Riverbrian

https://covidtracking.com/data/ March 19 Update: Looks like the test kits are arriving because the testing numbers took a big jump in certain states. Tracking to see how more testing changes the percentages daily. Any state with higher positive tests than National Average will be in bold. I am arbitrarily only listing states with over 1,000 tests with no idea if that number is close enough to be worth anything. Take all of this with a grain of salt... I am not an expert. National: 79,766 Tests - 8131 Positive - 1 out of 9.81 (Down) Washington: 17105 Tests - 1187 Positive - 1 out of 14.4 (Down) New York: 14597 Tests - 2382 Positive - 1 out of 6.1 (Down) California: 8592 Tests - 611 Positive - 1 out of 14.6 (Up) Minnesota: 2762 - 77 Positive - 1 out of 35.9 (Up) New Mexico: 2354 - 28 Positive - 1 out of 84.1 (Down) Colorado: 2328 Tests - 216 Positive - 1 out of 10.8 (Down) Massachusetts: 2015 - 256 Positive - 1 out of 7.9 (Up) Illinois: 2052 Tests - 289 Positive - 1 out of 7.1 (Up) Texas: 1907 Tests - 83 Positive - 1 out of 23.0 (Down) North Carolina: 1850 Tests - 63 Positive - 1 out of 29.4 (Over 1000 for the first time) Wisconsin: 1683 Tests - 106 Positive - 1 out of 15.8 (Down) Maine: 1670 Tests - 43 Positive - 1 out of 38 (Up) Florida: 1660 Tests - 328 Positive - 1 out of 5.1 (Up) Oregon: 1554 Tests - 75 Positive - 1 out of 20.7 (Down) Georgia: 1508 Tests - 197 Positive - 1 out of 7.7 (Over 1,000 for the first time) Pennsylvania: 1320 Tests - 133 Positive - 1 out of 9.9 (Over 1,000 for the first time) Virginia: 1278 Tests - 77 Positive - 1 out of 16.6 (Down) I am not an expert - Just presenting the information in a different way.

1. So you know who has it. 2. Find the clusters (hot spots) 3. With larger samples and more stable information, the researchers get more accurate information to better fight the spread. We can both test and ban. In my opinion, the lack of testing early has contributed to unnecessary banning.

Mortality rate will depend heavily upon medical infrastructure. If the system is over run, Mortality rate could be 3 to 4%. Flatten the curve. Mortality rate could be under 1%

34 Confirmed cases in Eagle County, Colorado (Vail) County Population: 52,197 11 Confirmed Cases in Pitkin County, Colorado (Aspen) 11 Confirmed cases in Gunnison County, Colorado (Crested Butte) County Population: 16,939 Based on the number of confirmed cases and the population of the counties. I think we can say the Colorado ski resorts are a HOT SPOT

The restaurants and bars are closing to protect us from ourselves. There is a high level of naivety. I personally know people who talk about the economy first and foremost and I know people who have literally said. Old people are supposed to die anyway. They continue life as normal in defiance because businesses need our support or they are unafraid of their personal health being compromised due to the high percentage of mild cases. . Which of course, leads to complete shut down of the bars and restaurants to stop the congregation of people who are: 1. Not Paying attention or care to pay attention. 2. Mininimizing the public health risk consequences. 3. Don't care about others 4. Don't understand and can't put two and two together. 5. Looking at the low level math currently available. Which in turn, deepens or lengthens the economic impact.

The most succinct way I can describe the way I currently feel is this: If I catch the Coronavirus... It may be mild, it may be critical. I obviously don't want critical especially during the peak but the reason I practice social distancing (the best I currently can) isn't for myself. I practice social distancing (the best I currently can) is because I don't want to be the person who sheds the virus onto 2 to 10 people or more.

Myself, I have no idea. We are all going to be forced to make calculated risks as time goes by. I'm going to watch the data and listen to the experts. The General Public? Not Long. I'm not afraid of my risk of catching it. I'm afraid of many people catching it. I want to be able to see my Dad again.

