Coronavirus Official Case Counts – World 380,000, USA 43,000

31 thoughts on “Coronavirus Official Case Counts – World 380,000, USA 43,000”

1. The front-end-of-the-storm statistics were ‘mortality around 1%’, which was also said to be ‘about 10× the average seasonal flu mortality’.

   Where I have a problem with this statement is that you’re basing the 1% for COVID19 on a massive undercount of cases, but you’re failing to apply the same to flu’s 0.1%.

   I agree that C19 cases are undercounted, but seasonal flu cases are also undercounted. Its 0.1% death rate is only for confirmed and diagnosed cases, by definition.

   There are a lot of mild cases of the flu that aren’t diagnosed and aren’t counted. If they are accounted for, the flu’s death rate would be lower too.

   If we rely on the proper definition of CFR (case fatality rate), it is defined as deaths per diagnosed cases. Under that definition, we’re seeing many countries with C19 CFR of 2, 3, even 4%. These aren’t outliers – they seem to the majority (at least in so far as I bothered calculating).

   But I totally agree that the definition of CFR is problematic, and invites statistical errors. I don’t know if epidemiology has a good solution for that other than best-guess estimates. And it won’t have until full virological profiling becomes widespread in the global population. Test every virus that every person has, the same way we take complete blood counts now.

2. It might help as treatment, I doubt it prevents infection. Even where this is rampant, it is still just a few people in a thousand. Treating everyone, just doesn’t make any sense.
   People are already dying from overdosing on this, even without general availability.

3. see my direct response to Doc

4. Mmm… beware the forces that drive the Media into Frenzy. It used to be the providence of “tabloids”, and other whack-job nutcase mags. And late nite, deep-in-the-fuzzy UHF broadcast TV. Along with end-of-times spouting Religious kooks.  

   Take a look at the media … not dominated by America’s Trump-is-always-Evil-and-we’ve-got-to-Sink-him outlets. 

   Europe’s media, while acting dutifully alarmed, didn’t run down the rabbit hole, demanding every last mortal within the walls of their kingdoms to hunker down and avidly work to destroy their economies from within. Hence, with rather poor on-the-ground-testing, it looks like CV19 is exhibiting high mortality in Europe. 

   Except for Germany. 
   Of course.

   I find that every morning, a little green imp on my left shoulder whispers “do you really believe this shît” in my ear. And I have to say, thinking that way — even experimentally just for the Hêll of it — provides balance, overall. Not sure which gremlin to believe, of course. But it is alway worth listening to the contrary ones. Stereo.

   ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

5. Umm… i’m not sure if the emergency measure being taken, today, now, haphazardly around the world’s countries … would have been done this way, had better measures, countermeasures, disease ‘factors and propensities’ had been well regarded and known beforehand.  

   And there are a whole-lot-of-idiots out there, using the absurdly skewed statistics of Iran, Italy, Spain and France to pad their theory that the death-to-infected-ratio is way higher than ½% to 1%.  

   I just don’t think it is quite as terrible as the yellow journals want to keep pushing it up to be. But hey… fuzzy bunnies an happy wildflower infestations of picture-perfect cow pastures … doesn’t sell news. Coming Panic And Certain Death of YOUR Grandmother and Sister, Coming To A Theatre Near You!!!! sells a lot of bbb-bb-b-bûllsnot eyeball space.

   ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
   ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

6. Yah, maybe. 

   But I’m pretty sure the Dead in Germany … are dead.

   And those who died aren’t counted as “dead because of drowning in snot” or “too high a fever” or “want of oxygen”. Germans are notorious for precise, outstanding record keeping.

   The front-end-of-the-storm statistics were ‘mortality around 1%’, which was also said to be ‘about 10× the average seasonal flu mortality’.  

   Insofar as Germany, US and S. Korea are lining up, with their better testing, I see no reason to doubt those original empirical claims.  

   In which case, my gross-estimation-and-justification remains valid.  

   2.5 million infected (actually 2.9 million as of today). Worldwide.

