Sunday, March 22, 2020

Flying By The Seat Of Our Pants

h/t In The Middle of the Right























We're forced to look to things like the Imperial College paper linked on March 16th, to estimate how bad Kung Flu is going to get.

A physicist who knows nothing about cars, per se, can still tell you how fast one will go, by looking at the car's engine horsepower, weight of the vehicle, drag coefficient of the body, friction from the tires on the ground, air density, temperature, and a host of other things, and get a pretty accurate max speed for the car, because science.
And that's what the folks in that study have done.

But the reason they had to, in the case of the folks at Imperial, is because Top. Men., in this case, at the CDC, cleverly yanked out the speedometer. Because Top. Men.












So, wouldn't it be useful to know things the easy way, by directly measuring them, and seeing how they stack up?

Funny you should ask. Someone else is on the same track, and nailing it.

Credit Where It's Due Dept.:

"Another question:
(yeah, I was raised by my Dad and Mom (and a few other mentors) to ask a lot of questions. I question everything and I like to turn a lot of data over in my mind)

We get stats on the Media about "number of cases" of CororinaVirus, and we get stats for "number of deaths" (those I question...not that they are dead, but that they died from Covid-19...often they are already old, weak or otherwise compromised and have other complicating factors).

But one bit of data I don't ever see is the number of people needing little or no care, or some level of hospitalization because of the effects of Covid-19. In fact, if you look, the data is pretty much only aimed at "deaths" and not much else.

Out of the several thousand cases for any one given area that have shown enough symptoms that they are tested, how many need any level of hospitalization?
I guess because they aren't anything the media can sensationalize, they don't give us any of that data.

I do think it would be a good bit of data though.

People showing symptoms and tested vs people tested showing positive vs people needing actual care vs people needing hospitalization vs people needing intensive care vs people dying.

I think the numbers would be not as terrible as the media and our governments might like you to think.

Then again, until I see some data I just don't know."

1) You are correct that such specific data would be useful.
2) You will never get it.
3) Because the CDC buggered up the test kits months ago, and we don't have enough. Anywhere.
3a) L.A. County just told doctors there yesterday not to test anyone (because they're out of kits) unless the results would change their treatment of the patient. (Which is no one, because you treat the severity of symptoms, not the presence or absence of the virus. If someone is sick enough to admit, you admit them. If not, you send them home and tell them to self quarantine.)
3b) This ensures we'll never know how many people have Kung Flu, and we'll never know how many people who have Kung Flu we've launched back into the community, to re-infect 2, 4, 8, or 48 of their fellows.
4) Things like this are why all stats on this outbreak will be pure bullsh*t, going forward. Nothing published will be reliable, because lack of rapid and accurate testing for all suspected cases ensures we never know how widespread it is, how bad it is, and what percentage of people are uninfected, asymptomatic, mildly symptomatic, really sick, or dead, because you erased most of that pie chart from the start.

(V + W + X + Y + Z = Q)
Z = 340
Q = 330M
Solve for all other variables.
Impossible.

In mathematical terms, we have made it impossible to solve for X, when we have put V, W, and Y beyond knowing. Ever.

We know as of today that 340 people have died.
But we don't know whether that's out of 27K cases, or 270K cases, or 2.7M cases, or 330M cases.

So we know how bad it is for 340 people.
But we can never know how bad it's going to be for 330M people.

The people at CDC that bungled the testing kits should be hanging by their thumbs in Lafayette Park across from the White House, while passersby jeer and pelt them with rotten fruit.

The problem with knowing the numbers, isn't that we'd know how terrible this outbreak isn't.
The problem is that we'd know how bad the government is.

But you're asking the right questions.

So now, because of CDC incompetence, (stop me if you've heard this since 2014 here), we can either do the long work of trying to model the variables within known ranges.

Or we can strap ourselves onto the hood, wearing our trusty GPS wristwatch, and see what it says as we rocket across the days to come, and see how fast the GPS says we're going.

That's the only choices, at the moment.

Plan B UPDATES Today:
NYFC is reportedly running out of ventilators for patients.
One OC CA hospital last night got hammered with mostly acute respiratory distress patients.
(No, not mine.) We'll see if this is a blip, or the crest of the approaching tsunami, in the coming days.

74 comments:

geoffb said...

Now I know why the case numbers in California flattened out recently along with Washington too I would suppose. I've also seen reports that China has stopped testing which makes their number of cases flatten out. Perception is reality for the PR guys until it isn't and reality bites back.

Jmparret said...

I follow a different Coronavirus update site (Not John Hopkins) that has active cases broken down into mild (95%) or serious/critical (5%). You can go into each country and see the same information. I know it is not the detail we need but it is something.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

From Norway said...

This is exactly why I am positive about my country. We have all that information. People admitted to the hospital, people on respirators and the rest.

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-widget&utm_term=5a#norge-innlagt-paa-sykehus

Dad29 said...

A couple of notes.

1) Fauci was the FedGov point-man on AIDS. He didn't think it was necessary to close down the SFO bathhouses until a year after we ALL knew that they were the problem. Apparently he likes that approach, based on his non-acceptance of chloroquine. Maybe a year's worth of deaths will change his "mind"?

2) Obozo's Gummint burned up all the N95 masks, didn't replace them. So it's Trump's fault.

CDC, like CIA, lies more often than lawyers do.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

I am absolutely not an epidemiologist or modeler, so I don't know if this could make any difference, but there is one source of data that will be available at some point in time, in quantity if we so choose (might not be able to afford it...). Tests for antibodies to reveal who's gotten SARS-CoV-2 sometime in the past. Duke's Singapore campus used a first cut version of such a test to link a couple of clusters together in the city-state.

