Sundancer

The contact tracing is the big hole in this. There's no way it's going to happen quickly, or by state. I see that continuing to be nearly 100% ignored. Federal leadership would be welcome here but it isn't coming, so these guidelines will probably be what we have going forward. With respect to this, it's not until there's sustained downwards shift that travel is supposed to happen. And I don't think businesses will be rushing to do this. You asked about which states are ready. I would refer to the RPI map. The darker blue states may be either ready or close to it. The others are not. I am not making a specific judgment on a specific state because I can't see each state's trajectory, but just noting that by the guidelines (minus tracing, which is probably a lost cause sadly), some are likely ready to enter phase 1, with maybe some lighter blue states being ~2 weeks away. https://covidminder.idea.rpi.edu/ *** The US I believe is currently in the "level phase" where Italy and Spain are. The "leap day" in the below data was the NYC reclassification day for the 3700 deaths, after which all deaths are counted in the same way. If you spread that spike backwards weighted towards more recent days when more people were dying, we have been more or less around 2000 deaths for about 10 days. No remarkable decline yet sadly. My numbers instinct says that once we are seeing this below about 1300 for 3 days in a row, we can feel like we're making good progress on deaths. If we were phasing the US according to the Opening America guidelines and ignoring the tracking/tracing requirement, we would likely be 4 weeks away from a Phase 1 attempt.

I don’t know if this sentiment is right as a reaction to the guidelines, though in general I get it. With respect to the guidelines, in the Northesst plus MI and IL...and for southern states, they are not close to phase 1 by definition unless cases slow starting today. They can’t meet two weeks of case declines or 2 weeks of pct pos case declines. For as good as PA can feel about its success, at best it has just a couple days of the former. So those states aren’t ready to change a thing. Some Midwest and western states though, are ready for Phase 1 and that’s a slight change from where we are now. It may take many weeks at Phase 1 before phase 2, where I feel things start to feel like what will be the new normal, resumes. My instinct is that governors will feel pressure to get to phase 1 because that’s at least a limping economy, but we will be stuck there for 6-8 weeks in places with large metros. Phase 3 could be a long time coming and I think we will end up bouncing between 1 and 2 a lot. Governors should feel relieved that the feds took a lot of this off their backs and they can add some implementation details but politically hide behind these guidelines as states open and close. I don’t think NYC metro can follow these by the way. It will need a much more careful approach. With 50% of the entire US impact, it needs its own guidelines with more details. A website will probably be up by the end of the day with phasing grades for states and maybe cities. The NY Times data analysis sites have been stellar and I bet they have this soon.

Does "padding" number kill people? The desire for people to minimize the reality of this is astounding. More than 3X the number of normal deaths are happening in NYC FOR ALL CAUSES and there's some discussion about padding.

Death counts are both over and undercounted (NYC is identifying 3700 more people today who died in the last month as presumed Covid but never got tested...this does not account for the big jump). Best measure we have. Today was a huge spike up. 20% higher than our highest day ever 4 days ago. No leveling on deaths yet. Bummer. Looks like we will close the day at 2400+ dead. For those tracking the IHME model, that’s 500 more than the peak it predicted happened a few days ago. That model currently predicts about 70,000 deaths by July in this wave, which would mean 50,000 more people die in the next 10 weeks. We all want to back to work but think on that number. It’s staggering.

Wow you're right about CT. I missed their caseload. Another NYT Metro casualty. NPR is just using the IHME data if I remember right.

US deaths today are likely to be near or to set a new high. [Edit--a new high by a lot.] What we are seeing everywhere is that there is no sharp decrease after reaching a high like many models predicted. This lingers a while. There is a good article in the NY Times about new treatment approaches in the last month. With 2M patients, we are learning quickly what works best. Ventilators are the last resort now, while other breathing methods are working well. NY, NJ, PA, and much of the northeast is peaking now and may well open sooner, but an early opening just puts at risk anything we accomplished by shutting down in the first place. “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won, that would be the greatest loss of all." - Donald Trump. Florida with a peak projected in early May (send a note of thanks to your moronic governor) and much higher death tolls still to come will take longer. Florida could end up with the 2nd highest death toll in the US by the time this is over, even more than NJ. Only MA will have a shot at beating it for #3, and it probably will (a really special note of thanks to that horrible governor, who left Boston open for 10(?) days after NYC shut down). The peaking of states at different times like this, so staggered, is a direct result of the failure of a national plan. We now will be in this much longer than we needed to because of the poor decision of some governors and the deference given to them. (I see that Hapless beat me to the punch on Florida.)

But if you’ve gotten to that distance, you’re not keeping the social distance in their methodology. If you’re 12 feet away from someone outdoors it’s probably fine. Inside maybe less so. They may lack the ability to tighten that to 6 feet but the reasoning is sound. More “hits” inside 13 feet is bad. Less is good. A bit arbitrary but not the worst metric.

The issue arising in many places is that seasonal towns lack the medical and other (think groceries) infrastructure for off season surges of people. And of course, the locals don’t want you spreading the disease you’re bringing from the big city to their small towns.

