This is old news now, a whole 5-6 days, but I'm just seeing it.
Now here comes a study at the University of Oxford that poses a mind-boggling question: What if half of the British population is already infected with coronavirus? What if the percentage of infected people who need hospitalization for COVID-19 is actually teeny tiny because, unbeknownst to us, the overall infected population is actually enormously large? If half of Great Britain is already infected, the country is already well on its way to acquiring herd immunity, which means they may be seeing the worst of the epidemic right now. There’s no true “mass casualty” scenario as the virus spreads. It’s already spread. And it turns out it’s harmless in virtually everyone who gets it.
If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all…
The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta…
The Oxford study is based on a what is known as a “susceptibility-infected-recovered model” of Covid-19, built up from case and death reports from the UK and Italy. The researchers made what they regard as the most plausible assumptions about the behaviour of the virus…
If the findings are confirmed by testing, then the current restrictions could be removed much sooner than ministers have indicated.
How do we know if the Oxford study is right or wrong? We take a “poll” of sorts. Head out into the field and perform serological tests on a *random* sample of the population. Those tests will show who has coronavirus antibodies in their system, the telltale sign of a person who’s been infected and fought the infection off. If half the sample turns out to have those antibodies, there you go. That’s the smoking gun that many, many, many more people have been infected than we realized and just shook off the disease without having had much of an inkling that they had it.
I think the UW or a local company is attempting this locally. Sending out testing kits to random neighborhoods, because if the results are that more people have it with no symptoms, it would indicate that senior living facilities, and densely populated places, really are horrible horrible places to live. That is, if you can smell piss, you're going to die.
So, like, all of New York City.
Fuck off, Seattle has long passed NYC in the piss-per-capita rankings.
Truth and it's not even close.
Have spent a bit of time in NYC the last couple years. It's quite nice. Hadn't been there since about 2001/Post-911 and they've done a nice job cleaning up the raw sewage smell.
There's still a lot of garbage and crap blowing around but that's expected with a bazillion people living in a confined area. There's constantly sanitation workers spraying down the sidewalks/streets and picking up litter.
And quite honestly, the NYPD do an amazing job of keeping the sidewalks relatively passable - there's an occasional bum camped out in a doorway but by 9 or 10AM, they are usually shuffled along out of the mainstream.
Fair, I've haven't been there in a while. Manhattan always smelled like piss, diesel and cabbage to me.
Shockingly, people who haven't been off the west coast in a while....big cities elsewhere are generally pretty clean and bum-free. Not saying you're one of those 206/360/425-centric myopic dicks who thinks their shit don't stink, don't twist.
Haven't really been in a shithole around the world that matches up to the absolute filth of SF, Seattle, LA and Portland. Include also Eugene - but Eugene has always had stinky hippies stumbling about like zombies so nothing's changed with them.
U.S. officials and hospitals braced for an influx of patients as infections of the new coronavirus continued to surge past those in any other country, while questions about China’s accounting of the infectious disease that burst into a world-wide pandemic rose after the country reported cases that had been excluded from its national tally.
China said more than 1,500 people who were infected with the coronavirus but haven’t shown symptoms weren’t included in its tally of confirmed cases. Public concerns about the risk of infections by asymptomatic carriers have grown in recent weeks, as the country begins to relax its cordon around Wuhan, the city where the virus was first identified late last year.
The National Health Commission said it had asked hospitals to report such cases and had asked local officials to place them and their close contacts under two-week quarantine. It couldn’t be learned to what degree that was done.
In the U.S., which has more cases than any other country, concerns about an expected surge in patients have pushed mayors and governors to take steps unprecedented in modern times to fight the contagion.
President Trump on Sunday said he was persuaded by coronavirus pandemic models to extend national social distancing guidelines through the end of April. The White House plans to lay out the data and assumptions behind the decision on Tuesday, and we look forward to that. Meanwhile, we thought readers might appreciate a dive into one of the more prominent Covid-19 models to look at the wide range of outcomes—and how much uncertainty there continues to be.
White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx said its assessment of how the pandemic would unfold closely mirrors the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the so-called Murray model. That group last week estimated 81,114 deaths over the next four months, with 95% confidence that the number would be between 38,242 and 162,106.
That’s a terrible human toll and would be about three times more fatal than the average seasonal flu. But the good news is this fatality forecast is much lower than the 2.2 million that the President suggested as a worst case. Estimates could still shift significantly, and the Murray group plans to update its model as more data flow in from the states and other countries.
Importantly, the Murray model measures deaths in terms of population rather than confirmed cases since testing varies geographically. It also extrapolates U.S. fatalities based on evidence from other hot spots and Wuhan in China after government lockdowns. One important data point: It took 27 days after strict social distancing was implemented in Wuhan before daily deaths peaked. New York, California and other states that took early action to close non-essential businesses are merely starting week three.