   It is a disease that is “out of the bag”, and like a really large herd of cats, is not going to be put back “in the bag” by any of the present don’t-go-to-work dynamics.  The only mitigation strategy that will be effective is a big compound methodology:

   • rapid roll-out of apparently survival-enhancing drug treatments
   • rapid roll-out of a weakly preventative injectable vaccine
   • WAY better testing, and quarantine of infected case
   • rapid ramp-up of ventilators manufacture, ventilator repurposing, ventilator ‘hacks’
   • requirement for all people in public to wear simple face-masks
   • ditto for either disposable gloves, or washable white cotton gloves.

   That’ll work, and will get people back to work.

   ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
   ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

7. Ummm… exactly. I’m beginning to believe that the medical-pölïtical community is seriously overblowing the cause-for-civilization-crushing-alarm. Much tho’ it irks me to say so, maybe Trump is right! (I really don’t like his glib characterization of the crisis. Rubs me wrong at the core.)

   Thing is, as T said (paraphrasing), “we really have to be cautious about applying a ‘cure’ that is far worse than the ‘disease'”. I agree. 

   Seen a lot of articles as of yesterday and this morning which kind of echo this opinion. IF … the statistical outliers are Italy, Spain and Iran, (i.e. having huge deaths-to-cases ratios), and if more-likely is Germany, US and South Korea (0.44%, 0.68% and 1.2% respectively), then what we’re looking at is a really lousy influenza season. 

   As you say. On the 10 to 20 years bad basis.

   IN WHICH CASE, … if so … then Trump is basically right. Let’s get over our (ahem) trumped up media-amplified-and-echo-chambered fear, and get on with a bad influenza, civilization-of-the-planet-wise. Yah, many (30% or so) of us will get sick. ½% or so will perish. (your factor of 3-either-way), mitigated TO BE SURE by rapid-roll-out of upcoming palliative treatments and perhaps also a modestly prophylactic vaccine injection. Then, as Trump sez, the world Economy will explode back. On Fire.  

   By Easter? … maybe!
   We’ll see.

   ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

8. Germany have very different procedures for recording cause of death than most EU countries and is almost certainly under-counting deaths related to C-19. It is more likely to be an outlier rather than a good model of morbidity.

   Deaths-to-cases is incredibly imprecise given different methods and sampling.

9. I’m intrigued. What is your theory as to why the “people in charge” want the population to be more scared than they should be?

10. Maybe they can Pull it off for New York because of special attention from White House , but what about the next 10 epicenters In other states starting up now that will be just as big as New Yorks present size of pandemic ….Apparently new York is more important?

    lets hope the malaria drug works …that could be a Game changer

11. There are many proposed drug treatments but I have not seen the trials results showing 100% effectiveness. Where is it being applied and why has it not had huge impact in Italy, Spain or New York? Clinical trials are not expected to have conclusive results for another month. There are hundreds of clinical trials. Which treatment do you think is 100% effective? The malaria ones ? That works on flu in tissue trials but fails in mice and humans for flu. They are trying it. I think the most promising is the antibodies from the blood of people who already are recovering. The trending is New York is not good for the hospitalizations and ICU. They would have to be using the most advanced treatments. They are doing some clinical trials. But they are expanding the number of beds in New York to 140,000.

12. Frankly, if we were seeing scenes of Italy sinking beneath the waves then global warming would seem a lot more real and urgent than it currently does.

13. And the drug treatment is possibly BS anyway, based on sloppy science and the researcher’s desire for notoriety.

    https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-an-effective-treatment-for-covid-19/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=are-hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-an-effective-treatment-for-covid-19

14. New York hospitals could be overrun in 10 days. The people needing ventilators is 3X the death rate where the medical system is not overrun. The death rate shoots up 4X or more with a medical system that is overrun. The massive virus loads in the air of the hospitals means that 10-20% of the doctors and nurses (even younger ones) can get taken out. The people who are 30-40 who do not die get hit bad. Even an x-olympic swimmer who is 30. Said when he had it he could only walk a little ways before getting out of breath. His body and conditioning were wrecked. Italy has more cases but cannot focus on testing because they cannot even take all the people into hospital or collect the bodies. Spain is as bad. We care about all people even if they are old.

15. This is our soon to be future:

    NYC: 8 million infected, up to 240 thousand dead, up to a million permanently injured.
    USA: 340 million infected, up to 10 million dead, up to 50 million permanently injured.

    The only way to change some of these numbers is testing contacts and isolating them quickly, continuing with the social distancing for months, and finding a way to reduce the chance or severity of the pneumonia.

