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DAY 118: COVID-19 Et Tu, National Geographic?
The screengrab above is from a special National Geographic presentation on the COVID-19 epidemic. There is a lot of good news hinted at in the image, but you wouldn’t know it from the way NG is playing it. For example – completely white space means no one, “0” people have died in that county. And tragic as deaths are, there is only a small fraction of the country that can be described as having a true health emergency. Nevertheless, in line with all the national media, NG is also taking the line that things are uncertain and the contest is still in doubt:
Over the course of April and into early May, the numbers hovered around 25,000 new cases per day, which indicates that the U.S. is riding steady in its peak. New cases are beginning to decline in hard hit areas such as New York City. But the steady overall tally for the nation means spikes are occurring elsewhere.
Assuming that tests are being deployed thoroughly, a regional growth in coronavirus cases signals a breakdown in one of those strategies, while a decrease suggests the virus is being controlled. Here are the top 10 states and territories that have experienced the greatest change—an increase or a decrease—in coronavirus cases and deaths per capita over the last seven days from the previous seven days.
I will ignore case counts because more testing means more cases without any relevant data as to the likelihood of severe illness or death. Sad to say (as I am a member of that group) but a disease that most threatens the population most likely to toddle off in the next decade or so and who is not a significant part of the productive workforce, does not constitute a public health emergency. A public health concern, for sure, but not the basis for draconian measures.
So here are the graphs from NG on the states with the greatest change over the last seven days.
First the increases:
Now the decreases:
Remember that an increase means a “breakdown” in control and a decrease means “the virus is being controlled.” There is a subliminal message in these graphs. Note that the grey segment in the background to the chart reflects the period of time that “stay-at-home” orders are in place. All of the states displayed as having the virus under control have those orders still in place while 3 of the 5 states displayed as having a “breakdown” in control do not have “stay-at-home” orders in place. Message: orders good, no orders bad.
Next, let’s examine the claims in detail by picking two of these states — one “increasing,” one “decreasing” — and comparing them. The two in each group closest in total population are Colorado in the “increase group” and Connecticut in the “decrease” group. Colorado ended its “stay-at-home” orders at the end of April; Connecticut has maintained the “stay-at-home” orders.
Uh oh. This is confusing. Now both are showing “decreases”? No, these charts only cases, not death. It is the text above the graph that talks about Colorado deaths increasing and Connecticut deaths decreasing. But look, when you compare the deaths per 100,000 people Colorado is at 20.8 while Connecticut is at 91.7 — four times as high as Colorado. So having a slight uptick in cases in Colorado is still a better position than a decrease in cases in Connecticut. Let’s take a look at the death rates per 100,000 in all of the greatest increase and decrease states over the last seven days:
|
States with Increasing Death |
Deaths/100K Pop. |
States with Decreasing Death |
Deaths/100K Pop. |
| Delaware |
28.5 |
New York |
141.5 |
| Colorado |
20.8 |
New Jersey |
114.1 |
| New Mexico |
12.1 |
Connecticut |
91.7 |
| Iowa |
10.7 |
Rhode Island |
45.3 |
| Nebraska |
6.5 |
Pennsylvania |
34.6 |
So you can see the comparisons between these groups is fairly meaningless. To say nothing of the fact that the graphs are clean and legible and made to fit the same space even though the scales on the y-axis vary greatly.
The narrative from the media, including NG is that although things may have been worse, they are still bad, and getting worse wherever “stay-at-home” orders are not in place. And if those orders don’t remain in place there will be a second wave, possibly higher than the first. So be afraid. Be very very afraid.
But the people, or at least more and more of them, are not seeing it that way. I’ll admit that if you are a small business owner you want to see good news whether it is there or not. But I think the good news is there and is factual. NG pushes the case fatality rate which is bad if it were equal to the infection fatality rate. But it isn’t and won’t be.
It starts as a trickle and then a flood. The people will be free.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Sure, but it’s an initial report from early February. There is a lot more back and forth on this since that time. It is not clear cut.
That is not quite what the article says. It merely says that there is little-to-no empirical evidence that asymptomatic people can transmit the virus. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The intended point of posting the link is that I find it astonishing that after five months of Coronacrisis nobody has adequately studied this question, to the best of my knowledge, which is admittedly limited.
Yabbut…
Conventional wisdom seems to be that this disease is particularly dangerous because the asymptomatic are contagious, unlike other similar diseases. Shouldn’t the burden of proof fall on those making that claim?
The only way to demonstrate it is through massive sampling of the population and administering PCR tests. That was not the priority when people were presenting with systems and available PCR tests were limited. And where is the incentive for someone to voluntarily test who is not symptomatic if they would be quarantined with a positive result? We will only get the answer when we do not quarantine asymptomatic positive testers and rely on our health care system and general prophylactic practices to keep the disease manageable.
I am also astonished. It seems like information we should have had a month ago at least. It’s the most critical thing we need to know, and I can’t imagine why it is taking so long to determine.
