Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

sirloindude said:

Here is an interesting article from the WSJ about how early COVID-19 might have been here. You may need a subscription to read the full thing (it popped up on my phone's news feed, but I can't read it on a PC).

(Full disclosure - this is a winding ride. For the TL;DR version, hit the last three lines of the post. If you're gonna cherry pick something from the middle of this out of context and change the trajectory of the disussion, please don't.)

I saw this last night. It popped up in my news feed.

So naturally, I clicked through to the article, but WSJ stuff, as you said, is a hard paywall. The caption under the photo read, "CDC scientists found evidence of infection in 106 of 7,389 blood donations collected by the American Red Cross." which intrigued me more.

So after some digging I found someone posted the full text on reddit.

It does appear there was spread a bit before we initially thought. Not enough to be a game changer, but interesting.

What was more interesting than the timeframe was a paragraph touching on the persistent idea that we're only identifying a fraction of the cases:

Not only did Covid-19 likely appear in the U.S. earlier than previously known, but researchers have found evidence that the virus is far more widespread in the U.S. than testing indicates.

Some 53 million people in the U.S. likely had contracted Covid-19 by the end of September, according to a modeling estimate published last week by CDC researchers. Roughly 6.9 million infections had been confirmed within that time period, suggesting that roughly one in every eight cases was identified.

So that sent me off on another tangent.

I found a NPR article on the same study published on Thanksgiving Day with the headline, "Government Model Suggests U.S. COVID-19 Cases Could Be Approaching 100 Million"

That article links to an abstract of the study mentioned in the WSJ story and from there you can access the entire thing in PDF.

It comes from government employees of:
1. COVID-19 Emergency Response, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2. Epidemic Intelligence Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
3. U.S. Public Health Service

And the summary reads:

We estimated the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in the U.S. population by adjusting confirmed case counts for sources of under-detection. Through September 30, 2020, an estimated 2.4 million hospitalizations, 44.8 million symptomatic illnesses, and 52.9 million SARS-CoV-2 infections may have occurred

Which I thought was interesting...and worth a share (even in the face of the subsequent poo-pooing and moving of the goalposts that will likely follow because, God forbid.)

Also, it lends at least some credence to some of what Dave was stating.

But I digress. Finishing this train of thought off, I go back to the NPR article which reads in part:

Since then, the CDC's tally of confirmed infections has increased to 12.5 million. So if the model's ratio still holds, the estimated total would now be greater than 95 million, leaving about 71% of the population uninfected.

Which is admittedly just Jon Hamilton at NPR extrapolating, but I still don't think it's an entirely invalid train of thought. Maybe not valid enough to title your article with it, but...you know.

And before I get accused of downplaying the threat or suggesting we all dance with chicken gizzards under the full moon for real COVID protection, I'm just reiterating again that I'm sharing because it's interesting.

If even close to accurate, it potentially changes where we are in this thing and possibly how to move forward and when we get past it.

With that said, I understand hope is not a strategy. (bringing back the classics for this post)

For full clarity, the PDF includes the disclaimer:

Disclaimer: The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So finally, I get to the point of discussion.

Is it possible to be only officially catching 1-in-8 cases? I don't think anyone has said yet, "Gee, we're doing a great job on the testing and identification front." so we know there's a factor of something at play here. Is it as much as 8? Dave was guessing 33 million with the numbers stuff he was looking at. These government people put it at 53 million back at the end of Spetember. We have 13.6 million confirmed cases as of today. What's the actual number? If we continue to use a factor of 8 that'd be 108 million. Has 1/3rd of the population been infected? That doesn't seem right, but somehow I'm also able to to say it seems possible.

I guess I'm curious as to where everybody puts that factor. We know we're not confirming all the cases. How far off do you think we are?

Been a while since the subject came up and I ended up down a rabbit hole following the info on this one - so now you have to read it too. 😊

I'm glad you said we could skip ahead. I didn't read the middle part.

If we in fact have missed that many confirmed cases, what does that change? I see this come up a lot, and it reminds me of the way people selectively look at company financials and ignore the bottom line. If we're missing that many cases, that's exceptionally bad news because it explains why we're so terrible at controlling the outbreak. It also doesn't change the number of people who have died, or the saturation of hospitals. People are quick to point out, "Well see, it's not as deadly if all these undetected people had it," which is technically true, but is not meaningful separate from how contagious it is. Ebola is incredibly deadly, but also not an airborne contagion. You still don't want to get it.

