I don't think we disagree on substance but I do think you're wrong to multiply with the 6.3 due to the population size difference. All things being equal, population size has absolutely no effect on the number of people getting infected and dying, if you'd take no action whatsoever, until such time as herd immunity starts to have an effect.

Due to the lower population density in the USA, the speed of the spread should be lower so the number of deaths in the short term in the USA should have been lower in absolute terms than in South Korea. On the other hand, I think the large cities in the US are as densely populated as the large cities in SK, so I suspect the effect of a slower spread based on average population density is too heavyhanded.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/world/europe/germany-coronavirus-death-rate.amp.html

I doubt he can read, which is why he only watches FOX.

Another misrepresentation. I have not criticised his optimism as my post history shows. You've just relabelled and excuses bad policy as "optimism". The fact that his "optimism" has had real life consequences resulting in the deaths of 199 times more than South Korea "because it will go magically away" is a criticism of policy failure. Just as Russian collusion wasn't a hoax (just not a legal term!), obstruction of justice was real, the emoluments clause is an issue, impeachment where Republicans blocked witnesses a sham etc. etc. That last has probably moved the US closer to an authoritarian regime as it was a tacit approval of the unitary executive theory.

Trump is corrupt and a product of a corrupt political system in the US, which system is propped up by both parties. He is too stupid and doesn't inform himself or inspire those who serve him to advise him on how to avert a crisis.

Trump has done exactly nothing to "drain the swamp", has not made the world safer, and his lack of action on the coronavirus has killed many more Americans in the short term than that would have otherwise died. All this was glaringly obvious from the beginning as the thread on the coronavirus had made clear.

I stopped reading after the first inanity.

Edit: or insanity. Take your pick.

Ventilators are used so you don't suffocate or feel like they are going to suffocate, it doesn't treat the virus. You get problems with breathing when the infection gets serious so the likelihood of dying also increases.

He's talking about bombarding your insides with UVC, which does kill viruses, because he doesn't know you'll get acute cancer from that. This guy needs to go. A dangerous fool.

Not relevant indeed. When doing nothing, the virus will spread at more or less the same speed in every population. While population density might have an effect on that speed, total population does not at the beginning of the spread of a virus. The fact that it's 199 times more than Korea, means the USA has done a 199 times worse than South Korea. Adjusting for population size actually makes the failure of the USA Trump administration less egregious.

Yiddish gibberish doesn't make it more profound. Sorry.

It’s been the going rate for opinion pieces in The Atlantic for a few years now. Trump has already been blamed for everything from climate change to war in the Middle East, so it’s no wonder he’ll be blamed for a pandemic. He is their whipping boy after all. But note that they can only come up with few out-of-context reasons why he is to blame, most of which revolve around his apparent word crimes. — NOS4A2

So you haven't read the article because it's not blaming Trump. Meanwhile, you're setting up pathetic strawmen in place of the criticism that has been rightly levelled at Trump. Trump has been criticised for denying climate change in the face of overwhelming evidence and unilaterally breaking the promises of the Paris accord without regard of the withdrawal mechanism. He's not blamed for a pandemic but for downplaying the risks, touting an unproven and ineffective medicine as the cure and reacting way to fucking late to the whole thing. And then turns around and blames the governors.

Every governor has been laudatory about Trump’s leadership. — NOS4A2

Because the reality is that if you don't have your face firmly planted on Trump's ass, he will shaft you. As we've seen ample proof of in the past 3,5 years.

No, Trump has done his job, has done it well, and all without seizing any new powers for the federal government. — NOS4A2

Unitary executive theory anyone? What fucking bullshit from you as usual. Don't bother replying either. It's for people who aren't Trump stooges.

Yes Benkei, you did in fact warn me about Trump but the idea of Hillary handling this pandemic is unthinkable. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

You have a rich imagination then. Handling it worse than Trump did and is doing is nearly impossible.

The other guy. It's not that hard. And I warned you about him last time.

RBGs — frank

Really Big Guns?

population numbers aren't even relevant to measure how bad a country does in the initial phase as the virus doesn't care about that until it starts to reach level where herd immunity starts to have an effect.

I've tried to estimate this effect very roughly but not sure whether what I did made sense. I'm only a lawyer after all. :smile:

see: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AOotU5H7YUp1mmZF6FplAz8FfQb7T-U_JzAUaxBTSB4/edit?usp=sharing

I assumed that the maximum number of cohorts of people who would die from covid-19 would be indeed the death rate; so if we have a 100% infection rate immediately, 0.66% of everyone would die . Then as people die, I calculate the percentage of cohorts left and adjust the deaths by adjusting for the percentage left.

