outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

and no one talked about it!

it was on Drudge Report

back in those days, the drudge report was actually a handwritten pamphlet handed from one stoic non-complaining flu victim to another in the muddy trenches

Skinny Rush is even more terrifying than Not-skinny Rush

The Second Wave of COVID Hits Israel Like a Tsunami

in testimony to the Israeli parliament, Dr. Udi Kliner, Sadetzki’s deputy, reported that schools—not restaurants or gyms—turned out to be the country’s worst mega-infectors.

Eek

This is so embarrassing. Okinawa was COVID-free for months, then American USFJ soldiers held a big 4th of July party and spread it across the island. https://t.co/bXubOgH8jV

— REDACTED 和諧删剪 (@Comparativist) July 14, 2020

Just awful.

https://t.co/W8lOyvehlG

— 𝖗𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖓 ✞𖤐𝓝𝓢𝓕𝓦 (@ravennsheaa) July 13, 2020

Euro-Anglos, spreading plague for over 500 years

wtf at today uk daily new cases number ?!

Another 530 or so? That's up on yesterday but still down on a week or so ago.

Smh @ the asshole gov of Oklahoma getting it and still not considering a mask mandate. I hope it ruins him.

xp sorry, i was looking at the graph they show on the guardian which always seems to be a day ahead of the number they give. I saw 1,240 !

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c_JzDcG9Azs/Xw9TjfdUexI/AAAAAAAAA2I/zZY4STRhF6gZ0-tdx1I3QNF9WGE942hcwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/COVIDJuly.png

please tell there's some valid techy stat gathering reason for such an increase

in general, it's not a good idea to look at daily totals. many jurisdictions have a different reporting schedule, and many/most have discrepancies related to weekend lags and weekday catching up. One large city may report very few cases on a particular day or weekend, only to release all of them at once later, on a weekday. there can also be delayed-case counts from weeks past - e.g., possible cases that were in definitional limbo but were suddenly categorized as cases, adding a big pile on one day.

in other words, there's a whole lot of crazy things that can happen on a single day that influences the count up and down.

that's why it's a good idea to look at 7-day averages, whenever possible.

look at those single days with nearly 0 new UK cases around the beginning of July, for example.

I've looked in four places including on the official gov.net coronavirus page and it's saying 538 new cases on all of them.

I've looked in four places including on the official gov.net coronavirus page and it's saying 538 new cases on all of them.

Nate Silver is getting sneaky with his viral marketing

anyone who said this was going away in march should volunteer imo

125 scholars, from epidemiologists to philosophers & incl'g 15 Nobelists, call for challenge trials of #Covid_19 vaccines (volunteers agree to intentional exposure to virus, making efficacy--or not--apparent faster). Many interesting names: https://t.co/5x6M7Qq1HQ

— sharon begley (@sxbegle) July 15, 2020

i would volunteer tbh

16. Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
99. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

wait a second - are these two ever in the same room? i just assumed there was a clark kent thing going on with them, this could be big if they're actually different people

i actually submitted a request to be a part of the phase 3 trials of one vaccine candidate. but that wouldn't involve being intentionally infected.

i am 1000% pro-vaccination, but i have the luxury of isolating for a while yet and i am not getting any vaccination that was developed on this compressed timeline, inside the US, while trump is president and has a political interest in cutting corners, unless it is also recommended by the german and south korean equivalents of the FDA.

that reads like one of those tweets from kamala harris about tax credits for people who meet 18 conditions.

honestly thanatos drives my desire to volunteer

i'd be less eager if there was zero chance of dying

California shatters record with more than 11,000 new coronavirus cases in one day https://t.co/oELya6TigN

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 15, 2020

pish, don't even try it CA, we got the record books on lock

The California numbers are incredibly skewed by Los Angeles County. Despite being just 1/4th of the state's population, more than 1/3 of the state's COVID cases are there, and over 1/2 of the fatalities. It's getting pretty insane, a smaller scale of rampant spreading we were seeing with NYC in March/April.

population density in being related to infectious disease transmission shockah

That Graun graph is still showing like that (also 138 deaths rather than 85) despite the figure in blue at the top of the page showing 538

population density in being related to infectious disease transmission shockah

― the word "restaurateur" doesn't have an n in it (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 5:36 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's literally no evidence that the relationship between population density and covid-19 incidence is causal fwiw. population density may also correlate with some other stuff that is causally related to covid transmission (inequality/race mainly), and there's some evidence that crowding (which is different density, because it's possible to build up, i.e. manhattan has low crowding) may be causally related too. but there's no evidence that, all things being equal, a place with a higher population density has a faster covid transmission rate.

if you don't believe me, look up the population density in hong kong, singapore, seoul, etc.

if the lesson we take from this is "cities are bad", we're fucked.

aren't hong kong, singapore, seoul, etc. places that implimented a plan and had broad compliance?

seems common sense that more people closer together would make for higher infection rate, since the disease is spread by...people...in close proximity

whatever the case, the notion ≠ "cities are bad"

oh I want people to think cities are bad so they move to the suburbs and I can afford to move in

Over here it's been less about population density and more about the number of people living in the same household and the working conditions they're pushed into.

aren't hong kong, singapore, seoul, etc. places that implimented a plan and had broad compliance?

exactly? the reason LA and NYC and other cities in the US are getting hit hard is not density. it might be a third order effect (behind competence of/compliance with the response and inequality) but honestly there's no evidence even for that!

if you want another example: compare the covid rate in manhattan with that in the other four boroughs.

it does seem like common sense, but like i say, there is no evidence that it is true.

xp yup, home occupancy and local industry does seem to have a strong effect.

(and it's not splitting hairs to differentiate between home occupancy and population density if you're trying to figure out a rational response after this is over)

I was thinking the best measure would be comparing densely populated areas to sparsely populated ones, with a control of similar containment protocols.

That some densely populated cities are relatively unaffected compared to others says much less about population density than aboutt containment measures

That some densely populated cities are relatively unaffected compared to others says much less about population density than aboutt containment measures

well, it tells you population density is less important than the other differences between those cities, and that if the lesson we take is "we should move to the suburbs" then it won't help.

population density in being related to infectious disease transmission shockah

― the word "restaurateur" doesn't have an n in it (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 2:36 PM (one hour ago)

It's only the 3rd most dense county in California, only 58% as dense as San Francisco.
http://www.usa.com/rank/california-state--population-density--county-rank.htm

San Francisco has 50 COVID deaths in the past 20 weeks*, which is what LA had just yesterday by lunchtime.

(*0 in the last 30 days!)

I was thinking the best measure would be comparing densely populated areas to sparsely populated ones, with a control of similar containment protocols.

this has been done. i'll try to dig up the studies.

but the short version again: look at the five boroughs of new york city.

I def hope some people move to the suburbs so I can live in their houses

good lessons that there is evidence for:

don't live 10 people to a dwelling
make working in a factory/warehouse/abbatoir safer
have a competent civil service and government
have a population that trusts its government
don't tie healthcare to employment

bad lessons there is no evidence for:

live in low population density settings

also that last one doesn't only not help. in a very real sense it will make the next pandemic more likely because it will accelerate the melting of the permafrost, releasing dormant viruses that we have no immunity for from the permafrost, killing us all haha fml.

lol

You can also see France as another counterexample to identifying population density and rona spread, in considering for example the regions of the Île-de-France (where Paris is located) and the Grand Est (where Strasbourg and Nancy are located). The former is much more dense but the latter had a proportionally worse outbreak.

Wait there’s a place in France called “Nancy”?

it's where they dance in fancy pants