# Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2020 Breaking News **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [February 11, 2020, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758 "2020-02-11T01:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 233
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4661 "2020-09-06T19:16:06Z")
Odd that they chose to put GDP change on the X and deaths on Y while suggesting a deaths on GDP causation chain. Again their way implicitly suggests that the resilience of the economy has causation on death rates, which is plausible but not the conclusion I think they prefer. Any way to easily port to an app that gives R and _p_ for the more complete set? ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4662 "2020-09-06T19:23:08Z")
**Maserschmidt** has this down now, so I don’t want to continue to step on his toes. He can include the model description for his trendline which has all sorts of metrics behind it. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4663 "2020-09-06T19:30:06Z")
Yeah I am also surprised that I’ve not seen this picked up in the media at all, and that before you the only reaction here was to my “homogenous” (which is consistent with my more common way of saying it, not a typo) over “homogeneous”.🙂 It is big and potentially very good news. But crickets. A discussion of why it doesn’t make the top of any sources news cycle, or garner much response, would be interesting, but a needless distraction. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4664 "2020-09-06T19:36:30Z")
You can mouse over the trend line to see R and p, at least from my view of it…let me know if not. I’ve also looked for ways to make it permanently display (like in Excel), but not seeing that. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4665 "2020-09-06T19:42:00Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > The NEJM just published a fascinating article [from Iceland](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2026116). The [accompanying editorial](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2028079) summarizes it well and is what the quotes below are from, bolded by me. Huge study in a fairly homogenous population that was very extensively tested with PCR. That looks like a nice study. However, Iceland did a great job with covid so they never had a lot of cases. Their official number of cases is about 0.5% of the population (only 2141 people with 10 deaths). So their official cases are only half what this study is saying (0.9% of the population). Therefore, their case fatality rate is less than double the infection fatality rate (0.5% vs 0.3%). Iceland had widespread testing and contact tracing. I’m sure there are shitloads of serological studies continuing in the US. The data will be interesting. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4666 "2020-09-06T19:54:53Z")
So R squared is 0.28? I’m no statistician so maybe I’m mistaken, but that doesn’t seem like a strong association. But the p value looks to be pretty good. How does that happen? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4667 "2020-09-06T21:17:16Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > However, Iceland did a great job with covid so they never had a lot of cases. Sure, but the main takeaway from the study is not infection fatality rate or anything else you mention - by far the most important result there is the evidence for sustained humoral immune response (at least 4 months, the length of the study) in a high proportion of cases. I see no reason why the smaller total number of cases in the population would affect that. The principal reservation would be whether there are genetic peculiarities in the Icelandic population, but that’s a small probability. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4668 "2020-09-06T22:29:30Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > by far the most important result there is the evidence for sustained humoral immune response (at least 4 months, the length of the study) in a high proportion of cases. I see no reason why the smaller total number of cases in the population would affect that. I’m not disputing that at all. In fact, I wasn’t buying in to the scary headlines about waning immunity. Unless, sars-cov-2 was going to be a very unusual virus, memory cells would remain even if antibody levels decline. In fact, plasma cells (the ones that pump out the antibodies) can hang around in the bone marrow for decades. The cases of reinfection are a little concerning but these seem to be rare out of the over 20 million covid cases. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4669 "2020-09-06T22:37:13Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > So R squared is 0.28? I’m no statistician so maybe I’m mistaken, but that doesn’t seem like a strong association. But the p value looks to be pretty good. How does that happen? A small(-ish) R squared just means there are many other factors not in the analysis which influence GDP - not a surprise when you include just one predictive factor for something complex like the economy. I’m not a Tableau person (though maybe I should become one…) but I loaded up those numbers in R and analysed it again with GDP change against the _log_ of per-capita deaths. R squared jumps up to 0.45 and the p-value for the predictor logPerCapitaDeaths is 4.48e-06 ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4670 "2020-09-07T04:09:05Z")
27,292,583 total cases 887,554 dead 19,377,267 recovered In the US: 6,460,250 total cases 193,250 dead 3,725,970 recovered Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: > [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > 27,065,789 total cases > 883,742 dead > 19,165,962 recovered > > In the US: > > 6,431,152 total cases > 192,818 dead > 3,707,000 recovered ---
