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Day 83: COVID-19 A View from the Peaks
On Easter Sunday morning, the peoples of over 10 nations and 17 of the United States can say they can look out atop the peaks of their own epidemics. At least according to the IHME — that oft-disputed modeling think tank that politicians are using to justify lockdowns in this country.
So if we are at the peak is it now time to “take our foot off the gas” that has propelled our national obsession with idling and isolating so many? That is the question as the pain increases well beyond the hospital wards to the emptying cupboards of formerly self-sufficient and proud individuals. Is it virtuous to save older Americans from death if it trashes their 401Ks or other retirement savings? It’s one thing to “rediscover” your family unit; it’s another to make them huddle together in poverty.
As more and more places in this country (and the world) arrive at the peak of their own epidemic, the process of recovery must be commenced in earnest. Yes, the epidemic is not over. No, there is no cure other than painfully gained (for some) physical immunity from the disease. But there are other pains and sorrows with which to contend: increasing domestic violence, depression born of isolation and idleness, the loss of confidence in a future that for millions of Americans was so much brighter just a few weeks ago.
Here is the list of countries and states that have reached peaks either in resources demanded of the health care system or daily death counts, or both:
Note that the countries listed are only those countries that the IHME has modeled and do not include China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and others that have been dealing with the virus much longer. Those have moved past their peaks much earlier.
The President’s commission on re-opening the country for business could not be appointed at a better time. Within the next two weeks, 26 states will be added to the list. And very few will be still be below their peaks after April. This does not mean that people will not become ill or die from this disease. It means the rate will slow. But we cannot afford to idle the economy until the last case of the disease either recovers or dies. And, besides, there is no certainty that even if that happens that this or some other bug will not return to devastate us again. Accordingly we need strategies to live with, not hide from, this disease. We live with lots of disease and death. It is only the speed and novelty of this viral infection that has thrown us. It is time to pick ourselves up and push forward as a society.
@roderic made an observation to an earlier post that I think fits in well with this post:
Rodin: We need to know how many people have been infected to give us context for how our society can live with COVID-19. Our government is going to protect us to death.
And you really think that with people piling up in the morgues, the hospitals in New York City overwhelmed, the numbers of infected people continuing to rise, and the news media screaming about it constantly that the people will support a resumption of normal activities now?
Here in Texas the state did not adopt a policy of shutting down “non-essential” businesses, but a lot of businesses shut down anyway because people stopped going to them out of common sense. Restrictions imposed by local government have varied quite a but. Other businesses can operate at a reduced level only because they take pains to address the crisis. I don’t see how a policy change at the state or national level will change that unless people can feel safe getting out and about.
If people voluntarily give up their economic life in response to a threat, that is consistent with the process that has made us the freest and most prosperous people on earth. But if government substitutes its judgment for the masses and through threat of force suppresses their desires, that is not protecting the public, that is tyranny. That tyranny made be aided and abetted by media — insisting that we believe “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” — but that does not make it so. At some point we must regain our agency. We cannot huddle in fear. And we, for darn sure, cannot be made to do so.
[Note: Links to all my CoVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
I don’t understand what Oregon Health Department is doing. Relying on the Institute for Disease Modeling, they say that the virus in Oregon has plateaued (no peak), but that the stay at home order must continue until May 23 to keep at plateau. (The model only goes until then, so the situation is likely worse.)
The OHD press release says “researchers predict there are approximately 7,000 cases of active infection in Oregon at this time.” Predict. What does that mean? OHD statistics report that there have been 1447 positive cases in the state. So only 20% of the “predicted” cases have been reported?
It looks to me like the entire model is based on this one piece of “data”.
Now Oregon has done shockingly little testing: <28,000 done, and currently doing about 1200 a day. I suspect that almost all of the tests are for people who present to the health care system with symptoms of the virus. But that doesn’t add much to the equation.
I’ll dig deeper into this later and try to make sense of it. In the meantime, any ideas? I’m just a layman here, so let me know if I’m missing something.
Government of the experts, by the experts, and for the experts shall not perish from the State of Oregon.
great post
we should add ‘social distancing’ to ‘war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength’.
The NBA canceled the regular season on March 11 before the states did.
Other corporations and private businesses were following suit.
California first imposed a quarantine on March 19 then the other states followed (herd mentality, peer pressure).
There was no need for the state to intervene except to say, we have the power to destroy your life and livelihood.
https://spectator.us/covid-antibody-test-german-town-shows-15-percent-infection-rate/
We should be testing asymptomatic people.
Los Angeles has the idiotic policy of testing only people who are ‘old’ and/or have high fever, cough, shortness of breath.
Do we really need to test people who have shortness of breath?
Certainly we do. There are other reasons one can develop shortness of breath.
But how do we test asymptomatic people? Stop them on the street and ask if they will submit to a test? Issue something on the order of a court summons to a random sample taken from voter registrations? Then what do you do about people who refuse to be tested? I’m sure there have been acceptable methods worked out in some places that still provide the desired data, but these things need to be worked out.
Right now there are not enough tests to cover random testing. My wife is doing testing at a major hospital in Cleveland and they are purposely not given the number of test kits that they can handle because the majority have been diverted to New York to handle the spike in cases. Even in New York they are only testing the most severe cases that show up. Besides, the most important test kits they are using are manufactured in Italy and the Italians understandably hold onto most of them for their own country.
Speaking of testing, when did Russia become a powerhouse of testing?
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This result in the small German town is interesting but I wouldn’t use it as a comparator for the rest of the World. Tiny Iceland has managed to test a full 10% of its population so far but has found only 1/2 of 1% of their people infected.
I think they just give each patient a snifter of vodka and if they don’t pass out the doctor says “Okay, you’re fine comrade.”
UPDATE FOR APRIL 12 DATA: The IHME is generating projections of US deaths-per-day from COVID-19. The projections will get better over time as more data come in. However, I wondered as to how good these projections are a month out. The graph below shows the low/medium/high forecasts as predicted near the end of March. The red dots are the actuals. I will post occasionally so everyone can judge how well they did. The green line shows the latest model (4/9) prediction.I am keeping my fingers crossed that we have peaked on April 10.
And then the NKVD shoots them in the back if they don’t charge the German lines with no ammo in their rifles.
Oh, sorry. Wrong thread.
Once we have a blood test, we could test blood donations. We could make it a standard test for any blood test given for other reasons. These too would have some selection bias, but over time we would have a better idea as to the extent asymptomatic people who have had the virus.
That could all be false positives, which is a problem when asymptomatic populations are screened.
Study of over 400o patients looking for criteria linked with bad outcomes from COVID-19:
If that’s true, then Iceland has an even lower infection rate than supposed. I don’t know how Iceland does its tests, but in my wife’s lab, they test the accuracy of the batches of tests they do on a daily basis by using control samples of both infected and uninfected samples. This is how you monitor whether your tests are working correctly or not. There have been many instances around the World of test kits being thrown out that were found to be defective.