Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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It's also beyond much of the US to implement 80-90 degree temperatures that dramatically limit the ability for SARS-Cov-2 to spread as in Singapore.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767

See: Hawaii, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, much of California and a lot of the warmer south. Which are all seeing between extremely low and low localized per capita transmission levels and hospitalizations, despite the very lagged (and overall mediocre) US response.

The Las Vegas metro area will be 80 degrees on Wednesday. Take a look at their deaths and hospitalizations (despite having millions of people). With their international traffic, vast number of casinos and casino workers, slow speed at which they shut it all down and the initially lagged testing rates, they should be absolutely buried in Covid cases and deaths. They're anything but and they're seeing no big surge in cases.

These temps are the reason why the experts are hopefully anticipating the infection rates to rapidly bend down in the coming weeks, and perhaps peak in May or June. Even very informed people like Bill Gates have spoken publicly about being hopeful about this (see his recent Ted Connects talk, it's about an hour long and almost exclusively about this situation). It's the seasonal temperature increase (and to an extent humidity) factor.

edit: I understand why some people don't like these facts, I understand the emotional response. The numbers don't lie: hotter climates in the US are not seeing the surge in cases, they're not seeing the same hospitalization rates and as a consequence they're not seeing the deaths as in the other climates like NY, NJ, MA, IL, CT, MI.

Check out all the cities in Texas (huge population), their metro areas, and look at the per capita rates of infection, hospitalization and death. Then compare.

Do you have per capita rate of testing for those locales as well? Otherwise you’re really just comparing mayors/governors from different regions.

This information is available for most states at this point (it's sometimes harder to find city data broken out, that varies; every state has Covid data available, published daily or close to it (a few seem to lag by a day)).

Show me the 500-2500 dead people in Texas per day, which is what should be happening if they were seeing the surge. Show me a massive explosion in positive cases and hospitalizations. The fact is, it's not happening.

34 deaths in Texas and zero big surge:

https://covidtracking.com/data/state/texas/#history

The testing information has been flawed as a resource in all locations except for a few around the world (eg South Korea, which has been a stellar example). You want to look at the deaths and hospitalizations, the flooding of ICUs in the states. The states I've listed are seeing none of the huge surge that the other high-infection rate climates have. The US isn't hiding tens of thousands of recent Covid deaths from the past week. Our testing has ramped up such that we're able to do near a million tests per week now. If Texas cities were seeing hundreds of daily Covid deaths, it would be everywhere in the news, on social media and so on (as it is in NYC).

Take a look at the SF local metro. Take a look at the infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The SF metro should be buried right now, and it's not at all. The Bay Area has 8 million people, where are the 50,000 cases, surging cases by the thousands per day, and hundreds dead per day? It's not happening. It should have been hit early and hard, and it hasn't been.

Los Angeles has a lot of poverty and healthcare problems, it should be an ideal explosion city. It has seen anything but that outcome despite all of its problems. Los Angeles isn't hiding many thousands of dead Covid patients and ICU cases from the past week.

Take a look at San Diego County. Same thing.

You might wonder: why am I bringing this up, why does it matter? We're misallocating healthcare resources based on an incorrect premise that all locations are equally susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 (which has also led to very flawed speculation, extrapolation, on expected national case numbers (eg: 70% will get infected, a million will die; headlines of: your city could be the next NYC)). Simple example: they sent the USNS Mercy navy ship to Los Angeles, it's needed off the coast of NYC to a dramatically greater degree - LA isn't going to see the same kind of surge (theirs will be far more mild). Conceptually we need Texas and Arizona manufacturing resources for the hard hit climates.

Except that Wuhan is at the same latitude as Texas.

You also failed to mention Washington, which was the site of the first outbreak in the US, and is about as north as you can go and still remain in the union, excluding Alaska. Washington currently has the second-slowest death-count doubling-rate out of any state with at least 10 deaths. Their deaths double every 7 days. It used to be every 3 days. Can’t attribute that to the heat. You know what you can attribute it to? Washington’s response to the outbreak.

Florida’s deaths double every 3 days. Louisiana’s deaths double every 3 days.

Texas’s deaths double every 3 days.

Vermont, another northern state that borders New York state, has the slowest death count doubling rate, at every 12 days.

