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

They’re not wrong

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Looks like Florida is ready to open. Only 30 new cases yesterday!

(headpoint.jpg Can’t have any CV cases if you don’t test)

Why is no one ever reporting new cases per test? Just telling us the # of new cases is so useless.

Not every state is run by assholes. Washington shows daily testing + positive rate:

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So just to continue playing your wet blanket on this, and again I think it’s probably more likely than not there’s something to the mutation thing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/researchers-hypothesize-that-a-highly-contagious-strain-of-the-coronavirus-is-spreading-but-other-experts-remain-skeptical/2020/05/05/db90d790-8ee7-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html

“If there were to be something that influenced transmissibility, then the spike protein is the place I expect to find it,” said William Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist who specializes in the evolution of infectious diseases.

But Hanage, like many other outside researchers, was not convinced this mutation actually affects the virus’ ability to infect people. Though the mutated form has become the dominant strain, that could be a consequence of a “founder effect,” Hanage said.

When the mutated version arrived in northern Italy, an older and more susceptible population was unable to contain it. “It’s the fox that got into the henhouse,” Hanage said.

Hanage pointed to Washington state, where the virus was recognized relatively early and public health measures have proved effective at reducing cases. Both strains were circulating in the state by mid-March — and now, cases of both strains appear to be falling at the same rate. If the European strain really were more transmissible, he would expect it to crowd out all other versions.

One prominent scientist, Stanley Perlman, a virologist at the University of Iowa who played a role in naming the coronavirus, said Tuesday that the Los Alamos study looks credible.

“It certainly looks like it is more readily transmissible. Viruses mutate to become more transmissible, but not generally to become more virulent (unless this enhances transmissibility),” Perlman said in an email.

David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, said the most interesting feature of the Los Alamos research is that the same pattern was seen in multiple locations. But he said “significant caution is warranted” because the data was not collected randomly. The vast majority of SARS-CoV-2 genomes in online databases come from Europe and North America, meaning strains from these regions are overrepresented in research.

One criticism of the Los Alamos hypothesis is that there could be other explanations for why one strain of a virus becomes dominant. University of Wisconsin virologist Thomas Friedrich, who has spent years studying the evolution and transmission of the Zika virus, said a virus that makes its way into a highly susceptible population — for example, Europe in January — will spread like wildfire, quickly becoming the dominant strain in the region.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it picked up a mutation that boosts its ability to infect people. It could mean the virus just got lucky — and humans got caught off-guard.

When the Zika virus migrated across the Pacific to the Americas and began to cause birth defects, scientists thought it may have picked up some kind of “microcephaly mutation” right when the outbreak in the Americas began, Friedrich said.

Experiments showed the virus strain did carry a mutation, and was able to cause nerve tissue damage when it was injected into mouse brains. But when scientists were able to study other variants, they found many of them also had the ability to harm fetuses. What made the virus strain in the Americas so dangerous wasn’t the mutation, but that people on this side of the Pacific had no immunity.

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Minimal Tuesday bump

Daily confirmed COVID hospital and nursing home deaths since peak (from Cuomo press conference)
April 8: 799
April 9: 777
April 10: 783
April 11: 758
April 12: 671
April 13: 778
April 14: 758
April 15: 606
April 16: 630
April 17: 540
April 18: 507
April 19: 478
April 20: 481
April 21: 474
April 22: 438
April 23: 422
April 24: 437
April 25: 367
April 26: 337
April 27: 335
April 28: 330
April 29: 306
April 30: 289
May 1: 299
May 2: 280
May 3: 226
May 4: 230
May 5: 232

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That wasn’t the mortality rate for people with Covid. It was the Covid mortality rate for everyone. Over 1% of New Yorkers over 75 have died from this.

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My son’s hair is getting long. Thinking of giving him a rat tail when this is all over. Good look to bring back imo

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Disagree lol. The bowl cut/rat tail era was awful.

There are way too many olds that are reliant upon help from younger people, both family and professionals. How many people who are their parents primary caregivers are going to be forced back to work? How many professionals are willing to quarantine as much as possible because their jobs require helping the olds?

A friend of mind felt sick over the weekend, scheduled a test at USC on Monday, got results today:

This is how you do it right imo. Everyone who wants a test should be able to get one. Of course red states are going to keep up with the fuckery.

She said her and the roomie (both late 40s) had a “day of shopping” about a week ago. Although the roomie is a dude and they sleep together so I didn’t want to ask her how sure she was he’s not out dipping his pen in other ink.

Symptoms:

-No smell/taste (since Sat eve)
-Occasional cough Sunday
-Coughed most of the night Monday night
-Dull Body Aches since Tuesday morning
Feeling better today
Pretty mild over all

She said the roomie has it really bad. Saw his dead relatives last night. That’s what I worry about more than dying. How long until that guy will be able do stuff like hiking on a mountain?

Rsigley also probably got it at a crowded grocery store in Vegas.

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I visited here back in 09 for a company management training class. We travelled to plant sites and got tours and to learn about how those sites operated.

We were at an food oils plant. The plant manager was complaint because he was in the middle between the soybean crush plant (his supplier) and the specialty sauces and oil plant (his customer). He want permitted to make much profit on his books as the intermediate.

At that time they blended the different oils and served as the 100% supply for McD McNugget oil. Even had extra storage on site for disruption insurance.

So I said the chicken was really the guy in the middle. Fed the soybean meal. Cooked in the oil. Dunked in the Sauces. And no profit at all for the chicken.

Insane amount of chicken processing within a 50 mile radius.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/trump-loving-georgia-governor-issues-dire-covid-19-warning-less-than-two-weeks-after-grand-reopening/

Lots of olds and high risk people need to work and I doubt we come up with a stimulus for those specific people

https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1258056904502378499?s=20

Run the winning lotto numbers during reruns of Muder She Wrote?

Ya that part doesn’t seem to be landing really. 1 in 400 or .25% or so of all people in NYC have already died from Covid-19. Not that percentage of people who had it, but literally .25% of the entire population is already dead in 2 months. The true IFR can’t be .2. If literally 100% of people had been infected already it wouldn’t be .2.

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Santa Clara county is doing this as well.

It’s legit encouraging here, as testing is trending up (the downward trend in the last 3 days is mainly data lag and figures to be revised upwards as we go) and new cases down. California’s problems at this point are basically all in SoCal, and LA county in particular, which has about half of CA’s cases and about 2/3 of CA’s total deaths but only about 1/4 of it’s population.

Things still pretty tame in Tarrant County (Fort Worth and Arlington). Although new cases keep climbing.