shoshin

SARS and its 774 total deaths worldwide Total at its height almost matched NY State’s total on a few individual days. None of the other coronaviruses got this kind of attention deservedly so.

Why do you think that is? a) it's impossible b) none of the previous coronaviruses were a big deal

Buffalo now opening phase 1 tomorrow--even better. And NYC is getting pretty close to its phase 1. https://forward.ny.gov/regional-monitoring-dashboard

Mortality data as you and I both agree is still up in the air. It's definitely way less than the early reports out of Italy. I can't let slide your proposal that the flu causes more hospitalizations than Covid. It clearly does not. Your data AND my data support how much worse Covid is. I found data that compared a 6-week snip of time to compare them and Covid has more cases. You picked an entire flu season to compare to Covid's current season, and found Covid to be only slightly behind the flu. But Covid started from a single domestic case sometime in December 2019! Imagine what it will do given its contagiousness with tens of thousands of seed cases starting in September and so little of the population without any immunity. That's why hospitalization should be the driving metric to watch for all reopening decisions (unless it becomes more fatal or starts to leap in case counts to younger people). Pretty sure you see the error here. Again, none of us analyzes CDC data for a living. If we can get the vaccine out quickly and drive this to zero, not allowing it to hang around and mutate in non-vaccinated folk, we can put it behind us maybe by summer 2021. This next flu season will be something different than we've ever had before. We will see it coming so hopefully we don't have to close, but we will have to be social distancing like MoFos.

Your own chart from the CDC says it: That's an entire season of outcomes. You can only compare a window if you want to compare apples to apples. Otherwise, you'd have to project an entire year of Covid, and if it was a truly honest comparison, it wouldn't start from a single case in December 2019 but you'd project starting from tens of thousands of cases starting in the fall.

Seems like a given. If a night club in Korea can generate a few hundred cases, stadiums full of screaming fans and finger foods will do a much better job. I am curious to see what the Bills do with my season ticket $$.

You can only compare those windows because COVID-19 does not have a yearly track record to draw upon. Your above post with the charts compares the hospitalization rate for an entire flu season vs the brief amount of time it took for Covid to fire up. If anything, it shows how brutal the effect has been and will continue to be regarding covid hospitalizations. If you give this some deeper thought, you will understand the apples to oranges your post is comparing. There is a reason why not only in NY but also in Italy and other countries, the hospitals were bogged down. It has to do with rate of hospitalization AND duration of stay. The later is why Remdisivir is important. See above. Covid doesn't have a year of data to compare to an entire flu season, and when you consider it started from case 1 in December 2019, it's staggering how much more dangerous it is. Note: Let's have a dialog, eh? I guess you can keep trying to be "the man" and put me down but I've not done the same. I'm fairly certain you're not a PhD research epidemiologist but just a guy like most of us, looking at data we were not looking at 5 months ago.

The source for the hospitalization graphic above and reproduced below is the CDC, as compiled in this article. There's really no argument about hospitalization rate being much different with Covid-19 than the flu. Your NL data was just about hospitalization rates with Covid, it didn't compare it to the flu. Plenty of other data sources for the same including another CDC article. Using the existing infrastructure of two respiratory virus surveillance platforms, COVID-NET was implemented to produce robust, weekly, age-stratified hospitalization rates using standardized data collection methods. These data are being used, along with data from other surveillance platforms (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview.html), to monitor COVID-19 disease activity and severity in the United States. During the first month of surveillance, COVID-NET hospitalization rates ranged from 0.1 per 100,000 population in persons aged 5–17 years to 17.2 per 100,000 population in adults aged ≥85 years, whereas cumulative influenza hospitalization rates during the first 4 weeks of each influenza season (epidemiologic weeks 40–43) over the past 5 seasons have ranged from 0.1 in persons aged 5–17 years to 2.2–5.4 in adults aged ≥85 years

Fatalities, which are higher for Covid, remain not the thing we need to watch for most of us. Hospitalization will be the driver of how we reopen. Always has been. You can't ignore this as the biggest factor in reopening. Regarding the vaccine production, it will take place all over the world. No one country is likely to hog the first 100M doses. The first batch of 1000, I guess might get preferential treatment of some kind. And though it's irrelevant to this particular discussion about how the vaccines will be distributed, I was in the vaccine production business building facilities that produced them for several years but what I did at that time is not relevant to how these are set up to be produced. The Gates- and others- vaccine incubators will get this out much faster. You won't have the opportunity not to take the vaccine for a while because you're a lower priority (as am I). It will be interesting to see what gov't sectors (military and schools in particular), businesses, and companies mandate the vaccine. I am sure the military will require it and probably school districts too. Others I'm less sure of but I expect those working with older populations or confined populations may be required to be vaccinated as a condition of employment--same with HCWs and their families.

