In other words, Trump foresees opening up the economy and completely giving up on containing the virus. The situation is going to get worse that it was at it worst so far -- US cases per day peaked at about 35,000/day and deaths at about 3,800/day (for one day). (I'm leaving out anomalous days when a tranche of new cases or deaths was found and added all in on one day.)
I don't understand this at all. I mean, why does Trump want to open up only to make things worse than before?
24 comments:
David - Trump's plan was approved by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. Why did they agree to the plan? I provided my guess in a recent comment to your 5/1 post. I wrote there
the disease will spread to most of the population, no matter what we do. In fact, that was the assumption of many experts from the get-go. If this is the case, what can we do?
1. Take steps to slow the spread, so that we have sufficient medical capability at any given time
2. Devote all our efforts to developing treatments and vaccines.
3. Try to protect those most in danger of dying.
If most of us are going to gt the disease regardless, why incur the enormous cost of the shutdown?
Cheers
Fauci and Blix have to tiptoe around Trump's narcissism and ego.
Where is Trump's plan to do any of #1-3 that you mentioned? No where. His head is consumed with his victimization.
If the US fatality rate is 5.8%, as it is now, and everyone gets the virus, that's 19 million dead. THAT's the plan????
This is part of the problem; from Frank Bruni's interview with Laurie Garrett:
Referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and its analogues abroad, she told me: “I’ve heard from every C.D.C. in the world — the European C.D.C., the African C.D.C., China C.D.C. — and they say, ‘Normally our first call is to Atlanta, but we ain’t hearing back.’ There’s nothing going on down there. They’ve gutted that place. They’ve gagged that place. I can’t get calls returned anymore. Nobody down there is feeling like it’s safe to talk. Have you even seen anything important and vital coming out of the C.D.C.?”
Remember how the CDC rejected the WHO's tests, then botched their own? How many thousands died because of that? Or is it tens of thousands?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-prediction-laurie-garrett.html
If the US fatality rate is 5.8%, as it is now,
Fatality rate is probably far less because the number of cases is likely much larger than is being captured.
Granted. Buy even 1 M deaths would be horrific.
David - I don't think Fauci and Birks have to tiptoe. They have more leverage than Trump, because of the prestige he allowed them to gain It would be suicidal for him to fire either of them. Anyhow, they're both top-notch professionals. I believe they are maintaining their standards, even with Trump. Also, so far, Trump has followed all of their advice.
How is Trump doing on the three items I mentioned?
A. Slowing the spread:
1. Maintaining border restrictions
2. All the cautious re-opening steps in the Plan, which probably were designed by Dr. Birx
3. Producing enormous numbers of tests, so that more contagious people can be identified.
B. Devoting effort to treatments and vaccines:
1. Supporting drug companies and universities in developing ideas.
2. Supporting scientific tests of every possible idea
3. Working jointly with other countries
4. Commitment to celebrate and utilize any vaccine, even it's developed by some other country
C. Protecting those in greatest danger
1. Getting all those in old age facilities tested.
2. Encouraging continued protection of the most vulnerable.
3. OTOH, people who refuse to go back to work because they feel unsafe will NOT get unemployment insurance. This contradicts the idea of protecting the most vulnerable.
A question for you, David: Do you believe that we can stop the virus from spreading to most of the population? If so, how can this be done?
BTW today's paper says that 1/3 of the people in Afghanistan have been infected.
Cheers
"Supporting scientific tests of every possible idea."
This one made me chuckle given the tests he's recently recommended.
"Commitment to celebrate and utilize any vaccine, even it's developed by some other country"
Wow. There was a chance that Trump would turn up his nose at a vaccine? That's crazy.
"Do you believe that we can stop the virus from spreading to most of the population? If so, how can this be done?"
A vaccine.
Layzej -
Yes, it's crazy to think Trump would turn up his nose at a foreign vaccine. Yet the point came up at his interview with FoxNews yesterday. The interviewer pointed out that Trump loves to win and asked if it would be a problem if some other country produced the first vaccine.