Of course, this doesn't take into account the effect on spread but I suppose it's a start.

EDIT: actually I just did the same by adjusting the R0 by the percentage of people left that can still get infected. That's probably wrong... but I can't think of anything else yet.

It's not about optimism or pessimism. It's about not opening your mouth until you have enough information.

@Hanover As expected: Chloroquine doesn't work

If I give you access to the sheet, can you make adjustments to it to reflect this issue? Would be nice if we get a reasonable estimate set up for PF that we can adjust as we get more info.

Correction on the below. I thought the estimated death rate was .6% but it's .66%. Plus I was an order of magnitude off. We're talking about 637,000 deaths from covid-19 directly in week 22.

I'm sure there's still plenty that can be perfected in that EXCEL (after all, it's just a quick doodle) but it does give you a feeling of what we're talking about. Doing absolutely nothing will mean your ICUs are overloaded in week 18 assuming they all have ventilators. The next week you run out of enough beds to take care of hospitalised infected. Somewhere in week 22 you will have over 40% infected and herd immunity will slow the spread. I don't know how much, so I haven't taken it into account for the two weeks thereafter (so you should ignore those). By week 22 almost 2,9 million US citizens will have died (actually, that number is probably delayed by a couple of weeks). — Benkei

I got it from here : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

I'd say it's the best estimate we have so far.

So you'd rather sacrifice people than money?

Of course, there's a turning point where the economy's downturn lowers life expectancy and causes depression and poverty. Where this leads to more deaths and sickness than the downturn resulting from an overwhelmed healthcare system, disrupted companies and social unrest when doing nothing, then there's reason to start rethinking the chosen approach of lock downs. The money isn't an issue for the US. As long as the USD is the reserve currency, the USA can issue debt.

I'm not sure how you're going to tell the difference though on what situation would be better. It depends on the type of economy you have, the quality of your healthcare system, your demographics, the room government has to issue debt, local sentiment etc. etc. However you're going to reach a conclusion it involves comparing unknowns and that requires modelling and those are only as good as the assumptions that go into making them.

The best models we have are still estimates. Currently we think it spreads, roughly, with a doubling every week (2.4 per week) of infected, half of which are asymptomatic. It's estimated that of those who develop symptoms, about 20% require hospital care and of those about 30% end up on intensive care. About .06% of all infected die. Before infection reaches 40%, herd immunity plays a very limited role. If you put that into charts, you get this for the US: Covid-19 spread doing nothing in the US

I'm sure there's still plenty that can be perfected in that EXCEL (after all, it's just a quick doodle) but it does give you a feeling of what we're talking about. Doing absolutely nothing will mean your ICUs are overloaded in week 18 assuming they all have ventilators. The next week you run out of enough beds to take care of hospitalised infected. Somewhere in week 22 you will have over 40% infected and herd immunity will slow the spread. I don't know how much, so I haven't taken it into account for the two weeks thereafter (so you should ignore those). By week 22 almost 2,9 million US citizens will have died (actually, that number is probably delayed by a couple of weeks).

I see a bigger problem in how the costs will be borne in the future. If the costs being made by governments to - once again - socialise risks, then more effort should be made to have corporations and the rich pay their fair share in taxes. As opposed to evading taxes as they're won't to do. More than ever, international tax justice is one of the most important social issues at stake.

For instance, we've already had Booking.com claim money from the government because the rule the Dutch government set up was stupid. Booking.com doesn't need the money if you look at the billions of profit transferred to the US, it isn't a "Dutch" company and it doesn't pay taxes here as it funnels all the profits to the US (where it is taxed). This has already created quite the row in the Netherlands as we're quite obviously not looking forward to "bailing" out companies that don't pay taxes here.

A broader view: Covid-19 decision making

Current, better contenders than chloroquine, to help treat covid-19 according to Dutch data are remdesivir, ruconest and the BCG-vaccin.

Anybody else know of other drugs being seriously researched?

We need a word worse than depression. We're looking at a lost generation in many countries; a generation that will have to live with paying of the debt that's being created now. Which makes it all the more important large corporations and rich people pay their fucking, fair share instead of evading taxes.

Unless you're a volatility trader I don't see the upside.

The latest peer reviewed estimate in the Lancet was .6%.

