Who was saying it was “just like the flu” other than Trump supporters? Anyone who was reading the news knew it was deadly. I suspect they simply didn’t think it would be so widespread.
I was saying the people on this Board.
Yes, who on this board? I find it surprising.
I might have, though I don’t remember whether it was on this board, and I doubt it was worded as ‘just like the flu’. I do remember saying on some board that I didn’t expect significant problems in the USA.
Considering that we’ve had a few pandemic scares in the last 20 years that didn’t amount to much (well, not much more than a bad flu season), it wasn’t a crazy thing to think.
Yes; at that point the information I was seeing looked a whole lot like the information I saw about those previous scares.
Then the information changed/increased, and I changed my mind.
That’s mostly true, although there were a few posters who showed at least slight concern very early. With that said, three weeks later in February, the responses were drastically different. So the board was starting to become greatly concerned as soon as the evidence started coalescing around a few truths, long before those in power.
Way, way back at the very beginning, I know I did. But as I gathered more information, I stopped.
Interesting historical thread. I would say even a week after the thread started, responses started to change. By three weeks later, people were already discussing the case fatality rates and Ro’s.
Unfortunately, my estimate was low. Yesterday, the 7 day moving average in the U.S. exceeded 1700 deaths per day. And the number of daily new cases is double what they were 3 to 4 weeks ago. That means we’re looking at 3000+ deaths per day by Christmas.
Daily new cases have started to level off, but now: Thanksgiving. In a week or two, we should be able to see the effect on new cases that this holiday will bring. From everything I’m hearing and seeing, it’s not going to be good.
And watch how many people will pop up to deny any correlation between them and then suggest the actual reason for the increase was due to more testing, the government falsifying the test results, we were ‘due’ for a spike or some other type of bizarro logic that makes about as much sense as trying to explain that the wet paint on your hand nothing to do with you touching the wall with the wet paint sign on it.
No, what they will point to is a slight decrease in deaths at that time, which will be the result of the slight improvements in numbers this week. Basically, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are so out of sync, you can always find one that is relatively “better” than last week (even if still horrifying in absolute numbers), so they point to that “trend” and say things are getting better, it’s practically all over.
“It’s winter, the cold weather drove everybody inside.”
“Covid is not real, it’s just a bad flu this year that’s getting everyone.”
“There’s nothing we could have done anyway. This was just going to happen.”
“But there is a vaccine or three on the way - we should be rolling those out today, not waiting for ‘emergency authorization’. Pfft.”
“It’s all Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s fault. Trump had this under control. That’s what you get for electing the Democrats.”
“The doctors and media just want to make Trump look bad. They are continuing their efforts to ruin his reputation. FAKE NEWS!”
Back on October 27, I said
The CDC just reported
That synchs up pretty well with my estimate, with a margin of error. By the way, those numbers mean 1,514 to 3,057 deaths per day that week. Do you realize that that is a 9/11 number of deaths per day?
What, if anything, would you allow for the ‘actual reason’ if daily new cases continue their present trend? Only that people remained in small groups for the holiday, I imagine? Certainly not the ‘natural course of things’, or however I’m sure Irishman must have chosen to characterize that line of thinking?
That’s why I don’t reply to you.
The present trend is upward. Hospitals are filling up, patients are being turned away, and not just elective surgeries.
So I guess the first question is how do we tell the difference between the current trend and a spike because of Thanksgiving?
Worldometers shows that the daily deaths yesterday hit 2300 deaths, and the 7-day trend hit 1,700 deaths per day.
United States Coronavirus: 13,204,796 Cases and 269,039 Deaths - Worldometer (worldometers.info)
The CDC Ensemble Forecasts shows predictions through Dec 19 - 3 weeks out from now. (Linked above.) (Data from Nov. 13, so 4 week projection.)
The individual models are all over the place, but look at the combined trends. Data has the value on Nov 15 at about 7,500 deaths per week, or right around 1,000 deaths per day. The Ensemble projection line basically follows the slope of the plot for November, hitting 15,881 deaths per week, or 2,269 per day (numbers from the downloaded data charts, not just reading the printed table).
The total deaths on Nov. 13 are at about 245,000 deaths. The Ensemble projection hits 309,858 deaths.
So, 2,270 deaths per day and 310,000 total deaths. We need a margin of error, so what about 5%? That means 2,384 deaths per day - call it 2390 - and 325,500 total deaths.
We hit those numbers and we can say there was no impact from Thanksgiving. We go higher, and we have a Thanksgiving spike.
Now then, I will answer your question. If we don’t hit a spike as defined above, acceptable answers will include
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People remained in small groups despite the large amounts of travel, and used masks and social distancing.
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All of the increasing control measures that localities are implementing right now have limited the upswing.
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Deaths lag hospitalizations which lag cases, so the spike may yet be on the way.
Acceptable answers will not include
a) More testing found more cases, so we were able to treat them earlier.
b) The government (or the local governments, or a secret cabal of Democrats and bureaucrats) is falsifying the data to make Trump look bad.
c) The trend was already up, so there is no impact from Thanksgiving.
I thought it was said a few posts ago that trends were down. At least in cases. I thought I had seen the same thing myself, on one site or another. Let me put aside your analysis of hospitalizations and deaths for the moment and stay on the matter of cases. Is that fair enough? Or do you think that testing levels are so variable as to make that metric essentially meaningless for the purpose of analysis?
