(07-07-2020 05:44 AM)Z-Fly Wrote: If you believe this, and I don't, this would be the virus to end it all. Vaccines wouldn't work and the virus could infect you week after week. That's never really happened before. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
I don't think they are necessarily lying. I just don't think they exactly know what they looking for. It might be wishful thinking on my part. Nature always seems to sort this out on it's own.
I look at an area like New York. The virus has pretty close to burned itself out. You are going to tell that's due to T-Shirt masks. I don't believe that's the case. According to top scientists T-Shirt masks buy you an extra few minutes of exposure time. Mathematically it doesn't seem like that would cause the curve to nose dive like it has. I'm guessing that it more has to do with herd immunity.
I will turn this back on you. If you believe that herd immunity is impossible, what's the move? And this isn't an attack on you. I actually would like to know your thoughts.
So I think it's misguided to use the word "believe" here. I don't "believe" that 5% of the Spanish population has the antibody, it's simply the best analysis that has been conducted thus far. One paper out of what will eventually be thousands. However, it's also a good paper, with a large sample population, a robust sampling technique, and peer reviewed in one of the best journals in the world. That means that it's probably the best estimate we have so far, but I'd caution there are a number of factors at play, namely that Spain is completely different than the US.
The simplest explanation for why states like New York seem to be doing better is because they have gotten better in a few key areas. From the blog I posted above:
Quote:But as the share of patients with infections from community transmission increases, the mortality rate has still declined. Several factors might explain this: Current patients are younger and less likely to die, hospitals are admitting less severe cases because more beds are available, and doctors and nurses have learned from experience. Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California-San Francisco Department of Medicine, posted a list of “Things We’ve Gotten Better At Since March”; it includes a number of improvements that could affect in-hospital mortality, such as better monitoring of vital signs and a more effective use of prone (face-down) positioning, which has been observed to improve oxygen levels in severely ill COVID-19 patients.
So, to Rath's point about Mortality, that really is the most important statistic to track here. And it's encouraging that things have been trending downward for quite some time.
Here's my concern; we all know that mortality is a lagging indicator, so what are the warning signs that might preempt an increase in mortality?
1. The daily case diagnosis goes up. And it has, drastically. But many have written that off as the result of increased testing capacity. Okay, then...
2. The positivisty rate increases. It has, drastically. Many have written that off as a result of younger people having increased access to testing. Okay, fair, then...
3. Increases in hospitalizations. Now we are seeing people write this off as the byproduct of increased hospital capacity, and a tendency to lump non-covid centric hospitalizations in with the rest...but then...
4. Individual increases in state mortality. And that's what's most concerning of all, specifically in hotbeds like Florida, Arizona, and Texas. While other states have seemingly handled reopening efforts well, a few key states have seen the opposite. The tweet I posted above, with research from Bernstein analyzing state trends, describes it as Simpson's paradox--where increases in state mortality are not immediately apparent in national trends.
My quesition is, what happens if mortality does increase suddenly and we begin to approach 2K deaths/day once again? Football is almost certainly not happening in that case. But more importantly, we probably look back on this period as the time when we should've heeded the warning signs.
FWIW, I've been in favor of reopening for awhile now. That's not to attain herd immunity, but to instead understand what capacity we have for coexisting with the virus until a vaccine is produced. That gives us about 6-8 months before we have a better idea of whether that comes to fruition. Beyond that, it'll be pretty chaotic.