As an economic historian who does various social statistics for a living I must say almost all numbers that are floating around are pretty meaningless. Number of infections is clearly a function of the testing regime, since we know there are many sick people who have the virus but are not tested and even more who are even asymptomatic. Number of hospital admissions when used for comparisons between countries is coloured by different cultural expectations of when you go to a hospital or when not. Even numbers of deaths are not an unproblematic number given the very high comorbidity. None of this is to deny that the problem is serious, and perhaps most of all in the US, where the public health system seems completely disorganized.
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What you need to know about the virus in China "2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)"
- Thread starter andymok
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TV Medical Dramas Are Donating All Their Gowns, Gloves, and Masks to Real Hospitals Fighting COVID-19
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tv-medical-dramas-donate-supplies-to-hospitals-fighting-corvid19/
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/tv-medical-dramas-donate-supplies-to-hospitals-fighting-corvid19/
maty
Major Contributor
Cataluña supera a Madrid como la comunidad con más casos nuevos de coronavirus diagnosticados
[Spanish] https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03...sos-nuevos-de-coronavirus-diagnosticados.html
Catalonia outperforms Madrid as the community with the most new cases of coronavirus diagnosed
https://www.translatetheweb.com/?ref=TVert&from=&to=en&a=https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-24/cataluna-supera-a-madrid-como-la-comunidad-con-mas-casos-nuevos-de-coronavirus-diagnosticados.html
[ The sorpasso occurred for the first time on Monday, when Catalonia recorded 1,221 new cases compared to the 873 in Madrid, and the trend has been confirmed on Tuesday, with 1,939 and 1,777 cases, respectively...
Last Saturday, Madrid had 7,388 people hospitalized and Catalonia had 1,681, a ratio of 4.4 to 1. Yesterday, with 10,433 and 3,599 hospitalized, this ratio had been reduced to 2.9 to 1.
More eloquent is the trend if you take into account the income in the ICU, where Madrid has gone from having on Saturday 2.6 admitted in intensive care for each one in Catalonia to having 1.6, always according to health data... ]
PS: As I already mentioned, the Catalan autonomous government (Generalitat de Catalunya) is by far the most inept.
[Spanish] https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03...sos-nuevos-de-coronavirus-diagnosticados.html
Catalonia outperforms Madrid as the community with the most new cases of coronavirus diagnosed
https://www.translatetheweb.com/?ref=TVert&from=&to=en&a=https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-24/cataluna-supera-a-madrid-como-la-comunidad-con-mas-casos-nuevos-de-coronavirus-diagnosticados.html
[ The sorpasso occurred for the first time on Monday, when Catalonia recorded 1,221 new cases compared to the 873 in Madrid, and the trend has been confirmed on Tuesday, with 1,939 and 1,777 cases, respectively...
Last Saturday, Madrid had 7,388 people hospitalized and Catalonia had 1,681, a ratio of 4.4 to 1. Yesterday, with 10,433 and 3,599 hospitalized, this ratio had been reduced to 2.9 to 1.
More eloquent is the trend if you take into account the income in the ICU, where Madrid has gone from having on Saturday 2.6 admitted in intensive care for each one in Catalonia to having 1.6, always according to health data... ]
PS: As I already mentioned, the Catalan autonomous government (Generalitat de Catalunya) is by far the most inept.
Still perplexed as to why this or a version of this isn’t discussed .
See Nebraska procedure here..
https://www.nebraskamed.com/sites/default/files/documents/covid-19/n-95-decon-process.pdf
Curious: would you say the current statistics are "meaningless" or "not representative"? I agree that comparisons across countries are extremely difficult, given the plethora of differences that can't be properly accounted for: national (or local) healthcare systems, demographics, government responses, climate?, population densities, etc.
