Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Is it possible that many/most people who have it will be (like Rand Paul), and stay, asymptomatic?
Looking at the worst six or seven countries on the list, who'd like to comment on statistical/epidemiological trends such as:
1. Do the small number of new cases still being reported in China and S. Korea comfort or concern you?
2. Does the number of Italian cases appear to be reaching a plateau?
3. Obviously the US trend is dramatically upward-how about Spain, Germany and France in comparison to the US and Italy?
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
The one thing I DO know is that we lack apples to apples data for each state...each has its own procedures...our state is vastly under tested, I am sure there are others in the same boat.
To make things worse, there is confusion about who should get tested, and who will do it. It changes by the day. Last report: VT has "ebbing supply of tests, shifting state guidance, and unclear standards for who can get tested."
The ONLY point being that there is NO way our data can be meaningfully compared with any other state's, and I suspect this is true of most states. Completely different methodologies at work.
Not sure I understand. On Wednesday, Italy had 4200 new cases, which is the highest they've had at that time. Then 5300 new cases on Thursday, 6000 new cases on Friday, and 6600 new cases yesterday. So it appears Italy is not even close to a plateau – every day they have more new cases than the day before. The rate of new cases might be slightly slowing down, but too early to say.
Aren’t those statistics on just the people who qualified to be tested? I’m wondering/hoping many more people already have the virus, are completely fine (like Rand Paul), and have not been tested (because they’re not Rand Paul)? If it’s highly contagious, then could millions of Americans already have it and be asymptomatic?
China says it may be about 1 in 3 cases if I read this right — salt grains of suitable size for Chinese statistics:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...ers-classified
Most up to date source of cases I have found is https://topic.newsbreak.com/covid-19...web#map-status
No one I have found is reliably reporting #s of tested/negative tests, a function of the fact that public health is state by state and there are no standards.
That's what I was looking for with my unintentionally, not-so-well phrased question. The rate of growth appears to be slowing down a bit with the absolute increase per day decreasing slightly from +1100 to +700 to +600 over the previous day. It'll be comforting to see those #s drop off dramatically (hopefully) as they did in China and S. Korea.
Thanks!
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
Yeah if you look at the Total Cases graph with log scale (instead of linear) you can clearly see Italy's line is NOT straight; straight would suggest an exponential increase. It's slightly curving downward:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
So, the numbers can still be increasing, but if the rate of increase (basically the derivative) is slower, that's a positive sign theoretically.
The US, on the other hand, is still a straight line on the log scale, meaning exponential growth. There's the tiniest downward movement in the last day or so, but hard to say if that's a pattern or not yet.
Last edited by Bluedog; 03-22-2020 at 05:28 PM.
1. Yea, I'm figuring that lots of people (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? more?) did not qualify to be tested and not sure what % of those who didn't qualify would be + or -, thereby altering any number of statistical variables like # of infected, % of infected with minimal/serious/critical symptoms, death rates, etc.
2. It'd be nice to have "unlimited" resources in the US/world and be able to test hundreds of millions more people and find out a more true infection rate, in which case we might find your infected but asymptomatic thought to be true.
Thanks!
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.
I'll certainly defer to rsvman WRT his amazing virology knowledge and experience, but I'd think exposure to some of the more common coronaviruses would confer varying degrees of immunity to other coronavirus infections, but, with COVID-19 being a new mutation (if I understand somewhat correctly), that serious/critical illnesses and death rates are somewhat based on increased age and/or high risk factors and possibly (probably?) and limited prior exposures.
My personal analogy would be my annual hospital privilege-required influenza vaccines (note: I am NOT comparing COVID-19 to influenza). For the last 20ish years, I've received the vaccines and have had years when I've had "common colds" but no influenza-like illnesses. Other years, I've experienced 12-48 hours of varying degrees of cough, congestion, fever, myalgias and arthralgias and have "cursed" the vaccine as I felt lousy for a brief period, but realized I could have been a *lot* sicker had I not taken the vaccine. I think I've missed two half days of work in that time for an influenza infection, fortunately never having been more than minimally to mildly symptomatic.
[redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.