COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[kyphysics]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...weeks-earlier-than-first-thought?srnd=premium

The U.S.’s first deaths from the new Coronavirus came weeks earlier than was previously known, suggesting the virus may have long been spreading outside of health officials’ attempts to contain it earlier this year.

Two residents of Santa Clara County, California, who died at home on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17 were infected with the virus, according to a https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/press-release-04-21-20-early.aspx by the county’s public health department.

The first death is 20 days earlier than what was previously thought to be the first U.S. fatality, and about three weeks before health officials identified the first Covid-19 infection without a known tie to other cases. The deaths were also weeks before cities and states began implementing widespread social-distancing measures.

 

[bhobba]

Just an interesting aside. Everyone this year, correctly, is getting a strengthened Flu jab, so much so it is in short supply, but the government is ensuring everyone who wants it (and as I said that is everyone this year) will get it May at the latest. But doctors have noticed with the Coronovirus measures the Flu has plummeted to a trickle even though not everyone has been vaccinated yet. Just imagine how much better Flu season would be in a normal year if everyone got the Flu jab and did simple measures like washing hands and basic social distancing.

Thanks
Bill

 

[DennisN]

Good news from Germany:

Germany approves first human trials for vaccine

A clinical test of a Covid-19 vaccine has been approved in Germany, the country’s Federal Institute for Vaccines has said. In the first part of the trial, 200 healthy people between 18 and 55 will receive several variants of the vaccine. The vaccine candidate was produced by biotech firm BioNTech, and is an RNA vaccine.

Source: The Guardian live update (22 april 2020)

 

[russ_watters]

So just to make sure I understand you - you wouldn't mind if the South Korean contact tracing system could be implemented in the US (say if Congress legislated it and the President approved)?

Yes.

I don't think the contact-trace-and-quarantine technique can succeed without it, and it can only be implemented on a national/federal government level (I'm not sure how, legislatively). My concern/expectation/prediction is that after we lift mandatory social distancing, we'll just get another spike/wave. Perhaps after a second wave, people/government will decide it's important to do.

 

[hmmm27]

IMnsHO, opt-in.

I normally go out of my way not to give Google/M$/Apple/etc. the time of day - mostly because they don't ask and are pretty weaselly in general but, if they're doing it strictly for "we're all in this together" publicity, dump the data at the end, and I won't find myself on the arse end of a spam flood in perpetua, then "I hereby give permission..." is forthcoming.

 

[russ_watters]

Interesting example. I had a colleague who lived and worked in Allentown (PPL), and he used to travel frequently to Europe for work (supplier audit). If that was still happening, he could potentially bring Coronavirus into the community. Certainly, the more remote a town (Mauch Chunk, Mahanoy City, Hazelton, or Sayre), the less likely of exposure, but it could happen.

I was born in Allentown; my dad worked for Air Products and both parents for Bethlehem Steel, and that was a reference to the Billy Joel song (circa 1982). The song accurately describes much of my extended family. It may not apply as well anymore, as Allentown seems to have become something of a suburb of Philadelphia.

 

[russ_watters]

I would turn my phone off. And maybe remove the SIM card when not in use.

What if you would be fined $8,000 or arrested and given a non-removable tracking bracelet for turning your phone off to break a curfew?
https://www.businessinsider.com/sou...irus-catch-people-dodging-tracking-app-2020-4

 

[Astronuc]

I was born in Allentown; my dad worked for Air Products and both parents for Bethlehem Steel, and that was a reference to the Billy Joel song (circa 1982). The song accurately describes much of my extended family. It may not apply as well anymore, as Allentown seems to have become something of a suburb of Philadelphia.

I've been through Allendown many times, and I've seen it change (like many other places) since the 1980s. I've met folks from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, and I interacted with a well-known professor of materials science and engineering about 3 decades ago. For me, it's a sentimental and historic place because of the LVRR and other connections.

 

[kadiot]

New Zealand is flattening the curve. R0 less than 1. Disease will eventually die out.

