The World-O-Meter Thread

[Elixir]

Good news?
New deaths and new cases both down for the day, in the US and globally. Sunday reporting, or good news...?

 

[Horatio Parker]

Less testing over the weekend?

 

[Derec]

The NY Times shows state data with graphics that show whether the new case rate is slowing or incrrasing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

Great resource! Thanks for posting.

 

[Derec]

For a while the data out of China looked about linear, also--because that was how many they could test per day.

Can you show me when? And here we have something different anyway - initial exponential growth but now slowing down. That is exactly what is expected. The cases follow a bell curve that looks exponential initially but slows down.

We are still in the early growth phase--at that point the population size is of little relevance, it's all about spread.

Not that early. We are over a month into this.

Keyword: community. It only spreads to other cities by travelers, not by community spread. Red America didn't get infected in the initial wave, it's lagging behind the hotspots but that doesn't mean it's not going to do the same thing.

Define "red America". Georgia has had cases pretty much since NY has had them. Only we have not grown nearly as fast due to multitude of factors like population density, transit use and probably also weather. But we have had confirmed cases since late February.

Actually, the place with the highest per capita number is a county in Idaho (although this is a few days old.) New York and New Jersey have a lot of cases--but a lot of population. They do not have the highest per capita rates.

What county in Idaho? Idaho itself is very far down on per capita cases, so [citation needed].
NY and NJ are definitely top in per capita cases right now, with Louisiana a solid third. As far as deaths per capita, NY leads and NJ and LA are pretty equal for second place.

 

[Jokodo]

Can you show me when? And here we have something different anyway - initial exponential growth but now slowing down. That is exactly what is expected. The cases follow a bell curve that looks exponential initially but slows down.


Not that early. We are over a month into this.

Keyword: community. It only spreads to other cities by travelers, not by community spread. Red America didn't get infected in the initial wave, it's lagging behind the hotspots but that doesn't mean it's not going to do the same thing.

Define "red America". Georgia has had cases pretty much since NY has had them. Only we have not grown nearly as fast due to multitude of factors like population density, transit use and probably also weather. But we have had confirmed cases since late February.

Actually, the place with the highest per capita number is a county in Idaho (although this is a few days old.) New York and New Jersey have a lot of cases--but a lot of population. They do not have the highest per capita rates.

What county in Idaho? Idaho itself is very far down on per capita cases, so [citation needed].
NY and NJ are definitely top in per capita cases right now, with Louisiana a solid third. As far as deaths per capita, NY leads and NJ and LA are pretty equal for second place.
View attachment 26936

You'll find that county im Idaho in the NY Times link above.

 

[Elixir]

Why an Idaho Ski Destination Has One of the Highest COVID-19 Infection Rates in the Nation

At least twice in March, President Trump invoked Idaho as an example of a certain kind of American place: wide open, capable, impervious to a health-care crisis. “Parts of our country are very lightly affected. Very small numbers,” Trump said, on March 24th. “You look at Nebraska, you look at Idaho, you look at Iowa, you look at many—I could name many countries that are handling it very, very well and that are not affected to the same extent, or, frankly, not even nearly to the extent of New York.” Five days later, Trump ticked off the same triumvirate of “countries.” “I said, ‘How about Nebraska? How about Idaho? How about Iowa?’ And you know what? Those people are so great—the whole Midwest,” he said, missing Idaho on the map by a thousand miles or so.

Those aren't countries, you insufferable dumbfuck.

A ski resort is, in many ways, an ideal breeding ground for an epidemic. Skiing and snowboarding may look from a distance like solitary pursuits; the helmets, goggles, and neck warmers may be assumed to function like alpine hazmat suits. But, at major resorts, stretches of brisk, wintry liberation on the slopes are interrupted by long chairlift and gondola rides, during which people sit shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee with a perpetually rotating cast of strangers.

But let's make sure the NFL season starts on time!
Prediction: if things are so calmed down by September that Trump is able to convince people to gather in crowds of 40-60,000 in 16 locations each week, we will be back in the thick of an epidemic by mid-October.
Trump says NFL season should start on time

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I have no idea what to make of Trump's note on the NFL schedule.

1) He is looking for an extremely easy target to reach.
2) We're fucked nationally and the distancing is going to last until Xmas.

So pretty much, could go either way here.

Less testing over the weekend?

Numbers have lagged on weekends followed by bursts on Monday. In general, it probably makes sense to look at three day averages.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I have no idea what to make of Trump's note on the NFL schedule.

(3) NFL owners are rich fucks among all the other rich fucks clamoring for Trump to reopen the economy. He's setting a back-to-normal milepost for his base and his congregation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Define "red America". Georgia has had cases pretty much since NY has had them. Only we have not grown nearly as fast due to multitude of factors like population density, transit use and probably also weather. But we have had confirmed cases since late February.