Won't tell us when, and I wonder if that makes it not very useful data for our current purposes, but it could, for example, be used to calculate a better Case Fatality Rate (CFR) after this is all over by providing a denominator through statistically sampling of the population. Except of course because of the ongoing lack of tests, and having better things to do with them per L.A. County, we'll only have a rough estimate of the total fatalities that make up the numerator.

Note it's not the only place running out of the CDC provided test kits and/or other testing capacity, one state near mine in the heartland predicts it will soon run out.

MTHead said...

The only constant in an equation such as this is, government incompetence. (DUH) factor? Maybe you could give it a suitable name?

From Norway said...

By the way, Italy also gives the information. The world is bigger than the US.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETurEa5XkAIp3UY?format=jpg&name=900x900

Aesop said...

From Norway,

No, you don't have that information, unless you've tested everyone.
If you're not testing asymptomatic persons, you have no idea how many people get the infection and show no symptoms.
If you're not testing the entire country, you have no idea how many persons don't get infected.

The world is bigger than symptomatic carriers.

That's the whole point.
You'll never know how good/bad this is.
It's simply not possible, except perhaps in Monaco or San Marino or Bermuda.

From Norway said...

@Aesop

That is true. Norway was testing everyone, but run out of tests. They are now testing people that arrive at the hospital.

Nevertheless Norway has tested 1% of the population.

Anonymous said...

As an aside; shouldn't we wait for the pandemic to pass before we fill out the census paperwork?

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

As an aside; shouldn't we wait for the pandemic to pass before we fill out the census paperwork?

You mean because the numbers will be lower?

Anonymous said...

@Dad 29 11:03AM I've been of the opinion that Fauci should have been fired since the news that he said Chloroquine needs to "studied", i.e. full blown test per CDC/FDA protocols, before it (chloroquine) can used as a treatment.

Fauci is a highly educated man, but typical of highly educated men or women, he is a blithering idiot. He doesn't have the common sense to determine, in a crisis, protocol should be first thing that dies, instead of the people that you're tasked, BY NATURE OF YOUR POSITION THE HEALTH CARE HIERARCHY, to save.

This ought to be real simple. Go find a dozen or two people that have Kung Flu, some of whom, probably half, should be on ventilators. Give'em the drug per established standard dosage guidelines for safety and treating malaria. You should have the answer in less than week.

Fauci is unhappy because the treatment wasn't discovered by his "shop", i.e. FDA, CDC or NIH. He's a sniveling little deep state bureaucrat, exercising his bureaucratic authority because he can.

He's also no fan of President Trump, which is why Fauci is often seen in the background face palming himself after Trump says something he doesn't agree with. Fauci, a fucking weasels weasel.

Nemo

Anonymous said...

Yes.

Anonymous said...

I concur with the sentiment that government has not accomplished as well as some would like.

I do not think that is an unexpected result for those who view government as an inappropriate locus for medical care. My worldview understands government's appropriate role primarily as the ministry of justice and war. Just as I would not envision a "Department of Bread" or a "Department of Tires", I am also unsurprised that we do not have a "Department of N95 Masks and COVID Test kits". I am also nonplussed that departments created to do things (Cough, CDC, cough) engage in metastatic mission creep and eventually do nothing well except for maintaining their budget and existence.

Come on folks, we live in a country that has something called the "Department of Education", and we inhabit a culture that can say the name of said department without immediately spitting their beer out with a horse laugh. You really send your children to the government for education; really? And then you think that what it cannot do very well at all in teaching geography and arithmetic to 8 year olds will not translate over into much more complex issues? Pull the other one.

The CDC is the DMV with a caduceus.

Anonymous said...

From Australia.

I personally can't get tested nor can I see a doctor. Can't see a doctor because of my symptoms. Can't get tested because I don't tick one box (travelled OS recently OR come into contact with a confirmed case). Mother travelled OS recently and has a nasty cough but refuses to get tested.

Anonymous said...

We have the Diamond Princess petri ship to study. Plus the WHO released a study of the Wuhan epidemic, though I've not read it yet.

.gov is always slow on the uptake, and then they over react wildly.

Remember we sandbagged almost all of ww1, and then when we decided to enter, gave the world the 1918 Kansas flu pandemic. You just can't make crap like that up.
Ww2 was going since 1939 when Pearl Harbor happened at the end of 1941. We were so woefully unprepared for war in 1942.

But we got our shit together and got revved up.
Point is, in this day and age of instant gratification and technical wizardry, we still do not know much about viruses. But once we turn all our fear into anger at this bug, we're gonna get revved up like in ww2.
We'll deal with the national, govermental, organizational, and personal fuckups later; right now we have our nation to save and heal.

RandyGC said...

Obozo's Gummint burned up all the N95 masks, didn't replace them. So it's Trump's fault.

Yeah. My county issued it's Federally funded cache of N95s to local Fire/EMS during H1N1 (hospitals and other healthcare facilities had separate cache they received masks through).

After that had settled down, the criteria for projects that could be funded through Federal grants did not allow purchases of N95 caches or other PPE. Not a Federal funding priority anymore. They 'fixed' it once and apparently did not see a need to prepare further.

Yeah, local governments could have funded a cache replenishment, but hard to convince them to spend money for a supposed once in a lifetime event when the Feds stated it wasn't a priority.

cyrus83 said...

At this point the only things that can be reasonably tracked are how slammed the local health care system is with patients in respiratory distress (until the system hits its limit), and possibly the number of deaths above normal.

Locally we're apparently out of testing supplies, so the number of confirmed cases is likely to plateau this week at probably 100 to 200 maximum - not because the disease has been stopped, but because there is no capacity to do any further testing.

