Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

ApolloAndy said:

So again, maybe this is confirmation bias, but it doesn't look like the data is that far off from what I expected (exponential cases would result in exponential deaths) when viewed statewide instead of nationally.

I don't understand why the sum isn't the whole of the parts in this case.

If the mortality rate is holding true in certain states, but not others, then it has to be even lower in the states where it's not holding true if the national number isn't showing the same exponentional growth overall that some states are.

What am I misunderstanding?

Time? Death rate and hospitalization are trailing indicators to infection. We've seen the infection rates spike locally, now we're seeing hospitalization, and it stands to reason death is next.

No, because Andy is saying he's seeing the upward trend in certain states.

I think we're looking for different things here. I think(?) you're looking for overall mortality rate: given a particular patient of a certain demographic, what are the chances that they die from an infection? You're right that the data seems to be suggesting that mortality is extremely heavily concentrated in the 65+ crowd and that it's quite low for large swaths of the population.

What I'm looking at is how behavior affects transmission and ultimately death. If a bunch of beach bro Brads go to a corona virus party, how does that affect the probability of infection and then death for Great Aunt Mae?

I think the former is more about the nature of the infection and the latter is more about the consequences of behavior. Maybe?

If the infection increases continue to stay with Brads, you wouldn't expect death rates to increase at the same rate (or proportionally) as cases. You would have to see more Aunt Mae's being infected. If that happens, average/median infection ages would have to increase, wouldn't they? At this point, the rates are continuing to go down (at least in states I have seen reporting that info). If those ages start to increase again, you would expect more Aunt Mae's have been infected with a significant portion of them not expected to survive.

The rates are not going down where the infections are rising. Arizona, Texas and Florida are all trending up.

Rates of what aren't going down? And in relation to what?

Infection, hospitalization and fatality rates, I was responding to your statement that, "the rates are continuing to go down (at least in states I have seen reporting that info)."

Should have been ages. That was context in which I raised it. Everything else I referenced were ages. Sorry. Average/median ages of infections in Florida is decreasing, isn't it?

Yes, in the larger counties where young people live, but as I start to dig in, the shift doesn't deviate that much from the age demographics of each county (I just started comparing). For example, in Orange County, about 8% of cases are 65+, and the population is 12% 65+. The median age in OC is 35, the median age of Covid cases is 33. Hillsborough (Tampa) is the same spread. Go to Sumter County, where The Villages are, and 47% of the cases are 65+. The median age there is 66, infection median age is 63. Sarasota, a genuine beach county shows the disparity more, median age 56, infection median age is 43. Brevard and Miami-Dade, also beachy, have a similar spread.

And while that's all interesting, I'm not sure what it means. A month ago, the doubters were all, "It's an old people at risk problem!" Now the young people are getting sick, and hospitalized, with the death rate likely not far behind, and the doubters are all, "It's just the young people humping each other!" Both of those generalizations are non-constructive, because people live in families with diverse ages, and go out into the world and mingle at grocery stores and banks and libraries or whatever. We can certainly make some assumptions about certain age groups' behavior, but in the end, any rise in infection rates is bad for everyone.

Jeff said:

any rise in infection rates is bad for everyone.

This is obviously true, but kind of a vacuous statement. The question which we're collectively exploring with seems to be how strong the correlation between "young people humping" and "old people at risk" is and it isn't super clear to me what the answer is.

Jeff said:

A month ago, the doubters were all, "It's an old people at risk problem!" Now the young people are getting sick, and hospitalized, with the death rate likely not far behind, and the doubters are all, "It's just the young people humping each other!" Both of those generalizations are non-constructive, because people live in families with diverse ages, and go out into the world and mingle at grocery stores and banks and libraries or whatever. We can certainly make some assumptions about certain age groups' behavior, but in the end, any rise in infection rates is bad for everyone.

I'll go on record as still saying it's an old/compromised people problem...mostly. I've believed it from the start and I still do. If it's primarily younger people being infected with this latest surge, I think you'll find the deaths don't correlate as highly to infections as they initially did. (in other words, the mortality rate for the most recent cases ends up being lower than it was when this first started hitting in March)

And more to what Andy is saying, an increased lag between infection counts rising and deaths rising might indicate a longer time to spread from the young people out sharing the virus (and not dying at nearly the rates the older population does) to the more vulnerable ones (who tend to drop like flies). Which would then be preventable by locking down those vulnerable populations and allowing others to pass this around an get it over with while minimizing risk. (a scenario where rising infection rates aren't necessarily bad for everyone - and, incedentally, when was herd immunity taken off the table?)

There's absolutely nothing to indiciate that the young people will suddenly start dying at the rates the older and compromised do. Nothing.

Which is exactly why I asked earlier when we can start saying the line is or isn't moving. When can we say the mortality rate isn't holding up and that something is different with the latest surge compared to the initial hit? Because I totally want to revisit these posts when that time comes.

