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COVID-19 Check-in
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Comments
The difficulty is that early on only 20% or less of likely "cases" were tested. Increased testing has gone some way to addressing this although the total of 2 million is not the number of people tested but is the number of tests evaluated in the labs. For instance many in the WH are tested daily and each test is counted so in a month the number of tests for such individuals would be 30 times the number of people tested. I would guess that the number of infections is somewhere in the 10 million range when as @YaleDawg said at least 200 million would be needed to get infected to have national herd immunity. Therefore I would guess that we are only 5% of the way there.
The good news is that the mortality rate continues to decline but I have not seen the reason for this. For this reason my forecast for June deaths has been reduced from 30k to 25k (still a high number) even as cases are increasing.
So rough math here:
2,140,000 confirmed cases in the U.S.
÷ .2 to gross up for asymptomatics and untested
= 10,700,000
÷ 328,200,000 population of the U.S.
= 3.25%
In other words, we have a long way to go for herd immunity even with a fairly optimistic approach.
Thanks, @Denmen185. I didn't see your post before running a very rough calculation of my own.
I think the next month will tell us a lot about the virus. I know a lot of people who are taking beach vacations posting pictures of large crowds and I doubt they are being very cautious about the virus. If there isn't an explosion of cases, and more importantly deaths, it will be a huge relief. Maybe warm weather is helping us out after all.
It may be helping on mortality rate. As I said several months ago, the warm weather may help in areas but in Florida it's never warm in grocery stores or restaurants and in fact we are starting to see weather where it's too warm to comfortably sit/dine or even be outside for many.
Two friends (in their 30s) were confirmed positive this week (they were together last weekend, and believe they contracted it at the same time). One had a fever and is now over it; the other only had sinus pressure and loss of taste/smell. She otherwise feels “better than ever” on day 10. I’m self-quarantining until my test tomorrow out of an abundance of caution (I saw one of the girls briefly), but it’s been 5 days since exposure and I have no symptoms- and have not had any contact with anyone since I was exposed. The friend I saw has had her roommate tested, her bosses tested, and her friends she had dinner with tested- all negative. However- were it not for the other girl’s fever- she wouldn’t have known she had it... and that’s the risk. It can really present such mild symptoms that mirror allergies... she could have so easily passed it to someone susceptible without even realizing it. After my elderly father also had a fever/symptoms last week (thankfully, it was something unrelated), I’ve given a lot of thought into what makes sense moving forward. I think I will continue to see a select group of friends and go to outdoor patios where I can maintain social distance (and continue to wear my mask any time I’m indoors in public!), but will get tested for the virus and then quarantine for the following days every time before seeing elderly or high risk family members/friends. For me, the guilt of passing it on to someone who is high risk is more worrisome than the virus itself. By the way, this friend also went to a salon the day she tested positive (before her test)... that’s how this spreads.
GrayDawg, I worry about this a lot too. Altruisitically I want to protect our elederly family and community members and selfishly I need our economy to be strong enough for me not to lose my shirt in my business.
I have for a long-time been a proponent of taking Covid19 seriously and also not letting it paralyze us. I get mad when I see any protestor or counterprotestors or anyone in a crowd or a retail store wtihout a mask. To me it just says they don't care about our economy or our community. I understand that in some areas of the country Covid19 doesn't have a lot of cases and folks don't feel that wearing a mask is necessary, but don't folks want to keep Covid19 out of their communities if they can?
I hate wearing a mask. I have felt nauseated at times in Home Depot while walking around in one. But, if wearing a maks keeps Covid19 from having a second wave in the US and I can do my part to help with that, I am all in to help Americans and our American economy.
But, I think the lack of posts in this thread represents our collective apathy to Covid19. I am sick of it, I imagine you are sick of it, I imagine all of us are sick of it. But unfortunately, the virus doesn't care what we think.
Apathy is probably the best word for it. The problem was how heavy it was played from the get go. People don't have the ability to consume that much information about one thing for an extended period of time without it losing luster in some way. Especially when the early predictions were so incredibly far off from reality. It was a matter of time before people stopped listening. The reaction will be the same for the current political drama. It was for the me too movement, the occupy movement, the drain the swamp movement, etc. I know the core values behind these movements are good. I don't believe the manner in which certain groups push them forward is the most effective method for positive change. I hope people don't become desensitized to the values these movements stand for because the messenger used a fire hose to deliver it.