 

[Astronuc]

Regarding the spread, USA Today reports on an investigation of the meat packing industry in which dozens of facilities report outbreaks of Coronavirus and cases of COVID-19, e.g., Smithfield plant in SD and Tyson plants in several states.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/n...y-force-choice-worker-health-food/2995232001/
Wa state - https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242117246.html

Washington Post reports on differences between Rhode Island and Kentucky with respect to impact of Coronavirus and testing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-two-states-a-vast-testing-gap-shows-what-it-means-to-have-no-national-strategy/ar-BB130p7D
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/21/kentucky-rhode-island-coronavirus-testing (subscription required)

 

[atyy]

LVRR

Lehigh Valley Railroad or Lehigh Road Runners?

 

[Astronuc]

Lehigh Valley Railroad or Lehigh Road Runners?

LV Railroad, and Erie+DLW = Erie Lackawanna, RDG, CNJ, LHR and LNE, and New Haven, and others like the CRIP, MKT, MILW, NKP, WAB, MON (CIL), Frisco (SLSF), ICG (IC + GMO). Basically I have affection for the underdogs and fallen flags. At university, I watched the MP and SP pass through town on a joint line, and I'd visit the ATSF, BN and MKT, which were some distance away.

Historical background - https://www.american-rails.com/fallen-flags.html

That's topic for another thread. I seriously considered becoming a locomotive engineer, but physics and nuclear engineering won out.

 

[OmCheeto]

...

Washington Post reports on differences between Rhode Island and Kentucky with respect to impact of Coronavirus and testing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-two-states-a-vast-testing-gap-shows-what-it-means-to-have-no-national-strategy/ar-BB130p7D
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/21/kentucky-rhode-island-coronavirus-testing (subscription required)

Were those articles supposed to be putting Rhode Island in a good light?
Because that's what it sounded like to me.
Running the numbers, it looks like Rhode Island is doing about as bad as you can.

OR = Oregon
TN = Tennessee
KY = Kentucky
RI = Rhode Island

Although New York currently has a VERY bad mortality rate of 1800 deaths per million, it's currently doubling deaths every 12 days, which is twice as long as Rhode Island.

The article strikes me as saying; "Rhode Island has the best bean counters. Therefore, things are going much better in Rhode Island."

 

[Astronuc]

The article strikes me as saying; "Rhode Island has the best bean counters. Therefore, things are going much better in Rhode Island."

The articles states that Rhode Island has the highest per capita testing rate of the 50 states. I have not independently verified. Rhode Island apparently also benefits from being the headquarters of the CVS pharmacy chain. And, Rhode Island is tied with Hawaii for having the second-fewest (5) counties of any U.S. state (only Delaware has fewer, with 3 counties). As far as I can tell, it is the county health departments, which collect the data, at least in the states with which I am familiar.

On March 29, Time magazine reported that Data compiled by John Hopkins University shows that 1,297 counties have no confirmed cases of COVID-19 out of 3,142 counties nationwide.
https://time.com/5812186/counties-coronavirus-rural-poor/

NY Times is mapping the pandemic in the US - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html - along with others. Certainly, major metropolitan areas have high incidence of COVID-19 cases (especially those with airports serving as international gateways), while smaller metropolitan areas see some moderate incidence, and there appears to be some correlation for incidence between metropolitan areas along interstates. See Where cases are rising fastest.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

 

[mfb]

You guys are aware that Google and Apple already track your every move as an integral part of the phone OS, right?

In iOS you can disable it. One of the reasons I use iOS. The service provider still knows which cell phone masts the phone connects to, of course, that's unavoidable if you want a connection.

All they have to do is provide that data to the government

That's part of "measures that would be very, very unpopular in western countries" I mentioned.

Even if you let your OS send all its data to Google or Apple: At least they have good security standards. That's not necessarily true for a third party app.

