Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2

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Belz... said:
Wait, wasn't it argued recently that we have to calculate mortality in proportion to cases? Which is it?
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Depends on what the purpose of the calculation is. If you're trying to determine how deadly the disease is, then calculating deaths as a proportion of cases is a sensible thing to do - as long as the data you have is reasonably reliable.

It has been repeatedly claimed that the number of cases in most (all ?) countries is 10 times the number claimed due to the fact that people aren't being tested enough. This has the result of artificially inflating the death rate. For example in the UK officially has had 305k cases and 46k deaths giving a fatality rate of 15%. The number of deaths is likely 20%+ understated but due to the fact that testing really hasn't attempted to cover the population as a whole, the number of cases is probably orders of magnitude wrong. Population antibody testing shows that somewhere between 5% and 10% of the UK population has been infected (3-6 million cases) and so the "true" death rate is somewhere under 1%.

If you want to measure how well a country is controlling deaths from Coronavirus then deaths as a proportion of population may be reasonable way of doing it provided that the number of deaths is reliable (in most developed countries, including the UK, it seems to be at least in the right ballpark even if it is under-counted by up to 20%), and that a comparable proportion of the population have been infected.
 
The Don said:
It has been repeatedly claimed that the number of cases in most (all ?) countries is 10 times the number claimed due to the fact that people aren't being tested enough.
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Just a second, though. That was a claim made early in the pandemic, and the claim was that the numbers could be up to 5-10 times higher. Presumably we've increased testing and that proportion is different now.
 
Belz... said:
Just a second, though. That was a claim made early in the pandemic, and the claim was that the numbers could be up to 5-10 times higher. Presumably we've increased testing and that proportion is different now.
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Depends on the testing strategy employed.

Here in the UK you typically only get a test if you have symptoms, a reason to assume that you have been exposed, are in a high risk group or are a key worker. Those tested are far more likely to have Coronavirus than the population at large and there's no attempt to do general testing of the whole population.


edited to add....

And if efforts of suppression have been successful, and the number of new cases is low, unless there is general testing of the population for who has had Coronavirus, not who currently has it, the failure to test during the peak of infection will mean that the total number of cases will still be understated.
 
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newyorkguy said:
First the Republicans pushed to have Red states reopen ahead of medical recommendations and now those states are seeing big increases in new cases. Now it's the schools. This is absolute madness.
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the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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Think about it a bit further. Especially in terms of the spread of an infectious disease.
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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It's called slowing the spread of the virus. Plus we only have a very small sample size regarding illness in children when gathered in groups. Unfortunately, this looks like an experiment we shall soon be conducting.
 
Belz... said:
Just a second, though. That was a claim made early in the pandemic, and the claim was that the numbers could be up to 5-10 times higher. Presumably we've increased testing and that proportion is different now.
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Sure but what does that buy you? Without timely contact tracing and isolation testing is only useful for documenting how bad things are getting.

The full process that works like this:
1) Lockdown until new cases per day reach a manageable number for contact tracing & isolation
2) Test extensively
3) Quarantine everyone who has been in contact with someone who tests +ve.

The States that are having problems are in trouble because they tried to bypass #1 and therefor are doomed to fail at #3 regardless of how much testing they do.
 
lomiller said:
Sure but what does that buy you? Without timely contact tracing and isolation testing is only useful for documenting how bad things are getting.
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Testing allows you to spot those you have to isolate or treat, and how many people have antibodies. It's not just a statistic.
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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Why you are throwing around number that is blindingly obviously made up?

Not to mention this argument ignores bigger picture. Even assuming that kid is very unlikely to die, it will infect everyone around - other kids, teachers, parents and by extension their families (including vulnerable members).
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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If you are going to go that route why not look at how much having a gun in the home leads to pediatric deaths.

Maybe people should all fill in their swimming pools.

You have no idea how many children will die from this disease because very few of them have been infected yet. We're only looking at ~6% of the population infected so far if you go by the percentage of tests coming back positive.

If we didn't have this lockdown there would be countless more people infected and dying.
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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The number of deaths per passenger-mile on commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles, while for driving, the rate was 1.5 per 100 million vehicle-miles for 2000, which is 150 deaths per 10 billion miles for comparison with the air travel rate.