It absolutely does appear to be more deadly by age, sure. At my age, it's 1 in 100, which are not odds that I want to try out, certainly. But no matter what the fatality rate is, the more it spreads, the more people die, the more it negatively impacts the economy, our mental health, etc. And yeah, I get the conversation about an "appropriate" level of trade-off, but that's a really hard conversation to have when we've seen entire nations mitigate the disease to zero by sheer will.

The "lock down the elderly and let the kids spread it around" argument doesn't work at all. As we've seen in Italy and New York, the equation changes dramatically when hospitals can no longer treat patients, and your risk level increases regardless of age. Healthcare access in general changes the outcomes, as we've seen because minorities are disproportionately dying from this.

Again, you can't look at the national trend for death rates when the infection spike is largely regional. In Florida, it never really went down significantly in the first place, and now it's trending up, unsurprisingly, two to three weeks after the infection rate started to rise.

I'm also unsure of the intent of this discussion... is it to imply, "No big deal, this is fine?" Or do y'all just like to argue your interpretation of facts? 😁

For the record, anti-mask a**holes are not just an American phenomenon.

Jeff, do you think if we actually imposed draconian style lock down (I think in Wuhan, one person could leave a house every three days if they could demonstrate they weren't sick) and people actually participated, we'd be able to reduce the incidence of the virus to the point where we could move about somewhat freely?

Gonch, herd immunity was never on the table because it either requires every old person to permanently stay completely locked down and isolated form society or somewhere north of a million people (obviously an estimate, but 300M*70%*0.5%) to die.

Jeff said:

I'm also unsure of the intent of this discussion... is it to imply, "No big deal, this is fine?"

It's observation on my part. It's a discussion of possibility. An atempt at understanding beyond. A thought excercise. Trying to offer ideas beyond, "We're all ****ed."

The doom and gloom tone of your posts and reluctance to consider beyond that makes no sense to me.

I feel like my posts come from a place of hope and yours from a place of fear.

And I know you like to say "Hope is not a strategy," but neither is fear.

Andy said:
Gonch, herd immunity was never on the table because it either requires every old person to permanently stay completely locked down and isolated form society or somewhere north of a million people (obviously an estimate, but 300M*70%*0.5%) to die.

1. Yeah, it would. But if you can make it work by locking down and protecting a portion of the population, that seems preferrable to locking down an entire population (which we aren't even doing).

2. Assuming your math is correct. If the CDC's suggestion that actual cases are 10x known cases, you reduce the death count by a lot. But if you combine the two ideas (they're not mutually exclusive), then you reduce it even further by removing most of the early fatality statistics.

The back-of-napkin math says you could potentially reduce the mortality rate by a factor of 30-to-50 overall. (The 10x number from the CDC and the fact that somewhere between 3-in-4 and 4-of-5 deaths so far are from the over 65 group)

15% of the population of the US is over 65. This leaves 85% to build herd immunity.

"But that's still as many as 300,000 deaths!" I hear you say.

Well, it is. But perhaps we could mitigate that further by allowing the at risk among the 65 and under crowd to also lock down.

I dunno. This is why I'm not an expert. But I don't think it hurts to discuss these ideas for fun and sport, catharsis, potentially better understanding, and yes, even hope.

and people actually participated

From what I understand about China and its approach to pretty much everything but particularly Covid, participation wasn't optional.

I don't have a gloom and doom perspective at all about the disease itself... I think you're misinterpreting my frustration that we as a society can't do the most basic ****ing things to mitigate the risk. Hope is not a strategy. People went out to bars and had parties, hoping without consideration of reality that the disease would just go away. Now hospitals are maxing out in capacity. Hope isn't working.

I also think people grossly misunderstand what it will take to beat this thing back. Herd immunity mathematically is not going to happen without vaccines or millions of deaths, and that's all based on the assumption that immunity is a long-term result post-infection. The data so far is inconclusive of that.

ApolloAndy said:
Jeff, do you think if we actually imposed draconian style lock down (I think in Wuhan, one person could leave a house every three days if they could demonstrate they weren't sick) and people actually participated, we'd be able to reduce the incidence of the virus to the point where we could move about somewhat freely?

I don't know that it has to be "draconian" Chinese-style. They certainly didn't do that in Australia and New Zealand. I think the problem is that our entitlement culture insists that we put ourselves above others. It's not fixable, it's just an ugly part of our society.

So, there are some things that I also genuinely don't understand about herd immunity. At some point, when old people start reentering society again won't they just get it and die? Or is the idea that if we wait long enough and we make sure that the 70% of people that need to get it are all young people (is that even how this works?) then it will mostly leave circulation, leaving a virus-free environment for old people to move through?

GoBucks89 said:

and people actually participated

From what I understand about China and its approach to pretty much everything but particularly Covid, participation wasn't optional.

Right. I'm just curious if that ship has completely sailed, even from a totally hypothetical, best-case-scenario standpoint.