For all you lawyers out there.
I have secured the Imperial College paper, March 16.
I just saw that some organization filed a lawsuit against China for the Coronavirus. $20 trillion class action. I saw their actual press release, which I wonât link to because they donât deserve the clicks.
And here is a nice NYT stream of live updates. One I find saddest is the turning away of asylum seekers.
And, in crazy news, patent trolls are already trying to leech off vaccine treatments for covid-19.
Dr. Fauci on Sunday.
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My town has its first confirmed case. Now I have eager âhelpersâ wanting to do work for âat-riskâ folks who have no damned clue what they are getting into, or how fast their âhelpâ could turn into becoming the latest âTyphoid Mary.â Now I have to draft a directive trying to stem this â â â â â â â â â I get their desires, but this isnât a time for Boy Scout stuff.
Check on your local neighbors in a thoughtful way - mostly by telephoneâŚsure. The pathogen playbook is good with electronic and even some amount of limited contact, if it canât be avoided.
Having 18-35 year olds running errands all over town having numerous contacts, then dropping it off to the at-riskâŚoh hell no. This is where help turns into âhepâ and âhepâ is not help. I get the good intention, but the road to hell is paved with those.
Thank god the stores are already accommodating the seniors and at-risk. I picked up my lunch from Cafe Rio at the curb yesterday. They wouldnât even let me inside to pick up and payâŚan I am ok with that.
Follow the directives, take care of yourself and your family, keep track of your neighbors - especially the at-risk. If you get sick - call the telehealth lines, or go see your doctor. If you lose co tact with an at-risk neighbor, let the public safety folks know so they can do the health and welfare check. If they find the worst has happened, they can call in the necessary teams for handling the worst.
Yes, this is the most morbid post most of you will ever read. Unfortunately it is what is going through my mind this morning with all the chatter going on. Hopefully the contagion rates will not be so high that we see the worst case issues. Knowing my personal luck, i will see some of this worst case play out first hand. 
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I cant help thinking that the lack of testing is keeping numbers artificially high. It just seems like if its that contagious then lots more people have and have had it than we know. And with only just over 100 deaths and with no deaths under age 50, and many/most deaths including underlying health issues, isnt it possible that those mortality rates are super high compared to what we will actually experience? Isnt it possible that you cant map those rates from china or a cruise ship or even from acute long term care elder facilities onto the general US population?
Yes.
Rocker previously addressed that issue some already.
My note that you responded to included that under testing (therefore under reported infection rate) is an issue.
All of my model runs use mortality rates below those experienced.
Regardless, true experts in their field of epidemiology have revealed their expectations. Maybe the mortality rate moves lower is how I read what they are saying. Right now those rates as they calculate them are unfortunately high.
On another subject, from the NYT: These Places Could Run Out of Hospital Beds as Coronavirus Spreads. Come from a study done by Harvard. The first thing you see is a chart that is a bit sensational to be honest.
And, NYT, March 18: U.S. Coronavirus Map: Cases Now Reported in All 50 States.
Rueters: Russia Deploying Coronavirus Disinformation to Sow Panic in West, EU Document Says
March 18, 2020
ExcerptâŚ
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russian media have deployed a âsignificant disinformation campaignâ against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus, generate panic and sow distrust, according to a European Union document seen by Reuters.
Pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, the Russian campaign uses contradictory, confusing and malicious reports to make it harder for the EU to communicate its response to the pandemic, the report said.
The Kremlin denied the allegations on Wednesday, saying they were unfounded and lacked common sense.
âA significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremlin outlets regarding COVID-19 is ongoing,â said the nine-page internal document, dated March 16, using the name of the disease that can be caused by the coronavirus.
âThe overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries ⌠in line with the Kremlinâs broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies,â the document produced by the EUâs foreign policy arm, the European External Action Service, said.
Coincidentally, I read this the other day after all the discussion on the moon landing and 9/11: Bad Thinkers. That got me into reading a bunch of articles about this. Here are a few more I read and found interesting.
Also see this Scientific American article: Insights into the Personalities of Conspiracy Theorists.
Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories? The need to find order in a confusing world.
Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories â and How to Change Their Minds.
Such lovely people.
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Is the thinking on cougarboard along the lines the church leadership isnât conservative enough?
Mainly it seems to be that they are smarter than their leadership. Canât blame them â after all, they have degrees from BYU!
Excellent point. That explains a lot.
So I guess what Iâm saying is that from a pure math standpoint, as I look at the numbers, and I look at the impact to the economy, and I look at the extent of the expenditure by the government, I canât help thinking that there was another path that would have made more sense.
Obviously armchair QB is easy, but seems like we could have focused a fraction of the resources this has cost on specific high risk populations. Provided infrastructure allowing them to self quarantine. Provided a huge boost to the existing medical facilities and ventilator manufacturers. Have the military mobilize some roving ICU type facilities, and so forth. It just seems like such a massively disruptive and costly response to a threat that is so narrowly focused.
More modeling that I did to look at the number of folks who might be infected with CorVid19 over essentially a 60 day period from March 9. The model uses assumptions. But the early growth rates were required to match observed. Iâve assumed, likely incorrectly, the future growth rate of infections in the US to be lower. Notice that I step the growth rates down twice during this period. That may or may not happen.
If folks self isolate, the spread of this disease will also slow. And in effect, that is how I elected to model it.
I want to make a comment about the chart. One who does not understand exponential growth will ask, âWhat happened on April 13th or April 20th?â Nothing. The growth rate from March 26 to the end the period here (May 10) is the same, 16% per day in new cases. In fact, that growth rate has been stepped down on March 18 to lower values.
Remember LAUteâs lily pad puzzle from the other day. The growth rate was that lily pads reproduced themselves everyday. On day 1 there was 1 lily pad, on day 48 the pond was full. When was the pond half covered in lily pads? Day 47! When was the pond only 25% coveredâŚday 46. That is what this chart shows, only the growth is not a doubling per day, its much much lower.
Update: According to Ars Technica:
As of March 18 at 3pm, there have been more than 7,300 cases detected nationwide and at least 115 deaths. With testing for COVID-19 in the US severely delayed and still dangerously limited, the number of actual cases is expected to be much higher.
I modeled above 7,389 cases detected for March 18.
I totally understand what you are saying, and I probably will read that paper tonight when I have time to see if it can convince me. Unfortunately during the day, all I really have time for is to listen to podcasts when Iâm on the move and read bits and pieces here. This is one I listened to today. And when I listen to this, and when I read this paper, I think itâs going to come down to whether you believe the assumptions the paper is based on for which there seems to be legitimate questions. And those assumptions probably come down to how fast it will spread in reality, how large the population of people that need ventilation will get. And both of these are highly subject to individual choices and how effective those choices will be.
Itâs all very interesting, and regardless of outcome, will probably continue to be interesting for some time to come.
One thing Epstein says that I totally agree with, and probably my most frustrating thing about this, is that issuing complete and accurate information is critical. They arenât doing that. It makes me feel like they arenât because if they did people might not take this as seriously as they think people should. My feeling is that by suppressing that information, they arenât giving people a full window into who is really at risk and what actions would be most effective.
If you have ad hom attacks towards David, withhold for a minute, and check this out, even just as a thought experiment from a different view
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