Here is another thing that people need to consider: When the numbers are being reported: 77 Cases in Minnesota or 11 Cases in South Dakota or 6 Cases in North Dakota and nobody is frightened by these low numbers. They might be the numbers reported today but in reality... those numbers are really at least two weeks old since the actual point of infection was probably at least two weeks prior before diagnosis. And of course older than two weeks because 77 cases in Minnesota is a counting stat over time that didn't just all show up today. The first confirmed case in Minnesota was March 5... So now we are talking about Mid-February for the first KNOWN infection. Regardless, Two weeks prior from cases diagnosed today means before, the schools, bars, restaurants, and March madness closed up shop and everybody was just doing what they do. The 77 cases in Minnesota have a range of stealth percolation that spans an entire month all before the term "Social Distancing" came out of anybody's mouth. Will the social distancing measures work? I don't know, the experts don't know but are hoping. We won't know until quite some time later because the increased numbers we are going to see for awhile is a cause and effect of the time we spent living our lives as normal without a clue before social distancing. Italy who is 8 to 14 days (depending on who is estimating) ahead of us on the curve has shut down the entire country. March 9th was the first Italian quarantine. They will provide the first indication of it working or not working but right now they are still dealing with the cause and effect of transmission prior to the lock down. Which means exponential rising for the time being. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/europe/italy-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/index.html

Here is a March 13 Article from Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist out of the state of Washington: https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/03/tracking-covid-19-trevor-bedford.html He was just reporting research for two counties in the state of Washington however this is what he said in the Q & A about social contact reduction. We estimate that in the baseline scenario, on average across multiple simulations, there will have been roughly 25,000 people infected by April 7, but that this declines to roughly 9,700 total infections for a 25% reduction in contact, to 4,800 for a 50% reduction, and only 1,700 for a 75% reduction. The Bell Curve everyone is showing is something that has been in place since the 1800's. William Farr was an epidemiologist who tracked the rise and fall of epidemics. They have a natural rise and fall however the how many and how long severity of each bell curve isn't a static calculation. They may all curve in a uniform fashion but it isn't uniform when it comes to severity. So when the new catch phrase "Flatten the Curve" is repeated over and over again, they are trying to get the message out. They are showing the curve over a dotted line that shows current hospital infrastructure. We've all seen it: Social Distancing or Social Isolation. The message from the experts is pretty clear, I'm personally not concerning myself with these types of distinction. Just for fun: Here is an Interview with Francis Collins the director of the NIH (National Institutes of Health) just released yesterday https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/interview-francis-collins-nih/608221/ We need to stay away from each other.

It doesn't matter the industry. There are good doctors and bad doctors and everything in between, Good Car Mechanics and Bad Mechanics and everything in between, Good Teachers and Bad Teachers and everything in between. Good Journalists and Bad Journalists and everything in between. However... Your odds are better getting your car fixed correctly if you don't take it to a teacher or journalist. Epidemiologists, Virologists, Computational Biologists, anybody who has a job working in the Infectious Disease health field are the people who need to be heard right now. There are journalists, reporters, bloggers, talking heads who are asking the experts and reporting what they are saying and there are journalists, reporters, bloggers, talking heads who are asking campaign advisers and reporting what they are saying. The distinction is important. I was watching CNN last weekend. They brought on Dr. Larry Brilliant who is an epidemiologist who was part of the group who eradicated small pox in the 70's and currently serves on multiple health related boards. They literally let him speak for 3 sentences before saying "Excuse Me, I hate to cut this short but we got the "Mayor of Atlanta". When I state my NBA gut feeling... I'm just contributing to the noise. All my posts are noise because I don't have a job in a related field. However, in my attempts to listen to them, I'm hearing one voice, one message from all of them. I've only found one epidemiologist (out of Israel) who suggests that this all might be a bit overblown. Of course, if I read the same amount of volume from car mechanics about how to fix a car, I will probably run across someone who thinks that your car will fix itself if you just give it time.

