Coronavirus

[Squirrel]

A good read and a fair assessment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-is-still-exceptional--but-now-for-its-incompetence/2020/03/26/4d6d1ade-6f9b-11ea-a3ec-70d7479d83f0_story.html

[Squirrel]

This is THE BEST video I have seen/heard ... Trevor Noah interviewing Dr. Fauci. All the basics, what you need to know. Very well done.

 

https://www.upworthy.com/trevor-noah-interviews-dr-fauci-coronavirus?xrs=RebelMouse_fb&ts=1585350929&fbclid=IwAR1Q0ePcTT53TcQI6gxZ-XDxYbqLJa7BdzchcIUyoWsxZIHzQomn61KAsZQ

[Brock Beauchamp]

This is THE BEST video I have seen/heard ... Trevor Noah interviewing Dr. Fauci. All the basics, what you need to know. Very well done.

 

https://www.upworthy.com/trevor-noah-interviews-dr-fauci-coronavirus?xrs=RebelMouse_fb&ts=1585350929&fbclid=IwAR1Q0ePcTT53TcQI6gxZ-XDxYbqLJa7BdzchcIUyoWsxZIHzQomn61KAsZQ

This is an excellent primer everyone should watch.

[Craig Arko]

Good for you, Fanatics.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/mlb-uniform-maker-switches-to-producing-medical-masks-gowns/ar-BB11LIiQ

[biggentleben]

 

Good for you, Fanatics.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/mlb-uniform-maker-switches-to-producing-medical-masks-gowns/ar-BB11LIiQ

This is one of those interesting things that took a long time to get through the news cycle. I showed it to my sports editor on Monday from a release on LinkedIn from the company, but it wasn't in the news cycle until the end of the week.

 

Still not sure they're the type of mask you want anyway. Many nurses are very, very wary of cloth masks for good reason.

 

SD just had their first 20+ positive report day, now up to 90 positive cases, with an age group split almost even from 20-69 in each 10-year age block. "Good" news is that there are now 3,127 tests that have been processed negative and the state lab is caught up and processing immediately rather than having a triple-digit backlog. Also, 29 have recovered in the state.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

This is one of those interesting things that took a long time to get through the news cycle. I showed it to my sports editor on Monday from a release on LinkedIn from the company, but it wasn't in the news cycle until the end of the week.

 

Still not sure they're the type of mask you want anyway. Many nurses are very, very wary of cloth masks for good reason.

 

SD just had their first 20+ positive report day, now up to 90 positive cases, with an age group split almost even from 20-69 in each 10-year age block. "Good" news is that there are now 3,127 tests that have been processed negative and the state lab is caught up and processing immediately rather than having a triple-digit backlog. Also, 29 have recovered in the state.

Ugh. I’m sorry you didn’t get to run this piece. The article this poster linked to is a prime example of what a pandemic response should look like: a phone call from a governor and coordination across industry. (I am citing a 2005 article by Osterholm in Foreign Affairs for that claim.)

[Richie the Rally Goat]

More on the economics and policy of shelter in place, linked below is a poll of economists, many rockstars in the field, including my favorite Richard Thaler. The gist of it, is lockdowns will hurt, but ending them will hurt worse.

 

http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/

 

 

[BeenHazy]

The Hammer and the Dance

 

This is the best article I've seen yet concerning our response to the pandemic and what the future can look like.  It was originally posted back on March 19, but nothing since has lessened its relevance, even in our fast-changing environment.  Thomas Friedman mentioned it in his open letter to Trump yesterday.  Terrific stuff, written for a non-technical audience.  

 

[Squirrel]

The Hammer and the Dance

 

This is the best article I've seen yet concerning our response to the pandemic and what the future can look like.  It was originally posted back on March 19, but nothing since has lessened its relevance, even in our fast-changing environment.  Thomas Friedman mentioned it in his open letter to Trump yesterday.  Terrific stuff, written for a non-technical audience.

