I have a little difficulty separating the political fulmination from the facts in our handling of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the United States. Let me give an example of what I mean.
As of this writing no country other than China has succeeded in “bending the curve”, at least not in the way that the curves are usually drawn, and I don’t believe the reports coming from China at all. Not South Korea, not Taiwan, not Singapore, not Japan and certainly not Germany. Not Sweden. The strategies taken by these countries are not in lockstep. They vary.
What South Korea apparently has succeeded in doing is to maintain the present growth in the number of cases. Unless a vaccine or effective treatment is right on the horizon, that’s no solution. It’s just kicking the can down the road.
I think I shocked a colleague of mine when I suggested that not only will the number of new cases not peak in April, it might not peak until June or July.
June or July
What year?
We are seeing the curve decelerate in NYC, NJ (not as much) and here.
Steve
We’ll see. The statistics I’ve seen from NYC look more to me like a lag in reporting than like an actual pragmatic decline.
The antipodes (Aus + NZ) look like they may drive down their outbreaks to 0 — maybe even better then East Asia (with the exception of Taiwan).
The West Coast states returning or lending ventilators to other states tells you the situation is turning there.
Based on the Korea / Chinese experience, once the R is driven below 1, the outbreaks declines as dramatically as it increased.
Can anything of material use be inferred from Australia or New Zealand’s example? Be an island. Be in the middle of summer at the start of contagion . Have an average temperature in the 70s or above. Put travelers from abroad (particularly China) in mandatory quarantine. Have a population density about the same as Des Moines, Iowa in your largest cities.
I will go out on a limb here. (Its just the internet.) I think the reason the R was so high was not because it is so easy to catch, like Ebola or measles, but because it has a long latency period and then lasts for a long time. It can be caught from another person while they are asymptomatic or have minimal symptoms for a long time. I think this suggests than even imperfect mitigation efforts can have a pretty decent effect. I can see us flattening and bending the curve. Still not sure what happens with the tail though so wont predict anything about that.
Steve
That’s not far from my view which is that the “novel coronavirus” is easy to catch, has a long latency period, and then lasts for a long time. I suspect that the outbreak actually began here in November or even earlier but was lost in the background stats. My brother-in-law (a doc) thinks he had it in the middle of December.
I take the lesson from the antipodes that the virus can be controlled — that “Western” nations can do it.
The genome studies on the virus so far point to an origin date of Oct 1 – Nov 30. They also point that the virus in the US and Europe were probably seeded around mid Jan.
I find the genome studies conclusive about the date of things. Remember the virus is very contagious. It does not stay hidden for months and months and then explode. It is about 2 months from introduction to health care overwhelmed if no social distancing occurs (Wuhan, Seattle, Northern Italy).
Prefer not to go tinfoil hat that the US government knew about it in Nov, or it was in the US before mid Jan.
How so? How do you distinguish between the effects of policy and circumstances?
Australia and New Zealand were more aggressive policing the airports weren’t they? And at this point, I think intrastate movement in Western Australia is regulated with roadblocks. My mental map has the West Pacific countries being far more aggressive in stopping travel than Europe and America, though European countries eventually did, but not as early in the cycle and not after a lot of throat-clearing about how problematic that was.
I think that the pushback had we put everybody returning from trips abroad into quarantine at the end of January would have been more than throat-clearing. Keep in mind the context.
The throatclearing I was thinking of was from European elites complaining about Trump’s various travel restrictions (or dicussions of them) as nationalistic, not helpful and divisive.
A lot of discussion on this blurred the difference btw/ rhetoric and policy. My brother was traveling back and forth btw/ Netherlands, France and Belgium in early March and decided to head home early due to rumors of a travel ban on March 12th. He landed in Atlanta and was surprised that he wasn’t subject to any screening or questioning related to the virus. Atlanta, home of the CDC.
I have no reason to doubt (but the data still stink) both Steve and Dave’s observations about latency and prolonged recovery. It seems to have observed clinical support. I don’t think it follows that the curve has been materially bent. I’m sure social distancing will be credited for a crest in the curve. Just as I’m sure a return to normalcy will be damned as the cause as every person dies the next two months, no matter the real cause. Trafficking in politically motivated “science” is a cottage industry here.
As for Dave’s doc. I tend to get an upper respiratory illness about every 3 out of 4 years. Typical symptoms. Lingers…….lingers….
I was just about over this year’s version when BANG! Fever, hacking cough, malaise…. Five days later. Done. It came on a few days after a business trip to NYC. Heh. Corona? This “relapse” has not occurred in the past.
We won’t know until it makes sense to test me for antibodies. Until then……….tending to our ailing portfolio companies, and some past Masters highlights. And some bad movies………..
If you stumble across any good movies, please share what they are.
I always keep Sturgeon’s Law in mind: 90% of everything is crap.
Right now I’m watching a UK forensic pathologist procedural on Amazon Prime: Silent Witness. It’s beautifully acted and interesting enough and it has been in production for 23 years so there’s that.
“decided to head home early due to rumors of a travel ban on March 12th. He landed in Atlanta and was surprised that he wasn’t subject to any screening or questioning related to the virus.”
We had people coming back from Europe who had the same experience. That is why I keep saying cutting back on foreigners coming here probably helped a little bit, but it was just as likely that Americans going back and forth caused problems.
Steve
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/fxoxti/coronavirus_deaths_vs_other_epidemics_from_day_of/
That’s a fun graphic but I’m not sure it tells us anything other than that the Wuhan coronavirus is easier to catch and harder to isolate than Ebola. As information it has the defect of including reported deaths in China which we have no way of verifying.
The figures that would be more revealing (as in more light with less heat) would be the case mortality and overall mortality rate. To the best of my knowledge both of those are extremely low WRT Wuhan coronavirus.
We’ll never know. In fantasyland, we take an instantaneous snapshot of every infected person, everyday, like they turn red, or something. In reality, we’ll never know.