In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak

[jon-nyc]

[Loki]

[jon-nyc]

@jon-nyc said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:

My logic from above:

• our shutdown measures were insufficient to get the reproductive rate down below 1. That was based on data from Wuhan and Europe.

• a sharp drop in R but to a level greater than 1 will only lead to a temporary decline in cases/deaths, then they start rising inexorably from a new, lower base.

• the temporary decline will be interpreted as victory and will lead to a loosening of mitigation measures, which then increases the reproductive rate even more.

That was my logic above. Unfortunately it seems to be playing out.

Another specific prediction was:

When we look back from, say, the end of the year, we will not see April as the month with the most cases or the most deaths.

All this was stated in the second week of April.

[jon-nyc]

CDC expects 3k deaths per day in May.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/internal-cdc-models-project-3000-daily-covid-deaths-by-june-1/

[George K]

@jon-nyc

Yup. With a total death toll north of 200K.

[Jeffrey]

Hi. Posting from NYC. Same tag as before.

[jon-nyc]

Hey man! Long time no see!

How's the fam?

[Jeffrey]

Good. You? Thought of you recently. Nice stats/science posting!

[jon-nyc]

Hanging tight, you know I moved to Westchester, no? I think I last saw you at the boy's birthday party maybe a year before we moved.

He'll be 11 next month. Your oldest is a teenager by now, right? 15?

[Jeffrey]

Yes. We now have three.

[Jeffrey]

Eldest goes to one of the Specialized HSs. Thriving with lots of friends.

[Jeffrey]

What is your take on the open up stuff? I suspect actual mobility among the population is not that different. Under shelter in place some people push the edges, under open for business many stay home.

[Jeffrey]

Hong Kong is interesting. High density, subways, near Wuhan. 5 fatalities. Near universal mask wearing. Maybe miracle technology is a mask. Just speculating.

[Copper]

Larry disappears, Jeffrey appears.

Coincidence?

[Jeffrey]

New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong. Island pandemic success stories. Any landmass success stories? Greece, Finland? What worked and what didn’t. I am surprised there is not more country comparison analysis to guide future policy.

[Jeffrey]

Copper - How are you? I’ll try to post like Larry. He had a distinctive literary style. Can you still fly? You were/are an amateur pilot, no?

[Horace]

Larry and Jolly disappeared at the same time, so NS's theory that they're the same person has been vindicated.

[Copper]

I became a commercial pilot and flight instructor and bought a few planes. I taught for about 10 years. Last year I moved to southern Virginia and it has been over a year now since I've flown. I might still get hooked back up. I have kept my instructor certificate and medical current.

[Jeffrey]

Really cool.

[taiwan_girl]

There was a recent Rand report which tried to look at the "strength" of a lock down versus the number of deaths and versus the economic impact.

Obvious, that the higher strength the lockdown, the less deaths, but more economic impact.

I believe that they were using a economic impact of one life = $10 MM USD.

The conclusion was that there was a pretty bad payback for decreasing teh strength of the lockdown. In other words, the decrease in economic impact was not greater than the increased loss of life.