Methodology. https://www.unacast.com/post/rounding-out-the-social-distancing-scoreboard

The Trump appointee, the conservative 5th Circuit, and the Texas Governor don’t agree with that extreme position. Times of war and times of national pandemic have allowed for suspension of certain constitutional rights. Historical fact.

Where I am, we are even walking dogs in masks and it’s nearly 100% at stores. As the social normalcy and pressure around it builds, it will happen. We all want our lives back. One small thing to do to get there is to wear the damn mask.

FoxNews quotes the Surgeon General talking about tracing contacts. As far as I know, this is the first mention of this from anyone in the Executive branch. Really good to see this--it means they are discussing the importance of this behind closed doors. But if he's floating it publicly, there's more to come.

Scotch Rye Bourbon Angostora Bitters Martini Dry Vermouth I can drink my Rye Manhattans while I grill and sip bourbon and scotch in the evenings.

Hapless has been quoting a geneticist (Bedford, also quoted often in this piece) early in this thread. Turns out that most of the CV-19 cases we have here came from European travelers, according to two separate studies. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html A travel ban for Europe in Jan would have made a big difference but we didn’t know Europe was ahead of us by a few weeks. Amazing science here.

For sure. The fatalities dropping is the last number that will go down. Is not predictive at all. It is the last number that will reflect the results of our distancing. But in spite of its accuracy issues, it is maybe the most reliable data point for how this is progressing. There is very little to trust in case counting, for all the reasons people mention here. I watch it, but only the grossest movements in the case counts are noteworthy. For example in Italy, there has been a definite drop in new cases. That is very good and should proceed the death drop by a few weeks.

That’s why I focus on deaths as the most reliable indicator of progress. It’s a lagging indicator for sure but the most accurate measure of progress we have. And they are undercounting deaths too where people die and they never tested them alive, and they don’t test the corpse to save a test. Still, It is our cleanest number. Hospitalizations were an ok measure but so many people are being told to stay home that in places over their capacity, that number is grossly underreported.

People were saying the same thing about Georgia and Boston 2 days ago and now they doubled in 2 days. Maybe Florida will get lucky and not follow the pattern of every other populous state besides California but you might want to calm your tone on that point for the moment. Edit: Florida has the 6th (or 10th depending on the source) most deaths in the US so far and climbing. More than Pennsylvania and it shut down 2 weeks after most of PA, so it's not exactly going swimmingly.

Yesterday's numbers in Spain and Italy continue the long, long, long period of level numbers in those countries. I thought the deaths would level and then drop. That hasn't happened. Level has come and hung on for almost 17 days now. The UK climbs. In the US, we had a giant spike yesterday to nearly but not quite 2000 deaths, and are well on our way to a similar outcome today. It was a broad jump with many states showing big leaps. CT, MI, MA, LA, IL, GA all popping up as it appears NY and NJ will not be the only hotspots as we had hoped. GA and MA, which closed very late, have been surging.

"Report" Journalists weep.

Understand from who? There's not been evidence that it will even though politicians have said they believe it will. Where there are lots of bodies and bad healthcare, this thing will catch fire. Think: India. ^^^--Things that will never happen, or at least not happen on a scale large enough to create a problem. People would rather have Big Brother in their pocket than give up their phones, even the most Libertarian among us.

You may be right but the death count nationwide may be 100% more today than yesterday when you wake up tomorrow. It will be over 2000 for sure but it's not clear what the total will be. After a few days of level death counts, that leveling is getting blown out of the water with today's data. I'll post the charts in the morning but it's going to be a tough one, and if Italy is any indication, the death toll, once it levels, stays level for 2-3 weeks. The warnings of a tough week ahead were right on target. Seeing rises in MA and GA (two of the last states to shut down so they will surge later) and also MI. Lesser surges everywhere else and NYS had a record day in deaths too. To give an indication, as I type, we are at 1942 deaths for the day. Here is the historic count through yesterday: What we've done to our healthcare workers cannot happen twice. And what we are doing to all the other patients who cannot get the normal care they need also can't happen twice. People need to STFU and accept tracking until we are clear of this, and we need a national plan. That is the ONLY way this doesn't happen again, and worse the next time.

There is already a pitchfork-weilding legion that thinks the models were terrible and the modelers should have their heads on spikes. As if being wrong on the high side in this kind of situation that has been horrible is a bad thing.

That's the advice because we lack the ability to test, going to the hospital is more dangerous now, and PPE for testers is so limited. In getting back to work, we should have so many tests lying around, they should be like breath mints.

We will reopen in the reverse that we closed I hope. rural to metro car transport to public businesses where distancing is possible in part to those where its not local schools to national universities restaurants to conventions local travel to regional to world limited seating sports to full stadium Or something like the above. Of course, without any guidance, this will be left up to every state. So if Iowa wants its huge state fair, they have it. I do not know how they reopen New York. It only works one way. Lots of crowds everywhere.

The Commerce Clause thinks the Tenth Amendment is cute.