**Official** COVID-19 Discussion

[Spark]

Was that the one that was predicting 100,000 deaths in the US at the minimum?

Yeah, and then it got revised down to 60k and people jumped all over that as proof that the scientists were being way too pessimistic.

Honestly if it really is true that they just fit Gaussians to the epidemic curve and called it a day then I literally could have done a better job of that. I would have picked a better function!

 

[RossTaylorsBox]

I'm wondering if they also make adjustments for different states being more locked down than others. Honestly would be hard to predict anything at this point.

 

[Spark]

https://covid-19.tacc.utexas.edu/me...6/ut_covid-19_mortality_forecasting_model.pdf

This is a really interesting paper that goes over in some detail the problems with "everything looks like a Gaussian!" and tries to resolve it to moving to an iterative, which still assumes the basic shape of the epidemic curve in the absence of other factors is Gaussian, but iterates its projection each day via MCMC with various assumptions on the impacts of social distancing from mobile GPS data. Results in 50k-75k deaths by the end of the month... https://covid-19.tacc.utexas.edu/projections/

 

[Flem274*]

i am bad at maths. can we have a summary of the nerd stuff in english pls?

 

[Spark]

i am bad at maths. can we have a summary of the nerd stuff in english pls?

Basically other people looked at the popular IMHE model which assumed that all the curves look exactly like a simple well-known function and pointed out that "well no stuff changes daily", and then tried to model what happens when stuff changes daily, and found that the epidemic does not subside from its peak nearly as quickly as IMHE model claims.

 

[Flem274*]

Basically other people looked at the popular IMHE model which assumed that all the curves look exactly like a simple well-known function and pointed out that "well no stuff changes daily", and then tried to model what happens when stuff changes daily, and found that the epidemic does not subside from its peak nearly as quickly as IMHE model claims.

thank you, a cliffs almost as good as your new location.

 

[hendrix]

 

[sledger]

 

[Anil]

the prophet!

 

[silentstriker]

 

[Magrat Garlick]

Apparently the survey was only for identifying people "acutely infected" with coronavirus, and did not count for asymptomatic cases or cases where people have already recovered from the virus.

Yeah this is why someone who actually speaks German would be good so this can be clarified.

I don't see why it would be restricted to "acute infection" though I guess it depends on the nature of the test. If it's a similar test to the ones used in South Korean then it should still catch a lot of mild cases.

it's a PCR test, so it would presumably count the asymptomatic cases too. Stichprobe means a population sample, and it was randomly selected from phone books, so it was not restricted to symptomatic people. .

also I think "akut" in this context more accurately translates to "current" (as opposed to chronic).

 

[Bahnz]

Hmmm, Russia appears to be heading to a bad place in a real hurry.

 

[andruid]

Hmmm, Russia appears to be heading to a bad place in a real hurry.

Really? Tell me more.

 

[Bahnz]

Really? Tell me more.

The number of infected has doubled to over 40,000 in the past 5 days. That's pretty similar to Spain's path in mid-March.

 

[duffer]

So, our Chief Minister has extended the lockdown until the 7th of May and has also banned food delivery apps. Which is terrible as those apps were delivering essentials to many people here in Hyderabad.

I might have to step outside in a few days. Dreading it tbh.

 

[Grasshopper]

The number of infected has doubled to over 40,000 in the past 5 days. That's pretty similar to Spain's path in mid-March.

Grim news.

 

[GIMH]

So can someone (Spark ideally) tell me what Belgium, France, Spain, Italy have done differently to the UK? All have worse death rates - is this a time lag, a difference in approach etc?

I know Germany has been done in terms of their lower death rate but I was very surprised to see their infection rate was higher than ours too. Any logical reasons behind that?

 

[silentstriker]

So can someone (Spark ideally) tell me what Belgium, France, Spain, Italy have done differently to the UK? All have worse death rates - is this a time lag, a difference in approach etc?

I know Germany has been done in terms of their lower death rate but I was very surprised to see their infection rate was higher than ours too. Any logical reasons behind that?

You asked Spark, so he can answer but it's a little of everything. You won't know the true rate until this all ends. Germany at the very beginning (due to massive testing) had death rate of like 0.2%, now it is about 3%! Death rates tend to get worse as the system gets overwhelmed as well, and we saw that in parts of Italy and parts of Spain. Sometimes there is a population component as well, for example, in the US, it is tearing through nursing homes, prisons and places like that (See: 70 died at a nursing home as body bags piled up). Other countries have different set ups/less nursing homes (e.g South Korea), so that adds protection. Right now, it's so difficult to say what helped and what didn't. Once this whole thing is over, people are going to look back and different responses to try to figure out what worked best.

 

[silentstriker]

The question for me for the medium and long term will be if this virus will behave like other coronaviruses in terms of immunity and spread.

 

[GIMH]

You asked Spark, so he can answer but it's a little of everything. You won't know the true rate until this all ends. Germany at the very beginning (due to massive testing) had death rate of like 0.2%, now it is about 3%! Death rates tend to get worse as the system gets overwhelmed as well, and we saw that in parts of Italy and parts of Spain. Sometimes there is a population component as well, for example, in the US, it is tearing through nursing homes, prisons and places like that (See: 70 died at a nursing home as body bags piled up). Other countries have different set ups/less nursing homes (e.g South Korea), so that adds protection. Right now, it's so difficult to say what helped and what didn't. Once this whole thing is over, people are going to look back and different responses to try to figure out what worked best.

Haha no your response is appreciated. Thanks.