Exponential Growth and Covid-19 [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
For transmission rates, this team is updating their modeling results often: https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/current-patterns-tran...
On twitter, @datagraver is publishing some of the most interesting visualization/graphs: https://twitter.com/Datagraver
I've found this via mrb (@zorinaq) who's been tracking the covid19 spread: https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1235850389020270595
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-reddit-social-pl...
Also you might as well rename /r/Coronavirus/ to /r/politics2 aka fucktrump. It's the same thing over and over again
It might (or might not) be accurate, but that's kinda irrelevant.
One of the biggest problems with Reddit is that Americans go on boards like /r/politics or in this case /r/Coronavirus, see extreme hostility towards America and Trump and assume that this hostility is all coming from Americans themselves, when really a substantial number of Reddit users (and users elsewhere on the Internet) are not American.
Not being Americans, their hostility comes more from predisposed bias against Trump and America than a careful analysis of what's best for America.
I think the real issue is that you go to a place like r/politics or r/vancouver or r/bitcoin and think it's some canonical forum with some semblance of fairness but it's really just someone's little world with its own rules and agenda.
But you can't simply start your own subreddit because you're now r/vancouver2, r/TrueVancouver, or whatever and it can never get the same traction just because it's not the official-looking r/vancouver anymore.
* * *
Seattle is about 2 weeks behind Lombardy. The Bay Area maybe 3 weeks behind. Everywhere in the US is going to be in that situation in 2 months at most, unless something very dramatic changes ASAP.
The kinds of measures being taken in the US are grossly inadequate for this challenge: leaders and some media outlets continue to downplay risks, residents continue to blithely go about their everyday lives, large gatherings like church meetings and sporting events continue as usual, the CDC/FDA is still blocking sufficient testing around the country, hospitals and medical workers are not being sufficiently trained and prepared, and the supply of personal protective gear and ICU beds is not going to suffice.
We have squandered 4–6 weeks of preparation for this crisis, and hundreds of thousands of people in the US may die as a result, with others experiencing permanent lung damage.
China has shown that this virus can be managed if the number of patients stays low enough that infections are discovered early and patients are treated aggressively with antivirals, supplemental oxygen as soon as blood oxygen starts to drop, mechanical ventilators for severe cases, etc. People’s immune systems generally do fight this virus off if we can keep them breathing for long enough. But that depends on having enough hospital capacity.
If everyone stays complacent and continues to mingle until there are hundreds of local deaths in each area it’s going to be a disaster.
Edit 2: To everyone here: If you have what seems like a minor cold, even if you are a young adult, please stay away from people and don’t spread it. What is 2 weeks of minor cough and sore throat for you might become severe pneumonia requiring hospitalization for your parent or neighbor or coworker. If anyone in the family gets a minor cold, please keep your kids out of school. Etc.
They also have already stock piled masks and additional resources. The medical staff in the area are similarly mentally preparing, schools are prepping for the shutdown (at home school).
I wouldn’t say the US is doing nothing, this is rural Illinois. There just isn’t much to do here until it’s a problem. But as soon as we get a few test positives schools are planning shutdown (I’m assuming gyms will be used for patients as necessary).
https://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2020/03/ontario-confirms-n... https://news.ontario.ca/mohltc/en/2020/03/ontario-confirms-n...
All the other cases we've seen were related to travel to Iran, Italy, Egypt, & China IIRC.
EDIT: one was a woman who returned from Colorado on Mar 2, the other a man who returned from Las Vegas on Feb 28.
Unfortunately this is effectively "let them eat cake" for many people.
Keeping kids out of school means not going to work. Not going to work means not having money to pay the bills, and very possibly losing your job.
In China, where the state has basically total control, things like this can be done. In the US, it's going to be a tough sell for an awful lot of people.
If it were up to me the federal government and state and local governments would be closing schools, closing nursing homes to visitors, canceling church services and sporting events, figuring out how to make transportation less risky, closing restaurants and bars to customers and drafting those workers to make deliverable prepared meals instead, recruiting childless people aged 15–40 into temporary (paid) public service jobs, doing everything possible to guarantee sufficient supply of protective equipment, taking every roadblock out from researching antiviral drugs for treating positive cases, etc.