I'm not comfortable using my NBA example gut feelings as anything definitive. It is truly a gut feeling of mine. This I won't deny. As far as the big overall picture. I'm leaving the gut feelings of everybody (including mine) out of the equation as best I can and there is a ton of noise to filter out. I'm listening to the experts exclusively. They are not arguing with each other and refreshingly they say "I don't know" when they don't know and they say there are things that they don't know yet.

By the time they ramp up the testing numbers. More people will be infected obviously. I imagine in my head -- a future tug of war between more people being tested driving the percentage of positive tests lower while more time for people to become infected driving the percentage of positives tests higher. If more testing increases the percentage of confirmed cases. We got ourselves a hot spot. Send the Ventilators and Protective Equipment that direction. If more testing decreases the percentage, the virus isn't as prevalent. The number of tests denominator is critical to determine the Hot Spots. Increase that sample size. More tests, quicker results should have been a priority yesterday.

The data is extremely small sample: 4 Brooklyn Nets Players 2 Utah Jazz Players 1 Piston Player The data isn't as important to me. What strikes me is that only 2 of the players are reporting symptoms. Of course, all of these players could have contracted the virus anywhere other than the basketball court. So anything I type doesn't conclude anything. However Saturday: The Pistons and Jazz played each other on a Saturday. Monday: Gobert was joking about the virus and touching microphones at a press conference. Both Gobert and Mitchell both felt well enough to play over 30 minutes. Wednesday: Gobert has a positive test. Mitchell was dressed and ready to play. Thursday: The Rest of the Jazz were tested. Mitchell is positive. Following Days: Mitchell is still Asymptomatic, Christian Wood of the Pistons is positive and was never taken out of a lineup in games after the Jazz and Pistons played. And of course Yesterday: 4 Nets test positive... only one of the four display symptoms. No recent games between the Nets and Piston or Jazz. So, using this faulty small sample information. And assuming the unconfirmed possibility that Wood got the Virus on Saturday from either Gobert or Mitchell. I assume there are a lot more Asymptomatic transmissions taking place then the 10% being reported by experts. It's not that I doubt the experts working with the information that they have but I doubt the early information they are working with due to: The lack of testing.

The asymptomatic small sample size of the NBA players is a little concerning.

The information isn't easy to find. Don't know the accuracy of what I am running across. I read an article posted today that Spain has administered 30,000 Tests. (Obviously Rounded) Spain has 13,910 Confirmed Cases: Therefore 1 out of 2.15 Tests are positive in Spain. Hot Spot I assume we can assume that 1 out of 2.15 positive tests is not the numbers they started with. I assume this shows how bad things can get once this thing starts spinning around without solid containment or mitigation. Trajectory comparison between Europe and the United States are similar according to reports. Stay away from others

https://covidtracking.com/data/ At 10:25 ET March 18th 5,993 Positive 50597 Negative United States: 1 out of 9.44 Tests are positive States with over 1,000 tests administered HOT SPOTS Washington: 1 out of 13.96 Positive (14129 Tests) California: 1 out of 17.52 Positive (8464 Tests) New York: 1 out of 4.23 Positive (7206 Tests) Minnesota: 1 out of 38.93 Positive (2336 Tests) Massachusetts: 1 out of 8.06 Positive (1759 Tests) New Mexico: 1 out of 74.78 Positive (1720 Tests) Illinois: 1 out of 9.31 Positive (1500 Tests) Maine: 1 out of 41.71 Positive (1335 Tests) Texas: 1 out of 19.81 Positive (1268 Tests) Florida: 1 out of 5.84 Positive (1227 Tests) Colorado: 1 out of 7.60 Positive (1216 Tests) Wisconsin: 1 out of 15.41 Positive (1110 Tests) Oregon: 1 out of 15.89 Positive(1033 Tests) Virginia: 1 out of 15.34 Positive (1028 Tests)