Jeff said:

Also you've gotta be freezing your tits off at Magic Kingdom today. 😁

It's absolutely gorgeous here. And I got my own boat on Splash Mountain.

I'll provide tit temperature updates upon request.

Lol. We had to de-ice the plane this morning.

Does the update have to be for your tits?

Admittedly the splashdown on Splash Mountain did freeze them up for a bit

So if we're super undercounting, that means the transmission rate is way higher and the mortality rate is way lower by factors which cancel out. For a given individual, this is probably still net-zero because it means that you're much more likely to get it and we're much less likely to be able to control it, but you're much less likely to die from it or even notice it and maybe you already had it and didn't notice.

If we're looking at non-vaccine based herd immunity (which we're still way far away from) though, it seems to be "good news" for the herd and the individual. It means that lots of people have had it and not been sick, which means the ceiling on deaths is lower than initially projected. Of course, the whole point of our mitigation efforts and vaccines is to never come close to the ceiling, which means it's sort of interesting, but probably not meaningful. I don't think we're going to see any meaningful effects from approaching herd immunity before we see a vaccine (knock on wood, etc. etc.) so the only thing I can see the findings suggesting is that we just give up on contact tracing (which, from what I understand, hasn't been going very well anyway).

I see what you guys are saying, but I need persuaded a bit more (or maybe more realistically, it explained differently) on how we just math away the logistical difference between:

33% of the population infected with a mortality rate of 0.3%

vs

4% of the population infected with a mortality rate of 2.3%

Because I can't wrap my head around the idea that there's no difference in those scenarios. It doesn't change where we are, but it's definitely different trajectories.

I really don't want to see a return of Flash Mountain today! Your own boat on Splash, Brett? You were the only crazy guy to get on? (My family of four got our own boat on Frozen a couple of weeks ago...which explained the incredibly long line that barely moved compared to just about everything else in the park that day).

Yes they were sending guests out on Splash only with their immediate party, which for me was just me. Surprisingly the line was actually backed up around the corner where Fastpass merge typically is. Granted with spacing that was only 5 or 6 groups. But with temps hovering around 50 and the Cast Members dressed for a ski trip, I was surprised to even have company in the queue

This might be a gross over simplification (I'll get to one aspect of that), but it seems like in the first scenario, you're 8x more likely to get it "soon" but 8x less likely for it to seriously hurt you. On a back of the envelope calculation, that seems like a wash.

Unfortunately, the spread isn't linear but exponential, so if 8x more people can spread it, there's a much greater than 8x likelihood of getting it yourself in the next few months, or year. So I think actually in the medium term, that's pretty bad. Also, any containment strategy is totally out the window and we're left with just mitigation strategies (maybe we all reached that conclusion in the last 3 weeks, anyway).

The only way it's good news is it means the cost in lives for herd immunity is much lower than originally anticipated, but still around 600,000 (300M x 66% x 0.3%).

Also, any containment strategy is totally out the window and we're left with just mitigation strategies (maybe we all reached that conclusion in the last 3 weeks, anyway).

I think we were there a lot longer than 3 weeks ago. For a variety of reasons.

I just think it is interesting that the early prevalence study...I forget where it was, but it concluded early on that nearly 80% of all cases were missed, but the results were largely dismissed when applying the same math to New York City caused the model to overcount the total population. And yet, other prevalence studies seem to be reaching a similar conclusion. Months ago when I was trying to figure out how likely I was to actually meet an undetected infected person, my 70% figure was, by my own admission, a WAG based on that largely-dismissed study. But then I was trying to do a bit of risk management, so I *wanted* to overestimate (today the odds by that count are 2.05%, or about 1:49 in the State of Ohio). I was shocked to find out that the actual measurements taken by researchers at OSU came close to my estimates.

As for what we do with this information? I think we...meaning us as individuals...use it to inform our risk management strategy. We now know that we are far more likely to be exposed to the virus than we might have thought. We are far more likely to become infected than we might have thought. And we are far less likely to die as a result of getting it than we might have feared.