Hey, erbody… Mid-500's in cases in SC today, down from the crazy last 3-4 days of 750-800 new cases a day. Praying that little spike was the exception and not the norm. Thankfully only a few new deaths over these days, and some contacts in the medical field are saying the case number rise is real, but not necessarily translating into hospitalizations at the same rate. We have crept up to around 520 total hospitalizations in the state due to Covid after sitting around 450 for several weeks.
The nerd in me will love to see advanced metrics and info on all these new cases (privacy laws...they just seem to keep things private...) to see what the common ground (if any) would be.
Still going to church here (very spread out), still going out to some places (gotta mask in my wallet when it looks anywhere near crowded). Saw my first NASCAR themed masks this weekend - its getting out of hand...
Just a wild a s s guess, but I would probably attribute the lower death/hospitalization rate to the fact that the most vulnerable are taking much stronger precautions. Retirement homes are better protected from outsiders/guests. People with pre-existing conditions probably are not going out like they used to.
The above shows the data for MTD for the states I have been tracking plus total US and the total excluding NY and NJ who were the first to be hit and are in the early stage of reopening. This total shows what I would expect, namely as the testing increased (+92k) the total daily cases have increased (+0.6k) but the "hit rate" declines. This happens as we move from only testing those with the most severe symptoms to moving toward anyone that MAY have Covid. In June the total exc NY & NJ shows testing increased by 32% from May while Cases increased just 3%.
For the 4 states I have been focused on all concern me to varying degrees.
Cal - 44% increase in testing should lead to 4-5% increase in cases if no spreading occurred but cases actually increased by 45%
Florida - Obviously highly problematic with a 34% increase in tests (roughly in line with the total) and a 91% in cases (much higher than the 3%).
Texas - 20% increase in testing with a 47% increase in cases is also alarming given I would expect around 2% increase.
Georgia - currently minor concern compared to the others but the 14% increase in cases is still higher than the total with a much lower increase in testing than overall. Likely 13 of the 14% is due to spread.
I do this daily but only seriously analyse every 7 days as the numbers for Sunday and Monday in many cases are due to lack of reporting from the field.
Good info - thanks for sharing...the only element I might add to this summary is the demographics of the positive cases which correlate to the severity of the disease (ie - younger tend to be mild/asymptomatic vs elderly who may be more likely to be hospitalized).
Much has been made of a spike of cases in Arizona this past week, but a closer look at the #s indicate that the majority are 29-44 year olds and that while tests and cases have spiked with the expansion of testing availability the past several weeks there, the # of hospitalizations (indicative of the most severe cases) has plummeted.
Not minimizing increases in case #s at all (!) - but I do think that if we conceptually agree that a movement towards herd immunity is critical to stabilize/slow down the pandemic, that seeing spikes of younger people becoming infected but not getting so sick as to require hospitalization is a positive step in that sense (independent of the fact that no one wishes any one person get sick, obviously).
Reaching herd immunity without a vaccine and not exposing high risk groups would require everyone under 50 to get infected.
Not sure where you got the AZ hospitalizations from but everything thing I've seen suggests they have also hit record levels.
Additionally in AZ the %positive has increased while with increased testing it should be declining. The testing narrative in most states where cases are increasing is false! Through yesterday FL has increased average daily tests in June (v May) by 33% which should increase cases by a max of 3-5% (if random/preventative testing is being done those should only by positive less than 1% of the time) but daily cases have actually increased by 106%!
Yeah - didn't say it's close to being reached...just that it can't be achieved without having large segments of the population exposed; and that the skewing of the recent cases in several states is directionally positive at a macro level as they tend to be asymptomatic/mild symptoms (ie - raising the # of people with antibodies without further spiking hospitalizations or death rates).
To be clear - I'm not saying case counts aren't spiking or that it's a trend that doesn't have to be watched closely...just that there's a consideration for positive rates relative to tests and age group as an indicator of increasing/decreasing risk as a public policy consideration.
My source is the AZ DoH Dashboard which is actually one of the best/easiest to navigate that I've seen during this saga. Click on Hospitalizations and the trend is heading toward zero at the same time tests and cases are spiking (testing has been expanded beyond symptomatic/sustpected patients as of early May while the 29-44 demographic is nearly 50% of all new cases )