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COVID-19 Check-in
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Comments
Again, all I was saying don't blame the Governor if you go into a crowded bar and get infected. Like don't blame Budweiser if you get a beer gut.
Early on in this, testing was limited in NE (NY in particular) where most of the deaths were being reported. This meant that tests were being conducted on those with severe symptoms to decide whether or not to admit to hospital. Consequently in my projections I was using a 9 day lag on cases to deaths. As testing is way better today, the cases are being identified earlier and capturing many more possible/probable cases rather than only near certainties. This would explain the reduction in mortality rate and also extend the lag between case -> death (or recovery). In my tracking and modeling I have therefore began calculating the mortality rate with a 20 day lag and using this in making projections.
The table below shows the June data through yesterday. The rate is the 29 days of deaths in June as a percentage of the cases May 12 to June 9th (also 29 days).
NJ included just under 1,800 presumptive cases 6/25 that related to March through mid June after a review of all death certificates and mainly relates to deaths before improved testing (March through Early May).
The US total excluding NY&NJ on this basis is 3% and mid month was 3.3% (each 15 days). It seems that due to reduced severity and/or improved treatment the second half of June was around 2.8% so in my projections I am now using 2.5%. Continued increases in testing may further reduce this rate but if hospitals become stressed that could lead to an increase. The July projection on this basis is for 26,500 deaths +/- with the daily total topping 1,000 on July 15th.
Solid work putting this together, thanks for sharing. I was doing something similar early on and was seeing a good fit of the data using a 7 day lag. It was an inexact method of just visually checking the fit of the data, so glad it compares well with your 9 day lag.
One hypothesis (not my own, just passing along) about reduced death rate is that the age demographics are changing compared to a couple months ago. Specifically, younger people are more likely to be going out and contracting the virus because they are at lower risk. If true, it would explain how we could have the surge in new cases without a surge in deaths.
A change from a 9 day to a 20 day lag doesn't make a ton of sense to me, even accounting for catching cases earlier, but I guess we will see. Thanks again for sharing!
Another possible reason for the lower death rate I heard on an interview not too long ago is that people may be contracting enough of the virus to test positive but not enough to get seriously ill. It is similar to the way vaccinations work. The theory goes that the warm weather may be reducing the ability to spread by some small amount. The virus doesn't live as long on hotter surfaces, etc. The warm weather is not enough to knock the virus out completely, but maybe enough to tone it down a little. If this really is a factor, we could really see a second wave this winter, especially if our collective guard is down.
I'm not an expert in hospital capacity utilization but my understanding is that target capacity utilization is ~85%. Using this target, I found this link which includes daily status of Florida ICU utilization. With the exception of two small facilities that are full (8 ICU beds in use), the overwhelming majority of ICU capacity is below that threshold:
It's also important to note that all occupied ICU units captured in this database are not necessarily COVID-related.
To @UgaXforPresident 's point - I think this supports the hypothesis that the correlation between increased # of cases and severity of cases (inverted).
@Denmen185 - thanks for pulling this together...certainly time-intensive, I'm sure! Not to add work, but would be interesting to see the %s of LTC deaths in the calculation as LTC deaths are roughly 50% of all deaths in the US to date. Would be interesting to see if this benchmark continues in the coming months or if we see more fatalities in those under 60/outside of LTCs.
I agree it's very subjective but most are saying 1-2 weeks lag for hospitalization and a further 1-2 weeks to death/recovery. I went with 10 and 10 for good or bad. Florida will be indicative in that positivity rates were consistent at 4-5% June 1-9, then 7-9% June 10-16th, hit 10% June 17th then accelerated from there. This would suggest that if the 20 day lag is valid I would expect the deaths increase marginally starting around today and really increase from July 7th on until the positivity rates turn a corner as tighter restrictions take effect.
Gotta step in here. It doesn't matter how much of the virus you contract. It will replicate like a rabbit as soon as it enters. It matters how well your body identifies it and kills it off. The vast majority of people can fight it off just fine. Some may not even notice it's existence at all. Just like all the other millions of viruses and bacteria and fungi and parasites your body's immune system fight's off every single day. Life comes with risks. At first we weren't sure if this virus was apocalyptic in nature. Now we know it's not. Time to put the responsibility back to what is supposed to be a free people.
Agreed, we will find out if it is just a lag issue in the coming days. I don't think recovery lag is the same as death lag though. Recovery lag is actually the reason I got fed up with tracking this data. If you start from the beginning and assume some death lag (7 days based on visual curve fitting), you could then calculate calculate what the lag is for recovery data to make sense.
The issue was that it became obvious that recoveries were wildly underreported. At the time I stopped tracking, the calculated average recovery period was 45 days. It makes sense why they would be underreported. If I'm sick and test positive and they tell me to go home and quarantine, I'm not going back to get tested in 14 days if I feel better. So they would never count me as a recovery. The problem is that you then never know how many active cases exist, which makes it tough to decide when to reopen things.
On another thread related to this topic I posted some very interesting numbers gathered from the Johns Hopkins Covid site.
When considering whether we should have a college football season, re-opening the economy or just general reaction to this pandemic, you should read this entire article.
Not claiming to be a medical expert, but there is a lot of info out there about how much exposure you have to the virus being correlated to how bad your symptoms are. I also know there is a lot of misinformation floating around so I could be completely wrong.
Read the piece I just posted, because it's the WHOLE picture, not a slice. It's long, but worth the time.
I prefer to get my info from scientists not a company that depends on business activity to survive. The graph they show is a joke. We all know that tomorrow's cumulative cases and deaths will be higher than today's and putting 2 lines on the same scale when we all know that the deaths will be far smaller than cases makes it impossible to see the correlation.
People have made their minds up on this since it's turned into a political issue. Facts won't change people's views at this point.
Fantastic article. Makes more sense than anything else I've reas.
Does this include yourself? Or is it a shot only at folks with a different point of view? I don't understand how this helps the conversation.