Of course, the other thing that I wonder about is whether that undercount is really people who have caught the bug, replicated it, and are spreading it in the community? Or is that driven by people who have been exposed to the virus in a sub-critical dose and have therefore developed antibodies without ever spreading the virus themselves in any significant way? Of course there is no way to know. But if that is the case, we're further along in this thing than we think.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Jeff said:

Also you've gotta be freezing your tits off at Magic Kingdom today. 😁

I stopped over to EPCOT this evening with a friend who wanted to see some of the Christmas decorations and get food. She was dressed as if we were in Cleveland and I was dressed like I still don't want to admit that I am a Floridian now. Shorts and a hoodie and I was freezing cold once the sun went down. My blood has certainly thinned out since moving here 10 years ago.

ApolloAndy said:

This might be a gross over simplification (I'll get to one aspect of that), but it seems like in the first scenario, you're 8x more likely to get it "soon" but 8x less likely for it to seriously hurt you. On a back of the envelope calculation, that seems like a wash.

Ok, I follow this, but is it because 8x is still within an unacceptable risk range?

Because if something is not (or next to not) fatal, we really don't care about the spread so much.

So is it a wash because 8x less likely to kill you is still too much or because the math is multiply by 8 and then divide by 8?

Because we can hypothetically change that 8x to 25x and make the spread outrageous, but the risk non-existent and that's certainly not a wash.

I'm not discounting 270k deaths, but again, "270k deaths and this is just the tip of the iceberg" is a completely different place logistically than "270k deaths and we're about to turn the corner"

(and I understand 8x doesn't have us "turning the corner", but I'm contrasting to express the point I'm trying to make)

I wouldn't say "we" don't worry about the spread "so much." That's a poor generalization. Diana has chronic bronchitis, allergies and minor asthma, which are not great bedfellows for Covid. This is why I get pissed off about anyone being dismissive about the disease, because her risk is directly tied to the behavior of others. Frankly, we've seen enough weirdness of 20-year-old gymnasts needing lung transplants and "long-haulers" that I find it naive to view any of it as just whether or not it kills you. Then last week, Diana did something to her back, pinched nerve, pulled muscle... we're not sure, and so we start to explore options about emergency care. Covid patients are isolated or kept at certain hospitals, but even here in Orlando, one flat out told us it was half-full in the ICU and trending upward. Regionally, you're at risk for any ailment that requires emergency care, because you may not be able to get care.

So, you know, I think this is a smart group of people. We're probably smart enough to stop viewing it as will/won't kill me. It's a lot more nuanced than that.

Sometimes I think you just want take anything I say and make it "wrong"

Jeff said:
I wouldn't say "we" don't worry about the spread "so much." That's a poor generalization.

There are plenty of bugs, viruses and such that cause little-to-no real harm and I don't think it's unreasonable to say we don't worry too much about those things - we certainly don't go to the lengths we've gone with this virus. (or do you really worry about getting some cold bug that will give you the sniffles for a week?)

Diana has chronic bronchitis, allergies and minor asthma, which are not great bedfellows for Covid.

Yeah, that sucks. As I mentioned in the mini-discussion about the vaccine rollout, we have some conditions in this house that I fully believe would put us in the 1b group (2 at worst) for the vaccine. In one case that's lung issues and, not being dismissive or playing one-upmanship - just sharing as much as I'm comfortable, I wish it were allergies and minor asthma.

This is why I get pissed off about anyone being dismissive about the disease, because her risk is directly tied to the behavior of others.

Ok. I don't think I've ever disputed that.

I think you see my general views as being 'dismissive' in the same way I see yours as 'scared' - we're both misinterpreting the other to some degree.

Frankly, we've seen enough weirdness of 20-year-old gymnasts needing lung transplants and "long-haulers" that I find it naive to view any of it as just whether or not it kills you.

And I disagree. That's the thing. We're both looking at the same info on serious, non-fatal outcomes.

But it seems, from the glow of my monitor, that everytime someone tosses anything out there - even hypotheticals - you just want to shut it down. "This is scary. Quit being dismissive and act exactly like me!"

If we're being frank, "No."

Regionally, you're at risk for any ailment that requires emergency care, because you may not be able to get care.

That's certainly a thing. But again, your fear of it is in a different place than mine. I don't think that makes either of us "wrong" - people are allowed to view risk differently...and that reality doesn't mean I don't care about your risk any more than it means you don't care about mine.

So, you know, I think this is a smart group of people. We're probably smart enough to stop viewing it as will/won't kill me. It's a lot more nuanced than that.

I'd talk about it killing you, but that just makes me sound like a horrible person. I guess for the sake of the discussion, it's about it's not me as much as the individual. Individual risk. Because, in the most honest moment you'll probably ever get from me, it will probably kill me if I get it.