Anonymous said...

...and of coarse President Trump would be foolish to fire Fauci at this point and Fauci knows it. The press, who loves Trump SSSSOOOO much, would crucify him and CONgress would probably Impeach him AGAIN.

Nemo

Anonymous said...

PANDEMIC and just like that government controls all sporting events, concerts, WHETHER YOU CAN WORK, colleges, medical facilities and WHETHER OR NOT YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR HOME.

Government has caused the depletion of resources such as toilet paper and food and controls all local travel. Interstate travel is next. They now control you and everything in your life.

Some jurisdictions are even prohibiting the sale of and carrying of guns and ammunition just because they think they can, regardless of what the Constitution says.

The government created mass panic, hysteria and from it complete control. They're even now contemplating instituting indefinite Incarceration without trial. All over a virus that has a high probability of survival. Although it does suck if you become infected and/or succumb to it.

They're taking our freedom, enshrined in the Constitution, practically overnight, because they can and WE LET THEM DO IT.

See how easy that was?

(I stole most of this from a meme over at Nosewetters. Although I did embellish it and add some more recent information; for emphasis, ya know. ;-)))

Nemo

Anonymous said...

Nemo,

"They're taking our freedom...WE LET THEM DO IT."

I would gently correct you and said, no, we did not "let" them do it. We heartily encouraged them to, and threw it at them like confetti at a parade in NYFC.

Children are the arrows in your quiver. You will either populate your country with more of you, or more of them.

When you energetically give THEM your children to indoctrinate ("Department of Educaashun" et al), then you are giving them the very best that you have. Everything else is an afterthought and screaming into the gale. Freedoms? Hell, they already have the children, they do not need anyone's paltry recitation of "muh rights".

If something is wrong, then say so, and why. What authoritative standard is controlling, and why should I bow to it? If it is simply force, then Stalin, Pol Pot, and numerous other tyrants are right. Wrong? Because someone does not like it?

This goes much deeper than many are willing to examine.

Welcome Black Carter said...

I have a family member who works in a hospital that began drive thru tests. Lasted a couple days. Now available only to patients who are admitted with a bed. One way to flatten the curve.

nick flandrey said...

someone was asking if this is real, where are all the politicians, sportsball players, and actors and celebs with it?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

Just scroll down the home page and see as many as you like. Every category. And it will be more tomorrow, and more the day after, and more after that.

n

FredLewers said...

I've been looking at that one. Not sure where they're getting their numbers. That site runs higher numbers than the other tracking sites. Sent the link to someone today. They said basically it doesn't match cdc case numbers. Currently the CDC website has the numbers from 4pm Thursday.
Top. Men. Working. On. It.

FredLewers said...

I do trust the independent sites and my own napkin math a heck of a lot more than the top men numbers. js

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

Some jurisdictions are even prohibiting the sale of and carrying of guns and ammunition just because they think they can, regardless of what the Constitution says.

The Constitution says what our robed masters says it does, every one at the top a graduate of either Harvard or Yale law school. And the majority of them hate guns/gun owners, since Heller and MacDonald they've let the lower courts do whatever they want about firearms, with one possible exception they can and look to be deciding on the narrowest of grounds.

That said, I haven't heard of any jurisdictions prohibiting the carrying of guns any more than they normally do. In California, emergencies are eagerly being used to shut down gun stores and interrupt the long process of buying them, but it's been reported that the Democratic governor of Illinois has included them in the list of essential facilities.

rsj said...

An elderly neighbor fell down the foyer stairs in the apartment building. 911, ambulance etc. Rescue personnel running thru the "how do you feel, you have a fever" while getting the backboard and neck brace ready. I gave his wife a ride to the ER. They aint playing. Two security dudes and a nurse/cna in mask and gloves met us outside the entrance. Only one person allowed inside with the patient so I gave neighbor lady my number in case she needs a ride home. I noticed a trailer parked near the entrance and a tent was set up next to the trailer. I think my local hospital decided to do the Aesop plan; Keep them out and isolated. Aesop is right. Regular everyday ER stuff like heart attacks, fall injuries, seizures and everything else they see, are going to have to get wedged in between the coronas.

Anonymous said...

"One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Anonymous said...

The only situation to date where an entire, closed population was tested was the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship, as Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis observed last week. Among seven hundred passengers and crew members, seven died, for a 1 percent mortality rate — low given the close and prolonged exposure among the passengers. A cruise ship’s population is much more elderly than the general population and thus more vulnerable to disease. Ioannidis suggests that a reasonable fatality estimate for the US population as a whole could range from 0.05 percent to 1 percent; he settles for 0.3 percent. If 1 percent of the US population becomes infected, under a 0.3 percent fatality rate, 10,000 people would die, a number that would not move the needle much on the existing level of deaths due to various types of influenzas, Ioannidis notes.

https://spectator.us/consider-costs-coronavirus/

Aesop said...

Ioannidis overlooks that as soon as anyone showed active symptoms, they were pulled off of the MV Death Princess and removed to definitive hospital care. That's skewed data, when you scrape every bacteria of a petri dish the moment you spot it.
As it was, before we intervened and removed all Americans, and other nations did similarly, the rate of infection was growing daily to where in a short time, they would have succeeded ion giving the infection to everyone. It was a half-assed "quarantine", with a common air handling system, thus designed to fail.
When you put all the rhesus lab monkeys in one cage, you haven't "quarantined" anyone, except from those not aboard. All the ship proved was stupid ideas yield stupid results. Rates of hospitalization and infection cannot be predicted, because that's precisely the point at which outside intervention was made, which skews all further data at that point, and ultimately the whole stupid experiment was forcibly scrapped.

