In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak
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I want to clarify something that might not have been clear from my earlier post.
If the effective R after social distancing measures is still greater than 1, we will see a decrease in the number of daily cases and active cases but it will only be temporary. Both new cases and active cases will decrease during the time the effective R is decreasing, but then will continue to grow indefinitely from the new, lower base.
I've attached here a stylized example. This shows R0 = 3.5 up through time interval 12, then it decreases to 1.5 over time intervals, then stays at 1.5 indefinitely. Don't worry about the actual case count, I just started with a random number. It's the trendiness that are important. Note that both new and active cases take a dive, then begin climbing again.
If our lockdown measures result in an R0 > 1, this will in fact happen to us, as sure as night follows day.
What's worse, is people will see that initial decrease and assume we're out of the woods. At that point people will begin to take lockdown less seriously, lobby hard for things to open again, etc. So the new R0 won't even stay at its 1.5 level very long before rising again.
I think odds are high that this is going to be our situation.
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I’m officially doubling down on this.
Not only are we not below 1 now, but we aren’t going to go there any time soon.
In fact we’ll go the other way. People will think we beat this and start to relax.
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.
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So what would be a good month to just drop everything and kill thousands in ritual economic sacrifice? Those Temple of Doom guys have a pretty good model if you wanna do it with flair, I guess.
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Today the effective reproductive number for the US is 1.07 and for NY it is 1.08. Today or tomorrow NY peaks. The entire country is forecasted need 1/2 of the ventilators Cuomo direly called for a week ago. That’s where we are now. Very different picture than the media had us believe not long ago.
What period are we doubling down on?
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1.07 doesn’t do the job, and we’re only going up from there.
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IOW, what Mik said. lol
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I can’t tell you the exact day, but if R stays north of 1, it will as surely as night follows day. See my graph above.
And it won’t even stay at 1.07. Because people think that dropping means we have it beat.
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@Mik said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
Those R rates are with the whole nation effectively shut down. And it still points to growth, not reduction. Going back to normal isn't going to help that.
You ignore active monitoring, testing everyone, antibody tests, disease surveillance, scaled contact tracing, antivirals, summer. Note I didn’t even say vaccine.
There is so much going on right now that just doesn’t make it into the press.
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This thread has more laughs than a German comedy convention.
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@Loki said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
@Mik said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
Those R rates are with the whole nation effectively shut down. And it still points to growth, not reduction. Going back to normal isn't going to help that.
You ignore active monitoring, testing everyone, antibody tests, disease surveillance, scaled contact tracing, antivirals, summer. Note I didn’t even say vaccine.
There is so much going on right now that just doesn’t make it into the press.
But all of those things will contribute to bringing it down below 1. None of those things exist today, and summer is merely a hope. If it does not go below 1 it will grow.
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@Mik said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
@Loki said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
@Mik said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
Those R rates are with the whole nation effectively shut down. And it still points to growth, not reduction. Going back to normal isn't going to help that.
You ignore active monitoring, testing everyone, antibody tests, disease surveillance, scaled contact tracing, antivirals, summer. Note I didn’t even say vaccine.
There is so much going on right now that just doesn’t make it into the press.
But all of those things will contribute to bringing it down below 1. None of those things exist today, and summer is merely a hope. If it does not go below 1 it will grow.
Mik the flu is 1.3 and we didn’t shut down the planet.
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So yeah, predicting that we’ll grow again after a pause contains the prediction that we’ll open up before implementing a sufficiently effective test and trace.
Obviously effective antivirals or a vaccine changes everything.
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@Loki said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
Mik the flu is 1.3 and we didn’t shut down the planet.
You’re forgetting that we got to 1.something by shutting down the planet in the first place. Now we’re discussing opening it back up.
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Loki - there exists a scenario where we lock down and stay locked down enough to get to a minuscule number of new cases, meanwhile building a test and trace capability the is comprehensive enough to keep new outbreaks at bay. IOW, the hammer and the dance.
I don’t think the mood of the country is in the right place to implement that.
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@Mik said in In which jon-nyc stakes out an unconventional opinion on the Covid-19 outbreak:
Good article. Don’t underestimate how quickly we will make progress in each of the areas. Right now in many of the examples it’s just a matter of getting to scale and without an economy there is no living, Staying at home is well just not an option.
