https://twitter.com/screaminbutcalm/status/1105577845642878976
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Yeah having learnt his lesson from the bushfires, the PM just struck a tone of “we’re going to do what the experts say” and that has been popular. Australia’s conservatives are not typically as anti-intellectual as the movement has become in the US. I’d say the PM is roughly a Protestant version of Mitt Romney, ideologically, with added climate denial because Australia’s economy is so dependent on digging things up and selling them to China.
Victoria is a special case because the trajectory of the pandemic there has been so different to the rest of the country. The state government there screwed up hotel quarantining (the Health Minister resigned over it) and that was part of what led to the resurgence of the pandemic. I’m not surprised the opposition are trying to get political mileage out of it, I’m more surprised that it doesn’t seem to be working.
Private spending on elections in Australia is low by US standards, but high by international standards and getting worse. There are laws governing how much advertising can happen but they’re only relevant to traditional media. Both major parties get substantial public funding and corporate funding, and Labor additionally is funded by trade unions.
Last election was perhaps a harbinger of things to come, with this guy Clive Palmer spending enormous, US-style amounts on his United Australia Party. They didn’t win anything, but Palmer’s campaign was substantially anti-Labor, and after the election he claimed credit for the Coalition (conservative) victory. Whether there was any basis to that I have no idea.
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Data modeler update. My tl;dr: it’s what we expected.
October 26th COVID Update: The Third Surge
Short version: Death rates will start to climb this coming week and increase rapidly. We should anticipate seeing daily deaths in excess of 2,000 return briefly and 60-65,000 additional deaths by year’s end. I’m so sick of 2020.
tl;dr of course, and depressing AF. Take a deep breath.
I’m going to try to keep this relatively short. This is partly because I’ve been crazy busy in my real life of late, and partly because I’m trying to limit my own depression. Happy to answer questions in the comments.
As of today, more than 225,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in about eight months. This number is hard to relate to, so consider the following comparisons to get a better sense of the enormity of it:
- All flu deaths from 2014 to present (SIX seasons) combine to about 229,000 dead, slightly more than COVID in eight months. #nottheflu
- About 222,000 Americans have been murdered in the last FOURTEEN years (2006-2019)
- The capitol of Louisiana, Baton Rouge, has about 220,000 residents
- About 215,000 soldiers died in combat in the US Civil War (both sides combined)
- The three largest universities in the US (Texas A&M, UCF, and Ohio State) have a combined enrollment of 199,000
Finally, if all of the Americans who have been confirmed to have died from COVID formed a city of the dead, it would be the 99th largest city in the US by population.
The new model had predicted in my previous posts that case numbers would begin to rise again during the last week of September, which is what, unfortunately, has come to pass. The model further predicted as I’d previously posted that next week we would start to see an increase in deaths. Apologies that it took so long to share the write up and the full projections.
We now enter the third surge of the first wave of COVID-19 in the United States. God help us.
I’ve also included the previous model’s daily performance thus far. As you can see, model projections have improved and are matching outcomes reasonably precisely. You can also see from that visualization how far we are from the likely outcomes one would expect under stricter mitigation efforts. There are a few new assumptions that have been included in the model. The case mortality rate (percent of confirmed cases that perish) has fallen considerably over time from just over 4% to just below 2%. This is a function of both improvements in the treatment of the ill and of the changing demographics of those becoming infected. I have included the change in age among the infected as part of the model. I have also made an assumption that general mitigation efforts necessary to reduce virus spread will resume, as before, only after death rates begin to climb substantially, and that the rate of increase in deaths will be far faster than the rate of decline in deaths that follows the apex.
The model suggests that by the end of the year we will reach nearly 300,000 dead Americans from COVID. These numbers are tragically high, but they are considerably lower than the numbers being suggested by Dr. Fauci and others that we will see as much as 400,000 deaths by year end. The reason for this disparity is that my models are predicting the confirmed COVID deaths, and not the excess deaths calculations that will eventually determine the actual death toll of the pandemic. Various studies since the beginning of the pandemic have found that excess deaths attributable to COVID are roughly 25-30% higher than the confirmed deaths that are being counted. If that is correct, we have already passed 300,000 dead and would be close to 400,000 by end of year.