    We can’t afford to be timid or slow. And we can’t screw over states because a majority of their people vote for the other political party because there will be a price to pay for who ever did this.

16. Allowing people access to something that might kill them if they take far too much is a dangerous idea.

    You can’t remove the dumbest and most wilfully ignorant 5% of the population.

    Not with an election coming up.

17. Insofar as I can tell, it really is progressing like one of the Great Influenza pandemics, friend. The unique things about this one are that it seems to attack the lungs with unusual virulence, and it also appears to have both a long enough exposure-to-symptoms-showing time, (but much shorter infectiousness time), that there are a LOT of people milling about, not showing symptoms, infecting others at a prodigious rate.  

    Then, when we ‘catch it’, the outcome is on the order of 10× to 15× worse than a ‘common seasonal influenza’ infection.  Which is not good. Amongst the elderly, the immune-compromised, the COPD bunch, asthmatics, people susceptible to pneumonia, recent surgery patients and all that, the mortality rates are … shockingly high. 

    But amongst teenagers, not very much worse than an ordinary flu. 

    So… it is different than a Flu. But in all other regards, it is the SAME as a flu, in terms of its infectiousness and the need seriously powerful intervention techniques and technology to arrest its ceaseless, tireless propensity to propagate.  

    Wash hands, wear gloves in public, wear face-masks whether you’re sick or well, distance yourself from others, don’t congregate in groups. It is NOT a fashion statement. … or maybe it is … au currant.

    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

18. OK fellow goats. 

    To REALLY get a handle on the number of people infected to date we need look at just 3 numbers.

    [1] America’s deaths-to-cases ratio
    [2] Germany’s deaths-to-cases ratio
    [3] Total deaths worldwide, LESS China’s, S. Korea’s and Iran’s numbers.  

    № 1 is 0.68%
    № 2 is 0.44%
    № 3 is 13,343 as of 1 PM pacific time, March 24, 2020

    JUSTIFICATION — there are astoundingly high ratios for other countries:

    ITALY — 9.3%
    FRANCE — 4.3%
    SPAIN — 8.1%
    UK — 3.3%

    These countries, as wonderful and loving as they are, are also in the thick of fighting a run-away epidemic. That and they are surprisingly ‘doctor-phobic’.  So while the deaths build the number of sick people hiding at home is large. Large and uncounted.

    Therefore … the ratios of US and Germany are very likely way more representative of the deaths-to-cases rate.  

    Therefore, 

    Estimated cases = (13,343) / √( 0.0068 × 0.0044 );

    That last bit … √(product) is called the geometric mean, and is more appropriate than an average when dealing with exponentially growing things. 

    Estimated cases = 2,440,000 worldwide;

    Sit back and absorb that. It is VERY likely to be the ‘right number’ today milling around across all the countries of the world transfecting others. 

    The easily remembered ‘quick factor’ is (175 × deaths) … 

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

19. Latest WHO statistics, 3/24/20:
    The top twenty countries have 90.6% of the cases and 97.4% of the deaths.
    The US has 11.8% of the CORVID-19 cases and 3.4% of the CORVID-19 deaths (593)).
    CORVID-19 is NOT a global issue.
    The lying, rabble-rousing, fact free, shit-stirring, fake news MSM propaganda machine obviously want the public to believe that a positive test for the Covid-19 virus is a sho’nuff painful, expensive hospital stay which one probably won’t survive.
    And if all 46,500 cases showed up for treatment it would be disaster.
    But 98% of those US positive cases are asymptomatic, they don’t produce a data point, i.e. no doctor, no hospital, no death.
    So, 2% of 46,500 = 930. That’s not going to tax the medical system.
    Much like the climate change scam models assuming RCP 8.5 for all their hysterical predictions or accelerating sea level rise that did not exist.

20. Yes the testing is the key.

21. FFS no its not just the dead. Jesus christ look people who get sick.are most often sick for days or even weeks and there are thousands at least right now. Most of the people we have found we found because they showed up.

    Some people are suffering permanent lung and kidney damage because of the virus and not just the old but young people and sometimes perfectly healthy people. This is a real danger.

    We need to be damn careful but lets be honest the problem is people are stupid sometimes and ignorant, They wont wash their damn hands or wont stay home when sick (or can’t because they are not give sick days or enough of them). They go to the beach or park in DROVES because they fundamentally don’t get how viruses spread or have been Trained into thinking everything is fine if they want it to be.