Data out of China may not be reliable, and the Murray study underlines that “modeling for US states based on one completed epidemic, at least for the first wave, and many incomplete epidemics is intrinsically challenging.” This is why the estimates are likely to change in the coming days and weeks.
The Murray model also simulates health-care utilization in the states over time based on other countries’ experience and their projected fatalities in the U.S. About 64,175 more hospital beds, 17,380 intensive care unit beds and 19,481 ventilators on average will be needed nationwide. But demand will be most acute in a handful of states.
For instance, New York will need an estimated 35,000 more hospital and 7,300 ICU beds next week when demand for care is projected to peak. That’s a lot, but blessedly fewer than the 55,000 to 110,000 hospital beds and 18,000 to 37,000 ICU beds that public health officials had said a week or so ago could be needed. This shows how projections can vary and quickly change.
“Demand for health services rapidly increases in the last week of March and first 2 weeks of April and then slowly declines through the rest of April and May, with demand continuing well into June,” the Murray summary notes. “Daily deaths in the mean forecast exceed 2,300 by the second week of April. While peak demand will occur at the national level in the second week of April, this varies by state.”
The Murray model predicts population death rates will fall below 0.30 per million in most Northeastern states, Michigan, Indiana, Nevada and Louisiana by early May, but not until late June or early July for Wisconsin and Florida. The enormous geographical variation and modelling uncertainty no doubt informed the White House decision to extend social distancing guidelines nationwide for at least a month despite Mr. Trump’s previously stated desire to get the nation back to work.
Statistical models are a crucial but not the only factor that political leaders should heed as they make decisions in the public interest. And none of these estimates assumes progress from new treatments that could reduce deaths and hospitalizations. Widespread testing—especially for antibodies for those who developed immunity, as Germany is planning to do—will also be valuable in planning an exit from the sledgehammer of our national lockdown.
April is going to be a brutal month for America, and the next two weeks especially. But as the bad news arrives, it’s important to understand that the worst-case-scenarios that many in the media trumpet are far from a certain fate.
The American public on Tuesday is expected to get its first look at the statistical models guiding the policy decisions that have led governors and mayors across the country to order more than 250 million people to stay at home. The findings are expected to be unsettling.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for the virus response team, tried to brace both President Trump and the country for some tough weeks ahead.
Even if all of the social distancing guidelines are followed “perfectly,” Dr. Birx said, the death toll in the nation could reach 100,000 to 200,000.
Trump wanted to open the country by Easter and then Easter becomes the DEATH DAY of all time and new models show 200K dead.
Fuck off
If this bitch is wrong by a magnitude of 100 she should be confined to a cruise ship for the rest of her life
The American public on Tuesday is expected to get its first look at the statistical models guiding the policy decisions that have led governors and mayors across the country to order more than 250 million people to stay at home. The findings are expected to be unsettling.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for the virus response team, tried to brace both President Trump and the country for some tough weeks ahead.
Even if all of the social distancing guidelines are followed “perfectly,” Dr. Birx said, the death toll in the nation could reach 100,000 to 200,000.
Trump wanted to open the country by Easter and then Easter becomes the DEATH DAY of all time and new models show 200K dead.
Fuck off
If this bitch is wrong by a magnitude of 100 she should be confined to a cruise ship for the rest of her life
It may get to that number but 60% will be in the tristate area and and 25% will be in California. Because California will fuck up a wet dream.
Seattle seems to be getting their shit together.
Oregon should be opened up on April 15th as we we'll have probably less than 800 active cases with 40 deaths. In that months time, there will have been 4,000 new flu cases and 75 deaths from the flu or related pneumonia in Oregon if you go by the averages for this season.
But Oregon won't be opened up by then because Democrats.
2020-03-27 -- As authorities lifted a two-month coronavirus lockdown in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, residents said they were growing increasingly skeptical that the figure of some 2,500 deaths in the city to date was accurate.
Since the start of the week, seven large funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of around 500 people to their families every day, suggesting that far more people died than ever made the official statistics.
"It can't be right ... because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?" an Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA on Friday.
"They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday," he said.
Seven funeral homes currently serve Wuhan -- a huge conurbation of three cities: Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang.
Social media users have been doing some basic math to figure out their daily capacity, while the news website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in one day alone -- double the official number of deaths.
Some social media posts have estimated that all seven funeral homes in Wuhan are handing out 3,500 urns every day in total.
Funeral homes have informed families that they will try to complete cremations before the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5, which would indicate a 12-day process beginning on March 23.
Such an estimate would mean that 42,000 urns would be given out during that time.
Various calculations
Another popular estimate is based on the cremation capacity of the funeral homes, which run a total of 84 furnaces with a capacity over 24 hours of 1,560 urns city-wide, assuming that one cremation takes one hour.
