I disagree because some of those “probably fine” communities certainly aren’t. Instead people should act like they probably do have it and do what they can within reason to reduce the spread just in case.

Slow the Spread—act like a 1.05er not a 1.25er:

5+% of the population dying (20% of old people) is far more economically disruptive than the 6-8 weeks of total lockdown required to get it to zero.

Difficult to estimate. By definition, mild untested cases are not reported (which I think you are alluding to). Also, the availability and quality of data relevant to estimating total infections, testing intensity, and transparency in reporting statistics, vary immensely between countries. Case in point: Indonesia had tested 736 people as of Wednesday morning, against a population of 237,000,000. Or 3 tests per million. This is effectively zero data. If you are talking about the US specifically, maybe people ITT will hazard estimates. According to the CDC website, # of tests = 7,288 for CDC labs and public health labs. Worldometers references this source and comes to 8,554 tests.

Here are figures from Worldometers on testing intensity by country:



The Economist magazine modeled expected infections by country based on the number of travelers from Hubei province in China, where the infection began, and concluded infections are significantly under-reported in some countries (Indonesia, Phillipines, Myanmar, Russia).

How long can asymptomatic carriers remain infected?

I can't find anything authoritative but browsing the general topic suggest it may be a very long time, maybe even years.

China's zero new infections outside Hubei answers that question. And even if this improbable event was true (antibodies and natural viral decay ensure it's killed in no time, this isn't like typhoid bacteria or HIV), population monitoring catching it early is more than enough after lockdown ends.
This take by The Economist is dumb on about 5 different levels. And wrong. The bolded statement is completely false. The Korea data is also consistent with a 1.5-2% death rate and inconsistent with a <1% death rate.

Sam Harris earlier today released a podcast interview with a Johns Hopkins physician who specializes in emerging infectious diseases who believes the upper bound fatality rate is 0.6%, based on the Korean data. He believes that age bias and severity bias have inflated the numbers. I don't know who's right or who's wrong but this is a bona fide expert's opinion; take it as you will.

The guy is a worthless idiot. He has no idea what he's talking about. I covered a response in a post above.
Remember the stupid take weeks ago ITT from people that the low death rate outside China was a good thing? Then Italy happened. Trawling for lowest death rate data and then doing a dumb hot take that those low death rates in those countries are because they're doing something right or that's the "real" data is really silly. Every population dies at a high rate, it just has to spread to old people and have enough lag time to see the deaths. In the few low death populations, one of the above was true. For example, in China outside Hubei, it's very likely that there were few olds in the travelers leaving Hubei (travelers tend to be younger and fit) which were then quickly tracked and isolated. And even there death is ending at close to 1% I believe.

By the way, Korea is 0.83% now and climbing. 0.83% already in a population level sample with well over half of cases still to resolve and a large proportion of young people in the sample thanks to the cult church. The very data he cites debunks his own claim.

I think all things being equal, the Case Fatality Rate is a lock to go down over time because of trial and error. All of the smartest medical minds in the world are experimenting on different treatments. Improvements will be made and CFR will go down.

On the other hand, we have a lot of fat f*cks in this country. Not sure how this compares to Korea (I've never been there), but all things may not be equal.

Ok the short infected period may be correct. txs

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0309110456.htm

By March 1, 2020, between 1,043 and 9,484 people in the U.S. may have already been infected by the COVID-19 coronavirus, far more than the number that had been publicly reported, according to a new Cedars-Sinai study.
....
Cedars-Sinai investigators, who led the study, said they chose "very conservative" methods to estimate the number of coronavirus cases. "This makes our current estimation likely to be an underestimation of the true number of infected individuals in the U.S.," they wrote.

On 3/1 we had ~100 confirmed cases. So 10-100x confirmed according to their extrapolations. Fwiw, my napkin math had it at 10-20x of confirmed.

South Korean data is consistent with 1-1.5% CFR imo. This taking into account reasonable underreporting guess.

It’s based on the fact that the Chinese CFR began at 2% , it’s now at 4% and will likely end at 4.4%. This based on the fact that ended cases are in 4.8% CfR .
Ended cases are always going to tend to go lower because the requirements to count as a recovered case are high in terms of time without a fever.

So if Korean data began at 0.6% and its now at 0.83% then I’m guessing it will end at around 1.5% and then we have to guess the underreporting. Models from experts that are saying it’s 1% CFR seem to me like a reasonable guess. It’s consistent with my math and consistent with diamond princess data.

