SARS-CoV-2: Electric Superflu

Deaths aren’t going to increase exponentially for two and a half weeks. Tens of thousands of deaths? Totally possible. But a million Americans aren’t going to die of covid in April, no matter how many times jman watches Contagion. We’re seeing the effects of the exponential growth of a week or two or three ago. It’s not spreading like that anymore, so in a week or two we won’t see deaths increasing exponentially. Look at Italy. Look at NYC right now – ICU admissions down.

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I’ve never seen contagion. I agree we are not getting to ww2 and civil war numbers… in April. That’s probably this summer.

New York Knicks owner James Dolan has tested positive for coronavirus. Finally some good news for new yorkers.

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Virus do not grow by binary fission like bacteria. (1 makes 2)

1 virus can make up to a couple of hundred copies each before they burst out of the host cell.

I don’t know the “burst” size is for CV but it makes bacterial growth look like it’s standing still.

Once it gets in and gets to the right place it’s gonna do its thing. Making a bit of assumption but some people’s cells are going to support a faster rate and others a slower. Early on i saw a paper linking high A1C levels with poorer outcomes on the theory of glycosylated heme (extra glucose residues hanging off the heme protein) enables the virus somehow. Not sure if multiplied faster or just has harsher impact on you.

Dose size has more of an impact on if it gains the initial foothold. You have to touch or breath it. It has to get to the right tissues and it has to infect and get going before you blast those initial cells out your nose. If you get a big dose or repeated doses then your odds of it getting it to start go up.

So yes your risk is lower but if you get it and it takes hold, the severity is probably much more determined by you vs how much viral load you started with.

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Derail I know, but this is definitely not true. A few data points on this:

  • Although the 1934 referendum to grant Hitler supreme power involved intimidation and vote rigging, historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his biography of Hitler that it “reflected the fact that Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people”.

  • A modern study by an institute in Frankfurt, using data like the number of babies named with popular Nazi names, concluded that Hitler’s popularity at its peak in 1938 and pre-war 1939 was probably up around 80%.

  • Within the SS there was what amounted to a domestic intelligence service, internal documents from this demonstrate that the SS were confident that the population were behind Hitler. These were genuine investigative efforts, they were not designed to produce puff pieces for Hitler’s consumption.

When you look at Hitler’s successes circa 1938/39 (the revival of the German economy, Anschluss and so on) it’s implausible that his popularity would not be far greater than it were when he was elected. It’s also important to realise that Hitler himself was more popular on a personal level than the Nazi Party was generally. Much like Trump’s cult of personality today, there was a widespread belief that any problems were the party failing Hitler and that when Hitler became aware of problems, he would lock Hillary in Guantanamo and revalue the dinar and whatever.

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[sad trombone] Can’t win 'em all.

Isn’t it the case that USA will have dozens of clusters with cases spreading at varying rates depending on how each city or state controls the outbreak, and death rates remaining fairly constant unless/until each area exhausts its own healthcare capacity?

There will likely be a few Italys and Spains in the US, but also a few Germanys and South Koreas. How these are distributed will depend on a range of factors including quality of state healthcare, efficiency of local government, behaviour of the population, dumb luck and Trump’s mood.

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The elite map makers were all in Slovakia.

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We’re clearly on the front end of the curve. Nowhere near enough infections to believe we’re getting close to herd immunity even if we’re massively undercounting. We know it’s incredibly infectious. Doing almost nothing to slow the spread. ICU’s haven’t hit capacity yet. What makes you think we won’t continue to see exponential growth for 2 1/2 more weeks? Other than a million dead being an incomprehensible number. There’s no reason to believe that’s not where we’re headed.

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Look at Miami, look at LA, look at … oh , any other fucking city that hasn’t really kicked off yet. Yeah, let’s not bother trying…or paying attention to history.

https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus?__twitter_impression=true

Keeeeeeeed is somewhat right that specific loci of infection and death will tip.

The problem is that too much of the country was too late and are going to get fucked and many other places with their heads still in the hand are going to get really fucked.

While we won’t keep doubling at some point we will more or less level of for several weeks. Let’s assume 6 weeks. 42 days at 5,000/day (my low end guess where we level off) that’s over 200,000 so more than WWI but less than WWII.

If the peak is higher we can hit WWII without much imagination.

But the point is that had we done better (and as previously noted there was a plan left behind by previous epidemic task force and prior learnings from 1918), we at a minimum will have many times more deaths than we needed to have with a much bigger economic impact if we get our shit together with 6weeks of warning.

The only question will be if

75%
90%
95%
Of deaths can be attributed to government incompetence, aka this administration.

I posted this thread much earlier. The gist was they don’t think it was this. Basically same reasoning many ITT said, if it had been this with the speed this thing spreads they would have known about it.

This should be the scariest part of all. He has no fear of the consequences of screwing over a swing state. That tells us something about the 2020 election…

This analysis does assume that he is thinking that far ahead.

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Hell yeah

But then the other question is what is the actual mortality rate? How many are actually infected? Are we going to see a fatality rate more like SK or Germany? Or Italy or Spain? And is the high apparent fatality rate in Italy and Spain due largely to testing only the sickest (ignoring a large fraction of infections), while the low fatality rate in SK and Germany due to much more comprehensive testing? If the true fatality rate is something like what SK is seeing, 0.2%, then obviously we won’t see a million deaths or anything close to it. And I think that, while the US obviously got a late start to the testing, we’re going to see an enormous testing effort that is going to go a long way to help the infected self-isolate and the healthy get back to more normal life. We’re going to start seeing millions of tests a week here in the US.

Nobody was making those claims when you sarcastically targeted the actual expected growth to make fun of.

I figure New York might peak in the next couple weeks but then we will have several other hot spots that will pop up.

The good news is if it hits us that way it provides us much greater flexibility in response. If everything was like New York right now this country would be done.

So the size, spread and diversity seem to really work in our favor in some regards. That being said it is going to keep our numbers churning for a long time and the death toll numbers will keep rolling for a while.

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Right now the only real limitation on the US is number of people. How it evolves between infected and dead and those waiting to be infected and die is a lot of guesswork.

I agree with you though, that is the only limiter on direct spread. If we overrun healthcare in multiple large centers than the death rate will climb even faster.

I hope we can keep enough people distanced so we can figure out some sort of viable treatment. Just waiting for the virus to burn itself out is going to be very ugly, most likely.

CDC Issues Domestic Travel Advisory for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut

The CDC urges residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately. This Domestic Travel Advisory does not apply to employees of critical infrastructure industries, including but not limited to trucking, public health professionals, financial services, and food supply. These employees of critical infrastructure, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security (https://www.cisa.gov/publication/guidance-essential-critical-infrastructure-workforceexternal icon) have a special responsibility to maintain normal work schedule. The Governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will have full discretion to implement this Domestic Travel Advisory.