Anonymous said...

and you Aesop

Anonymous said...

Ioannidis is a Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences. He is director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director, along with Steven N. Goodman, of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).[5][6] He is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation.[7] He was chairman at the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine as well as adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.[8][9]

nick flandrey said...

Aesop and others have addressed this repeatedly.

Not apples to apples because the sick people were pulled off the ship and given state of the art care. That isn't gonna happen once (number of patients that can be saved by a ventilator) = (number of ventilators). They were also in an almost complete quarantine, that limited spread to others that would have been infected if not. Even with the almost complete quarantine, they STILL managed to give it to shore based personnel. And to more people on the plane as soon as they broke quarantine.

Look at the cleared cases for any western country. Those are cases that have run their course. If you get sick, and need hospital care, you are about even odds to die from it. Many places, more die than recover.

If your case isn't bad enough to require hospitalization, I don't even care about you, because you are just ordinarily sick. And there is no way to get any real number about the number of cases of mild infection, other than a mandatory, accurate, and UNIVERSAL antibody test. Which we don't have.

Just counting the sick people that will need hospitalization and looking at the doubling rate, you get to horrific numbers. Doesn't matter that they're 8 or 15% of the population, the double kills you and them in just a few extra doubles.

Don't count on immunity as we have evidence you can get it again, and some evidence that it's worse the second time.

without an effective treatment (and the quinine one might work but it only cuts the sick time in HALF, you're still on a vent and using resources, just for less time), or effective prophylaxis, the only tool left is isolation under whatever name you want.

While you are looking for reasons not to take it seriously, it's doubled again....

nick

Anonymous said...

I'm really not too surprised at the incompetence in .gov.

People don't vote issues, they vote the personality they like. Heard once that a woman voted for Clinton because he was handsome. Most people don't handle their finances well. Within about the last year saw the story that 60% live paycheck-to-paycheck. Now I've been there always struggling to get a nice bank balance so some of it is being young and just starting out. However, I know people who make good six figure incomes and are still living paycheck-to-paycheck. They are not fiscal conservatives and likely don't vote that way either.

We all know how 'preppers' are vilified even by close relatives and even spouses let alone the MSM, .gov, and self-styled elites. Not suffering from normalcy bias is a rare condition. Then those who haven't prepared (and I mean mentally, physically, and logistically) tend to get their panties in a wad when you don't share their freak out. Again, those who can't/don't/won't look past their noses (smartphone screens?) are unlikely to vote for anyone with any sort of long term vision.

So called 'captains of industry' are no better. Long gone are the days when a solid product and good, consistent profit were sufficient. There must always be more profit, more and bigger bonuses and stock dividends, on a quarterly basis. Add in outright lies and fraud to the equation in order that the above targets be met.

The entire system is rotted from top to bottom and KungFlu is just making is too obvious for even the lowest IQ moron to not grok the situation. Yet, we have those who STILL remain willfully obtuse (e.g. Chinese virus is racist).

Take a little poll for yourself: How many people do you know IRL who have their shit wired top to bottom? Who are intelligent, open-minded, and willing to admit mistakes and/or ignorance? An example from where I work. All 'highly educated' with many many years of college represented by the 65 people in my department. I might fill two hands with those I'd say meet the criteria above.. one hand might be more than sufficient as I don't know all the details of everyone's lives.

Think of this: in 1969 the Lake Pontchartrain bridge was completed ahead of schedule, under budget, and it worked. That feat could not be completed again today despite all of our 'progress'.

We are right and truly screwed.

Hope@ZeroKelvin said...

Let me tell you about Fauci.

I was at NIH from 1983 to 1985. That was when HIV was being worked out and Fauci was locked in mortal combat with Luc Montongier (?sp), a French scientist, for the identification, and the glory therein, of this weird immunocompromising virus spreading through the (mainly white) homosexual population. He waited an entire year before admitting that gay bath houses and promiscious gay sex was a key problem in HIV spread.

Meanwhile about every (mainly white) homosexual became infected and died. Reagan was President.

My favorite uncle, a man that put me on the path of (sucessful) science nerd geekdom, died of it.

Fast forward to H1N1. Fauci sat around until 1000s died as he was, and is, totally a Deep State and DemGlob guy. Obama was Prez.

He is a total alarmist. Claimed that millions would die of HIV. Which occurred under Reagan but was curiously muted about H1N1 which occurred under Obama.

Now we are all gonna die of COVID19 or transform to flesh eating zombies or whatever. Cuz Trump is POTUS.

Fuck Fauci with a rusting chainsaw.

FredLewers said...

There's academia and there's real world.
The people on the front line usually know more about a situation than the guys who work in theory land.

Anonymous said...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/video-of-dr-fauci-in-2009-is-unearthed-shows-a-calm-and-unalarmed-nih-chief-during-h1n1-epidemic-that-killed-over-12-thousand-americans/


https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/03/21/political-health-the-motives-of-a-very-very-political-dr-fauci/


Political Health – The Motives of a Very, Very, Political Dr. Fauci…

Anonymous said...

https://healthweather.us/

Anonymous said...

https://www.amgreatness.com/2020/03/19/dangerous-curves/ <---- I don't think I'm willing to bite on this disease being in the "abating stage" (anywhere), or the idea that the governmental reaction is 100% just a naked power grab (cockroaches will always try and scurry out to take advantage when the lights dim) but I suspect it would be very interesting to see the actual numbers of viral pneumonia cases here that didn't pop positive for influenza a/b since say ... november/december/january. It might help partially cover some of those missing variables. I recall in all this storm of information seeing where some asian country wasn't giving out kung-flu test numbers but they DID have a real spike in what their viral pneumonia stats.