----

Germany keeps its (sort of) weekly pattern of new cases but the numbers keep going down despite a roughly constant rate of 50,000-60,000 tests per day. Active cases went down to 2/3 its peak, new cases are ~1/3 the peak rate after three weeks. If this trend continues the restrictions will be loosened at a time of 1000 new cases per day, or 1 in 80,000. That means 50+ tests for each new case - in principle enough to test all the closer contacts and then some more.

New confirmed cases in the US stabilized at ~25,000. They will reach a million in about 8 days and will have ~1/3 of the global reported cases by then.

 

[chemisttree]

I’ve heard that we are still limited by a shortage of ‘reagents’ for our testing. Any idea what exactly the hard to source ‘reagents’ are?

 

[TeethWhitener]

Germany keeps its (sort of) weekly pattern of new cases

Any reason for the periodicity? It shows up in US data as well. It seems to peak in the Thursday-Friday range.

 

[chemisttree]

I wonder if the periodicity would remain apparent if positives were reported on sampling days rather than test result days. Obviously a retrospective analysis...

 

[TeethWhitener]

I wonder if the periodicity would remain apparent if positives were reported on sampling days rather than test result days. Obviously a retrospective analysis...

Good point, hadn’t thought about that. A friend tested positive very early in the outbreak—it took her 12 days to get the results. She looked at the daily data for her city, and reasons it’s far more likely that her result was counted when it was reported, not when the test was administered.
(She recovered, btw)

 

[mfb]

Any reason for the periodicity? It shows up in US data as well. It seems to peak in the Thursday-Friday range.

Analysis date as far as I understand, and fewer tests analyzed at the weekend. Plus some reporting lag, so tests from one day can appear in the statistics of the next day. More discussion here and details in its German source.

 

[kadiot]

What a sad discovery.

Apparently for younger people, CORONAVIRUS might present as a stroke instead of a simple respiratory problem

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/22/...T23:00:21&utm_source=fbCNNi&utm_medium=social

 

[kadiot]

Wow! Oil producers now have to pay someone US$37/ barrel to take oil from their hands because of extreme lowering of demand brought on by the medical crisis ...

US is filing up its strategic reserves as its own shale producers are declaring bankcruptcies...

Going forward, will the oil industry recover or will the renewables overtake fossil fuel?

 

[chemisttree]

Going forward, will the oil industry recover or will the renewables overtake fossil fuel?

No way renewables will ever replace oil when it is priced so low. The first to die will be the renewables most likely.

 

[mfb]

Wow! Oil producers now have to pay someone US$37/ barrel to take oil from their hands because of extreme lowering of demand brought on by the medical crisis ...

In one place, for one type of contract.
Let's not forget the context here.

Going forward, will the oil industry recover or will the renewables overtake fossil fuel?

They still have the oil underground for the time when demand goes up again.

 

[kadiot]

No way renewables will ever replace oil when it is priced so low. The first to die will be the renewables most likely.

I agree with your point. Super cheap oil will give renewables a run for their money! How long this oil bonanza will last may be coincident with the Corvid. But then, there is the politics between Russia and OPEC with KSA as lead... uhmmm

 

[kadiot]

The contact tracing app which South Korea used so successfully and which the UK is now adopting is raising serious privacy issues...

However, some quarters have pointed out that identifying a Corvid positive in the same space where you are, may redound more to everyone’s interests...

Further, this cannot be compared to identifying HIV positive individuals because of the tremendous social opprobrium of those who are HIV infected...

 

[Tendex]

Analyzing what practical measures could have maybe helped at the beginning, with an eye on what would be the best actions before possible new similar situations, we all know (taking seriously China's reports) how effective the internal lock-down in China was, but international airplane travel from China, including Wuhan, was continued if I'm not mistaken, all through the months of January and most of February which is the time window where the virus seems to have spread worldwide and especially in Europe, including up to 6 regular flights per week from Wuhan to Paris and similar frequencies to Rome and London. Would it have been practical to halt the epidemic spread interrupting those international flights from China to the rest of the world? Could China have done it? I'm centering in what China could have done more than what the destiny countries could have done as I think it would have been more difficult for each country to lock entrance to people from China if that measure was not taken by most countries in a coordinated way, otherwise each country would have had to lock entrance from any other country which is not practical except maybe for North Corea and such.

