Sundancer

Bill Gates today in the Washington Post on making up for lost time in our response.

I posted that video without intent in creating a controversy about where I read it (I try to mention sources where possible...most of mine come from the NYT and WSJ but I go elsewhere too) and I’m glad people might see it. It’s a long but sensible take on how individuals can avoid this by just being diligent. My wife has us all following the recommendations from that religiously. I do think the political bashing is wrongly placed here. Anyone who has time to bash politicians for anything other than their actual actions related to this pandemic and not their party, tweets, or past actions, is wasting energy that they can save for closer to November. Pence saying that this will be "largely behind us" by Memorial Day aligns with what Gates was saying 10 days ago. That claim needs a national plan to go with it but it sounds possible with the right—and not hard—plan. Get the medical equipment in place, test the S*** out of everyone, and track contacts to squash outbreaks.

I believe it's coming. The admin has maintained the opinion that maintaining strict adherence to the (long-ignored) 10th Amendment is the way to go, but coming out of this, ONLY a national plan will work since we have proven that the state and local approach to quarantining is/was a clusterF.

I am not even sure it needs to be identical for all 50 states but it needs to be organized nationally so we don’t have idiots making self serving political decisions.

Pretty good site tracking just NYS and NYC data. I've been wanting to tease out the NYS data from the US to see how much it's contributing the the numbers. https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-statistics-tracking-epidemic-new-york

Your governor and the MA governor are morons but that's now in the past, and this is why we need a national plan moving out of this with testing and human movement tracking.

For sure. The US will spike in geographies from the cites outwards, not likely at once as a country, which may create a longer period of leveling once we get there. But our spread and lifestyles (driving culture...living in houses and not high rises--both true even for most city folk outside NYC) may make our situation not as bleak as we are seeing in some of Europe. I note the interesting test case in Sweden, which in many ways is a lot more like the majority of the US geographically and even in cities, in terms of lifestyle, and is currently open for socially distant business. What's happening there may change but it may serve as a realistic beacon for how to exit the quarantines eventually. Places like India, I weep for in advance. I really worry about my friends there. Here are the UK and Spain deaths...UK numbers are not level yet but Spain maybe is.

The daily country watch. Italy is definitely leveling and I look forward to seeing how long it stays here and then drops. I will use China...even though I think their data is BS, to say that the drop happened pretty fast after the leveling. This makes sense since the effect of the quarantines take a little time to work through the system. It's like when you shut off the valve for your hose. Its flows for a few seconds like normal but it goes to zero pretty fast thereafter. Big jumps in cases and deaths in the US yesterday...not sure if that reflects some underreporting from the day before or if that's right. There was a footnote on potential underreporting from the day before in this data. NYS alone added 2500 and 200 more cases and deaths respectively than the day before. So the big leaps are still happening in NYS. Oh and Spain continues to perhaps see leveling too. (I am having trouble pasting Spain but you can see it here.)

The test tube experiment optimism should always be tempered with, “You know what else kills this in a test tube? Bleach!” It hurts to let these run their course but we have little choice. Tonight’s doom and gloom headlines bring nothing new. Nada. It would be good if they just said that instead of getting more eyeballs by trumpeting this report.

Anecdotal and correlative, but which countries have the crazy citizens who wear masks in public and which don't? I don't doubt his advice in here may be sound, but lessons learned from China's response and "success" is not something I buy. The China story is a little too storybook for my taste, but I do hope they have been forthright.

Continued daily data on US, Italy, and Spain (for now). Leveling in Italy continues to look like a real trend (being level on daily deaths is *not* great...but it's at least better). US and Spain haven't been level yet for long enough to indicate a real trend.

My senior is pretty bummed about missing all the senior things and very concerned about the coming fall semester being remote at UPenn (yay her!!).

Interesting article today in the NY Times tracking trends in fevers from a company that sells thermometers that upload their data to the web. Social distancing orders and closures have had a measurable effect on their data nationwide with fever trends declining everywhere. This is not just covid but every other fever. It's a great data point, not that we need more, about the effectiveness of distancing. But also a great data point about the need for more data and tracking. This kind of data would be a great predictor of regional outbreak. The company maps and trends are here. Edit: Ha. Hapless beat me to it while I slept. Well it can be discussed here.