There are many things to be frustrated with in consideration of everything happening around us right now. However, the low level of testing that has been done in the United States is near the top of the list for me and should be for all. The numerators being posted such as number of cases and and number of deaths is almost useless (false sense of security) information. For us Baseball fans that dive into statistics it's like trying to determine who is a power hitter without using the number of at-bats. He's not a power hitter with only 8 home runs... Yeah but he only has 20 at bats. I found this website: https://covidtracking.com/data/ God bless them, they are trying to track tests state by state but as you can see some states are not even reporting the number of tests and the ones that are... are ridiculously low. As (I assume) we ramp up production of ventilators and protective equipment and try to figure out where to send doctors across state lines. The denominator of number of tests taken is critical to figure out where to find the true hot spots which will determine where to send the ventilators, protective equipment and health care professionals. TEST TEST TEST... It's really important. I assume (pray) there are computational professionals who have accurate information and we just don't have access to it but with all the talk about being behind testing... I can only assume that we are behind on testing and that isn't giving the professionals enough information to work with. That's a sad problem and based on South Korea... an unnecessary problem. Speaking of small sample sizes... I know this is a baseball website but I can't figure out why this topic thread isn't 100 pages long by now. .

Our Media was created by us. We shape it. We demand hype. We put those who don't provide it, out of business.

I've always been an actions speak louder than words guy. When they cancelled March Madness, that was quite the action. I've spent my time recently trying to find out why. It's like when the Twins kept playing Logan Morrison. I spent my time trying to find out why. That's when I tend to fixate. And I'm not going anywhere so I got plenty of time for that.

Honestly, I wasn't talking about you or your post. Information is what is needed most right now. The only problem is when the information is interpreted wrong. It doesn't take a lot of work to find the numbers of cases and deaths. This is what is being published en masse. However, someone at work today said "1 Case in North Dakota and we close the schools, Governor Burgum just lost my vote". 1 Case in North Dakota doesn't look very scary. Meanwhile, I'm just reading what the experts are saying and I was honestly passing along things I'm reading. Wasn't personal... I promise.

Still filtering out the noise from the news and politicians. Spending my time reading what the experts have to say exclusively. Forget about the daily updates of confirmations and deaths. The confirmations are not worth much with testing still at low levels. Confirmations will naturally increase with more testing. The number of deaths are misleading (they don't seem scary at the moment) with the virus just starting to get out of the percolation stage in the ramping up locations. Death percentage is way too volatile with the low level of testing keeping the confirmations low. More testing will lower that percentage but as hospitals start getting over run, it will increase the percentage like what is happening in Italy. Right now... Look at the amount of tests conducted and compare to the amount of positive tests in locations around the world. Spain and New York City are extremely high. I don't know if the amount of tests numbers that I'm running across are accurate but the numbers I saw added up to Spain with 1 positive out of every 3 tests. New York was 1 out of 7. Even with the spike upward to 59 cases in Minnesota. Minnesota is still around 1 out of 35. South Dakota was out 1 out of 38. If I could find the stats I'd like to break it down to an even smaller radius like Minneapolis by itself because I suspect Minneapolis by itself will be higher than the statewide totals. And of course... locations that are not hot spots now can become hot spots on a dime later. We don't know how many cases are out there. Information is changing daily. The secretary of health and human services stated two weeks ago that those showing symptoms was the primary driver. They are not saying that today. Asymptomatic transmission is now front and center especially with slow incubation. Stay away from each other for awhile. This ain't the flu. Listen to the experts, filter out the political noise. Think of your parents and all that they've done for this country and you. If you don't care about yourself. Care about them.