As you say, a vaccine would stop the spread. However, a vaccine may not be available until January, 2021 or fall, 2021, or later yet, or never. Can we stop the spread without a vaccine? The huge number of asymptomatic contagious cases suggests to me that we cannot. Tradition contact tracing can help a little, but it won't identify the large number of asymptomatic cases.
Cheers
Oxford is on track to have a vaccine ready for high risk populations by summer. Until we have a vaccine or herd immunity we need to make sure we don't overwhelm the hospitals.
Good points, Layzej. I checked google and found,
"University of Oxford coronavirus vaccine: everything we know so far
A million doses of their experimental Covid-19 vaccine could be ready as early as September, Oxford scientists say"
That's a lot earlier than I had been hoping for.
Cheers
DavidinCal,
Trump is 'producing enormous numbers of tests'?
What a bunch of bullshit. Trump threw it back to the states and said good luck to y'all.
Maybe you have evidence that Trump is the one producing enormous numbers David?
In reality am guessing 200,000 a day is enormous numbers for you. If that's what you mean.
At that rate it'll only take 4 years to test most of America.
Also,
There are 50 States in the US. 200,000 tests per day = 4,000 per state per day.
Your 'enormous numbers' fall rather short DavidinCal.
Worldometer shows USA in 41st place for test per capita. It's not an impressive showing for a powerhouse like the USA. Canada is only slightly better in 37th place.
Canada and USA are in 15th and 9th place for fatalities per capita. Again, not great.
Good point, Layzej. The current rate of testing is around 250,000 per day. That's a big increase over what it was in March and much of April. So, the US may well ranks higher than 41st in terms of the current rate of testing. Nevertheless, your point is valid.
Trump says we'll be around 400,000 tests a day in a couple of weeks. Let's see if we achieve that.
Cheers
"Trump says we'll be around ... " DavidinCal? That's like an oxymoron right?
yet lets suppose this time something Trump says does come true, that means your state gets 8,000 (400,000 divided by the 50 states) tests a day two weeks from now.
How many folks in your state Dave? 40 mil?
I mean really, do the math.
"the US may well ranks higher than 41st in terms of the current rate of testing"
You are probably right, but neither USA or Canada are leading the pack. You can see a graph of testing over time here. (click the link to see the graph. Hover over the names on the right to highlight specific countries.)
Here's the graph from Layzej's link, with the USA highlighted:
https://i.imgur.com/hR7q7ZY.png
That is the "spectacular amount of tests" that David in Cal announced he would give Trump an "A" for.
Thanks for the links, Layzej and Ned. According to that chart, the US ranks somewhere in the middle of countries listed with .78 tests/1000. Of course, Trump's boast about the US leading in total number of tests is completely misleading.
Cheers
One metric that I think may be important is the hit rate: #cases/#tests. The closer your hit rate is to 0 the more confidence you can have in your case estimate.
If you run 10000 tests and find 10 cases you're probably doing better than someone who runs 10 tests and finds only 5 cases. Even though your case count is twice as high.
USA has a hit rate of 16%. That's an improvement over a few weeks ago when it was up at 20%. South Korea is at just under 2%. Canada and Germany are at 6.5%. Italy has a hit rate of 9%. UK is at 14.5% and France 15.5%
Over the past week, the average daily hit rate in the USA has been 10.6%.
I don't understand this at all. I mean, why does Trump want to open up only to make things worse than before?
C'mon, David. You know.
The Trump Administration has just disowned its own guidelines for states to follow when re-opening.
Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on reopening
The problems:
(1) According to the guidelines, no (zero) states are ready to re-open yet. Trump himself wanted all states to be open on May 1st.
(2) Some states that are re-opening still have increasing daily counts of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, meaning that they are re-opening *before* the peak of the pandemic.
(3) Publishing guidelines would make the White House vulnerable if things go badly, and Trump would prefer to avoid any responsibility.
Full text of the (shelved) guidelines here:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6883734-CDC-Business-Plans.html
Dano - this disease is a dilemma, with no good option. Opening up is disastrous: it possibly means millions more cases and tens of thousands more deaths. Staying closed is disastrous: it possibly means another Great Depression.
Cheers
I think the answer is somewhere between, but it will require accurate case data and LOTS of testing to chart the optimal course.
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