The Coronavirus thread

Shocking range of death rates.
11%-13% in UK, Italy and Algeria
3.4% in US
0.08% in New Zealand

Quote: AZDuffman

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice the last day or so the news is shifting to stories of people challenging the models and questioning the shutdown?

Scott Adams used to do financial modeling for a
living before he was a cartoonist. 2 days ago he
said I'm going to explain modeling to you and
when I'm done most of you still won't get it. He
said the one thing that you cannot ever do with
modeling is look at it as a prediction. Someone
who does modeling will never call it a prediction,
because you cannot predict the future, because
you don't know what's going to happen to change
the model. That's why climate change models are
such a joke. The press takes those models and thinks
they're predictions, when they aren't predictions at all.
All the models in 2016 said Hillary would win in a landslide.

Because the virus was a crisis situation modeling was
all they had. Times changed, the models changed.
Scott does predict that when this is over you will have
the Press screaming at the top of their lungs that the
shutdown wasn't necessary. Because the Press does
not want to understand how modeling works. The
press wants this to ruin the economy by going on
forever, or if it doesn't they want to be able to blame
Trump for using the models and shutting it down.
Trump had no choice, models was all they had at
that point.

That range for the death rate is part of why we have so many different ideas on the severity of the pandemic. We are missing some fundamental things about how this virus spreads and who is more vulnerable. Testing is part of the reason, as it will pick up more mild cases dropping your death rate, but I don't think that is the only thing that is happening.

Iceland I believe is the best example. They have had more testing per capita than the USA. My three nephews are COVID survivors, and will not be included in the denominator because they were not tested. In Iceland they would have been tested.

.4% death rate.

The death rate everyone quotes is death rate per positive TEST. Unless you believe Iceland is making up something, the HIGHEST their death rate could be so far is .4%.

So in USA..... death rate of people who go get tested and test positive might end up being 2%? But total of people infected might be .5% Still terrible.

How do you know your nephews had Covid if they weren't tested? The test only show if you are currently infected, if you have fully recovered it will be a negative test still making it very difficult to collect accurate statistics. The antibody tests they have been trying are not getting good results so we still don't have a dependable way to determine who has had Covid if they were not tested while they were ill.

One other comparison to cigarettes.

If you died within 3 weeks of smoking your first cigarette I imagine the overall death rate would be much lower and usage would drop tremendously. I suppose that's the slow boiling the frog effect.

Hey, I heard Trump make an admirable statement. It actually sounded wise and considered.

All were sick to some degree. Started with oldest son, med student in the trenches, who had classic symptoms of mild disease... fever, loss of sense of taste/smell. Next his brothers got sick as well. Then his mother and father. The mother and father were a tad sicker, and got tested. Both positive. Both fine now. Their illness was less than a 'regular' bout with the flu.
There is a non-zero chance they did not have it, but it is close to zero. It is my exact point. There will be millions who 'had it' but will never know it unless we do the antibody testing on everyone.

Quote: rxwine

Hey, I heard Trump make an admirable statement. It actually sounded wise and considered.

Link please....

Quote: SOOPOO

Link please....

It's during the live briefing I have on right now. I might have to check the context to make sure there wasn't some nonsense connected to it, since I only noticed it in isolation.