[ungermm]

[quote="ungermm]With a rate of 2%, Covid-19 is close to 200 times more deadly than the seasonal flu death rate of around 0.1%.

I think you meant 20x. Not 200x.
[/QUOTE]

Matt you're correct, and an interesting perspective about bacteria growth. There's been so much attention about Covid-19, I didn't worry enough about my stocks. I wish I had sold my stocks last week!

 

[Manta Rallier]

Regarding the virus, as of this morning the death rate of coronavirus patients in the US is around 2.7% (1300 confirmed cases with 36 deaths). The majority of deaths were in Washington where two nursing homes with frail elderly were infected. Flu has a rate of around 2%, some years higher than others depending on the particular strain that goes around. This is from the raw numbers that are being made available to date. So it makes sense to be vigilant but this panic seems to be manufactured.

The world mortality rate is running in the mid-high 3% range and it will go up as some of the currently seriously ill will not make it. The US rate is lower at this moment simply because the fact that the vast majority of those currently infected are relatively recent; more of them will pass away and the mortality rate will increase. We are just too early on the curve to have seen the rate go to near it's full rate in the US yet; the vast majoroty of cases here are still not finally resolved.

To put this mortality rate in perspective, I am accepting that we will have news of the loss of a member of this group, based on the typical higher age here. As it looks right now, the mortality rate for US males in the 60-70 year old group is going to almost quadruple over the usual rate, based on current stats and the mortality rates per age group in China.

Edit to add: I realize that my quadrupling number is based on everyone having this virus in year's time, which is not going to be true. If 1/3 of the population caught it in a year's time, then the mortality rate for 60-69 yo males in the US would approximately.double.

 

[Mercougary]

I guess we have that to look forward to. C'Mon Man. Lets all just go out to the garage and work on the Opels over a beer.???

 

[kwschumm]

We buy most supplies at Costco. Given the large quantities that stuff comes in there we always seem to be hoarding.

 

[The Cub]

We buy most supplies at Costco. Given the large quantities that stuff comes in there we always seem to be hoarding.

I suppose it will have an effect on car shows. The two hotels I worked at today were less than 20% full used to being above 80% with group cancellations extending into September. Housekeepers out of work and the maintenance guy shutting power off to six floors not being used. That was the reality that hit home today. I have to admit I was somewhat oblivious until now

 

[Autoholic]

Just start drinking some corona. If you're gonna die from this virus, you might as well die happy.

Personally, I doubt we'll see even 40% of the US population get this. Is it serious? You bet. But if 40% of the population got this, the US has 108.7 million adults 50 and older. source If 40% of that group got the virus (43.5 million), then 2% (more or less the current mortality rate) of that group would be ~870,000 people who died. Literally, it would become more deadly than the entire Civil War. The best stock pick would become funeral homes and the best real estate purchase would be cemeteries. It would be a reckoning that would shape US history for the next 100 years, or more.

If that's the reality we're facing, you don't need more toilet paper. You need to go buy more guns and ammo.

 

[First opel 1981]

REALITY CHECK

First off, the numbers we see aren't real numbers. The numbers are of fatalities of people TESTED. There are multiples of the people tested that aren't tested, get the virus, let it run it's course and they live. So the actual mortality rate is lower.
I know someone that's symptomatic, called the doctor like the CDC said, and the doctor said they aren't testing.
A local hospital confessed that they are allowed to run 80 tests a day. No more than that. So, nobody is really being tested.

Secondly, humans aren't endangered. Yes, it sucks to have someone you know die. We will all have someone we know die of something.

Third, destroying the freedom and economy of the world to keep us safe from this virus is not going to do anyone any good in the long run. Poverty kills people just like a virus does. It also makes people miserable, like a virus does. The difference is poverty is suffering for months and years instead of a couple weeks.

Part of me says that anyone worried should just crawl into their little bubble and watch the world go by. The other part says let's have the virus run it's course and let Darwinism take effect.

