Covid-19 information - some statistics, models, and firsthand sources.

Scott this is such a refreshing change of pace but...do (semi-rhetorical) questions count as editorializing?

For example: Why are the numbers so much better in some places (e.g. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, etc)than others(e.g. USA)?


If you want me to delete this just say the word, will be no hard feelings 

And Japan and the Philippines for that matter.

Non factual, semi-scientific wild assed guess to follow:

Part of it may be cultural - a bit more respect for authority. Wearing of masks in public is quite normal. Larger desire to fit in behaviorally with the society as a whole.  All the above are me stereotyping based on my limited experience in Asia. And it's not like the USA is at 1 and South Asia is at 10. But take all the slight differences, and how they affect the local R0, and maybe that takes you from 1200+ cases per 1M population to 200 cases per 1M population.

Part of it may be due to their having better intel. Taiwan especially.  I believe it highly likely that people with real sway in the government of these countries were getting a much more accurate assessment of what was happening in Hubei than what the CCP and WHO were saying.

End of speculation.

SARS

Agreed. This isn’t their first rodeo.

-Eliot

This discussion is very good. I don't have anything to add, but I enjoy the reading.

i would be interested in seeing the impact in the Redding/Cottonwood area.  I have a few good friends in that area and they all swear that this hit them in January of this year.  Symptoms match up perfectly by all of their accounts.  Including the one that the press does and doctors do not mention.

i would be interested in seeing the impact in the Redding/Cottonwood area.  I have a few good friends in that area and they all swear that this hit them in January of this year.  Symptoms match up perfectly by all of their accounts.  Including the one that the press does and doctors do not mention.

That same upper respiratory infection went through Humboldt this winter from November - February. It went through my house too although I never had symptoms.

I would love to take an antibody test or have my daughter, who was knocked down pretty hard by it, have her take the test to see if we were exposed to COVID-19.

i would be interested in seeing the impact in the Redding/Cottonwood area.  I have a few good friends in that area and they all swear that this hit them in January of this year.  Symptoms match up perfectly by all of their accounts.  Including the one that the press does and doctors do not mention.

David, I live in Redding and we had a houseful of people during Christmas. My brother in-law from Georgia caught the flu, and I ended up with it as well as many in our family. I do not get sick very often and when i do it last just a day or two. I was bed ridden for four days, i hurt so bad i thought maybe i had cancer or something because my joints didn't hurt, my bones hurt. it was by far the worst flu i had have had. i finally got strong enough to go to the Dr. they said the same they always say, " too late for anything just drink lots of fluids." took another two to three weeks to feel halfway normal. Not say it was Covid 19 but not saying it wasn't ether.
Jeff

My friends want to get the antibody test too.

I went through the Sheriff department up there as well.

My sister says that our niece who lives in Redding had it in January

A LOT of people in the bay area were sick in early Jan - early Feb including my family.  Whatever we had swept through the whole family for a week.  Everyone had a dry cough, slight fever, but generally mild yet long lasting.  It seemed like I had the cough and it lasted >2 weeks.   I remember having a coughing attack on my yak waiting for the sturgeon to bite.  And this was before I had a smoke.  Really makes you wonder.  That said, I wouldnt hold your breath for a wide dispersion of antibody tests.  The feds couldnt roll out shit if they needed to. 

I had a similar experience

What is amazing is how scarce either kind of testing still is here As of last week Taiwan was testing more per day than we had to date

On a brighter note the backlog of tests at hospitals is better so results are coming back much faster A couple of weeks ago it was taking days, which translates to a traffic jam of patients in covid rooms that could’ve moved out

I heard that swab test is like a punch in the nose.  I don’t want it...

I had a similar experience

What is amazing is how scarce either kind of testing still is here As of last week Taiwan was testing more per day than we had to date

On a brighter note the backlog of tests at hospitals is better so results are coming back much faster A couple of weeks ago it was taking days, which translates to a traffic jam of patients in covid rooms that could’ve moved out

As of this moment, there are over 2.7M tests done in the USA. Taiwan - just over 46K.

