The Numbers Dont Work

[mikewhitney]

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

The up-to-date numbers are on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

[Mountain Man]

I just don't see justification of the fear and quarantines. Am I missing some critical concept that artificially keeps the deaths down?

I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.

[mikewhitney]

I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.

Hopefully others will become aware of that. Meanwhile the Dems (and Republicans) are going wild in DC while trying to push for borrowing to pay people out of their debt, and they are pushing for their socialist atrocities. This sounds like a quarantine to keep people away from protesting the decisions of Congress.

After governments kill the economy, they are offering radical marxist solutions to fix it. They are complaining about the numbers of deaths due to the President (I suppose referring only to NY and NJ) while proposing radical socialist medicine to use across the country. "Wow. We can sneak in our new agenda while the country is unable to fight back."

[Starlight]

Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???

[mikewhitney]

Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???

You are calling the California government website a conspiracy? It is too easy to call something a conspiracy theory when you do have a logical argument against the facts. This is an aspect of mind control. Are you really a scientist? Are you able to explain the numbers?

[Mountain Man]

Are there any conspiracy theories you two don't believe???

What conspiracy theory did I espouse?

[oxmixmudd]

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

The up-to-date numbers are on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

Sigh.

California has not had 'super low' casualties. The mortality in california is 2.5%. Louisiana is 3.5%, New York is 4%. New York is doing lots of testing.

The goal is to avoid exponential spread of the disease. When the spread has gone exponential, you can't control it, real mortality is 1% at best, for california, at 50% catching it, that is 200,000 deaths. For the US total is 1.5 million deaths. So you have to keep it from spreading exponentially.

1) asymptomatic people carry the disease and can spread it. So you can't just ask sick people to stay home.

2) we don't have enough tests to test everybody, so we don't know who is carrying the virus.

3) the virus is very contagious and typically 2 to 3 people get it for every one that has it.

4) to stop exponential spread other than with isolation, you must act very EARLY and aggressively. We are way past that.

5) The reality has been you can't stop it period without isolation. The only places that have it under control have done lots of generalized testing and extreme social distancing.

These five reasons are why we are doing what we doing. Otherwise you end up with new york, or Italy, or spain. Once the number of serious and ICU cases exceed hospital capacity, mortality goes way up. as we see in other countries. you keep mortality down by making sure hospitals can handle the really sick patient load.

The US as a whole is still experiencing exponential growth. Many of the states you mention are adding 10% to their case count per day. 10% per day is a doubling every week. that is exponential growth. Doubling every week starting a 17,000 cases like california means a little less than half the state (17,000,000 people) is infected in just 10 weeks, and somewhere between 150 and 300,000 of them die.

Those are the numbers that tell the story and that we have to act on.

You stop that scenario from happening by seriously reducing the rate of spread. You reduce or stop the spread by stopping physical interactions between people.

Once we have a real test and enough tests we can control the spread by knowing who has it and quarantining them. But that is a long way off.

[oxmixmudd]

You are calling the California government website a conspiracy? It is too easy to call something a conspiracy theory when you do have a logical argument against the facts. This is an aspect of mind control. Are you really a scientist? Are you able to explain the numbers?

The explanation for your numbers is they are the wrong numbers from which to derive a conclusion. Much like trying to figure out how fast you are going by measuring the diameter of your wheel but not measuring the RPMs it is spinning. The size of your wheel in isolation of its rotation rate will not tell you your velocity. See my post above.

[firstfloor]

I suppose the argument would be that the deaths are down because of the quarantines, but there are obviously flaws in that sort of reasoning. It's like arguing that the magic rock I carry in my pocket keeps tigers away. How do I know it's working? Because I don't see any tigers around.

[mikewhitney]

The explanation for your numbers is they are the wrong numbers from which to derive a conclusion. Much like trying to figure out how fast you are going by measuring the diameter of your wheel but not measuring the RPMs it is spinning. The size of your wheel in isolation of its rotation rate will not tell you your velocity. See my post above.

You have to hand-wave a lot of stuff away to make your point seem logical.

[mikewhitney]

California is loaning away ventilators. That is how bad the severe case load has been in California. We should have more people in normal life so that we can load the hospitals a bit more -- so we don't unnecessarily slowdown the economy further and kill more people.

[Terraceth]

You have to hand-wave a lot of stuff away to make your point seem logical.

Exactly what is oxmixmudd hand-waving away?

[mikewhitney]

Sigh.

California has not had 'super low' casualties. The mortality in california is 2.5%. Louisiana is 3.5%, New York is 4%. New York is doing lots of testing.

The goal is to avoid exponential spread of the disease. When the spread has gone exponential, you can't control it, real mortality is 1% at best, for california, at 50% catching it, that is 200,000 deaths. For the US total is 1.5 million deaths. So you have to keep it from spreading exponentially.

1) asymptomatic people carry the disease and can spread it. So you can't just ask sick people to stay home.

2) we don't have enough tests to test everybody, so we don't know who is carrying the virus.

3) the virus is very contagious and typically 2 to 3 people get it for every one that has it.

4) to stop exponential spread other than with isolation, you must act very EARLY and aggressively. We are way past that.

5) The reality has been you can't stop it period without isolation. The only places that have it under control have done lots of generalized testing and extreme social distancing.

