NYC is ground zero

[Mik]

Or the tests one of us is using is crap. Or our criteria for testing is more stringent.

[jon-nyc]

A little of each.

Germany tests 50k a day. NY state tested 23k yesterday, most of those in NYC and surrounding counties.

[Klaus]

Given that so many thousand tests are performed each week, why has nobody yet done a random test of, say, 1000 random people, to get a number that is actually useful for policy?

[jon-nyc]

How would that conceivably change anything NY is doing?

[Klaus]

You don't think it would be useful to know how prevalent this actually is? (which would also yield better estimates for death rates etc.)

[jon-nyc]

I do, but at the current crisis moment in NY it wouldn’t conceivably change anything.

[Klaus]

Well, let's take the two extreme cases:

Case 1: 50% of the population in NYC is infected. In that case, one could assume that NYC is presumably done with COVID-19 within a few weeks, and it won't get much worse.
Case 2: All who are infected have been tested. In that case, this could just be the beginning. OTOH, isolating the known infected still makes sense in this scenario.

Of course none of the extreme cases is particularly likely, but I think getting some better data at this point would be possible and should be done.

[jon-nyc]

I think we can rule out the extremes from the testing data we do have and the realistic outcomes wouldn’t change our strategy now.

Besides, we could use antibody tests for this, one of which is now approved by the FDA

[jon-nyc]

Been three days since I updated this.

"NYC - 51,809 - up 9.2%
NJ - 25,590 up
Westchester - 11,567 - up 8%
MI - 10,779
CA - 10,080
LA - 9121 - up 42%!
FL - 8010"

NYC - 67,551 - 9% daily growth rate
NJ - 37,505
MI - 15,718
Nassau County - 14,398
CA - 14,055
Westchester - 13,723 - only 6% daily growth.
LA - 13,010 - 13% daily growth rate
Suffolk County - 12,405
FL - 12,151 - 15% daily growth

Nassau and Suffolk counties are the two counties of Long Island. Nassau borders the city, Suffolk is further out.

Probably makes sense to think of NYC, Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, and NJ as a 150k+ case cluster.

[Loki]

Jon

You’ve been tracking the NY data very closely. Is the actual matching up to the Cuomo narrative?

[Loki]

IHME is back up. It says NY needs 5664 ventilators. Very different than Cuomo’s 30k

[jon-nyc]

“Narrative” doesn’t seem like the right word.

He looks at a bunch of models. The more pessimistic McKinsey model shows a need for ~30k ventilators.

I haven’t seen the details behind the McKinsey models but I’ll bet they turn out to be more accurate than IHME In most particulars. See the flaws that Cochran points out, which I quoted in the previous thread. Baked into IHME is:

• believing CCP data.
• considering our social distancing efforts the equal of Wuhan’s 2nd round in efficacy (When they were welding doors shut)
• envisioning the fall to be the same rate as the increase, IOW post-lockdown R = 1/R0

[Loki]

@jon-nyc said in NYC is ground zero:

“Narrative” doesn’t seem like the right word.

He looks at a bunch of models. The more pessimistic McKinsey model shows a need for ~30k ventilators.

I haven’t seen the details behind the McKinsey models but I’ll bet they turn out to be more accurate than IHME In most particulars. See the flaws that Cochran points out, which I quoted in the previous thread. Baked into IHME is:

• believing CCP data.
• considering our social distancing efforts the equal of Wuhan’s 2nd round in efficacy (When they were welding doors shut)
• envisioning the fall to be the same rate as the increase, IOW post-lockdown R = 1/R0

Today IHME says 24,000 ventilators are needed in the US in total. It is also 5 days later and their model is tracking the screenshots I took. Also says NY is peaking which appears to be the case. I don’t mind Cuomo making the case for resources but last week it was all vents all the time as a political football and now we are seeing who may be right.

[jon-nyc]

Today the McKinsey models are far more accurate.

No way we peak Thursday. Cases are nowhere near peaking and we still have >50% positive test rate.

[jon-nyc]

@jon-nyc said in NYC is ground zero:

NYC - 67,551 - 9% daily growth rate
NJ - 37,505
MI - 15,718
Nassau County - 14,398
CA - 14,055
Westchester - 13,723 - only 6% daily growth.
LA - 13,010 - 13% daily growth rate
Suffolk County - 12,405
FL - 12,151 - 15% daily growth

NYC - 72,181 - 7% increase
NJ - 41,090
MI - 17,221
Nassau - 15,616
CA - 15,332
LA - 14,867 - 14% increase
Westchester - 14,294
Suffolk - 14,185 - 14% increase
MA - 13,387
FL - 13,317

Louisiana now has more cases than Westchester.

Every entity I didn't put a percentage increase on gained less than 10% (usually just under)

Again I like these (2nd deriv) trends.

[LuFins Dad]

I would like to see a comparison of states with similar sized countries. I hear compare US vs Italy or Spain...No, compare US vs Italy, Spain, France, and Germany combined...Let’s compare Italy with New York and New Jersey... Let’s compare Spain with Texas....

[Loki]

Jon

Do you know in NY what the average time from test to result is? I assume the cases tally is based on the day of the result?

[George K]

@LuFins-Dad said in NYC is ground zero:

I would like to see a comparison of states with similar sized countries. I hear compare US vs Italy or Spain...No, compare US vs Italy, Spain, France, and Germany combined...Let’s compare Italy with New York and New Jersey... Let’s compare Spain with Texas....

That's right. John Burn-Murdoch posts nightly updates with those pretty graphs showing rise, etc. When the US deaths exceeded the number from any other country, he posted the graph, with the comment "American exceptionalism."

[Jolly]

I'm about ready to get behind the call for martial law down here. Tracking cellphone movement, Louisiana was recently given a D- for staying in place. My parish was given a F.

I think it was a generous grade...

[George K]

@LuFins-Dad

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/07/stop-comparing-u-s-to-south-korea-on-coronavirus/

But they’ve all missed the bigger problem with this fixation on South Korea. The comparisons are utterly pointless.

Yes, South Korea has had just over 10,000 confirmed cases and only 186 deaths. Whereas the U.S. has more than 363,000 cases and nearly 11,000 deaths.

But South Korea could hardly be more unlike the United States in almost every way. Its population is 16% of the U.S. population to start with. There are 16 million more people living in California and Texas alone than all of South Korea.

It also has one of the most homogeneous populations in the world. The U.S. is one of the most diverse. This has profound implications on everything, including health care and health outcomes. South Korea’s murder rate is 0.6 per 100,000 people, compared with 5.3 in the U.S. (Is Trump to blame for that, too?)

Rather than compare a small Asian nation to the entire United States, why not compare it to individual states?

Texas, for example, has only had 7,320 cases, and just 144 deaths among its 29 million residents. It had 686 new cases and 22 new deaths on April 5. (South Korea had 183 and 3, respectively.)

California has 39 million residents. So far, it’s had less than 16,000 total cases, and 372 deaths.

Florida, with a population of 21 million, has had 236 deaths among its 13,000 cases.

Seven states in the U.S. — with a combined population of 20.2 million — have death rates as low or lower than South Korea’s.

Comparing the entire U.S. to South Korea also fails to account for the fact that New York alone is responsible for 36% of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. even though it has only 6% of the country’s population.

However, I think this article ignores the fact that the US is about 2 weeks behind Korea in terms of spread. Let's see how that works out.