But what is we except for a bunch of me? None of the discussion on numbers and especially behaviors are limited to the individual. The effect on each individual is the effect on the whole.

It certainly is nuanced. And in another ironic, from my side, expression of viewpoint, I often feel like I want to say the same thing to you.

I don't know. If you had to pull the line about generally not worrying about things that don't harm you out of my post, twist it to apply to COVID and then use it to explain why my view sucks when I'm just posting "what if" thought excercises (that, again if we're being frank, help me feel a little better standing in the middle of this thing) based on ideas some goverment researchers are exploring, then...

*shrug*

(I hope Andy still takes a moment to continue the 8x discussion with me, because it interests me)

Your willingness to go point by point is exhausting and argumentative. You're simultaneously trying to make room for nuance and say that the nuance doesn't matter. You "win" either way. If you just said, "Everyone's actions make it better, or not," then we'd be on the same page and go back to discussing the weird **** you post on Facebook.

...we certainly don't go to the lengths we've gone with this virus. (or do you really worry about getting some cold bug that will give you the sniffles for a week?)

Nine months in, are you really making the strawman argument that this is like a cold?

Yes, I dismiss hypotheticals, because they serve no purpose other than to say, "Look, I have this exception! I heretofore question all of the accepted guidance to justify my non-compliance and war against DeWine!" Maybe you don't do that, but you've seen the rest of the Internet. That's what the people who make this an issue of politics cling to.

Anyway... here's a little more color on the reasons behind the CDC guidelines for initial distribution:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/cdc-experts-vote-heres-who-...ine-shots/

Universal now has team members dedicated to mask enforcement now. They have a little sign, a speaker on their hip and they are actively looking for and correcting people not wearing the mask correctly.

Jeff said:

Nine months in, are you really making the strawman argument that this is like a cold?

No! Never. Not once. I'm not sure how you don't understand the conversation between me and Andy.

I started by asking how, if the factor of 8 were true, that would change things.

Andy stated it he thought it'd be a wash. I didn't quite follow.

I asked if it were a matter of degrees and if we continued to move the slider, how far we'd have to go before it wasn't a wash. Because I thought there has to be a point moving the slider in our purely hypothetical scenario to a point where the mortality rate is comparable to other virus and diseases and such that we readily accept. Asking at what point does it get low enough that multipling and then dividing by the same number isn't a wash because one of the values gets close enough to zero? Or if it doesn't and it's a wash for a reason I wasn't following.

All hypothetical. Imaginary. Coronavirus fan fiction if you will. A chance to pick someone's brain and potentially learn - in both knowledge and viewpoint.

I don't see how any of that isn't clear.

And then you jumped all over me and I explained why I didn't think it was unreasonable to ask Andy that. There is a point in which we accept mortality rates with little intervention.

I've never once suggested Coronavirus is comparable to a cold. I suggected to Andy in our discussion there's a hypoothetical point where our undocumented cases create a factor that goes beyond "it's a wash." And when you questioned that hypotheictical so aggressively, I backed up my line of thought in that hypothetical scenario by asking if you worry about catching a cold on a day-to-day basis.

But reading it back now, I see that you pulled my argument from hypothetical to actual. Because...

Yes, I dismiss hypotheticals, because...

Ok. I think I get it. Hypotheticals break you.

They're not an argument. They're a discussion. Where you seem to see no value in it in general (at least it seems that way given what I know about you), I find them incredibly fun and useful excercise in general. I believe every step forward is the result of someone thinking outside of what we know. (and in no way am I suggesting off-topic discussion on a roller coaster forum is going to change the world in the same way that enjoying playing football in the yard doesn't mean I think I'm joining the NFL)

You also expressed pretty solid disdain for philosophy too. So it seems like an area that you don't get or not the kind of thing you value in or find particularly useful or whatever.

Some people that are smarter than any of us think it's possible we're miscounting cases by a factor of 8. We can wait around until it's proven or disproven (or, most likely, remains an unknown forever) or we can blow some time discussing the implication of their thoughts while we sit here distanced in our masks waiting this thing out. I don't see the harm. Just the opposite. I find a lot of value there - in mental excercise, sharing of opinion and knowledge, general catharsis. But what do I know?

I don't know what else to say. I don't know if it's a misunderstanding or what? I'm legitimately not following how you didn't understand what we were discussing or why it pisses you off.