I’m torn.
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Grunching somewhat but the optimism in this thread seems very odd to me. If we had 35k new cases a day or infinity more the stats would look like they look. The testing is currently maxed out at less than 100k tests a day so it’s basically impossible for the official stats to go any higher than current regardless of what is really happening. Like maybe it just so happens that our actual peak stats happen to occur at our testing limits but that seems really doubtful. It is way way more likely that cases/deaths from Covid-19 just aren’t getting reported accurately than thinking we hit some kind of peak today.
We will end up worse than Italy and it isn’t going to be particularly close imo.
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I have no idea how hard it is for call centers to wfh, I do know it’s been done.
When you described slowness of the VPN as the main culprit that sounded to me like they just didn’t want to shell out for the hardware/bandwidth until they absolutely had to.
Yeah. They shelled out late.
I can be equal parts pissed at the company for taking so long, and admiring towards the IT guys who’ve been putting in 18 hour days over the last month to get this up and running.
I have layers I guess.
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Yea I ain’t optimistic. I mean NYC is approaching their peak. But then you got NJ, Michigan, New Orleans, Florida, Georgia, Texas, etc. And than after all that, it could be another 10-20 hot spots.
Not to mention American half assed “social distancing” is a far cry from what they did in Italy or most of Western Europe for that matter.
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What I really really want to know - and I have no idea how to find this out - is if Ford/GM are still going through with their plans to build more ventilators. And are we trying to source them from anywhere else as much as we can?
Because none of those will get here in time for the first wave. And we all know Trump doesn’t want to shell out money for an ounce of prevention.
So if they’re still going full steam ahead trying to load up 100k ventilators into the national stockpile or w/e, that would tell me they’re thinking about an even bigger second wave.
Which could confirm my theory that they’re going to try some kind of long tail push through this thing, possibly with only the vulnerable trying to isolate themselves. And hydroxychloroquine of course.
For whatever reason Louisiana went from the next disaster spot to supposedly peaking now. I don’t understand it either.
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The models are mostly based on the stats. The stats have flatlined for several days now. Overall testing has also basically flatlined for several days now.
So that could mean everything has changed and we peaked earlier than expected. It could also mean that the stats are just a function of how much we test rather than reality. Only time will really tell.
Yea I bet in the end, it’s gonna be some city way off the radar that gets hit the hardest. Like Salt Lake City or Fargo or some shit and we are like WTF?
I’m assuming the IHME guys took that into account.
Maybe for covid to truly go nuts - you you need cold, high population density, and a high prevalence of multi-generational households or a housing clusters in close proximity. (FWIW - I have read exactly that about a huge problem being the family housing clusters in China, and I have posted stuff about it liking cold air, population density is a given.)
Kid catches a mild version on the train/bar/work - comes home and blasts his parents and grandparents with a much worse infection because they get a massive viral load. I think that the secondary infection (the person getting it from someone in the household) possibly being much worse - because of the higher viral load - could explain a lot.
Queens is getting hit the hardest in NYC - lots of immigrants. I worry about LA too - still pretty high population density and lots of immigrants. It’s not cold here but has been 50ish for a while.
Oh yeah and nursing homes. Worst possible scenario - all the vulnerable people gathered together - with young healthy people coming and going and mixing among the nursing homes.
So are all the anecdotal stories of people not being able to get tested (I’m sure we all know a few) total bs or are they accounted for somehow in these models? I’m legitimately asking because I don’t know. It seems a lot more likely based on what I know from a lot of health care workers (my wife is an ICU nurse) that lots and lots of people with and dying from COVID-19 aren’t being tested and counted than the stats somehow matching up with reality.
If the models are based on the stats only without accounting for this then of course they have changed significantly in the last week. The stats have basically flatlined along with the testing.
The other factor here, which you alluded to, is that this thing isn’t over until a majority of us have had it or have been vaccinated from it. In the scenerio where we only have 35k actual new cases a day we are in for a much longer slog with this thing than if it is spreading much more rapidly. So if we are actually flattening the curve it will likely save a lot of human life but it should prolong the time to the actual end of this thing.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say - but the nightmare scenario was hospitals completely overrun - like North Italy - in say a dozen US cities including NYC - maybe even rural areas. There would be no way to hide that. You’d know if it was happening.
I live in a city with a population of about 110k people and we have 18 confirmed positives that have came in just the last week or so. It’s really just getting stated here and I think this is the same for most smaller North American cities. If this is really somehow peaking now I think it will be a longer sustained peak and for sure the hardest hit could be anywhere.
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This should be obvious to most, but isn’t. What would this thread be if not for jumping to conclusions based on whatever article one happened to read or whichever (incomplete) stats were just released.
The other factor is this:
I’m not sure if Spanish Flu and Corona will behave similarly, but if we look at the “flatten the curve” scenario here, then in late Oct/early Nov we’d all be telling ourselves “phew, the worst of it is over, cases/deaths are going down”. Only for it to hit even harder in December.
Even if the data was highly accurate (it’s not) and NYC, Seattle, etc. were going down in cases, I don’t think it necessarily means all that much and in that scenario they’ll probably lighten up on social distancing and get slammed even harder a month or 2 later.
What I’m trying to say is pretty simple. We aren’t that far along the curve in most places. We really don’t know much about where we are outside of NY because the testing is so limited. So sure it’s possible we are near a peak everywhere. It’s also possible we are actually just at the testing peak in most places. That and models are only as good as the data you feed into them.
As far as the hospitals being overrun we have basically one city who has really been hit hard by this. We threw everything we had at that one city and we may get lucky and never overrun NY. Now what happens when they are still having 500+ deaths a day and 4-5 other cities go down that path?
I also think it is a little hard to say NY isn’t actually overrun when they are having pretty close to an Italy death toll every day themselves. Like people obviously have a hospital bed to lay in but I have a hard time thinking everyone is getting top notch care with probably doctors/nurses/equipment being spread as thin as it sounds like it is.
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Also, in 1918 STL was shutting down public gatherings just 2 days after the first reported case. How many cities in the USA have done that? Very few. This thing is just getting started and the results will probably be pretty brutal once the red states who have been late to the social distancing party or haven’t arrived at all take their turn.
I’m not sure I believe the cold air hypothesis. Alaska doesn’t even have 200 cases. You’d think cities like Anchorage or Fairbanks would have more cases. The key to me seems to be social distancing is the biggest factor.
Boggles my mind that there were that few cases on March 15th in New York. This weird time delay we all struggle with going through this.