 

That was a very long read.

[BeenHazy]

 

That was a very long read.

 

If only we had time! 

[Vanimal46]

 

Everyone continue to do their part...

[biggentleben]

 

Everyone continue to do their part...

 

Not true in every state. It's the 10th in SD.

[BeenHazy]

It's starting to look like the partial shutdown and social distancing might have averted disaster in Minnesota (and many other states) for now. The business closures and social distancing guidelines issued in the third week of March seem to have pushed the R number to 1, and possibly below that. New confirmed cases per day have leveled out over the past week in much of the country.

 

Colorado shows what a difference a few days could have made. Asymptomatic and presymptomatic people from all over the world brought the virus directly to Colorado, most passing through DIA and the Denver metro before and after hitting the ski resorts in the mountains. As a result, that demographically similar state has had about 5 times the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths versus Minnesota. It was true when the news of Rudy Gobert and Tom Hanks broke and remains so today. They shut down the same group of businesses at exactly the same time as we did, and have also seen their new cases per day level off...but at around 300 per day, versus about 60 here.  The really good news is that their health system has so far kept up with those numbers, numbers that Minnesota might not even come close to as long as the R number is kept in check.  

 

The big caveat in all of this is the continued lack of adequate testing. We know that only a portion of cases are getting reported - but what is the nature of that portion?  Is it drawing on a wide enough sample of the population to accurately detect the overall trend?  I think it's probably very close, and if anything would overstate the rate of new cases due to health care workers getting priority for testing.

 

In the near term, this is excellent news. By far the best yet. We're not going to be New York City or Italy! But we can't stay locked down indefinitely, and getting the R number below 1 doesn't mean diddly if we don't have the testing capacity to pursue a test-trace-isolate strategy that can allow us to open things up again. Where is the news coverage of the continued testing capacity shortage?

[Riverbrian]

It's starting to look like the partial shutdown and social distancing might have averted disaster in Minnesota (and many other states) for now. The business closures and social distancing guidelines issued in the third week of March seem to have pushed the R number to 1, and possibly below that. New confirmed cases per day have leveled out over the past week in much of the country.

 

Colorado shows what a difference a few days could have made. Asymptomatic and presymptomatic people from all over the world brought the virus directly to Colorado, most passing through DIA and the Denver metro before and after hitting the ski resorts in the mountains. As a result, that demographically similar state has had about 5 times the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths versus Minnesota. It was true when the news of Rudy Gobert and Tom Hanks broke and remains so today. They shut down the same group of businesses at exactly the same time as we did, and have also seen their new cases per day level off...but at around 300 per day, versus about 60 here. The really good news is that their health system has so far kept up with those numbers, numbers that Minnesota might not even come close to as long as the R number is kept in check.

 

The big caveat in all of this is the continued lack of adequate testing. We know that only a portion of cases are getting reported - but what is the nature of that portion? Is it drawing on a wide enough sample of the population to accurately detect the overall trend? I think it's probably very close, and if anything would overstate the rate of new cases due to health care workers getting priority for testing.

 

In the near term, this is excellent news. By far the best yet. We're not going to be New York City or Italy! But we can't stay locked down indefinitely, and getting the R number below 1 doesn't mean diddly if we don't have the testing capacity to pursue a test-trace-isolate strategy that can allow us to open things up again. Where is the news coverage of the continued testing capacity shortage?

From a numbers standpoint, April will be (for lack of a better word) interesting. There will be a variety of things tugging and pulling at the numbers mathematically. Exponential Growth meeting social distancing, continued increase in tests resulting in either finding more confirmed cases or finding less. When will New York stop growing, level off and head the other direction? Will other locations take it's place. April should be (for lack of a better word) interesting.

 

The R number (Reproduction number R Naught) you mention has a lag that should hopefully start to show itself soon while deaths will continue to increase with it's own lag behind the percentage of confirmed cases.