This is exponential growth. Please stop dealing with absolute numbers. Some states are later into their epidemics than others. Texas is relatively early into their outbreak at ~7 days since the 10th death, but their deaths are growing exponentially as well. The exponential growth curve should be what you’re observing, or else you will make the same mistake that everyone who thinks they’re exceptional makes.

According to that data NY has tested almost 1% of their population while Texas has tested only 0.1% of theirs. But even if we look only at hospitalizations as you’ve suggested could it be that you’re incorrectly attributing the slower rates to temperature rather than population density? The colder cities in the US are the older cities where people live very closely together. States like Texas have a certain degree of “social distancing” already baked in. Using the drive thru and avoiding the subway and elevators isn’t really a drastic change for Texas. It’s basically impossible for much of New York.

> See: Hawaii, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, much of California and a lot of the warmer south. Which are all seeing between extremely low and low localized per capita transmission levels and hospitalizations, despite the very lagged (and overall mediocre) US response.

And yet Lousiana is getting pounded because of Mardi Gras.

And Florida is likely to follow due to Spring Break.

No state yet has evidence that they have turned their curve over from the standard R0. And, last I checked, practically every state was on the same trajectory past the 100th case.

Hotter temperatures do not guarantee the cessation of all possible transmission of SARS-CoV-2, it impedes it in relation to the increase in temperature (and also ideally humidity, particularly indoors). It helps make everything else you might do for slowing the spread more effective and easier. There is very strong evidence at this point that SARS-Cov-2 is susceptible to the same seasonality factors as influenza. We're seeing this demonstrated all around the world simultaneously in warmer climates, from Mexico to sub Sahara Africa to hotter countries in Asia. It's why none of the major cities in Latin America are seeing the kind of infection rates as NYC or Milan (or as Wuhan previously did). It's why sub Sahara Africa isn't getting hammered (despite plenty of international traffic and trade, including previously from China, that should have massively spread it). It's why India still isn't seeing a massive explosion in cases, as has been feared since the beginning of the outbreak in China.

Check out: Mobile & Birmingham & Montgomery Alabama, the Western handle of Florida, Jackson Mississippi, look at other cities in Louisiana that didn't hold Mardi Gras (and one assumes those cities still got a burst of their cases from the Mardi Gras spread event).

Latin America is not testing people Nearly enough. That’s the main reason for low counts.

In my country, it is only possible to be tested if you say you were in direct contact with the current 4 confirmed cases (1 deceased), and they would have to confirm that too.

Yes, I understand the reason for the low counts. As I keep repeating, you want to pay attention to the flooding of hospitals with Covid patients, that you can't hide (unless you're very authoritarian with strict media control).

These places are not buried in dead people either. Their intensive care systems are not being flooded. Their hospitals are not being flooded by a million cases.

Mexico is not seeing what NY and other high-infection climates have. Given the poverty, poor healthcare system, poorly prepared healthcare system, high traffic and trade with the US via NAFTA and in general, it should have an enormous number of cases by now, and as a consequence a large number of daily deaths and intensive care cases hammering their healthcare systems in every major city. None of that is happening. It's not happening for the same reason it's not happening in Texas.

From everything I've read about COVID-19 and flu-like infections, I'm also inclined to believe that warmer climates help slow COVID-19 outbreaks. It is (in my opinion) the most plausible explanation why certain regions are hit so much worse than others thus far. I also believe a paper I recently read supports this hypothesis.

I've seen the media publish articles with titles like "coronavirus myths busted: warm weather stops the virus". Ironically, these attempts to combat misinformation are dubious themselves, as the truth is probably somewhere in the middle; that is, warm climates may not outright stop COVID-19, but they may certainly hinder it. The fact is, while we can't make definitive statements at the moment due to limited data and understanding of the virus's pathology, we can make educated guesses through observation.

Another contentious point (particularly here in Australia) is the sentiment that children are mostly immune to the virus. The Aus government is pushing this line very strongly as an excuse to keep schools open (i.e. economical reasons).

So yeah, I don't know why I wrote this comment. Probably to stress the fine line that exists between having a mindset which is open to observational theories, while also being critical of "facts" which are pushed to drive political agendas amidst the coronavirus outbreak.

It's still too early to tell, but SF Bay area, California may have gotten a break (vs a NYc/Italy level surge) from having gone shelter-in-place early.

https://brokeassstuart.com/2020/03/30/bay-area-curve-stays-f...

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