If you’re okay with using positive test results as at least a loose proxy for spread, would you add that it’s also a fair measure of the mitigation efforts you describe?
If so, what I’d like to hear is whether you expect the same results from places with similar mitigation efforts and different results from places with different efforts. And if not, how much allowance will you make for outside or unknown factors?
What I am getting at is whether to read anything into it if, say, South Dakota ends up with – or, more to the point, continues to display – similar trends to North Dakota, given the two states have contrasting approaches to mitigation. Or South Dakota to its neighbors in the Midwest.
I also am interested in your take on differing trends between, say, Florida and Illinois, another situation that gets directly to the thrust of this thread, Florida being relatively far more open than Illinois. Since you’ve been giving a fair amount of thought to ‘acceptable’ and unacceptable ways for us to consider such things, I want to hear the acceptable ways to view those contrasts as well – because Illinois seems to be really, really struggling as compared to Florida.
I’ve been looking at deaths because early on the argument was made that increased cases and even increased hospitalizations was a good thing as long as the death rate kept going down, because that meant more people were getting immunity. So I stressed deaths, which is the worst outcome. Admittedly, deaths is a very lagging measure, so 3 weeks from now might not be enough to see a spike from this weekend. It will more likely be from Halloween.
Number of cases is a cloudy metric precisely because of what you mention, the variability of testing levels. Increased testing will find more results. Changing criteria for who gets tested and how often will affect the results of how many positives are detected in an area per number of tests. Increased availability of testing for college students makes light or asymptomatic cases more frequently detected than the beginning, when the only people being tested were people with strong symptoms or health care workers.
I haven’t been thinking about testing levels and numbers that much myself. I also would like a good resource for tying case and hospitalization data to dates of events like opening up or closing down, mitigations, etc.
As a general trend, I would expect for similar geographical regions with different policies to have different results. I would expect population density to be a factor, policy differences to be a factor, geography itself less so.
Let me look at what I can say with what I can find right now.
According to the CDC case tracker, the US case trend is slowing down. Not getting fewer cases, but slowing down the increasing number each day. Leveling off, maybe peaking - hard to tell because case data is not reported evenly per day and it can take a few days for all the data to be collected.
What I know offhand is that the rates have been soaring, so many regions have been increasing controls. Thus those increases might be having the desired effect.
What about specifically North Dakota vs. South Dakota? Both show a peak on the 7 day average at Nov. 15. ND = 1,511 cases vs SD = 1,425 cases. Both are down on Nov 26: ND = 1,030 vs SD = 914. As you say, those are similar trends. How different are their behaviors right now?
You also mention Florida and Illinois. Florida has a 7 day trend going upward at an increasing rate, with a daily peak of 16,809 on Nov. 26. and 7 day peak at 8,933. Illinois’ 7 day trend peaked on Nov 17 and is decreasing, from 12,380 down to 10,872. The daily peak was on Nov 13 at 15,415. Those trends definitely reflect what is expected trends from Illinois being more closed down than Florida. As for numbers, I would need more consideration of per capita cases, relative comparison of urban vs. rural areas, hospital capacity, testing programs and accessibility, etc.
I haven’t been giving an excessive amount of thought on the matter. I simply discount bizarro logic like “it’s a conspiracy” in favor of reality-based explanations. “Natural course of things” is not an explanation of anything - one needs to describe what is natural about that course. If the data was dropping, why? If the data changed course, why? If the data remained the same trend while behavior supposedly changed, why? Same thing for “we were due for a spike” or “we were due for a drop”. What made that due? Previous behavior patterns catching up with us, right? So what were those patterns?
Now maybe you can project what you think will happen in the next 4 weeks between now and Christmas, and between now and the end of January. I’ve given my guess for the first - we will top 300,000 deaths by Christmas. The latter, 390,000 deaths by Jan 31. Note comparison against
COVID-19 (healthdata.org)
My numbers are conservative. They have 300,000 deaths by Dec. 16, and 413,000 by Jan. 31.
Florida’s numbers have mystified me for the longest time, but I think I’ve finally figured it out. It’s the weather. Scientists and health experts have been hammering away at us regarding indoors vs outdoors and I think that is playing a huge factor in Covid outbreaks.
The entire south, including California, saw a surge in the summertime, when outside temperatures became unbearable. As temperatures dropped, the south saw a decline in cases while the north saw an increase. Florida still has comfortable temperatures; yesterday, highs went into the 80s. I expect Florida’s cases to really start rising towards the end of December and into the new year.
So, comparing Florida to Illinois is unfair. A better comparison would be Florida to California. Divoc-19 cases: California, Florida, and the US South
Also, why would you compare South Dakota with North Dakota? The attitudes toward Covid are similar in both states. They share the same region, so interstate travel would spread coronavirus between the two states.
Wouldn’t a better comparison be North Dakota and South Dakota vs Maine and Vermont? They have similar densities, similar remoteness, similar weather, etc. The big differences between the regions are attitudes toward Covid and government regulations.
Divoc-19 cases: North Dakota, South Dakota, Maine, and Vermont
Interesting stuff!
As for the Dakotas, I may be wrong but I thought North Dakota had decided to kick in a mask mandate and other mitigation measures that South Dakota was trying to avoid. I’d certainly agree that apart from any effects of those measures, you’d certainly expect to see similar results across the two states. I hadn’t thought about comparing them to the upper Northeast like that. Intriguing.