That said I believe within a specific country various statistics can be critical, even if they do not give us a full picture. Understanding rates of infection, for example, can be fundamental in determining things like how to ramp up available hospital beds, or when to start easing work / travel / social distancing restrictions. I agree that the U.S. response so far has been -- to put it politely --slow. The U.S. testing capabilities are woefully behind where they need to be at present. But the numbers we have from our limited testing can help local and state agencies make decisions. They'll be modeling using some potentially large assumptions but even the trend data can be crucial.
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Shadrach
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Why don't you move South maty?
The Catalan government has been pressing for a total lock down for some time. It's Madrid that wants to drag this whole sorry business out.
I'm not quite sure why you have this anti Catalan agenda but it would help if you had your facts right.
Shadrach
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At last a functioning brain cell.
You are right, the numbers are meaningless. It would take a considerable amount of random testing to assess the penetration of the virus.
Of course the numbers look bad. They are largely testing those who call in sick. Many of those who contract the virus and have not much more than flu symptoms may not ever feature in the stats.
For anyone in the US or outside, this is why Korea is doing great, here are several reasons.
maty
Major Contributor
Metro/subway, buses and some railways depend on the Generalitat and the City Councils. They could have closed them but they have not, so they say one thing but do another, blaming others for their INACTION.
Furthermore, the Generalitat still does not ask for the help of the UME (Spanish Army) to build a field hospital in Barcelona as in Madrid (IFEMA), so it will be their fault the additional deaths after the collapse of Catalan hospitals.
Furthermore, the Generalitat still does not ask for the help of the UME (Spanish Army) to build a field hospital in Barcelona as in Madrid (IFEMA), so it will be their fault the additional deaths after the collapse of Catalan hospitals.
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Trends are probably the least problematic, but much of the argument here seemed to be about comparisons between countries or regions. Also I find the use of the word infections as labels for these numbers problematic because we know we did not test everyone, that the proportion that we test may have gone down, that mortality rates (as opposed to numbers of deaths) are a function of the number of people tested, and that what we do not know yet is how many in the population have been infected and hence have some immunity. Similarly, the number of ICU beds is not necessarily that meaningful if one country has a cultural tradition of aggressive treatment of those who are dying anyway, compared to another country where people prefer not to prolong their life by a week but want to die at home.
Here in the Netherlands we have a large National Institute for Public Health and they do indeed collect as much data as they can, and do pretty fancy modelling. The entire response from the government is based on their advice. My apprehension is more towards uncritical use of such very flawed data.
I think we will only know more when we have more or less random sample data on the entire population such as will be produced by our Blood Supply system. Personally my hunch is that our scientists are right that a total lockdown is pretty useless, and that we have achieved almost the same with our policy of now enforced social distancing, but without the social disruption. You can only have a lockdown for so long, and I fear when it is relaxed the epidemic will be back. Here it is mostly the populist right wing parties who stoke up fear and shout for drastic measures (none of their leaders have any scientific education). But we shall see.
I have done some research on past epidemics, and from that perspective this one is very mild indeed. The Antonine Plague (probably smallpox) of the second century AD probably killed at least a quarter of the Roman Empire's population, while Yersinia Pestis of the Justinianic Plague of the sixth century and the Black Death of the fourteenth century killed between a third and half of European population of their time. Even the last epidemic that ravaged my town in 1826 killed 10 %. We are not nearly there, even though it is a curious experience to have written about past epidemics and now experience one yourself. The past should remain, as the great historian Peter Laslett once called it, 'The World We Have Lost'.
Here in the Netherlands we have a large National Institute for Public Health and they do indeed collect as much data as they can, and do pretty fancy modelling. The entire response from the government is based on their advice. My apprehension is more towards uncritical use of such very flawed data.
I think we will only know more when we have more or less random sample data on the entire population such as will be produced by our Blood Supply system. Personally my hunch is that our scientists are right that a total lockdown is pretty useless, and that we have achieved almost the same with our policy of now enforced social distancing, but without the social disruption. You can only have a lockdown for so long, and I fear when it is relaxed the epidemic will be back. Here it is mostly the populist right wing parties who stoke up fear and shout for drastic measures (none of their leaders have any scientific education). But we shall see.
