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The World-O-Meter Thread

Derec may be off a bit, but I don't know if it's right to call 15,000 per day happy talk.

Deaths are still going down but new cases have been increasing the past 2 weeks. Looks like the vaccines are working for the olds but the youngers are starting to mingle more.

3 million jabs today.
 
blastula said:
Derec may be off a bit, but I don't know if it's right to call 15,000 per day happy talk.

Deaths are still going down but new cases have been increasing the past 2 weeks. Looks like the vaccines are working for the olds but the youngers are starting to mingle more.

3 million jabs today.
Click to expand...

I call it Happy Talk now, since the US 7-day new case average is FOUR TIMES Derec's bet threshold (as I predicted back when the bet was made), and DOUBLE his "worst case" prediction, at over 60 thousand new cases a day. "Off a bit" doesn't begin to describe how wrong.

Derec's prediction of "herd immunity" was Happy Talk too. Almost a year ago Derec was touting New York as experiencing herd immunity because by his estimate more than 20% of New York residents had been exposed/infected with COVID.
Yesterday, New York was still leading the pack with over 8750 new cases. So no, there is no "herd immunity" going on in New York or anywhere else.

On November 11 Derec said "I think we will peak before the end of November, so I definitely think we will drop below 80k well before inauguration day. Probably even by New Year."
Happy Talk. On January 8 ('the 'peak') there were over THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND new cases, and the seven day average peaked a few days later at over 250,000.
Happy Talk. I'd be happy as a clam if we were headed for less than 15k cases per day by Easter.
 
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We have had another outbreak here; Two cases have been identified outside quarantine in three days.

Full contact tracing and genomic sequencing of the virus is underway, and thousands of people are being tested. The first of the patients apparently contracted the disease from the doctor who was infectious in the community last week; And the second from the first.

The big news today is that the second identified case allegedly went ahead with hosting a party for twenty five people, after he was told to isolate pending his test result, which then came back positive.

It seems likely that the Brisbane and Moreton Bay local government areas will be put into a lockdown to prevent further spread from this cluster. I am rather surprised that this hasn't already been announced.

There were long queues outside testing centres yesterday, as one of the cases is known to have visited the very large Carindale shopping mall on Saturday afternoon last week, and the Queensland Department of Health has asked anyone who was there in a two hour window to get tested immediately - that's a lot of people.

Our state's death toll remains at six, all of them a year ago.
 
Went through Couer d'Alene, ID today. Everything pretty much back to as it was before pandemic. Maybe 5% of ppl wearing masks. No indoor mask mandate anymore. Bigger groups gathering indoors at shops and restaurants with little distancing.
 
Axulus said:
Looks like we are heading back to 100k/day. Spring break surge hasn't yet begun.
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Yup. Appears pretty grim right now. I'm happy for Au, and don't blame bilby for taunting us (I don't think that's really his intent), but the extent of the avoidable suffering and death that has been visited upon this country by the Trump administration/s incompetence and disinformation, makes my blood boil.
 
Axulus said:
Looks like we are heading back to 100k/day. Spring break surge hasn't yet begun.
Click to expand...

I may have been overly optimistic with the 15k/d number, but you are way off with this I think.

There is a small uptick in cases and everybody thinks sky is falling. It's a very shallow positive slope right now. To get to your 100k/d in the next few weeks, the slope will have to increase. I think the opposite. It's most likely going to a brief bump and the slope will turn negative soon.

The vaccination rate is now at ~2.6M/d. The number of susceptible people will keep continually, and quite rapidly, decreasing.

I may just have been mistaken about which Easter we will have reached 15k/d. :)
 
Europe (minus GB) have a full blown 3rd wave. And in France they claim found a variant which fools standard C19 tests. AstraZeneca has a bad rap in EU, which is weird considering that GB is doing fine with it.

By the way, vector vaccines can be used only once. Both Sputnik and AstraZeneca
are vector vaccines.
 
Axulus said:
Went through Couer d'Alene, ID today. Everything pretty much back to as it was before pandemic. Maybe 5% of ppl wearing masks. No indoor mask mandate anymore. Bigger groups gathering indoors at shops and restaurants with little distancing.
Click to expand...

That's pretty reckless of them. Luckily, Couer d'Alene is in a low population density area.