And I'm PISSED that the annual Portland Auto Swap Meets are cancelled for a bug that everyone is going to get anyway and (likely) over 99% of the people will survive.

 

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

But if 40% of the population got this, the US has 108.7 million adults 50 and older. source If 40% of that group got the virus (43.5 million), then 2% (more or less the current mortality rate) of that group would be ~870,000 people who died.

Oh, no, it's much worse. The 2% is an average across all age groups. The average for older people is exponentially higher.

What percentage is older than 60? Because that's where the graph spikes. 70 million americans are 60 or older.

Below age 50, it's 0.3% fatal.
In your 50s, 0.8%. Still not bad. After that though, it's brutal.
60s? 10%
70s? 32%
80s? 57%

And that's IF the hospitals have room for you like they currently do. In Italy, they're choosing which people get unplugged from their ventilators to give others a chance. So people who are probably savable are dying anyways because of the lack of medical resources.

If that's the reality we're facing, you don't need more toilet paper. You need to go buy more guns and ammo.

Ridiculous. What are guns and ammo going to do?

2% of the population is going to die. Most of them, retired. The workforce is still a workforce. Food is still going to be available.

I know someone that's symptomatic, called the doctor like the CDC said, and the doctor said they aren't testing.
A local hospital confessed that they are allowed to run 80 tests a day. No more than that. So, nobody is really being tested.

The US tested 50 people TOTAL Monday-Wednesday. Just pure idiotic response from the US. Of all the developed nations in the world, the US is by far, by an order of magnitude or two, having the worst response to this.

Secondly, humans aren't endangered. Yes, it sucks to have someone you know die. We will all have someone we know die of something.

I don't get this logic, though I see it a lot.

Then why do you bother looking both ways before crossing the street? Why do you bother stopping at stop signs? Why do you bother to wear a condom when you're bangin' an AIDS patient? Why not share needles with an Ebola patient?

Yeah, those things happen, but, do you want them to? Or would you rather it be something else, at a later time?

It seems this attitude is used to rationalize any behavior an individual feels like engaging in.

Third, destroying the freedom and economy of the world to keep us safe from this virus is not going to do anyone any good in the long run.

So, you would recommend not taking the consensus advice of the best experts in the world, because you know better?

And I'm PISSED that the annual Portland Auto Swap Meets are cancelled for a bug that everyone is going to get anyway and (likely) over 99% of the people will survive.

Can't recall the last time I heard such a selfish comment from a person. I mean, you can be upset (it sucks that the show is cancelled sure), but you're upset at the decision to cancel the show?

There is literally a pandemic going on, sweeping the global population, and you're upset about a car show being cancelled? As if society has it's priorities wrong, and car shows should be above the health of the population in a global crisis?

I can't think of anything less important, and more trivial to give up, than a damned car show, when the lives of millions of people are in balance.

Yes, most people are going to get this, and most people are going to survive it. But if it all happens at once, it's going to be far, far, far worse. Worse deaths. Worse destruction. Worse economically.

It's a pandemic, it has exponential growth. Small sacrifices in public gatherings will have huge impact on the infection rates and society's ability to handle the medical and economic burden.

If you're big on Darwinism, let's just get rid of hospitals permanently. Who needs medical care, if it's going to happen it's going to happen.

 

[Autoholic]

Matt, I think you’re reading too far into this situation. If it really did get as bad as you describe with senior citizens, the reason why you need guns and ammo would be the mass hysteria. Society in America won’t handle mass portions of the elderly dying very well. It will make it seem like the end of days when millions of old people are dropping like flies.

I’ll admit if I end up being wrong but we’re not going to lose millions of Americans to this. Did we see millions die from H1N1? No. Was it a pandemic? Yes, over 700 million people got it around the world. But it only ended up with a mortality rate of 0.02%. This is still a very fluid situation. When the dust settles, this won’t be the Grimm Reaper of the elderly you try to make it out to be. I’ll admit it if I was wrong but I’m calling BS. The US still has very few cases of this and State governments are doing more than Trump has to fight this.

