> Also the increase in deaths you link to is not statistically significant, given it is in the rage of 10-30 over the course of several months in a state with 10 million people.
A penny doubled daily is $0.64 after a week, $81.92 after two, $10,485.76 after three, and $1,342,177.28 after four.
Upwards movement in cases and deaths in something that spreads exponentially is... not great.
Nothing is doubling every week anymore. Why did you bring that up?
Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed. Nit pick all you'd like, be as afraid as you like, but the numbers you supplied don't support your assertions.
Exponential growth of the disease isn't tied to an arbitrary "week" timeline. It's delayed because of a 0.25 - 4.0 weeks. Different environment and behaviors will cause it to spread at different time intervals (not just a different number of recipients per spreader).
> Daily deaths across pretty much all nations are decreasing even as lockdowns are removed.
And COVID death doesn't happen within days of new exposure. It's delayed 3.5 - 5+ weeks after exposure and the people most likely to die aren't the ones walking around in public on the first day of end of SiP.
Your parent comment wasn't as outrageous as you make it seem.
>Your parent comment wasn't as outrageous as you make it seem.
Parent didn't account for vastly increased testing capacity in their assertions, and characterized a statistically insignificant increase in deaths as "massive". I objected to that.
I grant that this is not over and needs to be closely watched. I object to the exaggeration of the threat.
Daily deaths are decreasing while daily new cases are increasing. The areas where most of the new cases are being recorded are rapidly changing, and I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to that. In quite a short time, the western European countries are not at the top of the list of countries with the most new cases, and similarly within the US, NY and NJ are behind Texas, California, Illinois, etc.
Maybe deaths being down means something positive, but it also could be a lagging indicator to some extent. It could reflect different record-keeping in the areas that are becoming more prominent in new cases.
>Daily deaths are decreasing while daily new cases are increasing.
But, as I originally stated, there are a lot more tests being done now, and that could explain why the number of confirmed cases is increasing. Some weeks ago they only tested those requiring hospitalization, and as time went on now anyone can get a test.
It would be nice if there were weekly samples of 20k people to serve as a valid week-to-week measure of the population infection rate.
The places where the new cases are skyrocketing are having more tests done, obviously, but they are places where the number of tests (and cases and deaths) up until now was low.
Conversely, the places that were hardest hit in the first wave are also having more tests done than previously, and at least before full reopening, are not yet having cases jump up.
Many states are experiencing continued increase in infection rates. See https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/, to a lesser extent https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/ for example. Deaths will lag that. Doubling time is really only a legitimate factor insofar as we can develop vaccines and treatments in the interim, and that hospital capacity is preserved; otherwise it's just a question of whether mass bad outcomes occur now or later. To be clear, I'm not arguing for continued lockdowns -- that seems fruitless. But it seems premature to assume the worst is behind us.
I wonder what those numbers would look like taking into account that there has been much more testing online in the last several weeks? (so of course the number of detected positives goes up)
I grant that the worst might not be behind us, but I also keep in mind that the experts said from the beginning that most likely outcomes are that this will become another variant of the common cold or flare up some years similar to a bad flue season [0]
I also agree that this needs to be watched, and I appreciate your realistic appraisal of lockdowns despite the possible remaining danger.
The idea is that it will decrease in severity over time. It may already be doing so. In early March they were tracking a dozen mutations already.
From the linked article [0], quoting a number of infectious disease experts, coronavirus researchers, epidemiologist, etc:
>OC43 and 229E are more prevalent than other endemic human coronaviruses, especially in children and the elderly. Together, the four are responsible for an estimated one-quarter of all colds. “For the most part they cause common-cold-type symptoms,” said Richard Webby, an influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “Maybe that is the most likely end scenario if this thing becomes entrenched.”
>Odds: Moderate. “I think there is a reasonable probability that this becomes the fifth community-acquired coronavirus,” Adalja said, something he expanded on in his blog. Webby agreed: “I have a little bit of hope that, OK, we’ll put up with a couple of years of heightened [2019-nCoV] activity before settling down to something like the other four coronaviruses.”
>Odds: Pretty good. What we may be seeing “is the emergence of a new coronavirus … that could very well become another seasonal pathogen that causes pneumonia,” said infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. It would be “more than a cold” and less than SARS: “The only other pathogen I can compare it to is seasonal influenza.”
(The article had a lot of other interesting and relevant information.)
A penny doubled daily is $0.64 after a week, $81.92 after two, $10,485.76 after three, and $1,342,177.28 after four.
Upwards movement in cases and deaths in something that spreads exponentially is... not great.