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

Well for one thing, the US would have started taking precautions in January. Testing would have been through the roof and WA, CA, and NYC would have been locked down before it got out of hand.

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The simple answer is that exponential growth takes time to hit noticeable levels. You need a lot of doublings from that one guy who came over from Wuhan with it to literally have any noticeable effect. Especially when you have 14+ day incubation periods and 30 days from infection to death. Probably lots of people died around the world from Dec-early Feb and were just coded pneumonia or whatever. I know my wife (ICU nurse) was talking about how bad the flu/pnemonia season was long before covid really seriously got on anyone’s radar here.

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I mean if we’re talking about like R 3.0 or whatever, what’s the variance there? It could be plausible that if you only introduce a handful of carriers to a population, it will die out before spreading significantly some percentage of the time.

Yes, I remember that was a Santa Clara County woman, heart attack victim, who died February 6th, and only reexamined two weeks ago.

Since its symptoms mostly look like a bad case of other respiratory infections it’s no wonder this thing went under the radar for as long as it did before anyone noticed it was something new. Probably lots of COVID-19 cases were misclassified as the flu or whatever.

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Not making any direct point, but it helps to remember that Sweden and Finland are relatively small countries. Sweden going for herd immunity is like Georgia doing it; Finland going for herd immunity is like Minnesota going for it. In so far as they are sovereign countries in control over their public health policy vs. our states that are impacted by federal policies, they are interesting test cases, but still small. Like if Finland decides to yolo it assuming a .5 ifr or whatever, that could turn out to a lower total deaths number than say Italy or NYS has already endured.

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It’s shockingly easy for pneumonia to kill a person without knowing what virus caused the initially caused the infection. If it’s not one of the handful of viruses we routinely test for it just gets put down as pneumonia (unspecified). There were essentially no tests done outside of Asia before January, so it’s not really surprising a few seemingly random cases are being found after the fact.

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That would make too much sense

No it’s infrastructure week.

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I thought Cali was late January.

Part of it is dumb luck. Some infection chains don’t get started. Some infect 50. The person infected Maybe isolated due to symptoms or deteriorated so rapidly that they didnt pass the infection.

I would think the thing could stay out of sight if it circulated in a non risk population the first couple of weeks and maybe the stray illness get listed as something else. Homeless or aged victims might not have been autopsied and just chalked up to flu.

All of the above is speculation. I’m in the camp that maybe it was In the US at the turn of the new year but doubtful. I don’t see any reason to believe earlier at this point. New info could easily sway me.

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Where is what’s his name? Did he eat a ban?

https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/1257453326423273473?s=21

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Meanwhile, Y’all Qaeda:

Nates been pissing me off the last couple of weeks but he did good with this one.

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1257476755574718470?s=21

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1257477043970887682?s=21

You can get some chemistry that’s second order with a squared term. But biological growth is almost always exponential.

Some solid state systems (solid mass of mold) has a cube term because only the surfaces get enough oxygen to grow.

But virus growth and spread is e^fu. And Ln(fu)=Jared and whatever crackpot is doing his curve fitting.

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It’s the furthest back bencher economics team for the Trump White House. Their only skill in the 30 years of their career is how to make lines on a graph match whatever whoever will pay them the most wants

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Apparently the data nerd police is on it. Best one so far.

https://twitter.com/daniel2e/status/1257433146896912388?s=21

Suggest that you search cubic model on the tweet box. Lots of lolz.

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Admission. I still get confused between you, Jbro and Jalfrazi. It’s the J thing.

I just have this general sense that there’s some kind of Jdrama going down.

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You’ve got him mixed up with jmakin.

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I don’t even get why you’d call it a ‘cubic model’ when polynomial model sounds so much fancier.

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Australian intelligence agencies have questioned evidence trumpeted by United States officials supposedly linking the coronavirus to a Wuhan laboratory as concerns within the government grow that the push will derail efforts to eliminate dangerous wildlife wet markets.

Senior members of the Australian intelligence community told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age a research document shared in political circles under the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement was mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering.

A 15-page “dossier” has been widely quoted by local and international media about China’s alleged cover-up of the virus. Australian intelligence officials have since identified a research report which was based entirely on open source material. The officials said it was likely the reports were the same.

United States secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Sunday there is “enormous evidence” the coronavirus outbreak originated in the Chinese laboratory but did not provide any facts to back up his assertion. Mr Pompeo also said he agreed that the virus was not man-made.

Multiple senior intelligence sources who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in recent days have confirmed that Australia has still not been provided with any evidence that strongly suggests the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak. Intelligence agencies have not been able to rule out the Wuhan lab, but the more likely cause of the virus is still the city’s Huanan Seafood Market where environmental samples of the virus were found.

Surprise surprise. Pompeo gives Trump a run for his money as a bullshit artist.

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Jmakin stood out…