Governments should be figuring out how to guarantee anyone with untested minor colds to stay home from work without losing pay until they can be tested; figuring out how to temporarily relieve rent, loan payments, and taxes for people quarantined or with jobs in temporarily affected industries; preparing to distribute food, medicine, and other items to patients in quarantine or isolated at home, and so on.
With a robust public response it should be possible to dramatically slow this virus without completely collapsing the economy. The fallout (not just illness/death but also economic impact) from all the cases hitting at once within a few weeks is going to be much more worse.
I’m not sure exactly what the best responses would be, I’m just spitballing here. But it seems to me we should have been thinking and talking about possible extreme measures for the past 6 weeks instead of collectively twiddling our thumbs and going on with our ordinary lives.
I looked through /r/covid19/ and it mostly seems to be an aggregator of research papers. Don't really see much tinfoily or panicky stuff there.
I also have no idea why posting this chart would be considered "making bold and fearmongering claims": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/euokq5/oc_...
Besides, I'm not sure why Business Insider thinks linking to the CDC is some sort of be all end all solution to providing coronavirus information. They've actually been incredibly slow to provide up to date information (not to mention testing).
This article comes across as Business Insider taking a petty swipe at reddit to generate clicks and trying to stir up drama where none exists.
Social media in general, and Reddit in particular, are commoditizing news publications, and displacing them as trusted sources of information. That's IMO why there have been so many such articles coming out regularly in the past few years.
The coup in Venezuela, the Yellow Vest protests, and even Charlottesville all had individuals, both partisans and observers contributing to a body of information that allowed interested people to develop a more holistic awareness of the ground-level context as it unfolded in real-time.
Seemingly there are a number of medical professionals providing coolheaded analysis of the COVID outbreak, but if I were to search it up, I would be subject to a tsunami of vapid, hyperbolic observations and speculations breathlessly belted out by talking heads whose two great skills are reading a teleprompter, and running their mouths between segments.
Every time something of cultural interest or controversy occurs, self-interested media outlets run hitpiece after hitpiece against whichever platform hasn't bent the knee to their industry in the recent past, all under the auspices of the public good, and ensuring only the highest quality information is available.
Which, of course, only inflames the skepticism and paranoia of those convinced that the media is plotting to control them, even as they deny knowledge to those capable of keeping themselves informed and acting through their own sources.
Traditional media is being outcompeted as a primary source for both critical audiences that want to stay informed, as well as for credulous audiences who want to be entertained, and hear what they already agree with.
This isn't to denigrate the great work being done around the globe by investigative journalists. News reporting is a thankless, and unprofitable venture. It's unfortunate that their great work is so often buried beneath a sea of punditry with little more insight than a reddit thread.
HN has been a great source for information on COVID 19, and I get links to primary articles that I wouldn't know to find, and which most publications only reference in passing. It helps me stay informed. If I was just passively reading/watching the news, I shudder to imagine what I'd think.
But if anxiety leads more people to self-quarantine and wash their hands over and over again, it will save lives. Potentially a lot of them.
Anxiety doesn't normally have a place in society because it's so overwhelmingly safe most of the time, but we're facing a legitimate threat that people can do something about.
Obviously, there's no place for panic and stockpiling, but most of the people I see don't seem too worried -- they don't seem worried enough. People should be more cautious.
You seem to be taking a position of "Everyone else is worried. I assert that my non-worry will be proven to be the correct position." Yet, your prediction that the redditors are excessively worried ("panicky") will only be borne out if those who worry are sufficient in number and intensity to keep downward pressure on the exponential multiplier.
There's a worry vector field around the Earth here, I can feel it. I wonder what you get with the line integral?
I even think the 500k death in the US is too much
https://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-us-hospitals-pr...
>Lawler's estimates include:
>4.8 million hospitalizations associated with the novel coronavirus
>96 million cases overall in the US
>480,000 deaths
Once again I'm not downplaying it but I think we will be closer to the 1957-59 asian flu which had 70k deaths in the US and 2 million global BUT maybe that's even too much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H2N2
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...
Their director also has statements published regularly:
Diversity of sources and information is good anyway, barring some caveats. There is more than just raw numbers at play; you need a variety of sources to see impacts on daily life, how people are preparing, etc. I follow CBC (Canada), some fellow humans on twitter, and especially appreciate the stuff this guy puts out; https://twitter.com/balajis
CSSE seems to be the most up-to-date aggregate source, though their Github repo is lagging half a day behind the map at here: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h....
https://gist.github.com/Gro-Tsen/866cb55d6004356c142ebab462b...
