re: Daily COVID Updated as of 11/2/20 8:00 PM

VL, the death rate (Mortality Rate) is dropping rapidly as testing & cases increase. This is due to the simple relationship between the rapidly growing number of total tests & cases vs. the much lower growth of deaths. I expect it to continue to decline to somewhere between .2% to .8% which I think is where the true mortality rate lies. Look at the mortality graph on the tracker...its a graph of the number you are talking about.



The other number, tests to cases reported, is also on the tracker with the title Positivity rate, ie how many tests are coming back positive. It is definitely increasing even though the raw volume of tests is increasing as well. That is potentially a bad sign.

I say potentially bad because the positivity rate can (and is) skewed by focusing our testing on symptomatic cases instead of a general sampling of the population.

There is some % of our population that has or has had the virus, we don't know what that % is at this point. We can draw conclusions on the growth of the outbreak by looking at the positivity rate and is it going up or down.

If the testing volume was fixed at 4.5M tests per week (fairly close to where we are now) and on week 1 we got 10% positive results, then on week 2 we got 10%, etc... we could make an educated guess that 10% of the population had the virus. If that positive test rate dipped, then we would know that the spread of the virus is slowing (Potentially). If that positive test rate increased, then it would obviously signal growth in the outbreak.

What we're currently seeing is testing volume going up and positivity rate going up at the same time, meaning the virus is spreading. When the positivity rate starts coming down is when we know the curve is starting to turn.

This chart shows you testing volume vs positivity rate.


You can clearly see that the positivity rate was very high early on when the testing volumes were low. Then as testing volume increased, the positivity rate declined until mid-June when it started climbing again. When that positivity rate line starts to decline, then we'll know the spread is slowing.

WOM at 199 so far today.

Big 2 still to come. Texas and Cali

238. Georgia didn't help.

quote:

---

This kind of test evaluates if there are antibodies in someone’s blood and if they came about through an early fight against the virus. [Scientists] even extracted antibodies from a llama that would detect Sars-1, Sars-CoV-2, and even the Mers virus. It also became known that Sars-CoV-2 had a less significant impact in areas in China where Sars-1 had previously raged. This is clear evidence urgently suggesting that our immune system considers Sars-1 and Sars-Cov-2 at least partially identical and that one virus could probably protect us from the other.

---

I saw some discussion about this months back. I don’t have the creds to argue one way or the other, but it seems to make logical sense.

quote:

---

If there are pathogenic viruses in our environment, then all humans — whether immune or not — are attacked by this virus. If someone is immune, the battle with the virus begins. First we try to prevent the virus from binding to our own cells with the help of antibodies. This normally works only partially, not all are blocked and some viruses will attach to the appropriate cells. That doesn’t need to lead to symptoms, but it’s also not a disease. Because the second guard of the immune system is now called into action. That’s the above mentioned T-cells, white blood cells, which can determine from the outside in which other cells the virus is now hiding to multiply. These cells, which are now incubating the virus, are searched throughout the entire body and killed by the T-cells until the last virus is dead.

---

On board.

quote:

---

It is likely that a large number of the daily reported infection numbers are purely due to viral debris.

---

Go on...

quote:

---

On our way back to normal, it would be good for us citizens if a few scaremongers apologised. Such as doctors who wanted a triage of over 80 year old Covid patients in order to stop ventilating them. Also media that kept showing alarmist videos of Italian hospitals to illustrate a situation that as such didn’t exist. All politicians calling for “testing, testing, testing” without even knowing what the test actually measures. And the federal government for an app they’ll never get to work and will warn me if someone near me is positive, even if they’re not infectious.

---

Old boy is based.

One question is why did China appear to panic about the virus? They care less about human life than almost any country I can name.

Same reason a farmer gets nervous about a group of locusts

quote:

---

China doesn't care about human life, but the government does need to do certain things to keep the Mandate of Heaven under Chinese political theory (the Chinese equivalent of consent of the governed).

---

That is an interesting read indeed. But it still doesn't explain why they were so much more fearful of this virus than the flu.

I often wonder if this board actually understands that it's possible to have a virus/plague/etc. that is worth doing what has actually been done this time. I'm guessing that what has amounted to crying wolf will only make it worse when it actually does come.

One caveat is that we have certain people that are getting multiple tests. We have some people in my organization that have gotten 5+ positive tests in the past 10 days trying to get a negative one. If we don’t assign a name to the test then this duplication is going to skew the numbers. Especially as countries or businesses may require a negative test to access.

quote:

---

I often wonder if this board actually understands that it's possible to have a virus/plague/etc. that is worth doing what has actually been done this time. I'm guessing that what has amounted to crying wolf will only make it worse when it actually does come.

---

Well, a big issue is when a virus has become a big enough deal "to do something" and of course, to what extent.

We know we've had pandemics in the past.

We know the response to this one is unprecedented.

We know prior ones were definitely deadlier.

Does that mean we are doing too much? Does that mean prior responses did too little? Does modern society value life differently than in those past ones? Are we "over/undervaluing" certain lives relative to others?

Those questions and their answers are less about science and more about current values, morals and yes, politics. That whole disagreement isn't seriously about if the virus is real, its about this debate and all these things and where you are on the spectrum of how you value these factors against other factors.

quote:

---

That is an interesting read indeed. But it still doesn't explain why they were so much more fearful of this virus than the flu.

I often wonder if this board actually understands that it's possible to have a virus/plague/etc. that is worth doing what has actually been done this time. I'm guessing that what has amounted to crying wolf will only make it worse when it actually does come.

---

I think it does. The number of Chinese people in poverty is almost three times the total US population. Initial data, I believe, had a hospitalization rate of 20% of those infected. But even taking current hospitalization rates in the US as an assumption (4.9%) and a 25% prevalence (225 million people), the Chinese government would have been expecting twice as many people in poverty being hospitalized than China has hospital beds as a country. And that's just taking into account those below China's poverty line. Guaranteed that those beds would first go to government officials, their families, the business leaders, and the 300 million person "middle class." That's a recipe for unrest, if I've ever heard.

Now imagine that China's initial assumption was that the hospitalization rate was going to be four times worse. China's government maintains power because it is selling its ability to handle crises and continue to generate wealth for China. Having people dying in the streets of giant cities doesn't fit the brand.