A slightly better informed guess by tossing out cases that couldn't have been kung-flu could help the models. If such is out there, I've missed it (which doesn't say much).

Glacialhills said...

My rn wife is at work right now in er in sw michigan. To this point they have only had a few handfuls confirmed cases. They only get ONE n95 mask and one gown per 12 hour shift. They are scraping the bottom of ppe barrel now and this has not even started yet. I sent some of our own home n95s with her and the staff are woking on sewing their own. As of 4 days ago they were told they couldnt wear them as they are not approved. I told her to walk out if they wont allow her to wear something. Managers all have normalcy bias. Same as not using cloraquine even if unproven. Would rather let folks die than break some rule or protocols.

Reltney McFee said...

Manpower will be our downfall, even if The Magic Ventilator Fairy sprinkles vents higher and you.

Is Elon gonna rapid prototype a competent ICU nurse, or 10,000?

True fact: a up-to-speed ICU nurse can, maybe, run 2 vent patients each shift, if things stay copasetic. Sooo: 12 hour shifts into 7 days means 4 RNs for every 2 ICU vent patients, if and only if nobody takes sick. 10,000 vents, that weren ‘t there last month? You just gave yourself the job of prestidigitating 20,000 graduated, licensed, experienced RNs. In the next, what? 2 months?

Nursing school is 2 years, rock bottom minimum. Once out of school, it takes, say, 2 years if you are smart, motivated, and on the ball, to get to the point that you can solo in a unit.

These things, I know. Among my creds is “RN”, and “BSN”. I spent a couple years working ICU. Nobody is gonna shit out ready-to-rock-and-roll ICU vent capable nurses. No one.

And I haven’t even touched on the docs-intensivists-who make the medical decisions.

Our lean, nearly-in-time systems will turn around to bite our asses.

Go long on lube. We’re gonna really, really want it.

Aesop is, again, correct.

Anonymous said...

I once had to change an Engineer professor's tire for him on the side of the road.

And not because he was old or physically handicapped.

MN Steel

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

If we listen to Fauci he is right were all gonna die. I loved his letters to hillary.

Termite said...

The latest Covid-19 stats I found, as of March 23 @ 0400 GMT, from here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

USA stats

Cases:34,717
Deaths:452
Recovered:178
Percentage fatal: 1.3%

World stats

Cases:338,724
Deaths:14,687
Recovered:99,003
Percentage fatal: 4.3%

Termite said...

LawDog has an interesting take on the Italian death numbers, and why they may be considerably skewed.

http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2020/

Unknownsailor said...

"If your case isn't bad enough to require hospitalization, I don't even care about you, because you are just ordinarily sick. And there is no way to get any real number about the number of cases of mild infection, other than a mandatory, accurate, and UNIVERSAL antibody test. Which we don't have."

SO we have no idea what the over/under is on infected-and-presented-with-severe-symptoms and infected-but-developed-no-or-mild-symptoms.

But the politicians are being advised to make decisions that appear to postulate that full blown symptoms will be the norm everywhere.

I get it, the rate of spread guarantees that those presenting with full blown symptoms will totally crash US health care. What I want to know, is why is no apparent effort being made to inform the general public what the risk factors are that lead to full blown respiratory symptoms? We also don't seem to know what the ratio is of those infected but largely symptom free to infected and fully symptomatic, and what's more, we have totally missed the boat in finding out.

Those at high risk for the full blown symptoms should be locked inside their homes, but the rest of us, the ones who might not even notice if we get it, we should be free to continue our daily lives.

I have zero faith that the CDC is giving good advice to Trump on this. They have been monumental fuck ups for 30 years, and as we know, bureaucrats never face the consequences of their bad decisions.

Anonymous said...

I don't have the education or experience to make sense of all this. What I do know is that people are dying at an increasing rate here in our country from this. Doesn't take a weather man to know which way the wind blows. Get yourself and family squared away and then limit your exposure. Pray for the nurses and docs dealing with it, and then stay away from any exposure the best you can. Start by staying the fuck home and not going out just because you got bored. The economy is going to go tits up, count on it. Be as ready as you can for that. Thanks to the host for his excellent work getting people educated and hopefully prepared.

Anonymous said...

Tsunami or not, I think they're going to ease off on a bunch of measures to prevent spread.

There is little point in tearing stuff up if idiots are just going to infect all of the most vulnerable demographics anyways.

You have people who work with the elderly and immune compromised - who are locked down hard for their own safety - going out and being fucking idiots. "Oh hey, my shift is off, time to go (do thing that puts me in intensely close contact with strangers)"

It is happening. I know of examples already.

Even if they lock down travel and work to essential personnel, tards are going to go walk out of their homes and socialize with their neighbors.

Like many neighborhoods all over the nation, I'm seeing people congregate, throw parties, and have their kids play together because they're off work. One of them the other day was loudly complaining about the number of COVID patients they have to work with, and the lack of supplies.

Idiots.

A Texan said...

”Termite said...
The latest Covid-19 stats I found, as of March 23 @ 0400 GMT, from here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

USA stats

Cases:34,717
Deaths:452
Recovered:178
Percentage fatal: 1.3%”
————————
That death rate is wrong - you have to wait until ALL of those 34,717 cases are resolved one way or the other (death or recovery) before you can accurately calculate the mortality rate. What you have done is calculate the fraction with a solid numerator, and an incomplete denominator.

Steve Parker, M.D. said...