**Author:** ![Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heffalump_and_roo/32/7691_2.png) [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4671 "2020-09-07T04:14:05Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > Results from Deloitte graph up very nicely. Another slice of this same data with the same conclusions but with more commentary. There are two charts in the article. The one in the thumbnail is the second chart. Their conclusion is that they see no evidence of a trade-off between protecting the economy and protecting people’s lives. Mostly, they go in tandem. That goes along with the results of the 1918 pandemic studies as well. > **[Which countries have protected both health and the economy in the pandemic?](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy)** > > Responses to the pandemic have often been framed in terms of striking a balance between protecting people’s health and protecting the economy. There is an assumption that countries face a trade-off between these two objectives. But is this assumption... > [@](#): > > ### No sign of a health-economy trade-off, quite the opposite > > Contrary to the idea of a trade-off, we see that countries which suffered the most severe economic downturns – like Peru, Spain and the UK – are generally among the countries with the _highest_ COVID-19 death rate. > > And the reverse is also true: countries where the economic impact has been modest – like Taiwan, South Korea, and Lithuania – have also managed to keep the death rate low. > > Notice too that countries with similar falls in GDP have witnessed very different death rates. For instance, compare the US and Sweden with Denmark and Poland. All four countries saw economic contractions of around 8 to 9 percent, but the death rates are markedly different: the US and Sweden have recorded 5 to 10 times more deaths per million. > . . . > But among countries with available GDP data, we do not see any evidence of a trade-off between protecting people’s health and protecting the economy. Rather the relationship we see between the health and economic impacts of the pandemic goes in the _opposite_ direction. As well as saving lives, countries controlling the outbreak effectively may have adopted the best economic strategy too. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4672 "2020-09-07T04:29:34Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > A small(-ish) R squared just means there are many other factors not in the analysis which influence GDP - not a surprise when you include just one predictive factor for something complex like the economy. Aspidistra covered the other variables at play, and hinted at the fact that it’s not a perfect linear relationship. If you simply change the trend line from linear to exponential, R squared goes to almost .45, as seen below. [https://public.tableau.com/profile/dmc7541#!/vizhome/GDPandCOVID\_15994146814380/Sheet2](https://public.tableau.com/profile/dmc7541#!/vizhome/GDPandCOVID_15994146814380/Sheet2) ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4673 "2020-09-07T04:42:20Z")
I forgot to post the big news of the day: India has surpassed Brazil and is now 2nd for total cases (behind the US). ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4674 "2020-09-07T11:47:23Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Our new two-week lockdown here on Oahu is supposed to end this coming Thursday, the 10th. But no one thinks it will. Friends of mine were planning a big anniversary celebration trip to Hawaii for over a year. Talk about a rollercoaster ride! September 2020 seemed far away. Trip finally canceled. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4675 "2020-09-07T18:00:31Z")
I can completely agree that there is nothing in the available GDP data to date that supports a (silly) contention that protecting health trades off the economy. Of course those who express concern about severe prolonged mitigation choices causing harms are at least sometimes thinking other than in simplistic binary terms and are usually looking beyond just Q2. Doing no mitigation in order to protect the economy would be absurd. Contending the polar opposite, that the most severe and prolonged mitigation would lead to the best long term economic result is no less absurd. To me what jumps out of the graph remains that middling contractions are associated with death rates all over the map. Countries whose economies very easily crumped greatly had large death rates, and countries whose economies were solid enough to stay pretty stable or grew, had low death rates. Fewer died in more resilient economies. More died in more vulnerable ones. The associations really mainly show up only at the GDP change extremes. S shaped fits best. Really can’t assume chicken or egg. FWIW how many accept China’s data (both deaths and GDP) on face value at this point? ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4676 "2020-09-07T20:58:45Z")
I don’t believe China’s death rate _or_ GDP. Given that, I took them off the chart. Getting to the point on reactions/lockdowns, I found a lockdown “stringency index” produced by the University of Oxford, which gets updated regularly (4 metrics, 0-100 scale, higher is more stringent). I color-coded the graph to reflect it…I don’t know enough about the index to vouch for it, but the results are interesting. [https://public.tableau.com/views/GDPandCOVID/Dashboard1?:language=en&:display\_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz\_share\_link](https://public.tableau.com/views/GDPandCOVID/Dashboard1?:language=en&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4677 "2020-09-07T22:14:37Z")
Indeed. Would it be easy to graph GDP change v stringency index? Thank you for your data crunching so far by the way!! ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4678 "2020-09-08T00:35:16Z")
Very nice, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4679 "2020-09-08T00:54:10Z")
Here it is, glad to do it…it’s very easy, and I’m learning from the data. There’s a slope, but the dispersion is huge. [https://public.tableau.com/views/GDPandCOVID2/Dashboard1?:language=en&:display\_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz\_share\_link](https://public.tableau.com/views/GDPandCOVID2/Dashboard1?:language=en&:display_count=y&publish=yes&:origin=viz_share_link) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/4680 "2020-09-08T01:06:42Z")
Thanks! FWIW that to me makes the case more strongly. The association, to the degree it appears to exist, is less driven only by the extreme GDP change cases. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=232) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=234)