Of course it grew faster in New York--higher population density, a huge use of mass transit.

Actually, the place with the highest per capita number is a county in Idaho (although this is a few days old.) New York and New Jersey have a lot of cases--but a lot of population. They do not have the highest per capita rates.

What county in Idaho? Idaho itself is very far down on per capita cases, so [citation needed].
NY and NJ are definitely top in per capita cases right now, with Louisiana a solid third. As far as deaths per capita, NY leads and NJ and LA are pretty equal for second place.

The page is working again (the page itself always loads, but the per capita data doesn't always):

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

Blaine County, at 1,861 per 100,000.

 

[blastula]

Home to some ski resorts.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...e-of-the-highest-covid-19-rates-in-the-nation

 

[ronburgundy]

I do. You apparently do not.



True. And if the amount per time increases linearly, the total amount increases quadratically.

Exponential growth means that each time unit grows by a larger amount than the prior time unit.

Wrong. Exponential growth means that the amount increases by a constant ratio.

It doesn't matter if the amount of that increase in the the growth rate is itself constant (e.g, that each day the growth = yesterday's growth + 2000).

Of course it matters! Exponential growth is a particular type of growth. To wit, the daily rate of change is also exponential. If each day's growth increases by a constant number you get a quadratic increas, not exponential.

The fact that there is any number in the equation other than todays growth = yesterdays growth means it's non-linear.

Not every non-linear growth is exponential. Specifically, a linear daily growth is definitely not exponential because the integral of a linear function is quadratic.

IOW, if it was linear growth, then all those per day numbers I presented would be the same or at least not in a systematic increasing direction. Note that the total number of cases would still be growing each day, but that is true for all types of growth.

Still does not make it exponential though.

Because linear growth would mean that the total number of new cases and deaths 3 weeks from now would be the same as they were in the prior 3 weeks. Since March 15 (3 weeks ago), there have been about 275,000 new cases and 8,400 new deaths. Linear growth would mean that 3 weeks from now you just take today's totals and add those numbers, thus getting 311,357 = 275,000 = 586,357 cases and 8,452 + 8400 = 16,852 total deaths. IOW, the non-linear trends in the past 3 weeks predict 3 times as many cases and 4 times as many deaths than would be predicted if there was actually linear growth.

That does not show exponential growth.

Nice goalpost move. Now you're pretending that your claim was merely non-exponential rather than repeatedly claiming it is linear and setting up the linear-exponential dichotomy: "daily cases look very linear" "Which would be linear, not exponentiell."

The difference between exactly which type of non-linear growth function with an increase in number of NEW cases per day is an irrelevant red-herring to the core discussion, especially since there isn't enough statistical power with only 5 recent days in question to test for a difference in goodness-of-fit between specific non-linear models. Plus, Quadratic functions have more parameters and thus are less parsimonious.
What matters is that it is non-linear growth b/c it means that the US has a more sustained non-linear growth rate than all other countries have had, including Italy. Almost all other countries have had essentially linear or declining growth for the past 3 weeks, and non ever had the degree of sustained non-linear growth of the US.

Look at the graph below. It controls for when the disease took hold in each country by using "Day 1" as the day when 100 diagnosed cases were reached in that country. Each country's first 2 weeks look similar, then the US begins to separate and by day 18 the US slope takes off and is far steeper than all other countries for the past 3 weeks, including Italy and Spain. The steepness of those slopes correspond to the degree of non-linear growth.

Below is another visualization of the same underlying data, except here the Y axis plots the #of New cases each day rather than total cases reached by a given day. Here, anything steeper than a horizontal line shows non-linear growth. As you can see, all the other countries had only a about one early week of mild non-linear growth then flattened into linear growth (same # of new cases per day), while the US has had extreme non-linear growth for 3 weeks.

And your excuse about population size is irrelevant, b/c it has no direct impact on growth rate. It only directly impacts how many total cases there could eventually be, which is the maximum height the line eventually reaches, but not how quickly it gets there.
If you take a line of 10,000 dominoes vs a line of 100,000 and keep other variables constant, then you push both starting dominoes over, after 5 seconds the number of dominoes knocked over will be the same. The longer line (bigger pop) simply has more possible dominoes that could be knocked over eventually if the process isn't stopped.

More directly relevant to growth rate of a disease is population density, and the US is lower in pop density than all countries in those graphs but Canada and New Zealand, and 6 times lower than Italy.

 

[Elixir]

Slight uptick today, but not back to Friday levels of deaths, new cases etc.
Markets went nuts thinking this thing is peaking - which apparently means "over" to some people. Next few days might tell a clearer story.