Tests per 1M population - USA over 8k, Taiwan just under 2K per 1M population.

Speculation here, but I think this is a demonstration of how a much larger, less nimble infrastructure reacts to a new situation. It just takes longer to put all the pieces in place. That, and as mentioned - SARS 1.0

FWIW - and this is fact, I have a former student in Australia, whose family is from Wuhan. She verifed that the "extra tens of thousands of urns" story is true. She also added that morticians from around the country converged on Wuhan during the peak of the epidemic there in order to meet demand.  For those that understand the significance of this: she had her 8 year old WeChat account permanently disabled due to her posts on the situation as it developed in Wuhan. We started our conversation in WeChat using her new account, then moved over to Facebook Messenger. "gege" is indeed watching you in China.

I had a similar experience

What is amazing is how scarce either kind of testing still is here As of last week Taiwan was testing more per day than we had to date

On a brighter note the backlog of tests at hospitals is better so results are coming back much faster A couple of weeks ago it was taking days, which translates to a traffic jam of patients in covid rooms that could’ve moved out

I heard that swab test is like a punch in the nose.  I don’t want it...

 FWIW ....Having had it done for something else , and having to perform the swab in sick call treating Marines and Sailors, calling it a punch in the nose is an exaggeration , unpleasant yep, but a punch mmmm..no , it might make  you sneeze and bring a tear or two to the  eyes ..LOL

Good stuff...I've shed a few tears before...

I saw this few days ago. Very interesting take from South Korea.

Cuz I'm a stoopid geek, and just have to play around with numbers.

Here's total cases in USA, New cases that day, and 3 day moving average

Date   Total Cases   New cases   3 day avg
04/03/20   277205   37926   30368.00
04/04/20   304826   27621   30560.67
04/05/20   330891   26065   30537.33
04/06/20   374329   43438   32374.67
04/07/20   395011   20682   30061.67
04/08/20   427460   32449   32189.67
04/09/20   459165   31705   28278.67
04/10/20   492416   33251   32468.33
04/11/20   525704   33288   32748.00
04/12/20   554849   29145   31894.67

Keeping my fingers crossed that we've either reached, or have gone past the peak 3 day average new cases of just over 32K. Best go look at the IMHE forecast again. Good thing it's right here.

P.S. - total case count drove the "new" case count as well as 3 day average. That information came directly from the CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

Daily reporting numbers make for a pretty jumpy line graph so I used 5 day rolling average. Also adjusted for population so it can be compared to other states. Except for one high reporting day (4/7) that skewed the average we've been pretty flat since 4/3. The media tends to focus on Total Cases which can be misleading, that number will always go up as it's just a totalizer, and few if any are reporting "recovered" so new cases per day IMO is the best way to tell how any specific population is doing. I'm keeping track of several states, CA is doing well, very well.

I'm getting my (very) raw data here https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/

Doesn’t the increase in testing skew the results?

Daily reporting numbers make for a pretty jumpy line graph so I used 5 day rolling average. Also adjusted for population so it can be compared to other states. Except for one high reporting day (4/7) that skewed the average we've been pretty flat since 4/3. The media tends to focus on Total Cases which can be misleading, that number will always go up as it's just a totalizer, and few if any are reporting "recovered" so new cases per day IMO is the best way to tell how any specific population is doing. I'm keeping track of several states, CA is doing well, very well.

I'm getting my (very) raw data here https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/

Doesn’t the increase in testing skew the results?

My opinion, yes, along with a variety of other variables and moving targets, but the data we got is the data we got, for now.  Data was my life for most of my working years, especially understanding and improving the quality of the data. In relation to what's really happening on the ground this is pretty shitty data at best.

I would have to agree. To go from 2,000,000 dead to 60,000 suggests someone is just guessing. That doesn’t really qualify as data.