 

I'm a big believer in the missing denominator (number of tests). Media reports have been missing the denominator consistently but then again the states were really inconsistent in reporting it for awhile. So, Media just ran with the numerators and that became everyone's reality.

 

The number of tests are starting to get reported by individual states (still not by the media) as the numbers of tests conducted have increased.

 

I don't blame the media though. There are journalists who drill down to things like that but you have to search to find them because, nobody reads, watches or listens to those type of journalists and we as consumers have already voted them off the island. We have already replaced them with the type of journalism that we request.

 

I'm doing my own data entry into a spreadsheet, tracking each state.

 

Despite the increase in testing. 40 of the 50 states still have rising percentages of positives tests per.

 

The United States Number of positive tests per test (1 out of 5.68) is still rising.

 

New Jersey 1 out of 2.45

Michigan is 1 out of 2.56

New York 1 out of 2.71

Oklahoma 1 out of 3.18 (Only 1794 Tests - But nobody is talking about Oklahoma)

California 1 out of 3.91

Georgia 1 out of 4.12

Mississippi 1 out of 4.77 (Nobody is talking about Mississippi)

Connecticut 1 out of 5.17

South Carolina 1 out of 5.26 (Nobody is talking about South Carolina)

Colorado 1 out of 5.68 (Same as the National Average)

 

On the other side

50. New Mexico 1 out of 44.58

49. Hawaii 1 out of 42.52

48. South Dakota 1 out of 34.42

47. North Dakota 1 out of 33.79

46. Minnesota 1 out of 31.45

45. Alaska 1 out of 31.20

 

For some reason Twins Territory (Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota) has managed to be less clustered. Walz has been aggressive regardless.

 

April will be (for lack of a better word) interesting.

[biggentleben]

Here's what I find funny. Minnesota people are lecturing South Dakota folks because their governor issued a "lockdown". Meanwhile, Sioux Falls is the only major city in South Dakota (and its surrounding area) that hasn't issued some level of stay at home edict, and most have followed the model of Huron/Beadle County, which is actually MORE restrictive than Minnesota's as far as what is closed and shut down.

[Craig Arko]

Here's what I find funny about this.

[AlwaysinModeration]

I’ve been regularly checking the Worldometer site. I’ve noted that the doubling rate is slowing for the United States, which is encouraging.

 

What is not encouraging is the worldwide “outcomes” chart. If you manage to catch COVID-19, when you get out the other end, 80% of the time you recover, but 20% of the time, you are dead. How does this match with the reported CFR of 1%/2%/3%4%, if 20% of the people who contract this thing have died by the time it has run its course?

[BeenHazy]

 

From a numbers standpoint, April will be (for lack of a better word) interesting. There will be a variety of things tugging and pulling at the numbers mathematically. Exponential Growth meeting social distancing, continued increase in tests resulting in either finding more confirmed cases or finding less. When will New York stop growing, level off and head the other direction? Will other locations take it's place. April should be (for lack of a better word) interesting.

The R number (Reproduction number R Naught) you mention has a lag that should hopefully start to show itself soon while deaths will continue to increase with it's own lag behind the percentage of confirmed cases.

I'm a big believer in the missing denominator (number of tests). Media reports have been missing the denominator consistently but then again the states were really inconsistent in reporting it for awhile. So, Media just ran with the numerators and that became everyone's reality.

The number of tests are starting to get reported by individual states (still not by the media) as the numbers of tests conducted have increased.

I don't blame the media though. There are journalists who drill down to things like that but you have to search to find them because, nobody reads, watches or listens to those type of journalists and we as consumers have already voted them off the island. We have already replaced them with the type of journalism that we request.

I'm doing my own data entry into a spreadsheet, tracking each state.

Despite the increase in testing. 40 of the 50 states still have rising percentages of positives tests per.

The United States Number of positive tests per test (1 out of 5.68) is still rising.

