Covid-19 NON DANCE debate

The graph I'm kind of watching is here and entitled:
www-dot-worldometers-dot-info/coronavirus/country/us/
Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States
Switch to log scale . . .
You will note that the slope is linear . . .
Easiest and simple observation:
March 2 -- 100 cases
March 10 -- 1000 cases (actually 994)
Doing nothing implies
March 18 --- 10,000 cases (the graph shows the US is on track to hit this)
March 26 --- 100,000 cases
April 3 --- 1,000,000 cases
April 11 -- 10,000,000 cases
April 19 -- 100,000,000 cases (1/3 population of US)

The goal of social distancing is to stop this curve from being log-linear and flatten it. With testing ramping, it's possible to stay on this trajectory in the near term, but the CDC is probably looking forward toward end of March to see whether the US is approaching a million cases or whether the spread has slowed. Hence, the current time frame of all closures. There are probably smarter people then me looking at this.

Multiply these numbers by 15% and that is how many hospital beds are needed. Multiply by 5% to find the number of ICU beds needed.
 
jjLA said:
The graph I'm kind of watching is here and entitled:
www-dot-worldometers-dot-info/coronavirus/country/us/
Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States
Switch to log scale . . .
You will note that the slope is linear . . .
Easiest and simple observation:
March 2 -- 100 cases
March 10 -- 1000 cases (actually 994)
Doing nothing implies
March 18 --- 10,000 cases (the graph shows the US is on track to hit this)
March 26 --- 100,000 cases
April 3 --- 1,000,000 cases
April 11 -- 10,000,000 cases
April 19 -- 100,000,000 cases (1/3 population of US)

The goal of social distancing is to stop this curve from being log-linear and flatten it. With testing ramping, it's possible to stay on this trajectory in the near term, but the CDC is probably looking forward toward end of March to see whether the US is approaching a million cases or whether the spread has slowed. Hence, the current time frame of all closures. There are probably smarter people then me looking at this.

Multiply these numbers by 15% and that is how many hospital beds are needed. Multiply by 5% to find the number of ICU beds needed.
Click to expand...
I think it’s already known that if it progresses without abating, there aren’t enough ICU beds or hospital beds to cover the expected serious cases. I certainly hope what’s being done so far will have an effect. I think Illinois will be hit with a bar/restaurant curfew/shutdown next, or at least Chicagoland.
 
I’m puzzled about the covid-19 testing issue. Suppose tests are free & readily available to everyone. If a symptomatic person tests negative, they aren’t any less sick or less contagious. Is a symptomatic person tests positive, they aren’t any more sick or more contagious.

So what is the urgency about getting tested? From what I understand (which is a lot less than many of you), the test results won’t change how you feel, how fast you recover, or your ability to infect others.

If you have all the symptoms & just got back from Italy, you might nonetheless test negative. So what? You still shouldn’t go visit your elderly sick parents or attend a social dance. And if you are asymptomatic and haven’t traveled anywhere, you might still test positive.

So...what am I missing that explains why it is so important for tests be widely available? Isn’t the safest solution for us all to behave as though we had tested positive, even if nobody gets tested?
 
ProgressNotPerfection said:
I’m puzzled about the covid-19 testing issue. Suppose tests are free & readily available to everyone. If a symptomatic person tests negative, they aren’t any less sick or less contagious. Is a symptomatic person tests positive, they aren’t any more sick or more contagious.

So what is the urgency about getting tested? From what I understand (which is a lot less than many of you), the test results won’t change how you feel, how fast you recover, or your ability to infect others.

If you have all the symptoms & just got back from Italy, you might nonetheless test negative. So what? You still shouldn’t go visit your elderly sick parents or attend a social dance. And if you are asymptomatic and haven’t traveled anywhere, you might still test positive.

So...what am I missing that explains why it is so important for tests be widely available? Isn’t the safest solution for us all to behave as though we had tested positive, even if nobody gets tested?
Click to expand...
I'd say it's mostly important so we have an idea what's going on: so our sense of the spread is accurate. If there's a really clear picture of exactly who has it, those people and their contacts can be closely monitored/restricted, leaving the general public not needing such drastic limitations with their social and economic consequences. From what I read, that's South Korea's situation now. Even if we're not at the point where we can loosen restrictions, that information can help with allocating resources and give health services the time they need to be better prepared in the places they'll be most needed. At the moment, we have very close to no clue on actual numbers of infections (that's what scared me about the Atlantic article I posted).

In terms of symptoms, it can be hard to tell between covid and other viral infections (e.g., the flu, a cold). So, no, any person with symptoms should try not to spread whatever they've got to others. But given that we all have experience with other colds and flus, we all have a certain degree of resistance to those viruses, so it's not going to explode through the population at anywhere near the same rate. In any case, if they have symptoms, they're more likely to have covid than someone without symptoms, so they're a candidate to be tested to find out.

A big concern are those people without symptoms who are infected; those are the ones less likely to be restricting their movement: even if they're being careful overall, they're still likely to do things they probably wouldn't if they knew they were infected, like go grocery shopping. So they can spread it without knowing. But unless we get to the point of enough tests for absolutely everyone, those people won't get tested. So that's why the restrictions need to be general for the time being and foreseeable future.
 
ProgressNotPerfection said:
I’m puzzled about the covid-19 testing issue. Suppose tests are free & readily available to everyone. If a symptomatic person tests negative, they aren’t any less sick or less contagious. Is a symptomatic person tests positive, they aren’t any more sick or more contagious.

So what is the urgency about getting tested? From what I understand (which is a lot less than many of you), the test results won’t change how you feel, how fast you recover, or your ability to infect others.

If you have all the symptoms & just got back from Italy, you might nonetheless test negative. So what? You still shouldn’t go visit your elderly sick parents or attend a social dance. And if you are asymptomatic and haven’t traveled anywhere, you might still test positive.