This calculation results in an estimated 46,800 deaths.
A resident of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, said most people there now believe that more than 40,000 people died in the city before and during the lockdown.
"Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality," the resident, who gave only his surname Mao, said.
A source close to the provincial civil affairs bureau said many people had died at home, without being diagnosed with, or treated for, COVID-19.
The source said any talk of the true number of deaths in Wuhan was very sensitive, but that the authorities do likely know the real figure.
"Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."
The source said Wuhan saw 28,000 cremations in the space of a single month, suggesting that the online estimates over a two-and-a-half month period weren't excessive.
Wuhan resident Sun Linan said relatives of those who died are now forming long lines outside funeral homes to collect their loved ones' ashes.
"It has already begun," Sun said on Thursday. "There were people lining up in Biandanshan Cemetery yesterday, and a lot of people forming lines today at Hankou Funeral Home."
Hush money
Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui told RFA that city officials have been handing out 3,000 yuan in "funeral allowances" to the families of the dead in exchange for their silence.
"There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones' remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming," he said, in a reference to the traditional grave tending festival on April 5.
"It's to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody's allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed," Chen said.
The son of deceased COVID-10 patient Hu Aizhen said he had been told to collect his mother's ashes by the local neighborhood committee.
"The local committee told me they are now handling funerals, but I don't want to do it right now," the man, surnamed Ding, told RFA.
"There are too many people doing it right now."
Chen said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.
"The official number of deaths was 2,500 people ... but before the epidemic began, the city's crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day," he said.
"But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock," he said.
A resident surnamed Gao said the city's seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they worked around the clock.
"Anyone looking at that figure will realize, anyone with any ability to think," Gao said. "What are they talking about [2,535] people?"
"Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day]."
Comments
Haven't really been in a shithole around the world that matches up to the absolute filth of SF, Seattle, LA and Portland. Include also Eugene - but Eugene has always had stinky hippies stumbling about like zombies so nothing's changed with them.
China’s Count Excluded Infected People With No Symptoms
China said more than 1,500 people who were infected with the coronavirus but haven’t shown symptoms weren’t included in its tally of confirmed cases. Public concerns about the risk of infections by asymptomatic carriers have grown in recent weeks, as the country begins to relax its cordon around Wuhan, the city where the virus was first identified late last year.
The National Health Commission said it had asked hospitals to report such cases and had asked local officials to place them and their close contacts under two-week quarantine. It couldn’t be learned to what degree that was done.
In the U.S., which has more cases than any other country, concerns about an expected surge in patients have pushed mayors and governors to take steps unprecedented in modern times to fight the contagion.
IWRYK
Coronavirus Models of Uncertainty
White House coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx said its assessment of how the pandemic would unfold closely mirrors the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the so-called Murray model. That group last week estimated 81,114 deaths over the next four months, with 95% confidence that the number would be between 38,242 and 162,106.
That’s a terrible human toll and would be about three times more fatal than the average seasonal flu. But the good news is this fatality forecast is much lower than the 2.2 million that the President suggested as a worst case. Estimates could still shift significantly, and the Murray group plans to update its model as more data flow in from the states and other countries.
Importantly, the Murray model measures deaths in terms of population rather than confirmed cases since testing varies geographically. It also extrapolates U.S. fatalities based on evidence from other hot spots and Wuhan in China after government lockdowns. One important data point: It took 27 days after strict social distancing was implemented in Wuhan before daily deaths peaked. New York, California and other states that took early action to close non-essential businesses are merely starting week three.
Data out of China may not be reliable, and the Murray study underlines that “modeling for US states based on one completed epidemic, at least for the first wave, and many incomplete epidemics is intrinsically challenging.” This is why the estimates are likely to change in the coming days and weeks.
The Murray model also simulates health-care utilization in the states over time based on other countries’ experience and their projected fatalities in the U.S. About 64,175 more hospital beds, 17,380 intensive care unit beds and 19,481 ventilators on average will be needed nationwide. But demand will be most acute in a handful of states.
For instance, New York will need an estimated 35,000 more hospital and 7,300 ICU beds next week when demand for care is projected to peak. That’s a lot, but blessedly fewer than the 55,000 to 110,000 hospital beds and 18,000 to 37,000 ICU beds that public health officials had said a week or so ago could be needed. This shows how projections can vary and quickly change.
“Demand for health services rapidly increases in the last week of March and first 2 weeks of April and then slowly declines through the rest of April and May, with demand continuing well into June,” the Murray summary notes. “Daily deaths in the mean forecast exceed 2,300 by the second week of April. While peak demand will occur at the national level in the second week of April, this varies by state.”