New Jersey 1 out of 2.45
Michigan is 1 out of 2.56
New York 1 out of 2.71
Oklahoma 1 out of 3.18 (Only 1794 Tests - But nobody is talking about Oklahoma)
California 1 out of 3.91
Georgia 1 out of 4.12
Mississippi 1 out of 4.77 (Nobody is talking about Mississippi)
Connecticut 1 out of 5.17
South Carolina 1 out of 5.26 (Nobody is talking about South Carolina)
Colorado 1 out of 5.68 (Same as the National Average)

On the other side
50. New Mexico 1 out of 44.58
49. Hawaii 1 out of 42.52
48. South Dakota 1 out of 34.42
47. North Dakota 1 out of 33.79
46. Minnesota 1 out of 31.45
45. Alaska 1 out of 31.20

For some reason Twins Territory (Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota) has managed to be less clustered. Walz has been aggressive regardless.

April will be (for lack of a better word) interesting.

I looked at the state health department sites for MS, OK and SC. All of those states are having a portion of testing performed by private labs. Those labs are required to report positive results to the state, but not the number of tests performed. In Mississippi, only 451 of the 1073 positives were through the state lab, and in Oklahoma it's 150 of 719. No negative tests by outside labs are being reported. South Carolina isn't breaking those numbers down. I haven't looked closely at the other states with high positives per test.

 

Data this bad isn't even worth tracking. To further queer the data, the COVID Tracking Project isn't even counting the positive returns from outside labs in its total tests performed for Mississippi.  

 

Minnesota is at least reporting all tests performed, whether they were done by the MDH or not. It might be a bit of wishcasting on my part, but I don't have any reason to believe that the criteria for who gets tested (either by MDH or Mayo) has changed much over the past two weeks. As long as that criteria is consistent, the results can tell us how fast the disease is spreading in the wider population. The positive rate in this data set should be much higher than in the general population because we know they're including all hospitalized patients with symptoms and the highest-risk group of the population (health care workers), but any trends over time should still track with those in the population. 

 

Unfortunately, the Governor and the MDH Commissioner had bad news about the testing situation today. Supply shortages might further restrict testing in the near future. We are apparently nowhere near having the testing capacity to replace the suspension of normal everyday life with a test-and-contain strategy to fight the spread.

 

 

 

[Riverbrian]

 

I looked at the state health department sites for MS, OK and SC. All of those states are having a portion of testing performed by private labs. Those labs are required to report positive results to the state, but not the number of tests performed. In Mississippi, only 451 of the 1073 positives were through the state lab, and in Oklahoma it's 150 of 719. No negative tests by outside labs are being reported. South Carolina isn't breaking those numbers down. I haven't looked closely at the other states with high positives per test.

 

Data this bad isn't even worth tracking. To further queer the data, the COVID Tracking Project isn't even counting the positive returns from outside labs in its total tests performed for Mississippi.  

 

Minnesota is at least reporting all tests performed, whether they were done by the MDH or not. It might be a bit of wishcasting on my part, but I don't have any reason to believe that the criteria for who gets tested (either by MDH or Mayo) has changed much over the past two weeks. As long as that criteria is consistent, the results can tell us how fast the disease is spreading in the wider population. The positive rate in this data set should be much higher than in the general population because we know they're including all hospitalized patients with symptoms and the highest-risk group of the population (health care workers), but any trends over time should still track with those in the population. 

 

Unfortunately, the Governor and the MDH Commissioner had bad news about the testing situation today. Supply shortages might further restrict testing in the near future. We are apparently nowhere near having the testing capacity to replace the suspension of normal everyday life with a test-and-contain strategy to fight the spread.