With as many people out of work as there are, grocery worker jobs should be fine. I don't see the food part of our supply chain being a problem, though I think we are likely to keep seeing shortages of certain items, especially those that come from other countries and/or are more dependent on seasonal migrant labor (someone posted a Mother Jones article about this last point somewhere here). My bigger concern for society is the long term effect on the economy. That will last unless we get a nationally coordinated plan on place to test and track asap. The admin refuses to nationally institute a plan or any tracking talk. Not turning this to politics specifically but more looking to solutions, and that still seems the only practical long term path out. (MA and FL, which closed very late are seeing spikes now they could have avoided absent stubborn governors).

Exercise outdoors allowed. Also walking dogs.

VA: “Stay at home” until June 10 order. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcwashington.com/news/coronavirus/virginia-gov-northam-issues-stay-at-home-order/2258486/%3famp MD issues indefinite date stay at home order. Those dates will tank the economy in a way we are only seeing hints of right now. The 2-3 week extensions may be psychologically preferable.

I am guessing that our desire for Faster impact of anything on this will have countries producing vaccines and treatments before the full trials are complete. Given the circumstances this makes sense but I sure hope the trials bear out any optimism.

The gloves are just an extra layer of protection and should be treated as contaminated the instant they are out in. And when you take them off, it should be done carefully and immediately be followed by the through hand wash to elbows. The best thing about the gloves for me is that they remind me not to touch my face.

Keeping this going. I agree that the "case count" is still dubious. I know someone who got CV-19 in the NYC area. Everyone is fine but only one member of the house got tested, and the other 3 did not, so the 3 don't show up in the statistics. This is happening all over and it is warping a lot of statistics (cases and contagiousness may be higher, fatality and hospitalization is definitely lower than can be known based on just tested cases). Nevertheless, Italy's deaths continue to appear to be leveling and so do its diagnosed cases. ITALY In the US, here are the numbers...no sign of any leveling in deaths yet (the death numbers don't include yesterday because apparently the reporting out of NYS was incomplete--not a knock just what they noted in the data). Adding Spain to the watchlist for comparison:

Nothing surprising here but I’m glad to see more and more people mentioning tracking as one of the prerequisites to reopening the economy. Still haven’t seen this come up from the administration, or an actual plan to do the tracking, but only with a national effort can it work. It could be a month before the other 4 factors are ready, if our healthcare system can keep up and not get swamped in April. “When we see a state or region have numbers that go down over time, and when we have diagnostics in place, and when we have masks available for all of our doctors and nurses who are putting their lives at risk to take care of sick patients, and hospitals are well-prepared, and when we can get our public health systems in place to start tracing or identifying individuals and start tracing their contacts, again like they do in Asia --- I think those five major conditions --- then I think it’s a time to begin to think about how we might experiment with lightening social distancing, perhaps one step at a time.” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/johns-hopkins-doctor-identifies-5-key-factors-for-relaxing-social-distancing

This could be true, although the lack of testing early may also have kept those numbers depressed. Case measurement remains a dubious measure so that's a good point made by you and another poster. Time will tell, but it's been between 600-900/day for almost a week (with the growth admittedly in the last few days). There needs to be a longer term trend to make a conclusion on that but we are not seeing big daily leaps like we still are in the US.

Agreed. The social distancing is helping though.

That's not what the 45% stat says but it is nevertheless not a great number that of the 20K of known and resolved cases, 45% were fatalities.

The case growth and death rate in Italy, while still high (900+/day deaths) is starting to show signs of leveling off. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/ Given the US's geography, our situation may not resemble Italy's so I am not sure we can make projections about when we will see leveling here. I hope because some places instituted lockdowns early (PA and Ohio seemed ahead of the curve), we may see it sooner in those areas. Reminder: These stats are WITH quarantine. The US deaths are showing no signs of leveling yet.

It doesn’t much matter. The other thread is a discussion thread now too. I was just trying to follow the original spirit of the thing. no way. Corona hair is real. Great vid. But oh white folk dancing sure can hurt!