 

[Derec]

Nice goalpost move.

Not at all! You are the one who insisted that it was exponential, and I showed it was not.

Now you're pretending that your claim was merely non-exponential rather than repeatedly claiming it is linear and setting up the linear-exponential dichotomy:

The daily increase has been roughly linear. Which means that the overall numbers are not increasing exponentially. It's not that hard to understand.

"daily cases look very linear" "Which would be linear, not exponentiell."

Are you so upset you switched to German at the end?

The difference between exactly which type of non-linear growth function with an increase in number of NEW cases per day is an irrelevant red-herring to the core discussion, especially since there isn't enough statistical power with only 5 recent days in question to test for a difference in goodness-of-fit between specific non-linear models. Plus, Quadratic functions have more parameters and thus are less parsimonious.

I am not arguing that the correct model is quadratic, only that that the growth curve looks that way when dailies are increasing linearly.
The thing is that models predict that the growth increases exponentially at first but then slows down. The fact that we are no longer increasing exponentially indicates that we have entered the slowdown phase. That's why exponential vs. non-exponential is significant. Linear vs. non-linear does not have the same significance.

Almost all other countries have had essentially linear or declining growth for the past 3 weeks, and non ever had the degree of sustained non-linear growth of the US.

Italy or Spain for example have also had a lot more per-capita cases and a lot more deaths. It is not surprising they are further along the progression curve than us.

Look at the graph below. It controls for when the disease took hold in each country by using "Day 1" as the day when 100 diagnosed cases were reached in that country.

But it doesn't control for the population size.

Each country's first 2 weeks look similar, then the US begins to separate and by day 18 the US slope takes off and is far steeper than all other countries for the past 3 weeks, including Italy and Spain. The steepness of those slopes correspond to the degree of non-linear growth.

No it doesn't. The steepness is the result of US having a much bigger population than Spain or Italy or Germany.

As you can see, all the other countries had only a about one early week of mild non-linear growth then flattened into linear growth (same # of new cases per day), while the US has had extreme non-linear growth for 3 weeks.

Again, the lack of normalization for population paints a misleading picture. Also, consider flattening the curve. When the curve is flattened, it takes longer to reach the inflection point.

This bell-shaped curve represents active cases, not total cases (which looks like the sigmoid (or logistic) curve), but daily increase curve also looks bell-shaped.

And your excuse about population size is irrelevant, b/c it has no direct impact on growth rate.

It's no excuse and of course it doesn't. But it does have an impact on the graph you posted. Not normalizing for population exaggerates the slope for one.

It only directly impacts how many total cases there could eventually be, which is the maximum height the line eventually reaches, but not how quickly it gets there.

Never claimed otherwise. How quickly it gets there is impacted by distancing efforts for example.

If you take a line of 10,000 dominoes vs a line of 100,000 and keep other variables constant, then you push both starting dominoes over, after 5 seconds the number of dominoes knocked over will be the same. The longer line (bigger pop) simply has more possible dominoes that could be knocked over eventually if the process isn't stopped.

True for dominoes, but is not applicable here.

More directly relevant to growth rate of a disease is population density, and the US is lower in pop density than all countries in those graphs but Canada and New Zealand, and 6 times lower than Italy.

The population density is not uniform though. US has very big, dense cities as well as a lot of empty place especially in the West. But even if lower average pop. density helped US have a slower progression, that would not negate us having a slower progression.

 

[Derec]

Of course it grew faster in New York--higher population density, a huge use of mass transit.

That's what I said. But it does not explain everything. Fulton has a much higher pop. density than Dogherty, and much more transit, and yet COVID spread quickly there.

What county in Idaho? Idaho itself is very far down on per capita cases, so [citation needed].
NY and NJ are definitely top in per capita cases right now, with Louisiana a solid third. As far as deaths per capita, NY leads and NJ and LA are pretty equal for second place.

The page is working again (the page itself always loads, but the per capita data doesn't always):
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
Blaine County, at 1,861 per 100,000.

Thanks. It looks like it's a ski resort that did it for them. But this confirms my point that per-capita numbers matter, and that you can't compare raw numbers for territories with different population sizes.
In Idaho, Blaine and Ada counties have comparable raw numbers (~400 cases). But it is obvious Blaine has been much harder hit because Ada has >20x the population of Blaine.

Same thing in Georgia. Fulton has 50% more cases, but yet Dogherty has been much harder hit because per-capita numbers are almost 8x higher for Dogherty.

 

[Derec]

(3) NFL owners are rich fucks among all the other rich fucks clamoring for Trump to reopen the economy. He's setting a back-to-normal milepost for his base and his congregation.