I found this link very interesting. It seems to show the reproduction number is decreasing quite fast in Italy (before the latest quarantine measures, making me wonder if they were really needed). In Korea, it's also just below 1, which would mark the end of the virus propagation if this is confirmed. If these numbers are accurate, it seems that the epidemics can be controlled without resorting to extreme measures. I'd be curious to get other people's opinions. I'm not quite sure I'm interpreting this data correctly.
From today's new case report and death count (not to mention the 16M person lockdown of all of Lombardy), the worst may not be over for Italy yet (although I think they're doing the best job of the European countries from what I can see)... https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fffppj/italy_r...
Of the 133 deaths today in Italy, it appears to be primarily older folks atm, but the reports of running out of ICU beds is not a good sign (anyone in serious condition, regardless of age, requires intubation at least): https://i.imgur.com/VYWdjEI.png
For those that aren't taking COVID-19 very very seriously, I'd recommend reading a frontline report from an Italian HCW: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/ffa2tf/testimo...
I'd also encourage everyone to take as many reasonable steps as possible to reduce the spread of infection (proper hygiene, avoiding crowds/public contact as much as possible, social distancing when unavoidable), as lowering the capacity pressure on the healthcare system will be key to saving lives, even if your personal risk is low.
We'll be able to see on a country-by-country basis soon which governments/societies have responded the best, but as the WHO put it, "this is not a drill," and I hope everyone here stays safe.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a comment alleging that the subreddit had a pro-china bias[1]. Personally, I've noticed some patterns that seem to be consistent with those allegations:
* I frequent /r/all. when the subreddit shows up on /r/all (first or second page), it's almost always negative news about some country other than china
* I visited the subreddit on occasion and negative news about china are... few and never anywhere close to the top. At the writing of this comment[2] the only post about china is good news about a 100 year old man recovering from the infection.
* A few days ago there were stories of a hotel collapse in china (it was used to quarantine patients). Posts from various subreddits were showing up on /r/all (first page), however in the /r/coronavirus subreddit the story was in the middle of the first page. You'd think that if such a story was showing up on /r/all, that it'd be #1 or #2 place in the subreddit.
That explains the first two points, but not the last. It is also consistent with a "moderator takeover" that the original commenter claimed. As it stands, the subreddit hasn't gone full blown /r/sino so it's hard to definitively tell.
> Please don't turn every observation into the world into a conspiracy.
Actually I never claimed there was any sort of conspiracy, just a bias. /r/politics has a liberal (and probably bernie) bias, but I, nor most people would call it a conspiracy.
> It's possible for people to lack your nationalist fervor without being paid shills.
Sure. OTOH you don't seem to think it's possible for me to bring up this topic without being nationalist.
And yes, if you think celebrating the survival of Chinese grandmothers and grandfathers is so unbelievable that that anybody upvoting it must be a shill, you are blinded by politics. There are forums made for spewing out attitudes like yours, on the grimier parts of the internet. Please consider commenting over there instead, so we can keep HN clean. Thanks.
R0 | % of population
----------------
2.5 60%
2.0 50%
1.5 30%
I think I have more questions now that I watched the video than I do answers :)
In the times of plague the places that suffered the least were:
- sparsely populated
- didn't participated much in the international trade
- used quarantines on the borders early
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/bubonic-plague-spares-pola...
In looking at the outbreak gripping Italy, it seems like hard quarantine is the most basic precaution, and perhaps we should be taking it before the first hundreds of people die in each of our countries.
Roads are closed.
People are going to be very, very hungry very, very soon.
Hunger will create desperation, which will create violence, which will quickly dwarf the few thousands of people that covid will kill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function
Can anyone recommend anything to read to add more clarity?
Why does this appear in deep learning too?
I mean, of course it's not a true, complete exponential, or else it would take over the universe in 2.3 years or something.
All exponentials run out of something eventually. The question is, how soon does that happen.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
Also, notice that 57k out of 81k have recovered.
But also, at least 3,097 people out of the 80,699 have already died, and by the same measure, 20,283 of the confirmed have yet to recover.
The rest of the world, of course, is just getting started.
Is there an immunity built up in infected people or does the clock reset ?
You cant quarantine the world and expect a global economy to survive
The simple fact most countries are interdependent ( see : Toilet paper) is a real issue.
