Tracking the Covid-19 pandemic — Our World in Data

@13 Jim Thibodeau

The calculation, is hey, if they get Covid, they might die, but if we have to close down and they can’t get dialysis, they will die.

Classical 'survival of the fittest'. Your ToE explains it. And feeling sadness/ compassion is an epiphenomenon. So do not worry. Darwin has liberated us from being burdened with sentimentalist non-sense. Truthfreedom

JT, that is a sad calculus to face. KF kairosfocus

@rhampton It’s worse than that. I live in Florida and I do commission sales and so I’m always chatting people up, and as you might imagine due to the number of retirees, there’s a shit ton of medical establishments here. A nurse and a dialysis tech have both told me that some places aren’t testing if they can do so, because they don’t want to get a positive result. A lot of places, if they get a positive Covid result, they have to switch to a different safety protocol, that would use up all their PPE real quick and they have’d to close the doors. So they’re not testing. The calculation, is hey, if they get Covid, they might die, but if we have to close down and they can’t get dialysis, they will die. Jim Thibodeau

BR, the USA is facing the equivalent of a war, with an invisible foe; as is the rest of the world. Estimates are, that it is capable of causing within a year, the equivalent of the European zone of WW2, about 40 million deaths. Yes, we have that many abortions per year and more and don't see it for what it is; maybe this should re-open eyes to the ongoing worst holocaust in history. That noted, a war situation is not business as usual, and fairly drastic measures will be needed and are justified, to save lives. The good news is, we may be seeing an emerging cluster of effective treatments. KF kairosfocus

RH7, kindly note statistics for Bahrain, combined with the already documented fact that they started Hydrochloroquine treatments Feb 26. By contrast, consider for the US that at 1% death rate and 50% infection rate, we would project 1.65 million deaths. At 0.1 percent, 165k deaths. So, we are looking at a suggestion of containing the scope of the epidemic and/or reducing the death/recovery ratio. Currently, the US is in the band that doubles every 2 - 3 days on confirmed cases [which, due to stability of statistics is likely a proxy for the whole iceberg inclusive of mild or asymptomatic ones]. KF kairosfocus

Had no one in China caught an outbreak in Wuhan City, we would not be talking about SARS 2 at all. The only thing we know for sure is someone with SARS 2 was in Wuhan City at some point prior to the outbreak being detected. China is not open with anything and doctors have not been encouraged to look for SARS since the last one ran its course. 1 doctor in the 7th largest city in China happened to notice clusters of older people dying at a greater rate than other age groups from influenza. We know the reaction he received from colleagues and the police alike. Since doctors have not been encouraged to look for SARS, this current outbreak could have been happening for years and no one would know it. Pharmaceutical companies have started to shift their focus to fighting SARS 2, which means they are not focusing on other medications, which will have a negative impact. The US just approved over 2 trillion dollars to help with states that are in violation of the Commerce Clause, rather than dealing with this through means allowed by the Constitution. We are going from a recession to a depression quickly and the only country lending us money is us. For the past 10 years, the Federal Reserve has been the only one to purchase bonds. Those trillions just sent us over the tipping point and there is no coming back from this. BobRyan

Spain confirmed another 838 deaths in 24 hours from coronavirus on Sunday, March 29, a new daily record bringing the total number of deaths to 6,528, according to health ministry figures. The number of confirmed cases in Spain has now reached 78,797 – after the one-day increase of 9.1% – as the country battles the world's second most deadly outbreak after Italy. rhampton7

(France) A total of 40,174 positive cases were confirmed, of which 2,606 died, while 19,354 others were hospitalized, up by 10 percent in the last 24 hours. However, 7,132 infected people have recovered since the virus has been spotted on Jan. 24. rhampton7

There are now 4,950 confirmed cases in the state, officials said Sunday night, 912 more than there were Saturday night. Sixty people in Florida have died of the disease. The United States had more than 139,000 reported cases as of Sunday evening and more than 2,400 deaths. rhampton7

Yes, considering what they are working with. Limiting the death toll to 100,000 would be a good thing. Too bad we the people seem to want more than that. ET

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, the US president claimed that, if his administration keeps the death toll to 100,000, it will have done “a very good job” rhampton7

Polistra, I hear you but disagree. We can be pretty confident of the deaths, at least as a proxy and the pattern of the strong enough cases to be recognised suggests that that is another proxy for the whole. Indeed, through models we can reconstruct the roots of the iceberg from the tip we see. I have significant confidence because of the relative stability of the patterns across countries. Yes, some of the US' steepness on cases may likely be a surge of testing but that is not going to be an exponential-like growth. Strong lessons are that Europe and North America have fallen into doubling every 2 - 3 days, by contrast with the outliers approaching doubling every ten days [slopes are key, here]. A significant number of countries are beginning to slow the growth and South Korea has clearly beaten the Epidemic; though, people are still dying. Depending on trustworthiness of statistics, China may have beaten it too. Bahrain is clearly flattening out on growth in cases and is important as it instituted routine treatment with Hydrochloroquine by Feb 29. It has 4 deaths so does not register on the death graph. KF PS: Bahrain's statistics as at Mar 30 dateline:

Total Cases: 499 of which 1 in severe condition Deaths: 4 Deaths/ Total Cases: (1%) Recovered: 272 Recovered/ Total Cases: (55%)

That seems quite suggestive given the two tests in France, that in China and work in Australia. kairosfocus

Indeed. As I have suggested on another thread, the U.S. and other countries need to do more survey testing. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/misuse-of-statistics-to-draw-an-unwarranted-conclusion-part-2386/#comment-696712 The best test is an antibody test that has just been approved by the CDC. It will not only be able to tell us who has Covid 19 but also who has had it. However, it will probably take some time for production and implementation of the test to get ramped up. john_a_designer

These graphs are minimally useful, since the testing and detecting of "cases" varies hugely among countries, and changes over time within some countries. polistra

Tracking the Covid-19 pandemic — Our World in Data . . . March 29th kairosfocus