The owners, coaches and players are "rich fucks", but there are tens of thousands of middle class and lower income folks who rely on NFL for their income. And if the economy can't be reopened by September, then we are in some real deep shit anyway.

 

[Derec]

I have no idea what to make of Trump's note on the NFL schedule.

1) He is looking for an extremely easy target to reach.

Dingdingding.

2) We're fucked nationally and the distancing is going to last until Xmas.

That's not going to work. We will have to start relaxing restrictions and opening businesses by June or people will go crazy and economy will be fucked.
So we need to reduce new cases by then to a trickle and we need plenty of testing available to not risk cases blowing up again once things go to being more normal.

Numbers have lagged on weekends followed by bursts on Monday. In general, it probably makes sense to look at three day averages.

That makes sense anyway due to fluctuations.

 

[bilby]

Dingdingding.

That's not going to work. We will have to start relaxing restrictions and opening businesses by June or people will go crazy and economy will be fucked.
So we need to reduce new cases by then to a trickle and we need plenty of testing available to not risk cases blowing up again once things go to being more normal.

Numbers have lagged on weekends followed by bursts on Monday. In general, it probably makes sense to look at three day averages.

That makes sense anyway due to fluctuations.

It's probably better if people go crazy and the economy is fucked, than if people die like flies and the economy is fucked.

Christmas is a very optimistic date for a return to any kind of normality - Shit, Christmas 2021 sounds optimistic to me. Finding an effective and safe vaccine against a coronavirus, and then mass producing and distributing it, in as little as two years, would be remarkable. Personally I doubt it is achievable.

 

[Jokodo]

Dingdingding.

That's not going to work. We will have to start relaxing restrictions and opening businesses by June or people will go crazy and economy will be fucked.
So we need to reduce new cases by then to a trickle and we need plenty of testing available to not risk cases blowing up again once things go to being more normal.

Numbers have lagged on weekends followed by bursts on Monday. In general, it probably makes sense to look at three day averages.

That makes sense anyway due to fluctuations.

It's probably better if people go crazy and the economy is fucked, than if people die like flies and the economy is fucked.

Christmas is a very optimistic date for a return to any kind of normality - Shit, Christmas 2021 sounds optimistic to me. Finding an effective and safe vaccine against a coronavirus, and then mass producing and distributing it, in as little as two years, would be remarkable. Personally I doubt it is achievable.

Depends what you mean with "any kind of normality". I suspect that telecommuting will remain the default for office jobs, football games will be held in front of empty stadions, boarding an international plane will be possible only with a recent health certificate, and schools will be organized differently (in small groups, with each child only being present for some hours, some days) well into 2021. I guess that production plants for "non-essential" goods will resume normal operation and restaurants will re-open, at least for lunch hours, much earlier.

The harder we stomp now, the more realistic it will be to resume a new kind of normality (though it won't be the kind of normality we were used to) in a couple months, or after the summer holidays for schools in the Northern hemisphere. Especially so if we radically expand our testing capacities so that we can effectively keep a lid on any new outbreaks and keep them localized and contained.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dingdingding.

That's not going to work. We will have to start relaxing restrictions and opening businesses by June or people will go crazy and economy will be fucked.
So we need to reduce new cases by then to a trickle and we need plenty of testing available to not risk cases blowing up again once things go to being more normal.

Numbers have lagged on weekends followed by bursts on Monday. In general, it probably makes sense to look at three day averages.

That makes sense anyway due to fluctuations.

It's probably better if people go crazy and the economy is fucked, than if people die like flies and the economy is fucked.

Derec does raise a valid sociology issue. People are going to have issues with the relative confinement. We are talking about a country that lost its mind when Netflix raised it's cost by $1. This issue needs to be addressed. As you note, addressing this valid point isn't exactly best served by causing another shutdown because we opened up too soon. I can't imagine what it'll be like for those in apartments in a city. Forget in an Indian Slum in New Dehli. Americans are pussies... for all the back slapping they give themselves.

Christmas is a very optimistic date for a return to any kind of normality - Shit, Christmas 2021 sounds optimistic to me. Finding an effective and safe vaccine against a coronavirus, and then mass producing and distributing it, in as little as two years, would be remarkable. Personally I doubt it is achievable.

 

[Elixir]

View attachment 26946
This bell-shaped curve represents active cases, not total cases (which looks like the sigmoid (or logistic) curve), but daily increase curve also looks bell-shaped.

The line representing health care system capacity is bullshit.
Actual capacity is a tiny fraction of the anticipated load. Did you draw that deceptive graph yourself, Derec? What's the source?



Yes, the little red line at the bottom represents ICU capacity.
But thanks Derec for trying again (and again and again) to minimize the situation that has ALREADY visited more death upon Americans IN A MONTH than the endless wars about which Cheato complains.