COVID-19 (2): Turns out it's going to be pretty bad actually

I think most of Vegas isn’t actually in Vegas, right? So she doesn’t actually have a say over most of Vegas including the strip.

Also, whether they open up or not, who the fuck would go to Vegas right now?

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It’s quite the riddle.

It’s possibly relevant that as of Monday, March 16, NY had 950 positives on 5,493 tests (+/- 17.2%). California had 335 positives on 8,316 tests (4%).

A 17% positive rate vs a 4% positive rate is a major difference, perhaps indicative of an order of magnitude more total cases in NY at that time than in California.

And now, with a much larger population tested in each state, we have NY with an order of magnitude more confirmed cases than California (and about 14x more deaths). New York’s overall positive rate has climbed to ~35% since then, and California’s to 11%.

In other words, there’s not necessarily anything inconsistent here. Community transmission and deaths were happening in California in February, but if there’s a “weaker strain” element it doesn’t really show up in the stats that clearly. It was already obvious when we got the first usable stats in early March that NY was dealing with a much worse outbreak than CA was, and since that time the data have played out pretty much like we’d expect in each state.

2 cats have tested positive in the US

we could test humans instead but nope

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Damn you coronovirus

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1252999110904500225?s=21

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It kinda makes sense. I had a couple buddies who chain smoked in their apartment in Seattle. Looking out their windows was like looking through tar-colored brown stained glass. The whole place just felt like it was coated with tar.

If that’s what their lungs look like - it doesn’t seem like it would be a good place for a virus to bear purchase.

Trying to do a little digging into the idea of a “weaker strain” theory.

Sadly, nursing homes would be a decent comparison. How does the mortality rate for a hard-hit nursing home in CA compare with one in NY?

Here’s the worst one I can find in CA. 16 deaths in a 95 bed facility. 17% fatality rate.

In New York, this appears to be the worst. 55 deaths in a 364-bed facility, or 15.1%.

However, in NY this seems much closer to the norm–lots of nursing homes have dozens of deaths. In California, many more facilities have some cases and only a few deaths.

We need more data from California to confirm, but nothing I see is super compelling that CA has a much less deadly strain than NY. Only that CA shut down relatively sooner in the course of the pandemic than NY did. I don’t think there’s a get of of jail free card re: weaker strains. Just that NYC was a uniquely vulnerable place, and has been uniquely hard hit as a result.

I think I proposed this a month ago. Errors are made on replication. The more replication the more errors. The more transmission the more replications the more errors and the more chance a positive mutation (positive as in reproductive success) being able to spread.

There is an element of competition if the two variants are going after the same hosts (same geography and immunity to one confers immunity to the other). Here speed wins. Once the substrate (warm human bodies) runs low then efficiency wins. This could be herd immunity, vaccination, social distancing.

Now if I can just lift my huge head carrying this big brain. Seriously most posters here are really smart. The current topic lines up with the expertise of a few of us. If we were talking stock trading I’d be the one asking questions. I just toss my money in index funds and forget it.

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Remember it’s not just weaker but also less contagious - in the paper ChrisV posted.

At some point, when the right realizes they were disproportionately impacted by this, they will convince themselves it had nothing to do with their lack of social distancing. Instead they’ll decide it was engineered by communist Joe Biden in a lab under a taco joint in New York City to kill conservatives by targeting their bigger brains.

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Anyone else feel their mood significantly darkening over the last few days?

I can’t really place what it is that is finally doing it other than a sense of dread/doom over once again the dumbest faction of our society getting their way and getting OPEN FOR BUSINESS and starting to really internalize what that means for our collective reality. And how insanely fucking stupid we are as a society and nation to be handling it the way we are. If I have been an ass to anyone here outside of wirelessbro I apologize. I can truly say I have never been more pessimistic about my own and the people I care about’s futures than I do today. And that is not a good place to be.

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Does the fact that people are contagious and moving around for such a long period of time mess with the R calculations? Like if the flu knocks you on your ass after one day of being contagions and had an R of 4, that would mean you infected an average of 4 people per day, but with COVID, you’d be infecting one person every two days with the same R… Doesn’t this mean it’s not exactly that contagious? Just that it has a long time to infect other people?

Yes, very much. I only feel like sitting down and staring at a wall when I should be working or doing something more constructive. I have to force myself to go for a walk or run, even when it’s dry and sunny like it’s been here this week.

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Did you say bear purchase?? This gives me an idea for a new Netflix series which will surely be a hit.

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Yeah. I’m holding judgement on this. Staying in the speculation column for me, though glad to see some evidence. Fingers crossed though. Certainly not far-fetched.

The totality of damage it can do is awe-inspiring from a biological standpoint. Pretty damn fear inspiring as a human and potential host.

The thing that gets me is when people discount it and say “see the IFR is only 0.5%. Shit that’s what makes it a perfect spreader. If it really a lot deadlier it would burn itself out. Those non-self-confining symptoms, lack of symptoms, and long infective period combined with the eventual damage in a few percent (and maybe even in the mild cases). Wow.

I’m not trying to be a dick, but you’ve been blasting out apocalyptic hot takes for weeks now.
I don’t know if it’s therapeutic for you, but it’s often pretty jarring to read.

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It is known that nicotine suppresses ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme 2) which is the principal receptor molecule for Covid19

The study

ACE2

I have a patch on now. 14mg. I’m thinking I should switch back to the 21mg patch, or just slap another patch on my other arm. Maybe my legs too!

Should we start our own conspiracy theory?

Just put out info that says 80% of victims in the US were 2016 Trump voters. Proof that the virus is God’s wrath for supporting such an immoral man as president. Tell them how there is a hidden 666 in Trumps hairline and prove it with doctored photos.

Hey they seem to be somewhat turning against him, might as well give them a push.

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They’re probably thinking only of their chances of surviving it if infected and not the chances of getting infected in the first place.

I mean that is what I really think is going to happen. I don’t see any rational viewpoint that you can defend with what we currently know that keeps this from being absolutely catastrophic from an economic standpoint and a loss of life standpoint (maybe not millions but 100k+ is a lock in USA #1).

We have literally not had a single thing knock us off pretty close to our worst case trajectory for like 2 months now, which is .5% of 60-70% of us getting it at dying and the economy suffering right along with it. We might have delayed it some with this 45 day lockdown but the reality didn’t change much. You can call that apocolyptic all you want I think that is probably the reality we are looking at and see no evidence that points in any other direction.

Hopefully I am wrong. I want to be wrong.

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