    We have to get back to work or the economy dies and THEN everyone dies. But people HAVE to be careful. That is the hard part especially with people acting like “its just the flu” still.

22. Australia and New Zealand are both exponential. NZ doesn’t have deaths yet because they still have relatively few cases. In Australia, the death count is low because they had few cases until recently. It takes a while. But the cases will multiply, and the deaths will come.

    Same for the rest of the world. Almost every country has cases now. In most of them only a few so far, but that’s how it started elsewhere too. This thing is global. In a month, there will likely be a lot more cases everywhere. The countries that are under quarantine now should see a slow down, and some of the others might be able to stop the spread early on, but this virus has proven itself to be difficult to contain.

    Two more points:
    — The countries with a small number of cases will catch up just like Europe is currently catching up to China. Where 80% of the cases are now means nothing. Exponentials start slow, but speed up.
    — All cases start asymptomatic, but a certain percentage deteriorate over time. As I said, it takes a while.

23. Tens of thousands would be dying of overdoses. They would just assume more is better. Even if they are warned.

24. It’s real… if you don’t slow it down…then you are going to have to many sick people All at the same time without any means of treating them …
    I suppose they could just give them Some fever medicine and some pain killers and see if they pass out dead instead of trying to treat them… Its only 3% of the population that dies. Those odds are too bad… better than creating an economic depression and downward spiral by Suddenly spiking unemployment to 30%…

25. Latest WHO statistics, 2/23/20:
    Italy, China, Spain, Iran and France have 60.3% of the CORVID-19 cases and 87.6% of the CORVID-19 deaths.
    The US has 10.1% of the CORVID-19 cases and 3.1% of the CORVID-19 deaths (473).
    The US is moving up in the number of cases because it does a lot of testing – DUH! Besides it’s the death count that matters not the cases. 98% of US cases are asymptomatic.
    CORVID-19 is NOT a global issue.
    It’s the old and sick past their shelf life that the CORVID-19 is culling.
    Australia and NZ are freaking out, but Australia has 7 deaths and NZ zero. What’s the matter with these people?
    Watch all the assorted data presentations with funny scaling. With two different scales the US can be made to look just like Italy even though Italy has over ten times the deaths as the US.
    Remember, there’s big money to be made, and careers and book deals and bylines in scaring people.
    YTD shot in Chicago: 469.
    Number of US gun violence deaths since 2003: 8,681.
    It’s the novel hot lead flu.
    A little perspective.

    If all 40,000+ cases showed up for treatment it would be disaster.
    But 98% of US cases are asymptomatic, i.e. no doctor, no hospital, no death, not in the data.
    So, 2% of 40,000 = 800. That’s not going to tax the medical system.
    Just like the climate change scam assuming RCP8.5 for all their hysterical predictions – that never came to pass.

26. Trump has said he’s hoping businesses will reopen sooner than later. But, I’m concerned about everything opening back up while the virus is continuing to spread. Could really screw us.

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/23/coronavirus-trump-says-businesses-could-reopen-soon-while-fighting-covid.html

27. Still doubling every 4 days in nyc…. that puts them at 80k in 8 days….Hospitalization rate of 10%…. 80k* 0.10 = 8k hospital beds in use in 8 days in nyc… just my laymen’s math… Not even counting people who recover and leave hospital… error in math? Any ideas what percent of people admitted to hospital require ICU… and what is average stay for ICU verses. non ICU hospitalization for cronavirus? They could easily require 16k hospital beds in 12 days at present trend… assuming nobody leaves hospital as recovered… then 32k At 16 days… Of course lockdown may start to slow exponential trend… We don’t even need to guess over 100k hospital beds in a month unless exponential slows down

28. The craziest thing happened. I was on my way to fill up my car when I saw this guy wrestling with a coronavirus. I tried to help him but because of social distancing I couldn’t get within 5 feet of him. He managed to fight off the coronavirus but then it attacked me and now I got coronavirus up my ass 🙁

29. We can damp the virus with testing even if it means that each one of us will need to be tested once a month.

30. A low dose of hydroxychloroquine for all NYC residents able to tolerate it might be a really good idea about now.

31. NYC is getting crazy

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