTHING except whining that he's getting blamed for something?

Some of us saw these faults long ago, way before he was elected.

David in Cal said...

The character faults are one thing; the achievements are another.

Regarding the testing, Trump and the Pence Task Force have done a lot of things that led to having over 300,000 tests each of the last 3 days. Here's some steps I can recall
1. Encouraging industry to create and invent new tests via his "public-private partnership"
2. Getting several new tests rapidly approved by the FDA, including a 15 minute test from Abbott and a mass test from another major drug company.
3. Abbott distributed hundreds of thousands of this new test
4. Encouraging the establishment of drive thru test sites. I noticed one this week in the parking lot of the Menlo Medical clinic, where I get my medical care.
5. Contacting test sites all over the country to see what help they needed to increase the number of tests.
6. Doubling the fee paid for a test, when they found that the old fee was insufficient to cover the labor costs.
7. Finding new sources of swabs, test tubes, and reagent, when the Task Force discovered that these were lacking.
8. Getting the invention of a new swab made of something other than the usual cotton.
9. Creating and disseminating a list of all test sites in each state and making these lists available to all the Governors. Many Governors were not aware of all the test sites in their state.
10. Making various federal and military test sites available to the general public.

Regarding character, IMHO one of Trump's strengths is the ability and persistence and discipline to get things done. You can't succeed in private business without this ability. As President he fulfilled (at least in part) quite a few campaign promises: tax cut, replacing NAFTA, getting a better trade deal with China, building a fence on the Southern border, "Draining the swamp", appointing judges who who follow the law, rather than their political preferences, and cutting regulations to name a few. David, you probably disapprove of some of these goals, but Trump did accomplish a lot of things.

Cheers

Ned said...

Somebody's living in fantasyland.