The World-O-Meter Thread

[Derec]

Foot, meet bullet.

You missed my foot!

Look at your own graph--the positivity rate is going up and up.

I have not denied that. Yes, real cases are increasing, as is evident from higher hospitalization numbers. But because we are also testing a lot more people since the Fall, some of the increase in reported cases is due to increased testing. I.e the case increase, while real, is not as bad as the graph suggests.

Also, look at the healthcare system--state after state are reporting their hospitals are overloading. That's not testing, that's sick people.

As I said, I never claimed that cases are not increasing. Just not as much as the graph of reported cases suggests.

And my main point was one to Elixir. We are right now testing a lot of people - maybe around 1.5M/day on average. Elixir think that Biden will somehow be able to increase that number several-fold and rescue his bet. I doubt it very much. People are not going to want to get tested unless they think they have it. So asymptomatic/weakly symptomatic people who have not been in close contact with known cases will not go get tested in any significant numbers. I think we have reached close to peak testing: 3% of the population every week.

 

[Derec]

It's going to be a while before vaccination makes much of a difference.

Well, it will make a difference in deaths and hospitalizations sooner than in cases because 80% of deaths are among those over 65.
But yeah, the percentage vaccinated is still quite low, and it takes 11-12 days for immunity to kick in. I hope this week will see a lot quicker vaccination rates than we have seen so far. The rollout has been quite poor so far, unfortunately.

 

[Derec]

Exactly. There is barely enough testing to keep up with symptomatic people, and that's why the shape of the test curve so closely resembles that of the new case reports curve.

According to that chart, it averages ~1.5M/d or ~11M/week. That's about 3% of the population every week and more than the symptomatic people we get every week.

An effective testing program would be testing entire populations, not just those who feel sick.

That would be an enormous effort. To test the entire US population every month even you'd need more than 10 million tests per day. But it is one thing to manufacture so many test kits and evaluate them quickly enough, but quite another to get people to let some guy stick a long stick into their nose every month!
Especially as cases, hospitalizations and deaths start to decrease, there will be less appetite to get tested unless there is real suspicion that one was exposed.

SAhhh! You're interrupting Derec's Happy Talk.

Doom and Gloom Talk is in vogue.

I agreed with him that it will be a while due to slow rollout and delay in immunity. But we may still disagree in how long a "while" is. Vaccinations should start making a difference by the end of the month, leading to more rapid decline in cases and a very rapid decline in deaths and hospitalizations.

But we shall see. Doom and Gloom on one side, Happy Talk on the other.

 

[Derec]

Also, it is now looking likely that Trump's coup attempt is going to produce another bump in infections. Among those probably exposed, are the lawmakers who were sequestered together during the Trump riots, in groups that included Republicans who had tested positive and Republicans not wearing masks (despite requests to do so).

Wishful thinking on your part. The rioters were maybe a thousand and a few hundred Congresscritters were sheltering. Not enough to cause a noticeable bump even if every single one of them got infected.

 

[Derec]

That “bumpy plateau” is looking rather Himalayan:

Well, first thanks for including the 7 day average.
However, this is the graph of cases/d. So cases are actually represented by the area under the curve. The missing area of Christmas/NY is being filled now by late reporting. So still a bumpy plateau. As you can see, especially if you remove the cursor, is that the graph seems to be flattening. If I am right, it will flatten and then go down. If you are right, it will continue going up at least for a while.

Meanwhile, vaccinations are proceeding. Slower than expected, but we have 10 million or almost a third of all people vaccinated worldwide according to Bloomberg. Grounds for some optimism.

 

[bilby]

Even better news. Several states have already extended vaccine eligibility to seniors over 65. Those over 65 account for 80% of COVID deaths and so vaccinating them will lead to a rapid decrease of the deaths and probably hospitalizations as well. I expect <1000 deaths/day by mid-February.

That's good news if the increased pool of eligible people is due to the availability of more vaccine doses than was originally anticipated.

It's potentially very bad news if the increased pool of eligible people is due to low uptake by those originally declared eligible, such that the same number of doses are now being given to a less well targeted group of people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You missed my foot!

I missed??? "Foot, meet bullet" is saying you shot yourself in the foot!

I have not denied that. Yes, real cases are increasing, as is evident from higher hospitalization numbers. But because we are also testing a lot more people since the Fall, some of the increase in reported cases is due to increased testing. I.e the case increase, while real, is not as bad as the graph suggests.

We simply don't know.