 

Excellent post

[stringer bell]

The haphazard collection of data is yet another instance of the federal government not leading. As with the procurement and distribution of vital medical equipment and (for too long) no action taken to mitigate the spread of the virus, we have some states, cities and counties leading and others following. The federal government is best suited to coordinate and lead in this battle, but they have not done so.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

Make Me Smile moment: 

 

Of course WSJ is a subscription service, but the NE Patriots lent their plane to the Mass. Governor to pick up 1.2 million N95 respirators in China. Weeks of negotiations between the Governor and Embassies became a need to actually collect, which is how the Kraft Family became involved. The Patriots plane was allowed to land for 3 hours maximum and the crew had to stay on board. The ground crew in China loaded the plane in 2 hours 57 minutes.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-million-n95-masks-are-coming-from-chinaon-board-the-new-england-patriots-plane-11585821600?mod=hp_lead_pos4

 

[Riverbrian]

 

I looked at the state health department sites for MS, OK and SC. All of those states are having a portion of testing performed by private labs. Those labs are required to report positive results to the state, but not the number of tests performed. In Mississippi, only 451 of the 1073 positives were through the state lab, and in Oklahoma it's 150 of 719. No negative tests by outside labs are being reported. South Carolina isn't breaking those numbers down. I haven't looked closely at the other states with high positives per test.

 

Data this bad isn't even worth tracking. To further queer the data, the COVID Tracking Project isn't even counting the positive returns from outside labs in its total tests performed for Mississippi.  

 

Minnesota is at least reporting all tests performed, whether they were done by the MDH or not. It might be a bit of wishcasting on my part, but I don't have any reason to believe that the criteria for who gets tested (either by MDH or Mayo) has changed much over the past two weeks. As long as that criteria is consistent, the results can tell us how fast the disease is spreading in the wider population. The positive rate in this data set should be much higher than in the general population because we know they're including all hospitalized patients with symptoms and the highest-risk group of the population (health care workers), but any trends over time should still track with those in the population. 

 

Unfortunately, the Governor and the MDH Commissioner had bad news about the testing situation today. Supply shortages might further restrict testing in the near future. We are apparently nowhere near having the testing capacity to replace the suspension of normal everyday life with a test-and-contain strategy to fight the spread.

 

I agree with everything you say. I started tracking early. I started back when only a handful of states had reported over 1,000 tests. 

 

I was staying at home with nothing better to do so I was just doing back of a napkin math. It used to make me feel better, like I was doing something. I used to think, since i'm doing this, I might as well share it, but, I saw the reporting issues so I stopped. 

 

I've picked the ball back up again because we are over a million tests in the United States now. So, I built a spreadsheet and just do data entry of the (Reported) State numbers and the spreadsheet spits out the data. I firmly believe that the number of tests taken is extremely important to the equation so I'm not giving up.  

 

I'm using March 30 numbers, as a baseline and tracking where the numbers go after that based on confirmed cases per reported test, hoping to see the eventual peaks as we go through April. I still think I will in heavily tested locations like New York.  

 

But Yeah, I see the flaws. I have also wondered about individual state testing guidelines. What is the criteria for getting a test. Do some states only test if the patient checks every single box or do some states only test NBA Basketball players or are some states testing nearly everyone who is worried they have it. I don't know the answer so I've thrown population into the mix to answer that question in a roundabout way.  

 

New York has (reported) tested 1 out of every 88 people living in the state of New York.   

Oklahoma has (reported) tested 1 out of 2,011.   

BTW - Minnesota has (reported) 1 out of 266.  

North Dakota has (reported) 1 out of 175

 

I feel a lot better about New York's numbers than I do about Oklahoma's because more tests per capita is what we need to achieve.

 

But, I'm just doing data entry with the expectation that the increase in numbers will smooth out the Oklahoma rough edges but yeah... I wish Oklahoma would get in line.   

 

In the end, it doesn't matter. There is nothing that I can do with the information other than look at it, other than tell my Sister who lives in DeKalb county near Atlanta to stay home because it's hot. I'm going to keep doing it anyway.  

 

What I really want to do is start looking where no one else is looking. Rural communities but again, what am I going to do with the information. 

