Posted on 03/20/2020 10:49:02 PM PDT by newberger
Within a week, countries around the world have gone from: “This coronavirus thing is not a big deal” to declaring the state of emergency. Yet many countries are still not doing much. Why?
Every country is asking the same question: How should we respond? The answer is not obvious to them.
Some countries, like France, Spain or Philippines, have since ordered heavy lockdowns. Others, like the US, UK, Switzerland or Netherlands, have dragged their feet, hesitantly venturing into social distancing measures.
Here’s what we’re going to cover today, again with lots of charts, data and models with plenty of sources:
What’s the current situation?
What options do we have?
What’s the one thing that matters now: Time
What does a good coronavirus strategy look like?
This is what you’ll take away:
Our healthcare system is already collapsing.
Countries have two options: either they fight it hard now, or they will suffer a massive epidemic.
If they choose the epidemic, hundreds of thousands will die. In some countries, millions. And that might not even eliminate further waves of infections.
If we fight hard now, we will curb the deaths. We will relieve our healthcare system. We will prepare better.
The world has never learned as fast about anything. And we need it, because we know so little about this virus.
All of this will achieve something critical: Buy Us Time.
If we choose to fight hard, the fight will be sudden, then gradual. We will be locked in for weeks, not months. Then, we will get more and more freedoms back. It might not be back to normal immediately. But it will be close, and eventually back to normal. And we can do all that while considering the rest of the economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
Note, I had to tweak the text a little and the formatting to include the whole introduction.
The problem I have is that this is all based on modeling and am missing two critical pieces of information.
How do I know the model is any good and how do I know the data put in is any good.
I have lost faith in experts and their models since climategate.
It is?
Not sure where you are, but out here it’s impossible to have any surgical procedure that is not life saving.
The small county I live in has 3 patients in ICU from the virus - 10 more and our ICU beds are almost full.
Everett and Seattle south of me are getting full too from what I’ve heard from friends there.
NYC is going to be bad.
Each state and county will be different.
This is what happens to freedoms, when people are dishonest about an epidemic and demanding that the spread be allowed to accelerate.
Military to enforce coronavirus lockdown in Italy
https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/488772-military-to-enforce-coronavirus-lockdown-in-italy
Italy calls in military to enforce lockdown as coronavirus deaths rocket
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/03/21/italy-coronavirus-military/
Italy bans jogging after biggest day-to-day increase in coronavirus deaths
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/italy-bans-jogging-after-biggest-day-to-day-increase-in-coronavirus-deaths
Italy death toll skyrockets as jogging, cycling banned
https://www.9news.com.au/world/coronavirus-italy-death-toll-skyrockets-as-jogging-cycling-banned/939d4291-22cd-46f7-94c8-09122a1c8265
Italian army drafted to transport corpses as coronavirus deaths surge in Europe
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Italian-army-drafted-to-tr-by-Alex-Lantier-China_Coronavirus_Corpses_Death-200320-761.html
Over 6,000 new cases in Italy in one day corona virus world
https://www.mbs.news/a/2020/03/over-6000-new-cases-in-italy-in-one-day-corona-virus-world.html
I’d bet the congressional cafe is open ....
Give it another week. Your faith will return.
If there had only been someone telling us this stuff days ago.
Another aspect of modelling is not being able to predict human behavior, either to improve the situation or make it worse.
Thanks for posting. Good info.
“How do I know the model is any good and how do I know the data put in is any good. I have lost faith in experts and their models since climategate.”
Take this post for what it’s worth. If it makes a difference to you, I’ve spent the last twenty years building data models for a living (not climate models). I’m not, however, an epidemiologist.
In terms of the quality of the models, we know that viruses spread exponentially. And the model assumes exponential growth. And we observe in the real world that the China Virus is growing exponentially. So we know that unchecked, the R0 has to be > 1 — that’s the math of exponential growth. So his assumption of exponential growth seems well founded. And any exponential growth eventually explodes and explodes seemingly suddenl. That’s the nature of the beast.
The measured transmission rate (R0) is 2.4 so far. Therefore the correct number is almost certainly somewhere greater than 1 (the definition of exponential growth) and less or equal than 2.4 (best expert estimate). The only difference the precise R0 number makes is how fast the exponential growth is — not whether the exponential growth will eventually overwhelm the health care system (unchecked). So you may take the model as correctly incorporating the nature of the growth (exponential) and admitting uncertainty as to timing.
Unlike the climate models, the fellow who wrote this article is pretty clear about what data we know and what data we do not. For example, he argues that we do not know how much various measures reduce R0 and that we need to be measuring and estimating that information. So the charts he presents assume those values. I believe this article has much useful information in it and I take it seriously.
The numbers he uses do not seem out of line from what we see elsewhere. He uses a fatality rate of only 0.6, for example. If anything, that seems optimistic. Also, he assumes that each sick person is contagious for only 3 days — that too seems optimistic given the various estimates I have read from other sources. So this article does not seem designed as a “scare” article.
His chart 7 shows what happens if you reduce the r0 from 2.4 to 0.62 on day 42 after the contagion starts spreading. You can go to the site of that chart (url in the footnote) and change the variables he estimates and see what the numbers look like. If you read the footnote to that chart, he notes that even reducing r0 to 0.98 (instead of 0.62), there is a dramatic reduction in death from letting the disease run it’s course (from millions to tens of thousands).
So unlike climate models, this fellow appears to be attempting to address a real issue with the best data available. Published climate model papers are, imho, mostly manipulating data to further a political outcome.
Take it for what it’s worth.
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