However a guess of 0.1 to 0.6% it’s simply bullshit. I heard his argument and he basically said that the Korean data was 0.6% absolutely ignoring the fact the CFR got worse in China. And then he basically ignored the reports from Italian doctors. Lol that is just awful analysis. Sorry but that guy is either an idiot or he has an agenda.

At this point of the epidemic in USA I would guess multiplying deaths by 250 is reasonable for total cases. Just a ballpark guess based on early Korean numbers.

In the US, the math is pretty easy. 38 dead at a 2% death rate = 1900 had it four weeks ago. You can make that a bit lower thanks to the early nursing home cluster but also make it higher since there was no testing and some pneumonia deaths were the Tedrovirus. That number is a lower bound imo and is likely higher. Add a doubling every six days gives you ~30,000 cases in the US.

5% is higher than I realized. I also didn't know that it will be going away in 6 to 8 weeks. That's good to know but still there are things that could be done to prevent people from dying other than shutting everything down.

You guys need to read the Medium post. I already posted it in this thread.

Trying again. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coron...e-f4d3d9cd99ca

Italy has about 0.02% infected, and is in full wartime triage. The old and people with preexisting conditions - most of whom could be saved with treatment and ventilators - are simply left to choke their life away to save resources for those with the best prospects. This is happening right now as we speak - doctors are deciding who will live and who will receive no care, because the hospitals are beyond overflowing. This is at 0.02%. Imagine what 50x that - 1% - look like? It will happen in every country, and when it does, the death rate soars over 5%. If it travels the world unchecked it will bring premature death to more people than World War II. Mountains of corpses. Everyone will know someone who died from coronavirus, often multiple people.

If you think that outcome is better than a temporary lockdown, China style, which got it to zero in six weeks, I don't think you're analyzing this well.
Like what? Once it reaches a certain point, nothing but total lockdown is left, and the earlier the better. All of Europe is in that position now. The US is probably in that position. China was in that position and are going to come out of this just fine despite a 6 week lockdown when this all done (cases outside Hubei are now 0). It works. It needs doing. That's all there is to it.

You can make a counter-offer. The bet was your idea, not mine, and I am not trying to induce you to punt your index fund.

Maybe in your world a 30% chance of Lombardy’s catastrophic healthcare situation is “very low”...





Sent from my iPhone

Some clarity today on the UK Government response to Covid-19 (which so far has been poor and simply been to "wash your hands").

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-12/...robert-peston/

From the excellent analysis in this thread I am sure the health services are going to be completely overwhelmed with this approach from the hospitalisation rate of this virus. I also wonder about Police/Army/Firemen all being off sick at the same time.

The tweet by the journalist announcing this actually names an advisor along with the politicians who came up with this strategy which is slightly unusual.

This is spot on. Even locking down one day earlier can dramatically affect the outcomes.

I can't understand this mindset

The deadliness and extreme transmissibility of the disease are not up to debate.

So you're arguing "let's do nothing and hope nothing bad happens to us"

if you're right then it's business as usual, if you're wrong then it's catastrophic

if you spend a few billion in preventative measures then if you're right you could potentially save the lives of tens of thousands or more, if you're wrong you had a slightly worse economic year than you'd otherwise have had

how can you not see the steps that other countries that are far more intimate with the disease have taken and then assume they are idiots who are overreacting?

'Herd immunity' must surely be a joke. Sounds good in theory (I guess?), will work absolutely horrific in practice.

We have about 100K ICU beds in the U.S. (apparently more per capita than any other country). I figure even if we can make 50K beds available, since 5% who contract the virus require critical care the magic number is 1M cases before crisis. But that’s assuming the where and when of demand perfectly matches supply, which won’t even be close. Nonetheless, there’s a chance that through aggressive mitigation but short of total lockdown things would remain under the medical community’s threshold until May or perhaps June in the hope that the warmer weather is a magic bullet. A more likely scenario is that once the death toll eclipses 1,000, which it could sometime next month, lockdown happens.

Herd immunity doesn't do much when <1% of the population has been infected and recovered.

As a UK citizen I can see what they are doing to make sure we all get it, but I cant see feck all about how they are trying to pace the spread in a sustainable way.

Is that what telling us to wash our hands all the time is meant to achieve?

Its a technical phrase you will read/hear over and over again if you do any meaningful research into Covid 19.