Beach photos like that always look more packed than they are.

Yesterday's problems which were real are not today's problems. We probably have enough active-case testing. Now we need to get the rapid testing together--the accuracy of those tests will have to be fixed first, then the availability next. The Oxford team is testing more widely. Both are developing quickly. I also doubt we have much of a read on what is happening in China, where some vaccine could pop up too.

Whoever develops it first will get it out through a global production chain. That is certain. Your vaccine may be made in the US, India, or France--no matter who develops it. I'll feel pride but I suspect no matter what company does it first, it will have been developed by an international team. In science? Have you been reading the thread here about people who won't take it, don't believe masks work? It is more dangerous than the common flu and puts many more people in the hospital and for long periods of time than the flu. You take it to protect others whose immune systems are compromised, where the vaccine doesn't take, or who are neglected. The vaccine helps create the herd immunity without putting yourself at risk of getting it and spreading it. People not taking vaccines are why the measles and other once-nearly-eradicated diseases are returning. I encourage you to read up on how important vaccines are. There is an element of “dropping other research” happening now too. Instead of 1000 projects to address 1000 diseases, we have 1000 projects to fix one. We are using known techniques to get at this one so there was never a lot of doubt we’d crack it. We just want to get it before it changes enough to render our approach useless.

I think you're going to end up seeing a few vaccines for this. I believe the UK one is a touch further along. I don't really care what country comes up with it. I'm amazed by the great work of the best minds in the world to do this so quickly.

Only if people take the vaccine.

This and the UK ones are the most advanced. Great news indeed.

He was stupid. Pick another adjective if you want. As I said, he got lucky his stupidity results in something he can easily overcome because of who he is. The rush to vilify and judge others overlooks our own flawed humanity.

I hear you're reopening in WNY starting Friday. That's great! (Jealous...heading into week 9 here but I'll be at the Jersey Shore this weekend so things will be looking up.)

Way too early for that prediction. All he is right now is a kid who did a stupid thing. A *lot* and I mean a lot of people have driven drunk. It doesn't make it right, but I'm not going to get into judging him or anyone for it. He's very lucky that no one was hurt. He's very lucky that even though this happened, he will still have the opportunity to live an incredibly privileged life and can make a world of difference in the lives of many people. Most people who pick up a DWI would not have the opportunities and support EO has. I hope the best for him.

More non-scientific takes that sound science-y. Masks prevent droplet transmission. You may have heard this before. And at this point you can do better than a rough cloth mask too. And...it puts more people in the hospital for a longer time. But besides that, it’s the flu.

Yes. You do it for neglected kids, immunity suppressed, and those where it doesn't take. That's exactly why you do it. Maybe you've read about the return of certain once-eradicated diseases in our country in recent years? That is the effect of enough anti and neglectful vaxxers now being large enough to overcome the former herd immunity. People once thought of those who refused vaccinations as fringe weirdos. Now they are mainstream. That merger of the anti science movement where left and right are the same. "Make polio great again."

I did it for Reality’s benefit. Not everyone can be vaccinated (many immunity suppressed people) and not all the vaccinations take. More people who are vaccinated create the herd immunity we all discuss.

I think that’s the order I’ve read in most places. HCWs, at risk people in order of level of risk, essential safety employees, essential workers, the rest of us. Then we force all the people who refuse it to take it. Makes sense.

He’s not taking the vaccine either. Reality has an interesting relationship to reality. I want to open up and stay open. If one of the ways we stay open is to wear masks inside and in groups of people, it’s a bummer but not a big deal compared to being shut down. No, I don’t think not wearing masks is a right the government gains anything by or looks to enforce long term.

Wearing masks does not stop spread, it slows it. And China has slowed its spread and they have 1.5B people living on top of each other in ways we cannot imagine. Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan have also slowed their spread. For more believable data in a mask-wearing country, look to Japan and in particular Tokyo, which has 38 million people and very few cases. Clearly societal decisions can make a big difference. We are not particularly hygienic and don't wear masks in public. Masks help. But they are hot and itchy and annoying.

Still citing a study that tracked whether HCWs working full time in hospitals got sick after wearing cloth masks to justify your discomfort with hot and itchy masks? You still don’t understand the purpose of the masks. It’s to prevent your expulsion of virus to keep others safe. Its probably been said by about 10,000 scientists so far. I can list the studies *again* if you want that show why masks are important to prevent disease SPREAD. And yes they predate Covid. There’s a movement afoot here to avoid the vaccine because “science.”