The American figures will be on a par with Italy's current figures in due course, due to the inevitable doubling every few days. At the moment the US has an infection rate a sixth of Italy's. So if one multiplies the current US figures by six, one will have an idea of the figures to come. So there will soon be hundreds of thousands infected in the US, but we know that social distancing is the only effective way to halt it at the moment. One can't be accurate in predicting numbers of fatalities in the US, as it depends on so many unknowns, (how many people will break social distancing? The US sees itself as the land of the free, so will people be happy to have their freedom of movement restricted for so long? How quickly will the US medical service get overloaded, so comparatively mild coronavirus cases, or other conditions, are left untreated, and end up fatally)

But remember, in Italy 18,576 Cases which had an outcome: 10,361 (56%)
Recovered / Discharged

8,215 (44%) Deaths

For the past 11 days Italian infections have increased by 20% or less, so social distancing helps, but it is still substantially increasing daily, despite all the precautions.

When you add in the lack of healthcare for most people in the US, fatalities will be higher than anywhere else in the world.

The US will have more total fatalities than Italy. The officially reported case fatality rate in the US will likely be much much lower than Italy's reported number (a mindbending 10%, which is totally out of line for the world as a whole).
I specified that it was based on what's projected to happen if the curve isn't flattened. Right now the US has about 70,000 active cases, and it's growing on a daily basis. Even if you use a low CFR (like 1%), the daily death toll will soon be as high as Italy's worst days (700 or so). If the CFR in the US is in the 3-5% region, then based on 70,000 current cases, the situation will be extremely grave.


When total deaths are plotted on a log scale, the line is basically straight. The gradient will gradually reduce, but so far has it's been pretty useful for predicting short-term numbers and answering questions like "How many days before the total hits 100 or 1k?"
Just from a quick eyeballing, it looks like it will take 9 days from yesteday to hit 10k total. If it stays on that path, you get some very scary numbers in a matter of weeks. (e.g. 10 days after hitting 10k total, you hit 100k).



Source of graphs: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'm hopeful that both those graphs will reflect a change for the better very soon, but I'm not confident they will.
I've also just been reading that some hospitals in London are experiencing quarantine-related staff shortages of up to 50%. The doctors and nurses aren't slacking. They are just getting too ill to work, which is why the army is being called in to help, and half a million normal citizens have volunteered their services too. The doctors still working are facing a "tsunami of cases". Every day is worse than before.
America as a whole needs to look at what's happened/happening in Bergamo and London and NYC, and prepare for the worst. The problems aren't going to "disappear". They are speeding towards you.

All valid points, but you missed my point (or rather maybe I wasn't clear, like Trump)... people get hung up on what Trump says, and the way he says it. That's all well and good and people can feel any way they like about him or any other politician. I prefer to look at what he does, not what he says, if only for the fact that what he says is typically hard to follow. From a "messaging" standpoint, things are always going to be problematic with this president. But I've been looking at the actual things done by the federal government with regards to COVID-19 and I don't see any big issues. If others feel differently, I am glad to hear their arguments, here or in DM. But from what I've seen, most of the complaints are coming from people who dislike him to start with. They aren't being objective. I hear things like... "We didn't take it seriously like South Korea did". Well, no, S. Korea didn't take it seriously in the beginning either... in fact, not for a whole month after their first reported case. I also hear stuff like "Trump screwed up testing" .Well, last I checked Trump doesn't fart our COVID-19 test kits. The truth is our testing bureaucracy was not ready for this novel coronavirus. But now we seem to have gotten back on track, and in a pretty impressively short amount of time, IMO. And I'm sure Trump will be happy to tell everyone how great our testing is now.

Fair enough. I also am more interested in what actually happens than what is said, although I think what is said affects the opinions of a lot of people more than it should. I watch the press conferences to see what Dr. Fauci and others say, and I just find it amusing to see how it gets spun.

My assertion was mid april, which is 3 weeks away. I'm not really sure what the point of debating this particular number is. I've actually had a hard time finding info on it today for anything but NY since in the US, NY has been the focus for the past 7-10 days. If you feel like the number is different, then provide your estimate. But this all started with the suggestion by somebody that there will be a period when 3000 people are dying every day in the US.

I look at the fact that we are weeks into this thing. And at this point the rate of increase in new cases seems to be slowing. And we have about 200 deaths per day, which is a lagging indicator. And all that makes me think we are closer to the peak than the beginning.

So, yes, I feel like 15x increase in deaths per day is far-fetched at this point. But I guess we'll see.

Already been doing so, albeit mostly with call options for mid-2021 and January 2022 contracts.

For me, the key has been putting in some low bids on the days the market dropped. Having a good-til-cancel bid has worked on getting some really good prices on several sectors that I believe will rebound nicely.