The real problem will be the economy. This is going to gut the world economy and the US is going to be back at 2008 by the time the dust settles. On the bright side, there will be a lot of money to be made in the recovery. Ford’s stock is going broke, pretty soon it will be a good time to invest in Ford.

 

[OrangPeEL]

The US tested 50 people TOTAL Monday-Wednesday. Just pure idiotic response from the US. Of all the developed nations in the world, the US is by far, by an order of magnitude or two, having the worst response to this.

Sounds like Interesting and disappointing news. Please link that source - thanks!

 

[RallyBob]

The governor of New Hampshire just declared a state of emergency. Kind of ridiculous when there are only 50 confirmed cases in the state.

I just spoke with my stepson however, and the base he was supposed to continue his training in (he’s a Marine) was locked down for 60 days due to 16 confirmed cases. Nobody in/nobody out. So he is home for the forseeable future.

 

[rrossjr]

Sounds like Interesting and disappointing news. Please link that source - thanks!

By far the most important weapon for managing and minimizing the impact of any pandemic is early and accurate testing for the virus.
The US response had lagged woefully compared to other countries. Without this data, epidemiologists and health care professionals are working blindfolded.

 

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Sounds like Interesting and disappointing news. Please link that source - thanks!

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) -- Scroll to the bottom, middle column (CDC). Monday-Wednesday. 28, 23, 0 = 51 total.

In perspective, South Korea has tested 200,000 people.

[Edited to add: That's 51 "tests" of which, multiple tests were for some of the same people, so, it's even lower number of "people tested" if that's the metric you want to use]

 

[kwilford]

MODERATOR's NOTE: We are getting very close to crossing the acceptable line of NO POLITICS on this Forum. And maybe just more than a bit over it, as discussions on guns and politicians simply isn't allowed.

Further posts on those topics will be dealt with quickly and with prejudice.

 

[First opel 1981]

I figure this weekend I can make enough money to fully restore mt GT.
I have 32 MEGA rolls of Charmin, Ultra strong. I'll sell them to the highest bidders.

For those who are worried about running out of TP, remember that you can conserve by using both sides.

This reminds me. I always like seeing Matt post. I enjoy reading his opinions... at least the 10% of the post I actually read.

 

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

For anyone interested in actually reading, instead of just watching news anchors interview people on the street and speculate wildly...

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now

Politicians and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When?

medium.com

I'll highlight a few snippets.

Here's an important graph. It's historic and measured, not a prediction. It's actual data, of this outbreak, from China. The Blue is what is actually happening. The Orange is what has been detected as happening. Note that it's only when the first few cases of detection that start coming in (in the "Don't panic, look how few people have it! It's not a big deal!" denial stage), that action is taken (in this case, China responded viciously and successfully as only an authoritarian regime can), and the actual rate of infection slows.

"have you wondered why Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand or Hong Kong haven’t? [...] All of them were hit by SARS in 2003, and all of them learned from it. They learned how viral and lethal it could be, so they knew to take it seriously. That’s why all of their graphs, despite starting to grow much earlier, still don’t look like exponentials"

"This is what you can conclude:

- Excluding these, countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
- Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%

Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten."

Another thing, for serious cases, ventilators are needed. There are only 250 in the US. Best guess for spread is 96 million cases in the US. Of those, 1%, or 960,000 will need those ventilators. 250/960,000 = 1/4000 will actually get them. 3999 die per 1 survive on the available ventilator. Plus, that ventilator exists in the first place to help with the existing and expected medical load. Anyone who needed it for that is now going to die instead. So, functionally zero people who need one will have one.

"All of this is what drives a system to have a fatality rate of ~4% instead of ~0.5%. If you want your city or your country to be part of the 4%, don’t do anything today."

"If we reduce the infections as much as possible, our healthcare system will be able to handle cases much better, driving the fatality rate down. And, if we spread this over time, we will reach a point where the rest of society can be vaccinated, eliminating the risk altogether. So our goal is not to eliminate coronavirus contagions. It’s to postpone them."

