[BetaWar]

Hey all, can we try to leave politics out of this thread? The last page or two seem to have devolved into nothing other than hearsay and jabs; completely unrelated to the topic.

The coronavirus doesn't care about borders, political leaning, or anything else. If you want to discuss politics and stories that are slanting one way or another, I would suggest that you feel free to start a different thread and continue the discussion there so we can try to get this one back on the rails.

[DarenR]

BetaWar, on 05 May 2020 - 02:10 PM, said:

Hey all, can we try to leave politics out of this thread? The last page or two seem to have devolved into nothing other than hearsay and jabs; completely unrelated to the topic.

The coronavirus doesn't care about borders, political leaning, or anything else. If you want to discuss politics and stories that are slanting one way or another, I would suggest that you feel free to start a different thread and continue the discussion there so we can try to get this one back on the rails.

i can pretty much sum this up:

someone said the virus is fake: listed a bunch of fake websites supporting their issue
everyone else: those are all opinion not based on fact

and so on

[ge∅]

Quote

I don't really have a lot of faith in someone who uses the word murder incorrectly

I understand that, but the same situation happened in the XIX^th century when Ignaz Semmelweis realised obstetricians who did not wash their hands where literally killing a fourth of their patients. His reaction was very violent, he wrote personal letters to call other doctors murderers and he didn't bother publishing his results because he thought his findings were obvious and any one with common sense should agree with him. Very rapidly, detractors made a straw-man of his argumentation and since he did not bother publishing there was no word of truth and many many women died preventable deaths during his lifetime because he could not stop being emotional about it.

[ge∅]

I have the feeling Splashsky's argumentation is "we should reopen America now, because we have flattened the curve long enough" and when you ask for reasons he diverts your attention with "it's China's fault and the WHO is evil" which has nothing to do with the Sauerkraut as we like to say in France.

[DarenR]

ge∅, on 05 May 2020 - 02:39 PM, said:

which has nothing to do with the Sauerkraut as we like to say in France.

i do like a good saurkraut

[modi123_1]

DarenR, on 05 May 2020 - 02:05 PM, said:

ge∅, on 05 May 2020 - 02:39 PM, said:

which has nothing to do with the Sauerkraut as we like to say in France.

i do like a good saurkraut

Not a fan of sweetish Bavarian saurkraut.

That being said, I have to make my own or apply it as a COVID19 therapy.

[jon.kiparsky]

Speaking of off topic...

In other news, Trump is winding down the task force... presumably because it's all sorted and there's nothing more to do.

Other updates at: https://www.nytimes....us-updates.html

[ArtificialSoldier]

Our graph for new cases per day is getting there, but I'm not sure we're quite there yet.

https://www.pandemic.../united-states/

[ge∅]

It depends on the state, you can look it up here (click on the "admin1" tab in the left panel to see the figures per state)

New York is good but they can't lift the confinement now because social distancing is impractical in NYC, New Jersey is on a very good path, Massachusetts has been on a plateau for 3 solid weeks.

These three states have the bigger number of cases, so the fact that they are stabilising is a great news but it also hides the performance of other states when you look at the figures for the whole country.

I can see that 19 states are still on an ascending trend. In descending order form most affected to least affected: Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, Ioa, Arizona, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Utah, District of Columbia, New Mexico, North Dakota.

I am sure that some states could lift the confinement soon depending on various criteria (density of the population, current R_t, remote working if possible, etc.) but one must be cautious. Lifting or relaxing confinement has proven to have a direct and quick impact on the infection rate in Russia: from the 28th of March - to the 30th of April nobody should have been working (with the exception of essential workers). There was no enforced lockdown or confinement except in Moscow which situation was comparable to NYC. Starting from the 13th of April, this measure has been relaxed in many regions, construction workers started working again, etc. and you can see this change very clearly in the graph of new cases. They were starting to plateau and now they are exploding again.

This post has been edited by ge∅: 05 May 2020 - 02:22 PM

[ArtificialSoldier]

I'm not sure what's going on here in Arizona. There's no requirement to stay at home, but restaurants and bars are take-out only. I had to drive on Monday and again traffic seemed normal. The FBI building looks pretty empty though. I'm just not sure where everyone is going.

Not many of the states look very positive. New York and Jersey are still increasing, just not as fast. Louisiana might look the best, but they had a huge spike early on. Minnesota looks really bad, but that might just be due to early lack of testing. South Dakota looks decent, but has very low population density. Same with Idaho. Vermont and Hawaii look pretty good. Wyoming looks decent but about a quarter of their total cases were from one day, that sounds like little testing.

[jon.kiparsky]

Coronavirus death toll expected to double in May

Even if the infection rate flattens, the numbers are huge and we're going to be on the top of the peak for a while - and these are the administration's internal models.

The logic of re-opening seems sort of myopic.

[DarenR]

ArtificialSoldier, on 05 May 2020 - 04:18 PM, said:

Our graph for new cases per day is getting there, but I'm not sure we're quite there yet.

https://www.pandemic.../united-states/

those spikes are from the states that reopened early

[ge∅]

It could be the case but Italy has lots of spikes too and only one policy. It's the expression of the exponential nature of infections. R_t fluctuates around 1 and when its > 1 it spikes, which slows down the process. You can see that Italy has this long tail because of these spikes. States reopening is one factor but people relaxing their attention even during a lockdown/confinement could explain the spikes if R_t is too close to 1, especially if you have central market places, this kind of thing.

This post has been edited by ge∅: 06 May 2020 - 05:52 AM

[ArtificialSoldier]

Here's a single sentence to sum up recent events in the US, emphasis added:

Quote

Pence’s flight to Iowa Friday to promote an economic restart was delayed due to the news of Miller’s illness. Six staffers had to deplane because they were recently in contact with her.

That's from this article. We'll pass 80k deaths this weekend. Just for comparison, the events on September 11th that united the entire country and made everyone want to help resulted in 2,977 immediate civilian deaths. We've seen 2 days with higher numbers of deaths each day and one other that was just below that number.

[jon.kiparsky]

ge∅, on 06 May 2020 - 07:44 AM, said:

States reopening is one factor but people relaxing their attention even during a lockdown/confinement could explain the spikes if R_t is too close to 1, especially if you have central market places, this kind of thing.

These seem to be roughly the same case: when people act under looser restriction models (either because model is loosened by the state or because people stop obeying the state model) we see spikes.

ArtificialSoldier, on 09 May 2020 - 01:32 PM, said:

Here's a single sentence to sum up recent events in the US, emphasis added:

Quote

Pence’s flight to Iowa Friday to promote an economic restart was delayed due to the news of Miller’s illness. Six staffers had to deplane because they were recently in contact with her.

Time for a production of "The Masque of the Red State Death", anyone?