There are many things that could derail these projections in either a positive or negative way. The outcome of the election will clearly shape our pandemic response into 2021. The timing of the approval and distribution of a safe and effective vaccine is another. We cannot predict either of those with any credibility at this point. Here’s hoping that regardless of who wins the election, the national conversation turns to masks and other sensible mitigations and that these insane super-spreading political events come to a decisive end. Obviously, prayers for the quick availability of rapid testing and an effective vaccine.
In the meantime, don’t wait for the government to take care of you. Wear your mask, maintain social distancing, quarantine when you discover you’ve been in the company of someone that was sick. Do all the sensible things and we’ll get through this together as Americans. There are no red states or blue states when it comes to the pandemic. We are all viable hosts for the disease regardless of who we intend to vote for. This will end only when we act collectively - and never forget that we have ALWAYS triumphed when we have found common cause. Let’s be THAT America, my friends.
COVID data are drawn from Johns Hopkins University’s COVID tracking project. As always, don’t forget I’m not a medical professional or epidemiologist. I’m a professional statistician with too much on my mind.
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My estimate of recent cohort CFR has been stable at around 1.5%-2.0% for about 3 months now. (And that’s consistent with what Steven Millman just posted today on Facebook.) So I think you can just mentally translate each day’s cases into deaths three weeks from now at about a 1.7% rate. USA hits a 7-day average of 70,000 new cases today? Cool, we’re at 8,000-9,000 deaths a week in about 3 weeks.
Edit: crossposted with @Fatboy8. Steven Millman is the guy he quoted.
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this makes me laugh everytime
LOmotherfuckingL
Sister and her family were negative, the game was outside evidently so I guess that was enough. Sisters Mother in law i haven’t heard an update on but I assume that means she’s doin ok. Also my aunt that had the stroke and covid is back home now too.
My sister thought her MIL got it from the guy she’s dating who was feeling sick the week before, god knows what these boomers are doing though.
Also went in to the office today to get out of the house for a bit and hardly anyone is there so it’s pretty safe but talked to one of my coworkers that I hadn’t seen in a while and apparently him and his wife have had it several months ago, she’s a nurse so i guess he got it from her and her from work.
Will report if heritagenothate gets it but I saw him wearing a mask the other day and per my mom he’s still working from home and doesn’t want to go back to the office. He probably isn’t doing fuck else other than golf.
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The Imperial College London team found the number of people testing positive for antibodies has fallen by 26% between June and September.
They say immunity appears to be fading and there is a risk of catching the virus multiple times.
More than 350,000 people in England have taken an antibody test as part of the REACT-2 study so far.
In the first round of testing, at the end of June and the beginning of July, about 60 in 1,000 people had detectable antibodies.
But in the latest set of tests, in September, only 44 per 1,000 people were positive.
It suggests the number of people with antibodies fell by more than a quarter between summer and autumn.
???
Yeah I initially thought it was a poor translation but they don’t want to hurt domestic producers here.
We’ve been over this before. People not having antibodies is not what it seems like.
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“On the balance of evidence, I would say it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity.”
Exactly what the antibody drop means for immunity is still uncertain. There are other parts of the immune system, such as T-cells, which may also play a role, directly killing infected host cells and calling to other immune cells to help out.
Honestly, the people writing these articles should know better by now.
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How long do the antibodies stay elevated for any virus?
Clearly we just need to round up some people six months out and reinfect them.
-Dr Mengele
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Quick reminder wrt antibodies:
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Your body codes antibody production to memory B-cells, this allows for much faster increases in antibody levels in the case of re-exposure
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Your body has a whole other immune system that doesn’t use antibodies.
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Coronavirus survivors may be at risk of lasting cognitive damage, according to a study that found that in the worst cases the infection can cause mental decline equivalent to an 8.5-point fall in IQ or the brain ageing ten years.
The “brain fog” reported by many people weeks and months after their recovering from the virus may be a symptom of more serious cognitive deficits, scientists have said.
Research involving 84,285 people who had recovered from confirmed or suspected Covid-19 found that damage to the brain had happened to varying extents, depending upon the severity of the infection. However, more work is needed to identify how long this lasts.
One way to get to idiocracy.
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Great. That means the derposphere antimaskers and antivaxxers are going to get even more stupid.
Great news.
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No I think it means there was a silent outbreak in 2016.
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Holy hell. What’s the double time in CR?