Posted on 03/18/2020 8:26:33 PM PDT by Teacher317
“Washington State shows no new cases today. That really made me feel optimistic.”
If the majority of CCP-19 victims were Chinese, no new cases would be expected. Trouble is, we don’t know the demographics.
According to your 10 fold increase every 8 days standard, we should reach 100,000,000 cases by April 12 (if my calendar counting is correct).
330,000,000 should only be a few days after that (assuming that really is the population of the US).
There has to be a peak in there somewhere. The only question is when that will happen.
What is your guess?
I should have said a peak in new cases.
I have been watching this worldometer.info site every day for the last week. The data for Washington for today 3/19 hasn’t been reported yet, that’s why it shows no new infections. Each country has slightly different reporting periods. In Germany and the US the cases and deaths are reported continually throughout the day, so you will see the numbers rising gradually. Italy reports at about 1:30 PM EST. France reported around 3 PM EST the last few days. China and South Korea and Far East countries report around 3 AM EST because they are 13 hours ahead of EST. I think Iran is 7 hours ahead.
Testing asymptomqtic people probably will not be done, nor should it be. The reason is that tests are invariably not 100% accurate combined with some basic math.
You can google “conditional probability” if your interested in details, but a simple example (with easy numbers) should help. Suppose you have a population of 1,000,000 people. 5% are expected to be infected and you have a test that’s 90% accurate (I am assuming the same accuracy for both positive and negative results). Now the numbers. 50,000 people infected, 950,000 not infected. Of the infected, 45,000 will test positive, of the uninflected, 95,000 will also test positive.
This means there will be 190,000 reported cases in a population with only 50,000 actual cases. Further, only 45,000 of the 130,000 reported cases would actually have the disease. That means testing everyone in our hypothetical population would yield a positive test accuracy of only 34.6%.
While this was only a hypothetical example, you could well imagine the panic that might ensue were such numbers released. Very few would understand the underlying math and (even more) panic would erupt. Poor olive decisions would result from such misleading data. The solution, of course, is to limit the number of false positives by increasing the probability that those tested actually are infected. Hence testing of only those who meet the screening criteria.
It was on the internet so it MUST be true! (No tag since I hope everyone has a working sarcasm meter today)
It’s the same data, just presented differently. If one is accurate so is the other. We aren’t looking for the cumulative cases to decrease, just level off and eventually remain constant.
I thought I saw a CDC graph showing that new cases are slowing down.
dump trucks.
Are old and chronically ill people worthless?
As time goes on and it turns out that the old and ill simply die fastest are you going to conclude that everybody else that dies must have had some underlying condition and was therefore also worthless?
I appreciate your response.
The “only kills Asians” theory was a myth. Long debunked.
Hope you are right - many will slam you for showing hope that all the panic is insane - they caused and fanned the flames of it and it would be a big slice of crow pie to eat after all the damage the panic has caused - far more than the virus running rampant ever could have.
One parameter not included in all this analysis is temperature. From what I’ve read the virus tends to not be as aggressive as the weather and humidity rise.
Temperatures here in Eastern NC are running above average. 80 today, 85 tomorrow.
Perhaps global warming may not be such a bad thing after all?
Thanks! Very informative. Do you have any idea on just how accurate the current test for CV19 in the US is? I had read that the initial test was very flawed.
To be clear, I am not any kind of expert on infectious disease in general nor The current pandemic in particular. I am a scientist with a pretty solid mathematical background. My post was only meant to point out why testing everyone is a bad idea in general.
Shorter answer: I don’t know what the accuracy of the current tests are.
That is an absurd rumor. Back it up.
It’s irresponsible.
I saw some more scare stories where some folks warned us that warm/humid environments "may not" slow it down but they are just fanning the flames.
It was noted that Latin America and much of Africa are showing lower incidences which tells me the heat/humidity is probably a good prophylaxis...
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