The U.S. CDC has published some preliminary data on 4226 U.S. citizens diagnosed with COVID-19 between mid-Feb and mid-March, 2020. Twelve percent of those were hospitalized. The CDC confirms that those over 60–65 years old are at greatest risk of serious illness or death; nothing new there.

The startling info for me was that adults of all age groups were prone to being admitted to a hospital with the infection. For instance, the rate of hospitalization for those aged 45–64 was 25%. The hospitalization rate for those 20–44 was not fare behind at 20%. From the CDC report:

"As of March 16, a total of 4,226 COVID-19 cases had been reported in the United States, with reports increasing to 500 or more cases per day beginning March 14 (Figure 1). Among 2,449 patients with known age, 6% were aged ≥85, 25% were aged 65–84 years, 18% each were aged 55–64 years and 45–54 years, and 29% were aged 20–44 years (Figure 2). Only 5% of cases occurred in persons aged 0–19 years."

"Among 508 (12%) patients known to have been hospitalized, 9% were aged ≥85 years, 36% were aged 65–84 years, 17% were aged 55–64 years, 18% were 45–54 years, and 20% were aged 20–44 years. Less than 1% of hospitalizations were among persons aged ≤19 years (Figure 2). The percentage of persons hospitalized increased with age, from 2%–3% among persons aged ≤19 years, to ≥31% among adults aged ≥85 years. (Table)."

The report doesn’t mention how many of those admitted to the ICU were on mechanical ventilation, nor how many made it out of the hospital alive.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm?s_cid=mm6912e2_w#T1_down

Anonymous said...

Let me tell you about Fauci.

I was at NIH from 1983 to 1985. That was when HIV was being worked out and Fauci was locked in mortal combat with Luc Montongier (?sp), a French scientist, for the identification, and the glory therein, of this weird immunocompromising virus spreading through the (mainly white) homosexual population. He waited an entire year before admitting that gay bath houses and promiscious gay sex was a key problem in HIV spread.

Meanwhile about every (mainly white) homosexual became infected and died. Reagan was President.

My favorite uncle, a man that put me on the path of (sucessful) science nerd geekdom, died of it.

========

Sadly, so much of the male homosexual population is still as irresponsible as ever. Those horrific gonorrhea and syphilis infection statistics?
They never mention that most of the infections are amongst two groups, homosexual males and drug addicts. Whatever happened to the campaigns to use condoms and barriers? I guess they will not get serious until gonorrhea and syphilis are immune to every existing drug treatment. Then they will finally get serious, when it is too damned late. And then everyone will pay the price.

Just like the irresponsible people that are defeating all the efforts to slow and stop infections from the Chinese Coronavirus these last few weeks. The efforts of thousands of responsible people are negated by the selfish and unthinking actions of a few.

Anonymous said...

I personally know three nurses at three different facilities who are seeing cases at their medical facilities which are in completely different AO's. One of them put out a public plea for PPE materials (and yes I responded and got them some because I had spare, no time to be selfish, rule 3 and whatnot).

Aesop, thanks again for these posts. Much appreciated. I have used them to try to wake people up but normalcy bias and plain ole fear is a heck of a disincentive for normies. The belief that the .gov is going to save them and is strong. The ONLY good thing about this fcking chink virus is that it's pulling the curtain back bigly. Lines outside gun stores (better late than never) and polticians soiling themselves daily on teevee is a wonderful thing to see.

Culper should update his CW scales, I think we may be further along now lol.

Anonymous said...

Atypical Illness Levels:

The U.S. Health Weather Map is a visualization of seasonal illness linked to fever - specifically influenza-like illness.

The map shows two key data points: (1) the illness levels we’re currently observing, and (2) the degree to which those levels are higher than the typical levels we expect to see at this point in the flu season.

https://healthweather.us/

TwoBuckChuck said...

Given the demographic most likely to be caught in the cross-hairs of this (possibly) manufactured epidemic, its beginning to look more like a controlled burn than an accident. Too many 'eaters' over retirement age being conveniently put out to pasture.

Have you heard about the latest craze among the Tide-pod-gobbling set? They go to grocery stores and deliberately cough on fresh produce. After congregating in large numbers with their bored spring breaking peers in defiance of common laws and common sense.

All this time I thought I was prepping for CivWar II. It never occurred to me to eye the grandkids with distrust.

nick flandrey said...

Interesting map, and interesting use for peoples' involuntarily shared data....

bet they had no idea their temps would be or could be used in something like this when they skipped reading the TOS and Privacy Policy.

n

(yeah, not personally identifiable in this form but SOMEONE has it in a usable form.)

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

Hope@ZeroKelvin said:

Let me tell you about Fauci.

I was at NIH from 1983 to 1985. That was when HIV was being worked out and Fauci was locked in mortal combat with Luc Montongier (?sp), a French scientist, for the identification, and the glory therein, of this weird immunocompromising virus spreading through the (mainly white) homosexual population....


The death match was between Montongier and Robert Gallo, Fauci is a doctor, not a bench lab scientist. Fauci could well have been in his chain of command at the NIH and supported his claims vs. Montongier, which got really messy.

From Norway said...

Data points, somewhat reduced in size about the effectiveness of hydroxichloroquine.

Local hospital had four patients with the Kung Flu. Set them all with HCQ on Friday. Two of them have already been discharged.

Data set is ridiculous, but that is all I have.

Anonymous said...

Smaller countries who have the ability to test a greater portion of their populations may be better indicators of the spread, as Aesop had mentioned before.
On Worldometer, San Marino is reporting 5,511 per 1M Pop, Faeroe Islands (NW Scotland) 2,415, Iceland 1,723, Luxembourg 1,275, Andorra 1,721, Liechtenstein 1,206
Etc.
The US count is not lower, it's the data blackout from the "don't test, don't tell" policy. I am guessing that Manhattan is higher than any of the others because of the density, the flat footed response, and the refusal to pivot to mitigation efforts quick enough.