The Murray model predicts population death rates will fall below 0.30 per million in most Northeastern states, Michigan, Indiana, Nevada and Louisiana by early May, but not until late June or early July for Wisconsin and Florida. The enormous geographical variation and modelling uncertainty no doubt informed the White House decision to extend social distancing guidelines nationwide for at least a month despite Mr. Trump’s previously stated desire to get the nation back to work.
Statistical models are a crucial but not the only factor that political leaders should heed as they make decisions in the public interest. And none of these estimates assumes progress from new treatments that could reduce deaths and hospitalizations. Widespread testing—especially for antibodies for those who developed immunity, as Germany is planning to do—will also be valuable in planning an exit from the sledgehammer of our national lockdown.
April is going to be a brutal month for America, and the next two weeks especially. But as the bad news arrives, it’s important to understand that the worst-case-scenarios that many in the media trumpet are far from a certain fate.
The American public on Tuesday is expected to get its first look at the statistical models guiding the policy decisions that have led governors and mayors across the country to order more than 250 million people to stay at home.
The findings are expected to be unsettling.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coordinator for the virus response team, tried to brace both President Trump and the country for some tough weeks ahead.
Even if all of the social distancing guidelines are followed “perfectly,” Dr. Birx said, the death toll in the nation could reach 100,000 to 200,000.
Trump wanted to open the country by Easter and then Easter becomes the DEATH DAY of all time and new models show 200K dead.
Fuck off
If this bitch is wrong by a magnitude of 100 she should be confined to a cruise ship for the rest of her life
Seattle seems to be getting their shit together.
Oregon should be opened up on April 15th as we we'll have probably less than 800 active cases with 40 deaths. In that months time, there will have been 4,000 new flu cases and 75 deaths from the flu or related pneumonia in Oregon if you go by the averages for this season.
But Oregon won't be opened up by then because Democrats.
3-31-20
Justice will not be served until I see a couple dozen of these sticking out of Pelosi's asshole.
Since the start of the week, seven large funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of around 500 people to their families every day, suggesting that far more people died than ever made the official statistics.
"It can't be right ... because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?" an Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA on Friday.
"They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday," he said.
Seven funeral homes currently serve Wuhan -- a huge conurbation of three cities: Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang.
Social media users have been doing some basic math to figure out their daily capacity, while the news website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in one day alone -- double the official number of deaths.
Some social media posts have estimated that all seven funeral homes in Wuhan are handing out 3,500 urns every day in total.
Funeral homes have informed families that they will try to complete cremations before the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5, which would indicate a 12-day process beginning on March 23.
Such an estimate would mean that 42,000 urns would be given out during that time.
Various calculations
Another popular estimate is based on the cremation capacity of the funeral homes, which run a total of 84 furnaces with a capacity over 24 hours of 1,560 urns city-wide, assuming that one cremation takes one hour.
This calculation results in an estimated 46,800 deaths.
A resident of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, said most people there now believe that more than 40,000 people died in the city before and during the lockdown.
"Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality," the resident, who gave only his surname Mao, said.
A source close to the provincial civil affairs bureau said many people had died at home, without being diagnosed with, or treated for, COVID-19.
The source said any talk of the true number of deaths in Wuhan was very sensitive, but that the authorities do likely know the real figure.
"Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily," the source said. "This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes."
The source said Wuhan saw 28,000 cremations in the space of a single month, suggesting that the online estimates over a two-and-a-half month period weren't excessive.
Wuhan resident Sun Linan said relatives of those who died are now forming long lines outside funeral homes to collect their loved ones' ashes.
"It has already begun," Sun said on Thursday. "There were people lining up in Biandanshan Cemetery yesterday, and a lot of people forming lines today at Hankou Funeral Home."
Hush money
Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui told RFA that city officials have been handing out 3,000 yuan in "funeral allowances" to the families of the dead in exchange for their silence.
"There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones' remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming," he said, in a reference to the traditional grave tending festival on April 5.
"It's to stop them keening [a traditional expression of grief]; nobody's allowed to keen after Qing Ming has passed," Chen said.
The son of deceased COVID-10 patient Hu Aizhen said he had been told to collect his mother's ashes by the local neighborhood committee.
"The local committee told me they are now handling funerals, but I don't want to do it right now," the man, surnamed Ding, told RFA.
"There are too many people doing it right now."
Chen said nobody in the city believes the official death toll.
"The official number of deaths was 2,500 people ... but before the epidemic began, the city's crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day," he said.
"But during the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock," he said.
A resident surnamed Gao said the city's seven crematoriums should have a capacity of around 2,000 bodies a day if they worked around the clock.
"Anyone looking at that figure will realize, anyone with any ability to think," Gao said. "What are they talking about [2,535] people?"
"Seven crematoriums could get through more than that [in a single day]."