Also, I've looked into the Chinese and WHO handling and the more I look into it, the more appalled I'm getting. I can get the misinformation from the local Chinese government as that's to be expected in a "shoot the messenger" culture. After that though, 10 january China fails to communicate an almost certain person-to-person transmission to the WHO and instead feeds it the famous 14 january line that "no clear evidence" exists fo person-to-person transmission. While that might have been technically true, it appears to be purposefully misleading given the available anecdotal evidence at the time.

It's fine to say you haven't conclusively established it but if you're sure as shit looking into it because of the anecdotal evidence, China should've said so.

Let's remember 10th of january is the same day the WHO does not advise to test people flying from Wuhan.

And sure the WHO is a political body but the level at which it is, is rather worrying. There really does seem too much subservience towards China that has endangered a lot of people across the world as a result.

Notwithstanding all the aid now flowing from China this really needs to be taken seriously as it's really problematic if they fail to appropriately inform others of new diseases.

My argument with boethius is mainly about his ridiculous assertion that the overlap will definitely be small because there's no significant overlap in factors. This despite the fact the the only recorded factors affecting prognosis thus far are exactly the same as the factors affecting prognosis in other conditions, as the four articles I cited demonstrate. — Isaac

The overlap is 100% given a long enough time period. I think we don't really know yet in the short term but I think there are some educated guesses.

We have a number of old people who would've died this year anyways and a number who would've died later. Given sufficient infections we will see a statistically significant rise in deaths in the older age groups, where a lot of deaths will occur now instead of later due to a reduced immune system and no effective treatment at this time.

Then there's the group of comorbidities. I don't know what the prevalence is of comorbidities resulting in deaths this year but since this apparently includes obesity and diabetis, here too I suspect a staristically significant increase in deaths this year from people who would've died much later under other circumstances.

To what extent these will be practically significant increases depends on the infection rate and therefore the efficacy of policies.

What is practically significant isn't precise and is a matter of opinion. It appears to me you and boethius might be discussing opinions at this point which is why you aren't reaching agreement.

It is crucially important that the NHS is not overwhelmed, but if COVID deaths can be kept in the order of say 20,000 by stringent suppression measures, as is now being suggested, there may end up being a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020 (although background mortality could increase due to pressures on the health services and the side-effects of isolation). — Spiegelharter

That reads to me as if he doesn't know one way or the other but that we shouldn't be surprised if the yearly deaths for 2020 despite covid-19 remains stable. That really depends, I think, what types of comorbities are in play and whether those world result in deaths this year or much later (like diabetis and overweight).

And to tie you over until you find something relevant to your skills and experience, you might consider delivery work.

Edit: sorry, typical "here's a solution" reply.

It sucks for sure and I can imagine this causes a serious amount of stress. Do you have someone close to really talk about it?

If Trump and Obama are symptoms of a rigged system then your question misses the point. Trump can only be the douche he is because of the Republican support in Congress.

soft Brexiters who were not ideologically motivated, but they thought that leaving was beneficial in terms of immigration, or sovereignty. These people did not sign up to a no trade deal Brexit with the collateral damage it would result in. — Punshhh

Maybe. The other probability is, that they've already said A and therefore will say B. In the art of persuasion a small concession opens the way to larger ones. So you look at this from a psychological perspective where you never agreed to the initial plan, but the soft Brexiteers already conceded to that. It's psychologically much more likely for them to acquiesce to a hard Brexit as a result.

It's amazing why it's now reported, as if it's news, that UV light is a virucide. No shit.

Let's recall MERS for a second and realise that the summer isn't going to solve this for us.

Ah, so you don't know how international law works.

Where was Bin Laden killed again? And that's not the only instance US forces were active in Pakistan. In fact they blew up their Pakistani allies by accident.

Obama didn't close Guantanomo Bay. He expanded the war into Pakistan without approval from the Senate and Congress. I'm sure there's more but those are the ones that stand the most out for me.

Woohoos and d'ohs for me.

Wrong analysis I'm afraid. Politically this is the smartest move; everything bad can be blamed on covid-19.

Thanks. I actually started with the one before that. Looking into getting a kf94 mask now, which unfortunately may not be exported from Korea or Taiwan unless you're Korean or Taiwanese and live abroad.

Sucks monkey balls.

I'm sure it was done legally but I don't see how yet. Prima facie it seems to be a breach of the holding period as described here: https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/investorpubsrule144htm.html