NYC will be out of ventilators by the end of the week. "Screen cap this".

Barb said...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18164798

"Increasing ventilator surge capacity in disasters:Ventilation of four adult human sized sheep on a single ventilator with a modified circuit" full text also available @ Elsevier hub.

FWIW. Experimental, done 2008 in US Dept Emergency Medicine, State Univ of NY Downstate Lorenzo Paladino, author and others.

Barb, flyover country, central US.

nick flandrey said...

Went out this am with the sole intention of getting 2 gallons of milk. Figured walgreens or a quickie mart was the best way to minimize interactions with people.

8:45am, and people were lined up outside walgreens, where the sign advertised milk in gallons, limit 3. I drove on by to a larger regional chain gas station with a new convenience store attached.

Place was clean, with only a couple of customers, and I got a gallon of ice cream as well as the last two gallons of whole milk.

I wore gloves, never got within 4-6 feet of anyone. No coughing or sneezing. paid with card, and used glove to sign, refused the receipt. carried the bags without using the handles, sprayed the jug handles with alcohol when I got home. Washed with the Gojo AB soap.

Crazy? Overkill? Who knows. I can, so I did. I'd have stayed home completely but having real milk for the kids is easing the transition.

Making my 'last run' to the home centers too so I can get more potting soil, plants, and materials for a security upgrade here at the house. Loading up on gas too since I'm out anyway. Given my 'druthers I'd just be here at home, but this feels like it is starting to get tight around here, so I'm topping up.

YMMV

Houston metro area, west side,

nick

Barb said...

Add:12 hrs study interval,

Stealth Spaniel said...

My new job in the paint store has morphed a little. We get call, after call, after call..........from nurses, hospitals, doctors, etc about masks. Yes, we carry N95 masks if we were in normal times but everytime we get 4 masks in they are already spoken for. One hospital-who shall remain nameless-bought an entire painters respitory kit for $100 just to get the mask. Sad times for a supposedly first world country. On Sunday, there was really no reason for me to show up, but I did, to get paid. I spent my time disinfecting and cleaning-I have turned into the Rosie Super Cleaner. No customers were allowed in, the boys in the back mixed 5 gallon after 5 gallon barrell of paint, for contractors. We take credit cards only, no cash at this time. Therefore, no way to spread germs. The contractor calls ahead, we put the paint outside the store on a pallet, with the reciept attached, and watch him pick it up. Inbetween the calls from the medical community, we get Heather The Privileged calling. "Oh! You're open? Good! I need to look at some paint colors, will someone be there to help me?" No. No one will help you, we aren't doing color consultations at this time, worldwide pandemic-you know, and if you need paint, you have to call it in, with the color, the finish, and your credit card. Absolutely stunned silence. "But! But! You're open! And I have time to do this now! I work full-time!" Home Depot, Lowes, and Target are full of morons. They are not buying parts for the refrigerator that broke, or fixing plumbing. It's plants, dirt, wallpaper, etc.
-Reporting in from Folsom, California

Wheel said...

Case report from my hospital. 88 yo male with history of COPD, coronary disease, pancytopenia, 50+ year smoker presented with 1 week cough and fever. Pt actively dances 4 to 5 times a week. In ED vitals within normal limits and febrile 100.8 had taken Tylenol. Sent home at pt request and self quarantine. 4 days later when COVID test positive, follow up call, pt doing great. If anyone should have died from this, this man was the poster child.

Note that spike in tests now that CDC opened up testing for everyone with cough and subjective fever.

ThatWouldBeTelling said...

Wheel, thanks a lot for that report. As I've been telling too many non-specialists on the Right who insist out of their ignorance that this must be a bioweapon, it's the world's worst one, with patients like this throwing it off (so far), and per the I don't trust them statistics mostly from the PRC, it only killing 15% of those over 80. Few of whom I assume don't have comorbidities.

nick flandrey said...

I'm looking to buy dirt so I don't have to venture out in this later, just to get a fresh veg... and I'm still weighing pros and cons and protective measures....

n

Anonymous said...

Lunatic new neighbors moved in next door to us. "Baby Huey" and His "'Lil Princess." Every freaking day--either UPS. FedEX, or USPO delivers packages to their front door. Record was 7 packages in one day--they live for "stuff."

Always running out now for eats--both are morbidly obese--he at about 300 and 'Lil Priness" about 350, true "land whales"; both are in their early 30s. Both waddle, not walk. Pizza delivery is multiples, not a single pizza. Self-absorbed and self-indulgent to the max. Have not said "Hello" to us in weeks, even tho we live 50 feet from them.

Catch this--two days ago a car from NEW YORK STATE (NYC ?) pulls into their driveway--about 50 feet from me--and occupants bail out and all of them are laughing, hollering, and making fun of these days by foot "handshaking," or elbow nudging. The New Yawkers have been there 3 days bow.

Everything for this group of collective 'tards is a BIG JOKE. Their bloated human bodies--prolly diabetic, over weight, bad hearts, and hypertension to boot--means ZERO to these clowns. And--they are making well into the mid six figures of salaries. He drives the $80k SUV and she the European all-wheel special.

Best one: their aged and decrepit parents come over daily to fawn over their 'lil Princess' and her new digs and endless "new stuff" she buys. They may contract more than they bargained for.

Total ignoramuses.



Desertrat 1 said...

I'm in a private sub-forum of a firearms website. One of the guys there is a code-writing savant. He and four or five others are working with GISAID in developing curves to project the growth rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from Corona.