These five reasons are why we are doing what we doing. Otherwise you end up with new york, or Italy, or spain. Once the number of serious and ICU cases exceed hospital capacity, mortality goes way up. as we see in other countries. you keep mortality down by making sure hospitals can handle the really sick patient load.

The US as a whole is still experiencing exponential growth. Many of the states you mention are adding 10% to their case count per day. 10% per day is a doubling every week. that is exponential growth. Doubling every week starting a 17,000 cases like california means a little less than half the state (17,000,000 people) is infected in just 10 weeks, and somewhere between 150 and 300,000 of them die.

Those are the numbers that tell the story and that we have to act on.

You stop that scenario from happening by seriously reducing the rate of spread. You reduce or stop the spread by stopping physical interactions between people.

Once we have a real test and enough tests we can control the spread by knowing who has it and quarantining them. But that is a long way off.

The deaths would have been in the thousands in California from among those infected. The real numbers tell the story. You are taking New York numbers and throwing them at California and hoping it will stick. The numbers simply do not work out like you say. California would have to have ten thousand people dying every day in the next week to catch up. If they were sick, they would have gotten to the worst of it by now. If they have not been exposed, we could expose people to a bit more of it. But your modeling numbers just have no plausibility. Why are you falling for this so strongly? Is this the disaster you just hoped would come on the world? I don't understand your view here.

[Littlejoe]

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID.../nCOV2019.aspx

The up-to-date numbers are on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c..._United_States

Yes, you are missing something important. First of all, social distancing is helping. Current thinking is that less of an exposure may be the difference between a mild case and an acute case. Second, the death rate for those who have contracted the disease is extremely high so far.

Mark Twain once famously said (falsely attributing it to Benjamin Disraeli then British PM): "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics". I see Meme's and posts that tout the "survival rate" of Covid-19 to be around the 98% mark...or even better. This is a statistic, and...it's a lie...or at least it's currently wrong and misleading. There's no way to accurately calculate the survival rate at this time because this "survival rate" is factoring in ALL cases including those still fighting the virus, versus only the deaths. We don't know how many of those who have it will recover or die...it's like Schrodinger's Cat, you don't know the state of the cat until it's over and you open the box (or at least without a sniff test...). What we DO KNOW is, (according to Worldometers) as of today, April 7, 2020 @ 7 pm CDT, here in the US, there has been 34,464 cases that have resolved themselves...either they lived and got over the virus and are no longer in danger, or they died. Of those 34,464 cases, 12,790 have died. That's an actual survival rate of resolved cases of around 63%. Hopefully more and more of the active cases will survive and this rate will go up, but we don't know that right now. That's why this virus is considered so dangerous. As of this writing, in cases that are considered resolved, it killed 37% of the people who got it.
So, this IS a serious pandemic even if the current number of deaths isn't what the seasonal flu deaths have been the current death rate is FAR higher

[mikewhitney]

Yes, you are missing something important. First of all, social distancing is helping. Current thinking is that less of an exposure may be the difference between a mild case and an acute case. Second, the death rate for those who have contracted the disease is extremely high so far.

Mark Twain once famously said (falsely attributing it to Benjamin Disraeli then British PM): "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies and statistics". I see Meme's and posts that tout the "survival rate" of Covid-19 to be around the 98% mark...or even better. This is a statistic, and...it's a lie...or at least it's currently wrong and misleading. There's no way to accurately calculate the survival rate at this time because this "survival rate" is factoring in ALL cases including those still fighting the virus, versus only the deaths. We don't know how many of those who have it will recover or die...it's like Schrodinger's Cat, you don't know the state of the cat until it's over and you open the box (or at least without a sniff test...). What we DO KNOW is, (according to Worldometers) as of today, April 7, 2020 @ 7 pm CDT, here in the US, there has been 34,464 cases that have resolved themselves...either they lived and got over the virus and are no longer in danger, or they died. Of those 34,464 cases, 12,790 have died. That's an actual survival rate of resolved cases of around 63%. Hopefully more and more of the active cases will survive and this rate will go up, but we don't know that right now. That's why this virus is considered so dangerous. As of this writing, in cases that are considered resolved, it killed 37% of the people who got it.
So, this IS a serious pandemic even if the current number of deaths isn't what the seasonal flu deaths have been the current death rate is FAR higher

I still don't get it. They cannot say the numbers are going to be high despite the social distancing.

Like I said before, people that were confined in their homes would be getting deathly sick if such a devasting virus were in effect in California. Most other states have number of deaths below 1000. Most are far lower. We should be going into normal life based on these numbers. There is no way that these numbers should multiply by a factor of 10 in a week, since everyone is isolated. The only way to properly expose people (i.e., if we want to stay in the end-of-world models) is to promote more normal life -- protect the most vulnerable. If the virus is going to thrive despite what we have done, then it does not help to stay isolated further.

Don't let panic drive you to seek comfort in models that propose a sudden million of deaths. We simply cannot afford to gamble our livelihood, our lives, on such panic-driven models. The numbers don't work. If they don't work, they don't work.

These are not real science numbers ... the numbers are based on the London College. Many scientists and medical doctors are not convinced by the London College model.