There have been 228 children and teen deaths in the US since the epidemic began. I don't know exactly what those numbers work out to, but I don't think the US has 228 million people under the age of 18.

In addition to that, there is growing evidence that a lot of people who recover have long term problems.


I don't know the answer as to whether or not schools ought to open this fall. I won't pretend to say that there is an obvious choice, but what bugs the heck out of me about our country today is that people just make up numbers and base their decisions on those fantasy values. That wouldn't be so bad if it were just us yappers on the internet doing that, but the clown in the White House seems to do it as well. That's bad.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
If you are going to go that route why not look at how much having a gun in the home leads to pediatric deaths.

Maybe people should all fill in their swimming pools.

You have no idea how many children will die from this disease because very few of them have been infected yet. We're only looking at ~6% of the population infected so far if you go by the percentage of tests coming back positive.

If we didn't have this lockdown there would be countless more people infected and dying.
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See also the conversation Rolfe and I are having on the non-US version of this thread.

We're both discussing various Twitter idiots (often with the #KBF hashtag*) who have blocked one or other of us.


*"Keep Britain Free (from lockdown, masks... rationality) and founded by a multimillionaire who lives in Monaco for tax purposes, where he presumably complies with the local mask laws.
 
Gavin said:
the risk your children will die from #Covid is 1 in 1,000,000. If that’s too high a risk for you, then you should never put them in a car. Or let them outside, period.
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Do the kids leave the virus behind at school when they go home? It's been indicated that kids spread the virus at least as effectively as adults, and perhaps much more efficiently.
 
By the way, in the Swan interview trump mentions the "countries now having a major second wave." One was Spain. [See the graph below.] The others? In the Swan interview he identifies two more.
"Right now, right now, Spain is having a big spike. There are tremendous problems in the world. You look at Moscow, look at what’s going on with Moscow. Look at Brazil, look at these countries what’s going on." Transcript of trump-Jonathan Swan interview on rev dot com
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Of course Moscow isn't a country -- except it kinda is, right Dirtbag? -- but make America great? Thanks to trump, this is the company he's put us in with. Russia and Brazil. Maybe a little behind Russia and a bit ahead of Brazil. Sickening what he's done to us. :(
 

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Great essay by Ed Yong in the Atlantic with a heck of a sentence...

No one should be shocked that a liar who has made almost 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency would lie about whether the U.S. had the pandemic under control; that a racist who gave birth to birtherism would do little to stop a virus that was disproportionately killing Black people; that a xenophobe who presided over the creation of new immigrant-detention centers would order meatpacking plants with a substantial immigrant workforce to remain open; that a cruel man devoid of empathy would fail to calm fearful citizens; that a narcissist who cannot stand to be upstaged would refuse to tap the deep well of experts at his disposal; that a scion of nepotism would hand control of a shadow coronavirus task force to his unqualified son-in-law; that an armchair polymath would claim to have a “natural ability” at medicine and display it by wondering out loud about the curative potential of injecting disinfectant; that an egotist incapable of admitting failure would try to distract from his greatest one by blaming China, defunding the WHO, and promoting miracle drugs; or that a president who has been shielded by his party from any shred of accountability would say, when asked about the lack of testing, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”
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Trump might give us a vaccine before the election, ready or not:
Under constant pressure from a White House anxious for good news and a public desperate for a silver bullet to end the crisis, the government’s researchers are fearful of political intervention in the coming months and are struggling to ensure that the government maintains the right balance between speed and rigorous regulation, according to interviews with administration officials, federal scientists and outside experts.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/...ogin-email&login=email&searchResultPosition=1
 
To poke at school reopening again... I think that this article, written by a middle school teacher, is worth adding to the conversation.

Parents: You’re Being Lied To

A very short summation of the points made is -

There will be no socialization.
Your kids are going to be unhappy.
Your kids will likely be taught by someone who is unqualified.
If your school doesn’t have air conditioning, your kids are going to cook.
Your kid is still going to be staring at a screen all day.
You’re about to have a teacher shortage.
The teachers aren’t on board.
This isn’t going to last.
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