And my main point was one to Elixir. We are right now testing a lot of people - maybe around 1.5M/day on average. Elixir think that Biden will somehow be able to increase that number several-fold and rescue his bet. I doubt it very much. People are not going to want to get tested unless they think they have it. So asymptomatic/weakly symptomatic people who have not been in close contact with known cases will not go get tested in any significant numbers. I think we have reached close to peak testing: 3% of the population every week.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

 

[Derec]

I missed??? "Foot, meet bullet" is saying you shot yourself in the foot!

I know what it means - I was turning it around.

We simply don't know.

We don't know exactly how much is due to more testing vs. more infections, but we do know it is due to both those things, not solely one or the other.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

Quite the contrary. If the level of testing stays roughly the same, then the reduction in reported cases will reflect the reduction in actual cases. It is a fair like-for-like comparison.
Elixir is hoping to win on a technicality. He think Biden will commission a lot more tests, so that the rate of reported case reduction will be smaller than the actual rate of case reduction.

 

[Derec]

That's good news if the increased pool of eligible people is due to the availability of more vaccine doses than was originally anticipated.

It's potentially very bad news if the increased pool of eligible people is due to low uptake by those originally declared eligible, such that the same number of doses are now being given to a less well targeted group of people.

There has been a lot of vaccine hesitancy among the health care professionals. Nevertheless, 10 million have been vaccinated so far, and that is from health care professional (~20 million, although not all of them work in close proximity to patients and thus may not be 1a eligible) and nursing home inmate (1.4 million) cohorts so a significant fraction of those have received the vaccine, although by no means all of them.

I also think >65 cohort is still rather well targeted regarding risk of hospitalization/death. 80% of deaths have been in that group.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We'll see, but right now, 7-day increase was about 0 from yesterday and one week prior. So hopefully the restrictions are finally starting to help. The bad news is about half a million dead seems to be the basement final number, and more likely edging toward 600,000. California appears to be plateau'ing.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I missed??? "Foot, meet bullet" is saying you shot yourself in the foot!

We simply don't know.

I disagree, as lots of areas lack the infrastructure to perform testing on demand for all of those asking.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

But roughly 600,000 confirmed lose.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I know what it means - I was turning it around.



We don't know exactly how much is due to more testing vs. more infections, but we do know it is due to both those things, not solely one or the other.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

Quite the contrary. If the level of testing stays roughly the same, then the reduction in reported cases will reflect the reduction in actual cases. It is a fair like-for-like comparison.
Elixir is hoping to win on a technicality. He think Biden will commission a lot more tests, so that the rate of reported case reduction will be smaller than the actual rate of case reduction.

It depends on something for which we lack data: How many of those tests are precautionary/regulatory vs how many are due to symptoms.

 

[Elixir]

I know what it means - I was turning it around.



We don't know exactly how much is due to more testing vs. more infections, but we do know it is due to both those things, not solely one or the other.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

Quite the contrary. If the level of testing stays roughly the same, then the reduction in reported cases will reflect the reduction in actual cases. It is a fair like-for-like comparison.
Elixir is hoping to win on a technicality. He think Biden will commission a lot more tests, so that the rate of reported case reduction will be smaller than the actual rate of case reduction.

It depends on something for which we lack data: How many of those tests are precautionary/regulatory vs how many are due to symptoms.

I think testing is limited by the cost and availablility of tests, not by the number of cases. I will win the bet, probably by a factor of four or more. Because Derec is full of unrealistic Happy Talk, as evidenced by his previous predictions of the course of the pandemic. If he wants to state a "most probable range" for 'active Cases' on April 4, I'd be happy to entertain that bet too. (No "technicalities" there.)

I am rather bemused that Derec defined the terms of the bet, and I have not asked to alter them one iota, yet he is already whining about a "technicality" that is going to make him lose.
I wonder if he's going to demand a recount, and then claim massive fraud.

 

[barbos]

Number of deaths exceeded 2 millions.

 

[Jokodo]

7-day moving average of daily deaths recorded globally has been consistently above 10k since November 24 - more than seven weeks. Even if we are already at a turning point, 3 million deaths by the end of April looks like an optimistic scenario.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I know what it means - I was turning it around.



We don't know exactly how much is due to more testing vs. more infections, but we do know it is due to both those things, not solely one or the other.

Sounds like you think you'll win on a technicality.

Quite the contrary. If the level of testing stays roughly the same, then the reduction in reported cases will reflect the reduction in actual cases. It is a fair like-for-like comparison.
Elixir is hoping to win on a technicality. He think Biden will commission a lot more tests, so that the rate of reported case reduction will be smaller than the actual rate of case reduction.