Summer is the best time for many to be able to get multiple days/weeks away without having to pay premiums for potential child care. You have some countries that see summer vacation as commonplace.

The only other consistent time I saw people getting out of town in Austin is during SXSW when we would leave to escape the nonsense associated with the festival. Was far easier to leave than to get pissed with the traffic and dining hassles...even the appellate courts (3rd CoA and TxCCA) often do little during those two weeks other than the emergency stuff (like death penalty reviews on a stay).

Very little of this makes any sense to me. What "infection rate" are you talking about with regards to the US being 1/6th of Italy? And if there are already nearly 80K "confirmed" cases in the US, that means it is likely there are already 1MM+ people infected. And the vast majority of these people have or will suffer little or no side-effects and no one will ever know they had COVID-19 unless some sort of universal testing mechanism materializes out of the ether (doubtful).

And according to this source, which is as good as any as far as I can tell

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/a...23467b48e9ecf6

Italy's daily infections are now decreasing. So the fact that they are 20% higher today than they were forever ago as far as this outbreak is concerned (11 days) means absolutely nothing. Its the trajectory that matters, and at this point things are looking better for Italy. Let's hope it stays that way.

You're interpreting it that way. Trump says he doesn't want the numbers to double. The way I interpret that is that he doesn't want those people to spread coronavirus off the ship. He did not clearly make the point about them not being reported as US numbers or whatever jibberish your claiming.

The infection figures for the US and Italy are from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

What supporting evidence do you have for you statement, "if there are already nearly 80K "confirmed" cases in the US, that means it is likely there are already 1MM+ people infected."

Not sure where you get your figures that Italian daily infections are decreasing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c...demic_in_Italy

indicates they are stable over the last 4 days, but no steady daily decrease.

Right, you're interpreting as well.

Aren't we getting a little out in the weeds here?

This study posits the 86% of positive cases in China went undocumented.

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abb3221

Considering the lack of testing in the US except for those people who actually show serious symptoms, would it really surprise you if there was a significant number of people walking around (or sheltering in place) with Covid-19 who aren't diagnosed? I mean, this and not inherent contagiousness, is probably the main reason why this has spread as quickly as it has.

The link I referenced... click on "Italy" and then "Daily Increase". Seems like the trajectory has turned downwards from the high on 3/20. I don't have any inclination whether this trajectory is permanent, of course, but I don't see any reason to believe why it isn't happening.

It's a good sign that you're disagreeing with me because you're always so absolutely wrong. Here he is later in the same press conference:
https://youtu.be/X5ZkUzOAnVo?t=65

He's just concerned about the numbers when he states that. If you don't think so, then you just want to believe what you believe.

As expected, US now has the most cases in the world.

Stay safe and healthy, neighbours!

Unfortunately, so far today they're up more than 1,000 over yesterday, and just a few hundred short of their highest day; not sure if any more numbers will come in, or if that's it for the day. Hopefully just a blip, but best case I'd say we're still not really able to call this a downward trend.

Yes, there's no reason to keep going on this. My only point was people didn't seem to be aware that PT Lou wasn't just assuming Trump was concerned with the number early on. He actually says it. That's all.

Apologies for the derail (in a thread that has had too many) but I've always given some credit for the growth in the Main Event field size to the WSOP's overall move in the calendar. The Main was a mid- to late-May thing for most of its existence, then an early-July event when Rio took over in 2005.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it was the biggest contributor – in fact, it might not even be among the top five. (Hell, the venue alone made those four-figure sizes possible at all.) But if you look at the other major tourneys from the same era, none of them enjoyed nearly the magnitude of growth.

Anyway, please return to the discussion. I've actually enjoyed lurking, wish I could add more.

So you're saying you hate America? Am I interpreting that correctly?

Hey man, here are the best people to maybe ask OP's question to (trying to get their "vicarious" life experiences maybe most similar to the current situation):

The WSOP started in 1970 plus the last pandemic on such a scale as this was Spanish Flu in 1918. So we're looking for adults who not only played in one or more WSOP's but also adults very old like at least probably around 130 - 140 years old. Remember you do NOT want to count people who were only around 10 years old or younger during the 1918 event as they probably would have no recollection of the event.

Okay, are there any 130+ year old poker players who remember the lessons learned from the Spanish Flu in the house? Anyone? Bueller..... Bueller...................Bueller?

I wasn't even trying to make a statement either way. I was just trying to back up PT Lou that the prez actually said what he said; he wasn't reading his mind or whatever he was accused of. Not trying to get into any fights. Just hope everyone stays safe.

The Imperial College study which had a model predicting 500K deaths in UK and 2MM+ deaths in US has now revised its estimates:

https://www.newscientist.com/article...pert-predicts/

"UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, he said, and could be much lower."