 

Keep testing for the virus and lets start testing for antibodies. At home kits, If they can crank out 15 million Snickers Bars a day, they can crank out the tests and the PPE and the Ventilators. 

 

Start cranking.    

[Riverbrian]

 

The haphazard collection of data is yet another instance of the federal government not leading. As with the procurement and distribution of vital medical equipment and (for too long) no action taken to mitigate the spread of the virus, we have some states, cities and counties leading and others following. The federal government is best suited to coordinate and lead in this battle, but they have not done so.

 

We can't have Kansas out bidding New York for needed equipment.

 

We need data centralized so we know where the equipment is needed, when it will be needed by and how much and what specifically.   

 

We can't have Wisconsin acting like nothing is happening while Illinois is trying to lock down. 

 

We need a QB. 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

We can't have Kansas out bidding New York for needed equipment.

 

We need data centralized so we know where the equipment is needed, when it will be needed by and how much and what specifically.

 

We can't have Wisconsin acting like nothing is happening while Illinois is trying to lock down.

 

We need a QB.

Agreed, but for clarity, WI has had the stay at home order since IL spiked and longer than MN by about a week...

[Riverbrian]

 

Agreed, but for clarity, WI has had the stay at home order since IL spiked and longer than MN by about a week...

 

Disclaimer: States used in my example were pulled out of thin air. 

[Squirrel]

Make Me Smile moment: 

 

Of course WSJ is a subscription service, but the NE Patriots lent their plane to the Mass. Governor to pick up 1.2 million N95 respirators in China. Weeks of negotiations between the Governor and Embassies became a need to actually collect, which is how the Kraft Family became involved. The Patriots plane was allowed to land for 3 hours maximum and the crew had to stay on board. The ground crew in China loaded the plane in 2 hours 57 minutes.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-million-n95-masks-are-coming-from-chinaon-board-the-new-england-patriots-plane-11585821600?mod=hp_lead_pos4

I’ve been saying this for several days now ... the governors need to buy direct from China. China ramped up production immediately and kept producing ... something we did not. And they have the supplies. 1.2 million? Wonder if they will share some with New York? And I’d like to see more of this kind of coordination between private business and state officials and just bypass the federal government whose handling continues along the lines of ... not leading coordination efforts as they should.

[Craig Arko]

I have not entirely forsaken a sense of humor...

 

[Vanimal46]

 

[biggentleben]

South Dakota's Department of Health has been open since day 1 that the negative tests could not be accurate as private labs out of state were not consistent in releasing back negative tests run to the state. That's why I've really only started reporting the percentage of positive tests since the end of last week, when the two private labs in SD came online and there were not tests being sent out of state at that time.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

I’ve been saying this for several days now ... the governors need to buy direct from China. China ramped up production immediately and kept producing ... something we did not. And they have the supplies. 1.2 million? Wonder if they will share some with New York? And I’d like to see more of this kind of coordination between private business and state officials and just bypass the federal government whose handling continues along the lines of ... not leading coordination efforts as they should.

but you can’t bypass the federal governments either. Massachusetts didn’t buy them from “China” they bought them from a private company that makes them such as 3M (here in the US) in accordance with the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 (SOX).

 

The challenge isn’t the Purchase, it’s manufacturing capacity, inventory supply, and in this case Chinese and US customs clearance. China is a notoriously difficult customs process plus they currently limit the export of COVID PPE, and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency is under the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch of the Federal government, who still enforces Tariffs and controls the speed of the import process.

 

Companies like 3M can make their masks in China, but are limited in their ability to get them out. I assume that is why 3M specifically is ramping up their mask production in the US. It’s way more expensive to produce in the US, but easier to export or move around inside the US, plus no Duties to pay to import your own goods.

 

Massachusetts needed help from the federal government to get their masks through customs. If they already have control of them, as the plane departed Tuesday, they got immense help.

 

Oh, and Kraft bought a half a million masks to donate to NY. The plane carried 1.7 mil total.