On Lockdown

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kaleun96
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Post by kaleun96 »

ray_parkhurst wrote:I may never go back to Starbucks
I think you'll be doing yourself a favour!

Better yet, buy an espresso machine. They can be a bit pricey but the economics of it are made easy for me living in Stockholm. The average Latte or Flat White will run you $4.50 so it can take less than a year or so before the machine has paid for itself.
- Cam

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

In 1999 I had a kidney stone, and then another 6 mos later, then another 3 mos later. My doctor said it was from drinking coffee, which I had been drinking for about 6 years at that point after becoming addicted to it while living in Penang. Good coffee in Penang. Many folks at the factory lived up in the hills and grew it themselves, and all seemed to have unique recipes for roasting and such. Anyway, I did give it up, and the stones stopped. I since then discovered the real reason for the stones, and that knowledge gave me some confidence to have a weekly coffee. It has been one of my many happy vices, and Starbucks was my choice of enabler, until LockDown2020. So having my own machine at home is not an option, and a weekly coffee is not a huge financial burden. It just won't be from Starbucks from now on.

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

The local hamfest guys have canceled May 9 Electronic Swap. It was still "on" until last night...I suppose they were hoping this insanity would end and life could return to normal, but alas they gave up and are now projecting the next Swap on June 13.

I plan to wear my "vintage prisoner" garb each time I go out from now until we are set free. The Electronic Swap is my bellwether, and until it is "on" I will be a "prisoner".

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

Some models were linked earlier in this thread which were actually more wrong than I had predicted. Not only were the numbers from China grossly wrong, but so are those in the US, though in a different way. Based on the larger tests done on asymptomatic populations, both for the virus and its antibodies, we now know the infection rate is much, much higher than the modeling numbers used to predict the infection trajectories, making the mortality rate potentially nearly 2 orders of magnitude lower than predicted by the models which justified the shutdowns we are now subjected to.

My question for the folks here...does anyone have a link to someone modeling this pandemic correctly, or at least with better data than before? I realize there are variables which are still unknown (at least to me...) such as environmental impacts, genetic and other demographic susceptibilities, impact due to mutations and diffusion of the multiple strains, etc, but I would hope that someone has at least looked at the data so far, convolved with a more realistic infection rate and the impact of social distancing, and tried to create a model which matches. Does it exist?

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

Note that these changes in mortality and infection rates don't necessarily lower the estimated total deaths. In fact, they could cause an increase that estimate.

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

Lou Jost wrote:Note that these changes in mortality and infection rates don't necessarily lower the estimated total deaths. In fact, they could cause an increase that estimate.
At this point I'm only asking for a model that can calculate what has already happened, using the updated rates. Of course estimates would immediately be calculated, scientists being who they are, but so far how can you believe estimates from a model that does not even properly calculate the historical record?

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

I don't know anything about these models. I just wanted to make the point that the lockdowns were not justified by the mortality RATE but by the absolute number of deaths based on the combination of infection and mortality rates. The lower mortality rate comes from new data on the much higher number of asymptomatic cases thna we had thought earlier. This means that the disease is much more contagious than we had thought. It provides even more justification for the lockdown.

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

Lou Jost wrote:I don't know anything about these models. I just wanted to make the point that the lockdowns were not justified by the mortality RATE but by the absolute number of deaths based on the combination of infection and mortality rates. The lower mortality rate comes from new data on the much higher number of asymptomatic cases thna we had thought earlier. This means that the disease is much more contagious than we had thought. It provides even more justification for the lockdown.
The justification for the lockdown was due to a very high case mortality rate plus an assumed very high unmitigated infection rate, which combined gave an astronomical overall mortality rate. Doctors who should have known better were estimating millions of deaths due to these factors being improperly modeled. We now know that the virus is far more contagious than the models suggested, and far less deadly. I agree that these two factors could sway the overall mortality rate either direction, and that is the reason mitigation is still justified. A good model should help decide if the lockdown is still justified, or ever was.

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

We will also have empirical data on that, from Brazil and Sweden.

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

Lou Jost wrote:We will also have empirical data on that, from Brazil and Sweden.
I'm not sure how much mitigation there was in either place. Weren't both places essentially business as usual? In any event, a decent model would be able to calculate the historical results in both places, though impact due to variations in the secondary factors, and quality of the data, is still in question.

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

Weren't both places essentially business as usual?
Yes, these will be the "control" countries. Of course there are also intermediate degrees of lockdown. But it seems pretty clear that the restrictions have to be strong to have a significant effect. We see that in the empirical data, we don't need to depend on models.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

I'm a simple man.

The observed mortality rate for New York City currently stands at 0.2267%, trusting todays' figures from the New York Times. Multiplying that number times the population of the U.S. gives 744,000 deaths, if things got "only" as bad as they have been in NYC to date. The corresponding numbers are 89,600 for California and 16,200 for my own state of Washington.

It would be an interesting conversation -- though not one for this forum -- to debate whether avoiding those deaths is worth the economic cost of the shutdown, or for that matter, whether we actually are avoiding the deaths or just spreading them out so as not to crash the healthcare system.

I for one am pleased that I don't have to make decisions along the lines of "Let's trade X thousand lives for Y billion $$ of GDP." (Let's see, that would be X/Y million dollars per life...yeah, seems like the right sort of unit.)

As for links to any analysis that you would consider "correct", I have no hope of ever providing such a thing.

--Rik

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

rjlittlefield wrote:I'm a simple man.

The observed mortality rate for New York City currently stands at 0.2267%, trusting todays' figures from the New York Times. Multiplying that number times the population of the U.S. gives 744,000 deaths, if things got "only" as bad as they have been in NYC to date. The corresponding numbers are 89,600 for California and 16,200 for my own state of Washington.

It would be an interesting conversation -- though not one for this forum -- to debate whether avoiding those deaths is worth the economic cost of the shutdown, or for that matter, whether we actually are avoiding the deaths or just spreading them out so as not to crash the healthcare system.

I for one am pleased that I don't have to make decisions along the lines of "Let's trade X thousand lives for Y billion $$ of GDP." (Let's see, that would be X/Y million dollars per life...yeah, seems like the right sort of unit.)
It seems a stretch to assume that every single person in the US will be infected, so perhaps that model is too simple. That 0.2267% is probably also suspect (as is anything from the NYT), though I have no idea in what direction as it is the lowest rate I've heard. There is also nearly zero data on the effectiveness of the lockdown. Did it help? Or did forcing folks to be locked at home spread the virus faster due to its much higher infection rate? Did we shoot ourselves in the foot and increase the infection and mortality rates by shutting folks in their homes, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in the head with the shutdown? I suppose we will know some of these answers in the next few months, and that a model to answer them "correctly" simply can't exist due to so many unknowns.
Last edited by ray_parkhurst on Fri May 08, 2020 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ray_parkhurst
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Post by ray_parkhurst »

rjlittlefield wrote:As for links to any analysis that you would consider "correct", I have no hope of ever providing such a thing.
I'd be happy with "somewhat close", "in the ballpark", or similar.

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

Ray, we do know that the measures helped. There is plenty of data about that.

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