Now, we have all been throwing numbers around, and linking to predictions. I have no idea what is going to happen. And who is to say this new prediction is any more accurate than the former one. But a couple weeks ago these same smart people predicted a pretty apocalyptic scenario in at least the UK and US. And now they are predicting significantly less carnage. This just goes to show that reality doesn't always match modeling. Let's hope the future reality is as, or even more optimistic than these revised predictions.

The 500k number was explicitly a worst case scenario where no measures were taken.

The 20K number assumes that the present strict measures continue.

That's the thing. There are people that will take this revision to mean that the estimates that caused people to take these measures were excessive scare-mongering. That the revised estimates show that the experts don't know what they are talking about so we don't need things to be shut down.

Those people are a menace.

lmao

Yes and no.

People who view this as everything is hunkydorie are definitely looking at it the wrong way, for sure.

I'm referring to the predictions on page 13 of the study:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imp...16-03-2020.pdf

The study always broke things down into three scenarios... do nothing, perform mitigation, perform suppression. The study deduced that only the last of these, which included the most stringent "lockdown" policies, enacted immediately and left in place until a threshold of new cases fell below a certain value (potentially many months later), could avoid a medical catastrophy by severely surpassing hospital resources. "Do nothing" led to 500K+ deaths, but even the middling "mitigation" strategy only cut that in half (middle paragraph on page 16).

If you look at the predictions for a suppression strategy, the death figures ranged from 8700 to 39000 based on estimated R0 at the time and how soon the stringent measures were enacted as a function of ICU confirmed cases. I don't have access to UK ICU confirmation figures to match to their "trigger" values (these would be useful to be able to know which predicted values to use on page 13), but I have to assume they were already at or above the 400 case trigger since at the time the UK already had over 1500 confirmed cases and the very next day that increased by over 400. So, I think at that time, it would be accurate to say their prediction was closer to the "high" end of the suppression estimates (39000) than 8700... and again, these figures assumed immediate implementation of the more stringent policies.

The report was published on 3/16, at a time when the UK strategy might not even have been considered as a mitigation response. Over the course of the next week the UK moved closer to a mitigation strategy (in other words woefully inadequate according to the study). And it wasn't till 3 days ago that the UK enacted the more stringent restrictions, And in enacting them, they put a proposed time limit of 3 weeks on them, unlike the suggested indeterminate time limit in the study.

So, to summarize a lengthy post:

1) The "best case" scenario at the time of the original study was between 8700 and 39000 deaths, assuming an aggressive suppression strategy were immediately put in place, and remained as such for an indeterminate amount of time till ICU confirmations fell below 25% of the value at that time.

2) Based on what the UK strategy was at the time, and had it remained unchanged, it seems like the study predicted between 85000 and 98000 deaths.

3) The even stronger mitigation strategy which the study thought would be very inadequate was put in place and remained as such for a whole week after 3/16.

4) The new more stringent "suppression" policy was not put in place till three days ago and is only scheduled to last 3 weeks. I'm sure the government will re-evaluate at the end of that period, but this is certainly less than what the study proposed in their best case scenario.

5) The current estimate for how "contagious" covid-19 is is a bit higher than it was on 3/16. So this would be a factor leading to worse predicted numbers.

6) Perhaps my use of the term "revised" in my original post is too strong since the study certainly left itself a fair bit of wiggle room. But given the 5 points above, I think it would be fair to say that the current prediction of 20K deaths (or significantly less), is rosier than the one put forth in the original study. There's nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't completely invalidate the study at all since it has always been an exercise in presenting various "what-if" scenarios.

I try to treat the models with a large dose of salt. They will become more accurate over time, but a lot of the 'predictions' (and I'm guilty of this too) amount to hand-waving and/or well-intentioned scaremongering. i.e. The message that "This could get really really bad" encourages people to take actions that prevent it from becoming really really bad.
I'm absolutely certain that Britain's social-distancing rules will be extended for a longer time. Spain has already extended its State of Emergency, for example. More telling are the long-term economic measures the UK govt is taking to mitigate the economic woes of people that aren't going to be allowed to go out (except for essentials) for possibly months. Millions of people aren't usually encouraged to register for welfare payments or government loans if a problem will be over in weeks. In addition, 1.5 million 'especially vulnerable' people like me are receiving daily text messages reminding us not to leave home at all for 90 days.
Meanwhile, as London is in semi-lockdown, the population gave a round of applause to the health workers that are battling to keep us alive. We're all in this together.

I'd aver that if America isn't doing the same thing in a couple of weeks in a show of community spirit, you'll either have had an amazing deathbed recovery (an Easter miracle!) when the virus is stopped in its tracks, or you're doing it wrong.