So...what am I missing that explains why it is so important for tests be widely available? Isn’t the safest solution for us all to behave as though we had tested positive, even if nobody gets tested?
Click to expand...

Well, if we'd acted fast, if we could have identified every positive person as they came into an area, and got them properly isolated, we could have stopped this from spreading. Possibly even stopped it from spreading from one country to another, from one state to another, from one county to another. And possibly even had the thing die out altogether.

At this point, we're trying to dampen that curve. And since we can't truly have everyone stay home for a long time (grocery stores, hospitals, and at least some other things will need to keep functioning), we still should be identifying the positives and getting them away from others. Particularly so we can keep them away from the highest risk people.

Wouldn't you like to know, if you're 70 and having a stroke, that none of your nurses and doctors and aides and the people cleaning your hospital room are currently infected? They'd like to know too. Right now, most of them don't, even if they are showing symptoms. Sure, many of them "just" have the flu. But we can't even keep positive health care workers away from nursing home residents and hospital patients if we don't know who's positive. (e.g. have they cared for a positive, but mild case recently? how do they know if they aren't testing the mildly affected?) And that's just one piece of it.
 
In my country (UK) they are only testing those who end up in hospital. Know a very worried girl (in her twenties) who has been calling 111 (our non emergency line we're told to contact only when symptoms escalate now) who can't hold a conversation for 30 seconds without getting out of breath right now, hard to get through to 111, when she is she's told she doesn't warrant testing, doesn't warrant treatment.

Another friend is a doctor. She developed a cough and has been told to self isolate until Tuesday. She doesn't think she has coronavirus, but doesn't know - she hasn't been tested.

My government is massaging the numbers to prove their insane approach at odds to all other nations is working. It is not. Testing is important to hold those who are meant to be helping their country accountable.
 
@bia nailed it. It's all about information.

The thematic undercurrent of the debate here and elsewhere has been about "right-sizing" the response. Without good information about the scope of the infection, it is impossible to properly scope the response.

Lacking information, the safest thing to then do (with respect to public health) is assume the worst and take extreme measures. But extreme measures themselves have costs that make them undesireable, unpalatable, or even impossible. And so we argue.
 
Logically, it might be time for a fully blown panic attack. Step one: Shift nervously from one foot to the other and back again. Step two: Run around in circles. Step three: Let out a primal scream. Wait... That wasn't a panic attack. That was my last dance practice. Okay, never mind.
 
ProgressNotPerfection said:
I’m puzzled about the covid-19 testing issue. Suppose tests are free & readily available to everyone. If a symptomatic person tests negative, they aren’t any less sick or less contagious. Is a symptomatic person tests positive, they aren’t any more sick or more contagious.

So what is the urgency about getting tested? From what I understand (which is a lot less than many of you), the test results won’t change how you feel, how fast you recover, or your ability to infect others.
Click to expand...
I think you understand more than most people. The people who are denied tests and are upset about it are generally people who imagine Covid-19 is like the black plague: a certainty of ending up in the hospital, and a good chance of death. And if they've only been paying attention to the levels of panic but haven't studied the data on the disease in any detail, that's not an unreasonable feeling to have right now. So when they get the flu, and have symptoms that are the same as for Covid-19, they really want to know so they know whether they can safely stay home sick or whether they should be presenting themselves at the emergency room ASAP.

In fact, you can safely stay home sick either way - and call 911 if your symptoms get really bad - but they don't realize that.

They also don't understand the other side of the picture. If you have the symptoms, but no known exposure to Covid-19, it's more than a 99% chance you have the flu, to which you've almost certainly been exposed, and not Covid-19. Those are not the most important people to test.

The most important people to test are people who have the symptoms and also exposure, because they're reasonably likely actually to have Covid-19 and not the flu - and those are the people who are being tested. The next most important people to test are people who have been exposed but don't have the symptoms, because they're still way more likely to have it than people who have the symptoms but have not been exposed. But this is a difficult thing to explain and understand.

People talk about how much more testing South Korea is doing, but in fact they have the same requirements to be tested: symptoms and exposure. It's just that in South Korea, a lot more people have been exposed to Covid-19, so there are a lot more people worth testing.
So...what am I missing that explains why it is so important for tests be widely available? Isn’t the safest solution for us all to behave as though we had tested positive, even if nobody gets tested?
Click to expand...
Well, the appropriate thing to do if you test positive is to self isolate, leaving the house only for absolutely necessary reasons (say your toilet paper stash ran out), wearing a mask. That means, for example, no going to work. If you have symptoms, that's probably fine, since those actions are not overkill even if you have the flu.

If everyone without symptoms did that and nobody was working, we'd be in trouble. There's a good discussion of the economic and human costs of social distancing in this article by Steve Malanga (who is also a ballroom dancer, though that's not relevant to the article):

www.city-journal.org

The Virus and the Economy

The spread of the coronavirus has led to fears of a worldwide economic slowdown. China, where the virus first leaped into the human population, has quarantined large sections of the country, virtually shutting down economic activity. In South Korea, several companies—including the automaker...
www.city-journal.org www.city-journal.org
 
fineshrine said:
My government is massaging the numbers to prove their insane approach at odds to all other nations is working. It is not. Testing is important to hold those who are meant to be helping their country accountable.
Click to expand...
The NHS actually has protocols for allocating scarce resources taking into account age and such. They're actually better equipped than many countries for when the number of cases outruns the available medical resources, because they have rules for who gets the resources and who doesn't. I don't think their strategy of timing the peak for the summer is insane - if it works.

I think it's way too early to tell if their timing effort is working yet. And if they end up mistiming the peak, I think that will be way too obvious for them to hide it.
 
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