 

[hmmm27]

Last week, the news stat's were : cases/deaths/recovered, with "deaths" being about 15% of "recovered". Now it's cases/deaths, and readers have to dig a bit for "recovered" : makes for a slightly less ominous bit of basic math, I suppose.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Any reason for the periodicity?

I'm sure there's some reason.

Some places show a clear weekend effect.

These people argue (in https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07208 ) that it's real and comes out of their model.

 

[TeethWhitener]

I'm sure there's some reason.

Some places show a clear weekend effect.

These people argue (in https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07208 ) that it's real and comes out of their model.

Interesting. I just hopped back on to say that the periodicity (at least on the Wikipedia plots) also appears in deaths, which one might expect to be reported in a more timely fashion than new positive cases. I’ll take a look at the preprint.

 

[mfb]

Some countries have published recent total death numbers, so people looked at the excess mortality. It's higher than the reported COVID-19 deaths in most cases: Tracking Covid-19 excess deaths across countries
Caveat: Deaths from people less likely to go to a hospital (or unable to go there, in some cases) with other diseases show up in excess mortality but don't count as COVID-19 deaths, so we don't expect an exact match.

Lombardy peaked at three times the normal death rate. 1/3 expected for other reasons, 1/3 attributed to COVID-19, 1/3 linked to COVID-19 but not counted in its death toll.

 

[peanut]

Is it true that the lining of blood vessels are another target of Covid-19?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Some countries have published recent total death numbers, so people looked at the excess mortality

You see the same effect (from the same source, EuroMOMO) in 2017, 2018 and 2019 flu seasons. Some of this depends on how the accounting is done: if someone catches the flu and goes out to see his doctor and is killed in a car crash, it is not recorded as flu, even though if he hadn't got the flu he'd still be alive.

EuroMOMO seems to have an obsession with z-scores, which I don't understand. They also have a sinusoidal "normal range" which is exceeded every winter they report. Seems like an odd definition of normal: if it were me, I'd find a different periodic function, one where about half the years were below normal and half above normal rather than everything above normal.

 

[Astronuc]

In mid-February, a month before New York City schools were closed, New York City and San Francisco already had more than 600 people with unidentified infections, and Seattle, Chicago and Boston already had more than 100 people, the findings estimate. By March 1, as New York confirmed its first case, the numbers there may already have surpassed 10,000.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/coronavirus-early-outbreaks-cities.html

Some critics believe the number of unknown infections may be overestimated.

The virus moved under the radar swiftly in February and March, doctors and researchers said, because few cities or states had adequate surveillance systems in place. And testing, if it was being done at all, was haphazard. Emergency rooms were busy preparing for the predicted onslaught and likely missed some of early virus-related deaths, and didn’t have time or tools to verify infections on the fly, experts said.

It was mid-March before teams at N.Y.U. and Mount Sinai began taking samples for testing in New York.

 

[russ_watters]

In iOS you can disable it.

Yes, but it is on by default and not many people do disable it. We're talking about opposite sides of the same coin here. For the same feature:
-If you allow an optional opt-in, most people won't.
-If you allow an optional opt-out, most people won't.

But again, the key feature here isn't the location tracking because that's already basically ubiquitous. Nothing at all new has to happen for it. The key feature is government access to and dissemination of private, legally protected medical records to/from private companies and at some level, to the general public.

That's part of "measures that would be very, very unpopular in western countries" I mentioned.

In the quote I said "to the federal government": actually, it's both and the key information as I said above has to come from the government. They could in principle do this without providing location data to the government, but they can't do it without receiving medical data from the government.

...unless Google and Apple figure out for themselves who has Coronavirus and who doesn't (or at least who is sick and who isn't). I suspect they could do that with a scary level of accuracy via location tracking alone.