The rich can wait out a downturn. It is the poor who will struggle.
Where goods can't travel from where they are made to where they could be sold, or worse can't be made because nobody is allowed to leave home to go make them.
Where we isolate each country from the others, each state/province/region, each everywhere.
Where commerce is effectively ended due to the inability of people to participate in it.
With no resupply available for weeks at a minimum, people are.going to get mighty hungry.
Funny how quickly the HN crowd cheers for these incredible restrictions on life and freedom, and yet pretend not to favor totalitarianism
I don't know how long the exponential growth might continue.
In CA btw.
Hard to know exactly what you are referring to here but it sounds like you are spreading more misinformation. We all need to get better at communicating. I swear that half of public discussion these days is based on fictional situations and not reality.
1) Democrats accused Trump of mishandling COVID-19.
2) Trump labeled the *criticism* as another "hoax" about his presidency/competency.
3) Democrats react to 2) and accuse Trump of labeling COVID-19 a "hoax".
4) Bipartisan collection of journalist pointed out that 3) is bogus and 2) is what was said.
5) hurrdurr2's comment appears to be a variation of 3) relative to 2).
6) this comment is an attempt to point out this history and correct the record similar to 4)
I have no idea what exactly motivated all the bullshit associated with 3) but it was some combination or poor reading comprehension, slopping rumor mongering, or disgusting politicization of a major public health crisis.
https://www.scottadamssays.com/2020/03/05/episode-840-scott-...
"Nobody under 70 has died, and over 700 people infected on that ship. So that's impressive."
That's just from randomly seeking through one of his recordings.
Yeah, China, Korea, and Italy quarantined millions over just the flu. Some people's ability to deny reality is very impressive.
And there are definitely Trump supporters calling the situation a hoax, as in, "this is a hoax to blow up the stock market and make Trump look bad, don't you know that more people die of the flu every year?".
We don't have to copy everything China does, just do what has proven to work:
Fast testing and contact tracing.
https://twitter.com/drdenagrayson/status/1235703439688175618
Yeah, if they stop containing it, it will start spreading again...
The only long term success for suppression is from a vaccine. Contained on the other hand means every infected person can gain immunity and the virus would then run out of new hosts.
96,000,000 infections
4,800,000 hospitalizations
1,900,000 ICU admissions
480,000 deaths
vs flu in 2019:
35,500,000 infections
490,600 hospitalizations
49,000 ICU admissions
34,200 deaths
If the doubling time is one week there is just something like 100k - 200k infections in next two months.
I think those numbers are yearly infection estimates.
You're quoting the opinion of one person: Dr James Lawler, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre. That person researches infectious diseases, so, their opinion isn't a complete guess of course, but we should ascribe the numbers to the right source.
So yes, lower hospitalised mortality rate but only because so many more people are hospitalised
I haven't been able to find studies on the hospitalization rate to know.
bad news: How this behaves will depend a lot on a (containment measures etc...)
good news: If we can make a grow faster than an exponential, we can win
While the first option would be unwise, the second would also be unwise.
A complete shutdown for a disease as virulent as Covid-19 will just suppress the virus for the duration of the shutdown. Ignoring the extreme difficulty and impracticality of shutting society down for a moment, recognize that the moment the shutdown ends, the virus will probably reappear and continue to spread.
What then? Another complete shutdown? When does it end?
No, the right solution is a distributed solution in which affected companies and communities deal with the virus, imposing gradual restrictions on gatherings, work, schooling etc in an organic way. Which is exactly what is happening in the US right now.
The point of all this is, what more can the US government do than it is already doing? Send the military in to shut down the highways? Hold scientists at gunpoint until they produce a vaccine?
Many (Media, Democrats) are trying to leverage this to their political advantage, but aside from small changes in approach, what exactly do they want the government to do differently?
Those would all be good steps.
To date, most of the complaints about the current administrations' handling of COVID-19 have been about the cuts to the CDC, the history of Pence and Redfield regarding HIV, and other fact based arguments and criticisms. It is entirely possible that none of these factors had or will have a substantive impact on the spread of COVID-19. But they are still valid criticisms none the less.
In contrast, take Trump's response to the Ebola crisis[1], which was a remarkable example of fear-mongering and politiking in the face of a potential crisis.
[1]https://www.vox.com/2020/2/26/21154253/trump-ebola-tweets-co...