outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

otm

this is the 3rd bullet down in the washpost live updates blog:

The CDC said Thursday that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus could rise to as high as 145,000 by July 11, meaning as many as 26,000 Americans could die in the next few weeks.

i just want to check in with what i previously believed to be reality and confirm that this would have been fucking bonkers to read just a few years ago

the last few years have been like a carnival ride that can only go faster

that explains why it’s been so much fun

some quick maths:

145,000 - 121,000 (approx. as of today) = 24,000
July 11 - June 19 = 22 days
24,000/22 = ~1,091 deaths per day or 7,636 per week

As of right now, I believe that CDC # is a very pessimistic forecast, unless something insanely dramatic happens.

it's around 700/day right now and the assumption is that they will accelerate upward, so it's conceivable

please god. please let the deaths per day remain at 700 for a while longer

maybe a graph would illustrate how drastic the change would need to be:

https://i.imgur.com/6kuMbWY.png

current trend line from peak of first wave til now = blue line
CDC's forecast for next 22 days = red line

that's what we call a "hockey stick" and there is no current indication of an event that would cause that radical of a shift in the trend.

my state is doing its damnedest to try tho

what do you mean CDC's forecast for next 22 days? is that the mean? the high projection (145k)? or the low projection (129k)?

also, where else have i heard of a "hockey stick"? hmmm

it's more like a dog letting it's paw hang out the window

you should go to sleep I think?

uh, i was letting you off easy - which CDC projection is the red line? the mean, the high end, or the low? or can you at least link to where you found it so i can do it

your post at 9:34 PDT upthread^^^

here's why i think there is already reason to believe deaths can and probably will rise soon:

https://i.imgur.com/s6f5FN4.jpg

i don't really understand the "there is no current indication of an event that would cause that radical of a shift in the trend" thought. first of all, it's not that radical of a shift. (it's more so if you assume the very highest CDC estimate) secondly, there are current indications of events that would cause a big shift. some of the biggest, most populous states in the country are seeing big increases right now, setting new records each day. ?

oops, didn't explain my little graphic: deaths have declined at a steeper rate than case declines. but still, there's a lag effect between cases and deaths, and we're seeing a big steep rise in cases right now, in new populations that aren't remotely close to taking the precautions they need to be taking right now. in places like texas, they're arguing about their goddamn masks still

honestly i'm still just curious why you can't draw another version of the graph with the low case scenario (129k). i just want to see what that hockey stick looks like so i can compare

plus if you could project the dates out as well, in addition to the lines

I totally agree that there may be some more plateaus and slight positive bumps until the fall, but... I do not see a radically divergent explosion happening tomorrow triggering an exponential increase in fatalities across the next 3 weeks.

That was a worst case scenario doom post, but don't worry I've posted a few of those too. Thanks for letting me off easy lol.

sorry, i am being an intense weirdo right now. i don't even know what i'm wanting.

*chugs water*

the 129k best-case would be ~350 deaths per day, so it would take the current trend line of -31% and ramp it down to -50%.

but it was kind of a meta worst case scenario post - i was saying that i saw that as the 3rd bullet on the Washington Post, and it seemed incredibly dystopian. it wouldn't really matter if the number was 700 instead of 1100 per day. it's so fucked up

xp well, shows what i know. so the cdc projection ranges from getting way worse to getting way better, and the washington post chose to amplify the very top number

and then i got freaked out because let's face it, i've been drinking again, you're right

i have never been that friend who picks fights while they're drunk, yet here i am, doing it on the internet. sorry albert r broccoli

<3

More than 50,000 new cases in one day, the biggest one-day increase for any country in the world since the pandemic began https://t.co/RFuwhWJvKD

— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) June 19, 2020

A small follow up to the "long plateau" assessment of the #COVID19 epidemic. When I tweeted this on April 30, we had ~30k daily confirmed cases and ~2000 daily deaths. This last week, we had ~24k daily confirmed cases and ~700 daily deaths. 1/10https://t.co/SjLdYVZdhK

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) June 20, 2020

Seems bad:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-germanys-r-number-rockets-again-from-179-to-288-12012143

pikers next to Florida

NYT:

California reported 4,515 new cases on Sunday, the highest one-day increase since the start of the pandemic.

Across the United States, the number of new infections has steadily risen during the past five days after plateauing for the previous 80 days.

At the same time, overall deaths have dropped dramatically. The 14-day average was down 42 percent as of Saturday.

Strikingly, the new infections have skewed younger, with more people in their 20s and 30s testing positive, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said. These clusters may be especially worrying to colleges and universities that plan to bring students back to campus in the fall, when the coronavirus and the flu virus are expected to be circulating simultaneously.

n Florida — which “has all the makings of the next large epicenter,” according to model projections by the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — an advisory from the state’s Department of Health this weekend recommended that people avoid crowds larger than 50 people. It also encouraged social distancing and mask wearing at smaller gatherings.

Mr. Trump is set to deliver his national convention speech on Aug. 27 in Jacksonville, Fla., inside an arena that holds 15,000 people.

242.355 cases of COVID in Chile, overtaking Italy's tally of 238.499. Cases per million sees Chile as the world's highest. This makes Santiago, where the majority of the country's cases are concentrated, a global epicenter of virus contagion.
It's going to a be a long winter. pic.twitter.com/pmuhVZa6LF

— Charis McGowan (@charis_mcgowan) June 21, 2020

Seems bad:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-germanys-r-number-rockets-again-from-179-to-288-12012143🕸

Germany's coronavirus R number has leapt again - from 1.79 on Saturday to 2.88 on Sunday, official figures show.

The Robert Koch Institute for public health (RKI), which has been publishing the country's COVID-19 statistics, said the new number is based on a four-day average. On Friday it was 1.06.

USA fatalities today were the lowest since March 23rd.

looking at the worldometer site it's interesting that the number of new cases per day is fairly steady but the number of deaths keeps falling

Interesting, but not well-explained by any known factors, such as improved treatments or viral mutation toward a lesser lethality, so it just sits there as an isolated 'fact' that could just be an artifact of reporting and tabulation methods.

It's so fun that we still have so little certainty this far into the pandemic. Lotsa shrugs!

there are just so many variables

Wonder if the proportion of cases vs. people suffering more than mild symptoms is also down

I've been watching it, according to worldometer the number of serious/critical cases in the US has gone down, but only slightly so far, from 17,000+ cases to 16,000+ cases

so the number of cases vs people getting really sick seems way down

ppl can get sicker

I think the assumption is that the you explain rising cases and falling deaths with two things:

1. The average age of newly infected people is going down because younger people are the first to emerge from lockdown. And young people are less likely to die if they get it.

2. Deaths lag infections by a couple of weeks, so deaths may go back up in future (but 1 may reduce this effect).

seems right

Apropos reading for those curious about the seasonality of viruses:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/why-do-dozens-diseases-wax-and-wane-seasons-and-will-covid-19

Lipid-enveloped viruses (such as COVID-19) tend to wane in hotter, drier months. Which also explains why the focus was on hand-washing in the early stages of the response (which answers a question I asked wayyy upthread about the seemingly overnight pivot from hand-washing to mask-wearing).

interesting, thank you for linking that article Albert

Any reason why there are no new numbers from Sweden in the past four days? Seems to have stopped updating everywhere I've looked.