When it comes to the transmission, causation and investigation of global or community outbreaks. I filter my information down to Epidemiologists and experts who study these things. The experts are who I want to hear from. When I'm having a transmission issue with my car. I listen to my car mechanic. I am continually amazed at the volume of people who would rather listen to their car mechanic thinking this is all a bunch of bull****. Rachel in accounting thinks this is a horrible over reaction and she will be telling everyone on Monday about how much fun she had at a big party over the weekend. The experts are not arguing with each other. The car mechanics and accountants are the ones doing the arguing and they are the ones who filled the bars again on Saturday night all dressed in green. If I bring in a 57 Chevy with a dry cough, the car mechanics probably won't argue with each other about what to do and I will listen to them when it comes to the car. The experts are not arguing with each other on Covid-19. They are shutting down big huge large revenue events. They are locking down entire countries. They built two large hospitals in 10 days!!! Big UNPRECEDENTED money costing things are happening at the advice of these experts. The experts have one solution... Get the hell away from each other for awhile. Dr. Tom Fauci did the Sunday morning circuit to get the message out, he is saying the same thing that is being said by the Computational Biologists and the Epidemiologists. The experts are speaking in one voice. Stay away from each other for awhile. I don't understand how people can watch two hospitals built in 10 days, the cancellation of March Madness, the cancellation or postponement of the NBA, NHL, MLB, European Football, anything crowd related, plus the lock down of Italy, France and Spain and still say to any of us with a straight face "This is no different than the flu". I don't understand people who can watch the news coming out of Italy and not put two and two together. If you see a guy in a Hazmat suit walking into your neighbor's house. You don't follow him into the house and lick the refrigerator. It's been percolating in the United States. There is asymptomatic transmission of the virus. We are not testing so we don't know how many are infected. Take a look at Italy, a country that is two weeks ahead of us and giving us a preview. Here it comes!

Over run health care system seems to be the main factor in higher death rates. Does anyone believe our "Excuse me... Could you please distance yourself socially from others" will be sufficient. I have my doubts. Italy is about two weeks ahead of the United States on the curve. It's a unique time. We get to watch a preview out of Italy of the shape of things to come in the United States, while listening to half of your office co-workers make plans for hitting the town on Saturday night because the bars are still open while they loudly dismiss the seriousness of the situation to everyone in earshot, saying "it's like the flu", "it's just media driven hysteria", it's a deep state creation", "we survived all these other things before". Spoiler Alert: Italy: Lockdown Spain: Lockdown France: Lockdown Austria: Lockdown

Just using Rudy Gobert as an example. He felt well enough to mock the disease at a press conference and play 30 Plus Minutes in a game on Monday March 9th. By Wednesday March 11th, he tests positive, which led to the entire team being tested and the discovery that Donovan Mitchell also has it. Donovan Mitchell also felt well enough to play 30 plus minutes in a game on Monday March 9th and was suited up and ready to go with the virus on March 11th. No Symptoms and we have transmission taking place. Now expand outward from the NBA locker room in Utah to everywhere on the planet, businesses, households, schools, churches across the globe. People are infected and unaware they are. Are any of you sure that you want to use the current reported stats of detected cases and use them to support any argument?

As baseball fans we understand small sample sizes. This virus is 3 months old. The stats dont mean much right now. Odds are that all who have it haven't been identified yet. I'm not sure we are ready to compare stats to past outbreaks of anything. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not sure how anyone can watch the unprecedented measures taking place and still try to compare it to other outbreaks that didn't require these unprecedented measures. I'm not panicked, I'm going to carry on as normal with the exception that I've decided to not make my weekly visits to see my Dad in the nursing home an hour away. I'd appreciate it if the nursing home didn't allow me to visit if I tried in consideration of the unknowns and elderly vulnerability. I'd like to visit my Dad again. I'd like my 401K to quit dropping, I'd like to purchase TP stocked on the shelves and I'd rather not pay triple the price when I do. I'd like to attend baseball games. The quicker we get this under control is in my best interest. I'm listening to the experts and I'm not assuming conspiracy.