I have done some research on past epidemics, and from that perspective this one is very mild indeed. The Antonine Plague (probably smallpox) of the second century AD probably killed at least a quarter of the Roman Empire's population, while Yersinia Pestis of the Justinianic Plague of the sixth century and the Black Death of the fourteenth century killed between a third and half of European population of their time. Even the last epidemic that ravaged my town in 1826 killed 10 %. We are not nearly there, even though it is a curious experience to have written about past epidemics and now experience one yourself. The past should remain, as the great historian Peter Laslett once called it, 'The World We Have Lost'.
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Here in Quebec, the government ordered all non-essential companies and services to close. Meanwhile the provincial alcohol and cannabis corporations are still open. Gotta milk the addicts dry I guess.
Agreed.
People will self medicate or simply recreationally use while they are in self isolation. I know I went and purchased a 1.14L bottle of sipping rye the other day. No big thing.
maty
Major Contributor
Más de un millar de sanitarios trabajarán en turnos de 24 horas en IFEMA
[Spanish] https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/...ronavirus-sanitarios-turnos-ifema-madrid.html
More than a thousand health workers will work 24-hour shifts at IFEMA
https://www.translatetheweb.com/?re...ronavirus-sanitarios-turnos-ifema-madrid.html
[ "This kind of war hospital" has been built in about 48 hours and its main mission is to decongest the hospitals of the capital, explains the director of Nursing of SUMMA 112, José Luis Pérez Olmo, in a video sent on Tuesday by the Community of Madrid...
In IFEMA will work between 360 or 400 doctors, 400 nurses, 100 wardens and between 300 and 400 clinic assistants ]
[Spanish] https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/...ronavirus-sanitarios-turnos-ifema-madrid.html
More than a thousand health workers will work 24-hour shifts at IFEMA
https://www.translatetheweb.com/?re...ronavirus-sanitarios-turnos-ifema-madrid.html
[ "This kind of war hospital" has been built in about 48 hours and its main mission is to decongest the hospitals of the capital, explains the director of Nursing of SUMMA 112, José Luis Pérez Olmo, in a video sent on Tuesday by the Community of Madrid...
In IFEMA will work between 360 or 400 doctors, 400 nurses, 100 wardens and between 300 and 400 clinic assistants ]
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Prana Ferox
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For what it's worth, this is US data:
There were changes in policy about a week ago that significantly increased the number of labs that can process tests. Since then we've gone from ~6k tests a day to 60k+. I won't forecast future curves. Blue line is percent of tests that were positive and we should hope this goes down. I tried looking for data from other countries but everything is old.
There were changes in policy about a week ago that significantly increased the number of labs that can process tests. Since then we've gone from ~6k tests a day to 60k+. I won't forecast future curves. Blue line is percent of tests that were positive and we should hope this goes down. I tried looking for data from other countries but everything is old.
Agree, look at deaths - except Russia where they are told to assign deaths to generic "pneumonia".
Panama extends curfew to 24 hours
24 March, 2020 - La Estrella de Panamá
The President of the Republic, Laurentino Cortizo, announced that the measure starts tomorrow morning at 5:00 am
24 March, 2020 - La Estrella de Panamá
The President of the Republic, Laurentino Cortizo, announced that the measure starts tomorrow morning at 5:00 am
An interesting blog from Splunk, a Bay Area big data / log analysis company:
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/leadership/bringing-data-to-covid-19.html
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/leadership/bringing-data-to-covid-19.html
I went to the local shopping mall to p/u my Rx at the drug store. The mall was near empty, 6 people walking around and 2 stores open. A games store with pool tables, card games, frisbees and stuff and the other a ladies undies and sexy stuff store was open and doing business.
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