Accuracy is near 100%, so far. New data points from reporting agencies are on the curves.

The worldwide death rate is now expected to be near four percent. In the US? Around seven percent.

Of those who go to ICU, half die.

From Norway said...

@Desertrat

Today in Norway the first patient with respirator was disconnected from it, because of recovery. It was big news, since all the others are still connected or dying.

Does not look good at all if you ask me.

nick flandrey said...

@ from norway, every one saved is a win.

take what joy you can.

nick

Survivormann99 said...

Keep up the good work, Aesop.

The powers that be assure us that the supply chain is intact. How can that be--at least for long? Given the percent of the population that is, essentially, sheltering in place, how can the supply chain function at the required level once the current warehouse stock is depleted? Who is actually at work now making that new products to introduce into the supply chain, be it food, disinfectant, fuel, medical supplies, and countless other things?

A person formerly working in logistics for a nationally known company that depends heavily on Chinese production, told me that, after a unit leaves a Chinese factory, it takes approximately 45 days for that product to reach a retail end-user. Since China is just starting to get back to work—if, in fact, reports are actually accurate—this delay has to be accounted for when figuring out the continued viability of the supply chain.

About the CFR rate, the most serious cases require ventilators and, without them, the outcome will be fatal for a very great number of patients. This explains the observation that it is better to become infected early in a pandemic rather than later. (Note that a similar situation happened with battle casualties in earlier times. It was far better to get wounded early in the battle than late in the battle when medical personnel were overwhelmed.) Reports indicate that we're close to the point where existing ventilators are being maxed out with the exploding number of cases.

Once the saturation point with ventilator use occurs, won't this ensure that the CFR rate will skyrocket in a couple of weeks?

Anonymous said...

@Anon 1534: Even better is they are now using anti-virals for AIDS for 'prep'. Docs started giving off label to take as prophylaxis about 10yrs ago. The dolts at FDA now have this as an INDICATION for some of these meds. This is beyond stupid. I'm not medically trained at all (unless you count Marine Corps first aid) and even I get that bugs change and/or you can select for more viable/virulent strains (see MRSA and overuse of antibiotics). Eventually AIDS II will come out and likely be far worse than the original strain b/c humans accelerated natural selection.

Never underestimate the power of stupid.

@MTHead 1118: It has a name. It is called Administratium.

Bezzle said...

I was right about this all along, on the literally the first day, and had it called correctly at the time:

* It's an ordinary cold-virus that's been given a name to panic everyone...
* ...in order to loot about thirty trillion dollars out of global stock-market futures....
* ...while acclimating the citizenry worldwide to "justified" at-whim oppression...
* ...permit the "Never a socialist nation!" Republicans to pass exactly 100% of Bernie Sanders communist campaign platform under the guise of an "emergency".

And, now that the US is ramping up case-reporting to something reasonably approaching slightly accurate (i.e., as opposed to the bullshit from, say, China and Iran, where we may reasonably assume that almost everyone susceptible in both countries should have contracted it by now), it's becoming ever clearer that all-told lethality of this thing is going to be under a tenth of one-percent (that I also predicted, as I assume that the virus is NOT "novel", and that the human genome has weathered earlier, unnoticed outbreaks). IOW, well within to average seasonal variation of elderly pneumonia deaths (which runs 50,000 annual deaths in the US).

They made y'all jump good, and got it on camera, and stole your liberty and your money while they were at it.

Wendy (KekistanTrans) said...

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) Executive Order 2020-13 (COVID-19)

Temporary enhancements to operational capacity and efficiency of health care facilities

...

Acting under the Michigan Constitution of 1963 and Michigan law, I order the following:

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, the Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”) may issue an emergency certificate of need to an applicant and defer strict compliance with the procedural requirements of section 22235 of the Public Health Code, 1978 PA 368, as amended, MCL 333.22235, until the termination of the state of emergency under section 3 of Executive Order 2020-4.

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (“LARA”) may grant a waiver under section 21564 of the Public Health Code, 1978 PA 368, as amended, MCL 333.21564, to any licensed hospital in this state, regardless of number of beds or location, for the purpose of providing care during the COVID-19 emergency, to construct, acquire, or operate a temporary or mobile facility for any health care purpose, regardless of where the facility is located.

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, LARA may issue a temporary registration as a certified nurse aide to an applicant, regardless of whether the applicant demonstrates to LARA that they have successfully completed the examination requirements of sections 21911 and 21913 of the Public Health Code, 1978 PA 368, as amended, MCL 333.21911 and MCL 333.21913. A temporary registration issued under this section shall be valid for 28 days and may be renewed by LARA until the termination of the state of emergency under section 3 of Executive Order 2020-4.

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, LARA may renew a license to practice under Part 170, 172, 175, 177, or 187 of the Public Health Code, 1978 PA 368, as amended, regardless of whether the licensee has satisfied the continuing education requirement applicable to their license.

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, LARA may recognize hours worked responding to the COVID-19 emergency as hours toward continuing education courses or programs required for licensure.

Effective immediately and continuing through April 14, 2020 at 11:59 pm, LARA may allow a non-nursing assistant such as an activity coordinator, social worker, or volunteer to help feed or transport a patient or resident in a manner consistent with the patient’s or resident’s care plan.

Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State of Michigan.

OvergrownHobbit said...

I know two gummint employees on paid administrative leave who both did the drive through-testing for corona-chan. Neither is admitting to their employer that they are sick, because it will use up their sick leave.

Public Heath here is not taking info from patients who call to report they have CCPflu, it has to be from doctors. Doctors are telling their patients to make the call, because HPPA.

So... GIGO all the way down.