By the way, that’s the purpose of this Mass General test presently in progress.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that asymptomatic people do not spread the virus very easily because of the emerging evidence that children don’t spread the virus much either.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/children-unlikely-to-transmit-coronavirus-says-study-cited-in-pms-push-to-reopen-schools
It looks like Boston has released some preliminary results from their random antibody testing. In four of the zip codes affected worst by the virus, they detected about a 10% background antibody rate from asymptomatic people, and a 2.6% rate of people with a current infection. With each little data snippet from testing, we are finding that the disease is not as prevalent as was suspected by the experts.
https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/05/15/boston-coronavirus-antibody-testing-results
Thank you. That is fascinating. It certainly explains the hesitancy in Massachusetts to fully reopen. If we are seeing the rates of serious illness that came with only 10 percent of the public already exposed, they are wondering what would happen if another, say, 20 percent became exposed suddenly. On the other hand, it looks like it’s not as contagious as we thought. Or, my own theory, the weather changed and killed the virus on surfaces. That may have been responsible for more infections than we could ever know. When the weather changes, that single source of infection may disappear. You’d still have person-to-person infection, but it would go much slower through a community.
The other point made in the article is that we are still not sure if people who have antibodies will have durable immunity forever or even for a year or two.
All of these results make me continue to wonder if there are more than two strains out there.
Thank you for posting that. I’ve been wondering if those study results were in.
uninformed question,
How long after someone is no longer symptomatic can they still transmit the virus?
What if, those who we think are cured continue to spread the virus, but think they are not?
Kind of like the reverse of being asymptomatic for 4-9 days before exhibiting symptoms?
There is so much we don’t know, and with lying-deceitful-China keeping us in the dark, we are 3 months behind in what we should know about this virus since the beginning.
I’ve heard 14 days, from my guy in the know.
He laughed when I asked him how our state was counting recovered cases, because if you had it more than 14 days ago, you shouldn’t be counted as an active case.
My town is counting people as “recovered” if they have had it but have been symptom free for 14 days. That information is on our town’s website, and it just started to appear last week. Someone must have asked for greater clarity than just “active cases.” It’s actually very helpful. But I don’t think every city and town is keeping track.
Ours isn’t. They’re counting people released from the hospital as recovered, but there’s no way to follow up on mild cases.
As far as I can tell, most places around the World don’t count recovered cases very accurately. They generally only report the people who have been hospitalized and released as “recovered.” Everybody else who had mild symptoms and stayed at home are lost track of.
I think Massachusetts is working hard to generate clearer statistics. I see evidence everywhere. The new guidelines for self-quarantine are very clear about the length of time one is considered to be contagious after symptoms have ended or if symptoms have never occurred.
I’ve been hearing anecdotally from Massachusans (is that what you call them?) that their state is implementing some aggressive measures to stem the tide, such as contact tracing and mass testing.
I wish someone would pay me to study the media’s reports on the progression of the disease in Wuhan and Lombardy in the November through January period. My memory is that it was not all old people getting sick and dying. In Wuhan particularly many healthcare workers were exposed and sickened from it. In fact, 22 doctors died. As I recall, the press was saying that in Wuhan, the people dying were young men in their forties and fifties who smoked. Then France came along and said the opposite.
I don’t think the United States overreacted, based on what I read back then. But perhaps my memory is wrong or I formed the wrong impression from what I did read. It seems that the experience in Massachusetts at least has been that half of our near 6,000 deaths have been frail elderly patients in long-term-care facilities. We’re really talking then about 3,000 deaths that matter to people rather than 6,000, and 3,000 is not a justification for shutting down civil society.
In my next life, I’ll come back as an academic with someone to pay me to study such things. :-)
Yes, they are. Our Republican governor, Charlie Baker, said a couple of months ago, “I am sick of waiting around for this thing to hit us. I want to go on the offensive.” And so we have. I like the plan. It’s not awful. No cell phone location tracking involved. Tracers will ask people whom they’ve been within 6 feet of over the two days before they tested positive. When those tracers call people to alert them, they won’t say who the infected person is. The state will support people voluntarily staying home in every way they can, putting them in touch with medical help and food and medicine supplies. I like the program. I probably wouldn’t if there were a Democrat in charge. But I like our governor, and I trust him.
Isn’t the goal to come back in a higher caste?
From your keypad to God’s ears @marcin…as they say.
Well, folks, this breaking news just in from the CDC via my Yahoo! News Feed:
And the CDC wonders why is has a credibility problem. :-) Too funny. My favorite is at the end: “The CDC couldn’t be reached for comment.” I wonder why. Hmmm.
The truth is, there’s no way to know how a person actually got a virus. We can guess it was person-to-person contact or from holding onto to a subway poll that was covered with the virus droplets and then touching ones eyes, nose, or mouth. We will never know. So this news probably won’t put the Lysol company out of business. But it should enable travel and tourism, doctors’ offices and hospitals, and restaurants to reopen safely. Yay!
If touch transfers were an important means of infection then post infection tracing would be completely ineffective. You don’t know all the surfaces you touched or who touched them after you. Contact tracing is solely focused on person-to-person contact for extended periods in enclosed spaces, or very close contact.
Exactly. Still, it makes sense to keep surfaces clean of viruses if we can because even though we can’t prove someone got infected from touching something with a live virus on it and then touching their eye, we can assume some people might.
Disinfection of surfaces–whether in kitchens or bathrooms or public places or surgical suites–should still proceed for the same reasons we’ve always done it. But we probably don’t need to leave packages outside for days. :-)
That’s where CDC uses ambiguous language, and they do this sort of thing all the time. They really need some editors on deck. What they mean is, “We can’t say for sure that anyone got sick from contact with the virus via a surface droplet. But it stands to reason that it could happen since we find the virus can be alive after several hours on surfaces in certain weather and humidity conditions.” :-) That’s why we have disinfecting surfaces for a hundred years. :-)
If one were interested in promoting contact tracing, then it would be in one’s interest to downplay the touch transfer of the disease.