Around here most people are masking for the most part. Although you still have stupidity like people going to nightclubs and the like where there is no social distancing.
 
jonatha said:
What does "can be used only once" mean in this context?
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I think it refers to the fact that the immune system can develop memory against the vector, and thus would attack the same vector if used again, possibly rendering the second vaccine ineffective.
 
jonatha said:
barbos said:
By the way, vector vaccines can be used only once. Both Sputnik and AstraZeneca
are vector vaccines.
Click to expand...

What does "can be used only once" mean in this context?
Click to expand...

No booster shot or any other vaccine based on that virus. Vaccine is based on particular adenovirus vector, once you used it, immunity against that adenovirus is developed and all subsequent attempts to use the same vector become ineffective, immune system kills it before it reaches the cell. What is interesting is that russian vaccine use human adenoviruses, whereas astrazeneca use monkey adenovirus. So in theory, russian vaccine would be ineffective for people who were previously infected with that particular virus. I guess they selected adenovirus which is rare among humans.
 
barbos said:
bilby said:
The big news today is that the second identified case allegedly went ahead with hosting a party for twenty five people, after he was told to isolate pending his test result, which then came back positive.
Click to expand...
Why?
Click to expand...

Because he's an idiot.

Although as literally only one other person in the state was infected, he probably figured it wasn't likely his test would come back positive.
 
bilby said:
barbos said:
bilby said:
The big news today is that the second identified case allegedly went ahead with hosting a party for twenty five people, after he was told to isolate pending his test result, which then came back positive.
Click to expand...
Why?
Click to expand...

Because he's an idiot.

Although as literally only one other person in the state was infected, he probably figured it wasn't likely his test would come back positive.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that explains it. Still, party after you were specifically told not to party.
 
Derec said:
Axulus said:
Went through Couer d'Alene, ID today. Everything pretty much back to as it was before pandemic. Maybe 5% of ppl wearing masks. No indoor mask mandate anymore. Bigger groups gathering indoors at shops and restaurants with little distancing.
Click to expand...

That's pretty reckless of them. Luckily, Couer d'Alene is in a low population density area.

Around here most people are masking for the most part. Although you still have stupidity like people going to nightclubs and the like where there is no social distancing.
Click to expand...

Does that surprise you? Not playing for points, I'm truly curious.
CO is doing a passable-to-good job of getting the 65+ crowd vaccinated, but lags in overall population vaccinated.
I recently read that 88% of Coloradans want to get vaccinated, up from 66% last year. But distancing and masking seem to be slipping rather badly. Grocery store are not enforcing masking rules and last time I was in a big one, at lest 40% of people were wearing no mask or were "chin masking". As a result, we are now getting 1000+ cases/day even though we were below that level more than a month ago.
That surprises me, and I chastise myself for failure to acknowledge just how very stupid people are.
 
France surpassed Russia in total number of infections.
And Russia fell below 8K in 7 day average. Death rate does not fall much, though.
 
@Derec - YOU LOSE

I admit that I was wrong too - for one thing I predicted that the 7-day new case average would be between 2 and 4 times your prediction by Easter. Now it looks like it will exceed 4x.
I was also quite surprised by the rapidity of the decline after mid January, and the suddenness with which it leveled off and then began rising again.
But the bottom line is that our bet is OVER.

World-o-Meters logged 60,066 new US cases cases yesterday.
It's up to 46,860 today.

That's 106,926 cases already for the week leading up to Easter Sunday, 4/4.
So even if there are zero more cases for the rest of eternity, unless some already reported cases are un-reported (that doesn't happen IME) the 7-day average on 4/4 will exceed 15,000.

(106,926/7=15,275)

@Derec, please pull out your credit card and call in a $100 donation to TFT (in the name of "Elixir", please)
Zipr will let me know when it's received.
Thank you.
 
Nebraska and Tennessee are either doing their part in poor reporting lags, or they are seeing an increase of deaths, indicating they have no hand on the wheel for testing.

Based on World-O-Meter, it'd appear that the death toll is between 0.5 to 1.5% in the end. Less than ten states had death tolls per capita (not per case, but per capita), less than 0.1%. The max is about 0.275% in Jersey, the new one.
 
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