It depends on something for which we lack data: How many of those tests are precautionary/regulatory vs how many are due to symptoms.

Testing isn't nearly as important as hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitalizations at least gives us a decent real-time picture, where as deaths give us a 2 to 4 week lag of said picture. If hospitalizations are rising, then the disease is spreading faster than people are recovering.

Hopefully we don't cross the 4,000 a day (7-day average) death toll threshold. Deaths compared to last week are about even, though over 4,000 a day. We are over 20,000 a week dying at this point.

 

[Elixir]

Testing isn't nearly as important as hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitalizations at least gives us a decent real-time picture, where as deaths give us a 2 to 4 week lag of said picture. If hospitalizations are rising, then the disease is spreading faster than people are recovering.

Hopefully we don't cross the 4,000 a day (7-day average) death toll threshold. Deaths compared to last week are about even, though over 4,000 a day. We are over 20,000 a week dying at this point.

I guess Derec should have laid out his prediction for hospitalizations, deaths or "active cases" - all stats that are not so dependent upon human whims. But, having offered to bet on his prediction of world-o-meters' 7-day average of recorded new cases on April 4th, that is what I accepted.
Derec's Happy Talk was based on a delusion that the Trump Administration had a plan for distributing and administering vaccines, that people would be vaccinated by the tens of millions by now, the vaccines would effectively produce "herd immunity" by March, and the assumption that testing rates would remain constant or decline. I don't think any of those things are happening. That's why I took the bet.

Again, if Derec wants to offer another overly optimistic prediction regarding hospitalizations, active cases or any other metric shown on the world-o-meters site, I am open to betting on it.
I assume that Derec won't mind funding TFT for 2021...

 

[Derec]

I guess Derec should have laid out his prediction for hospitalizations, deaths or "active cases" - all stats that are not so dependent upon human whims.

Active cases is if anything even more dependent on "human whims" than daily confirmed cases. It's basically cumulative number of confirmed cases minus the resolved cases - which has to be decided by a human.

That leaves hospitalizations and deaths. I think cases will decrease substantially over the next weeks, which will affect hospitalizations and deaths, but even faster due to vaccines now being available to the >65 crowd.
So, on March 1st, I predict:
Hospitalizations ≤ 25k
Deaths ≤ 600/d

But, having offered to bet on his prediction of world-o-meters' 7-day average of recorded new cases on April 4th, that is what I accepted.
Derec's Happy Talk was based on a delusion that the Trump Administration had a plan for distributing and administering vaccines, that people would be vaccinated by the tens of millions by now, the vaccines would effectively produce "herd immunity" by March, and the assumption that testing rates would remain constant or decline. I don't think any of those things are happening. That's why I took the bet.

Vaccines are distributed and administered on the state and local level. Not everything is Trump's fault.
Biden will most likely do a better job getting more vaccine to the states, but that alone will not help for example the incompetence of the Newsom administration.

Again, if Derec wants to offer another overly optimistic prediction regarding hospitalizations, active cases or any other metric shown on the world-o-meters site, I am open to betting on it.
I assume that Derec won't mind funding TFT for 2021...

I think you need will be enhancing my hooker budget for my post-pandemic celebrations

 

[Derec]

I think testing is limited by the cost and availablility of tests, not by the number of cases.

It is also a function of how many people seek to get tested. People showing symptoms and people who came in contact with those who tested positive are likely to get tested - other people far less so.

I will win the bet, probably by a factor of four or more.

Wishful thinking. If you win, it will be a close one, unless something fundamentally bad happens like a mutation that the vaccines we have are ineffective against.

Because Derec is full of unrealistic Happy Talk, as evidenced by his previous predictions of the course of the pandemic.

I predicted a bumpy plateau which is what we have had for the last month or so. Now we will start the decline.

If he wants to state a "most probable range" for 'active Cases' on April 4, I'd be happy to entertain that bet too. (No "technicalities" there.)

As I said before, "active cases" are even more dependent on "technicalities", so no. But I'd entertain hospitalization and death bets.

I am rather bemused that Derec defined the terms of the bet, and I have not asked to alter them one iota, yet he is already whining about a "technicality" that is going to make him lose.
I wonder if he's going to demand a recount, and then claim massive fraud.

Not whining and don't think I will lose based on a technicality. I think you will still lose.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I predicted a bumpy plateau which is what we have had for the last month or so. Now we will start the decline.

View attachment 31393

Plateaus are flat. That's not.