"If the transmission rate goes down by 25% (through Social Distancing), it flattens the curve and delays the peak by a whole 14 weeks. Lower the transition rate by 50%, and you can’t see the epidemic even starting within a quarter."

And lastly... the importance of acting right now versus even just tomorrow, let alone not at all, is 40% difference in cases.

So... it's complicated. People's brains do not intuitively grasp the exponential function. Everyone instinctively just wants to wait and see, then act "if/when it's time", but "wait and see" only tells you "Oops, yep, a month ago was the best time", it's too late. That's why it's important for things like car shows (and other public gatherings) to be shut down and shut down now, not waiting to see if it gets worse. Pandemics are not linear. Do you want that black line, or that red one, or that green one?

For what it's worth, social isolation and no public gatherings has a decent chance of bankrupting me and many of my peers, (a huge portion of my income comes from events), and I still think it's the best thing to do. The alternative in unconscionable.

I’ll admit if I end up being wrong but we’re not going to lose millions of Americans to this.

It depends on the severity of the response, but it looks like that's going to be the ballpark regardless. I'd be thrilled to be wrong. I'm not a panicking type. But the data is there.

 

[opelgtboy70]

For anyone interested in actually reading, instead of just watching news anchors interview people on the street and speculate wildly...

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now

Politicians and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When?

medium.com

I'll highlight a few snippets.

Here's an important graph. It's historic and measured, not a prediction. It's actual data, of this outbreak, from China. The Blue is what is actually happening. The Orange is what has been detected as happening. Note that it's only when the first few cases of detection that start coming in (in the "Don't panic, look how few people have it! It's not a big deal!" denial stage), that action is taken (in this case, China responded viciously and successfully as only an authoritarian regime can), and the actual rate of infection slows.

"have you wondered why Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand or Hong Kong haven’t? [...] All of them were hit by SARS in 2003, and all of them learned from it. They learned how viral and lethal it could be, so they knew to take it seriously. That’s why all of their graphs, despite starting to grow much earlier, still don’t look like exponentials"

"This is what you can conclude:

• Excluding these, countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
• Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%

Put in another way: Countries that act fast can reduce the number of deaths by a factor of ten."

Another thing, for serious cases, ventilators are needed. There are only 250 in the US. Best guess for spread is 96 million cases in the US. Of those, 1%, or 960,000 will need those ventilators. 250/960,000 = 1/4000 will actually get them. 3999 die per 1 survive on the available ventilator. Plus, that ventilator exists in the first place to help with the existing and expected medical load. Anyone who needed it for that is now going to die instead. So, functionally zero people who need one will have one.

"All of this is what drives a system to have a fatality rate of ~4% instead of ~0.5%. If you want your city or your country to be part of the 4%, don’t do anything today."

"If we reduce the infections as much as possible, our healthcare system will be able to handle cases much better, driving the fatality rate down. And, if we spread this over time, we will reach a point where the rest of society can be vaccinated, eliminating the risk altogether. So our goal is not to eliminate coronavirus contagions. It’s to postpone them."

"If the transmission rate goes down by 25% (through Social Distancing), it flattens the curve and delays the peak by a whole 14 weeks. Lower the transition rate by 50%, and you can’t see the epidemic even starting within a quarter."

And lastly... the importance of acting right now versus even just tomorrow, let alone not at all, is 40% difference in cases.

So... it's complicated. People's brains do not intuitively grasp the exponential function. Everyone instinctively just wants to wait and see, then act "if/when it's time", but "wait and see" only tells you "Oops, yep, a month ago was the best time", it's too late. That's why it's important for things like car shows (and other public gatherings) to be shut down and shut down now, not waiting to see if it gets worse. Pandemics are not linear. Do you want that black line, or that red one, or that green one?

For what it's worth, social isolation and no public gatherings has a decent chance of bankrupting me and many of my peers, (a huge portion of my income comes from events), and I still think it's the best thing to do. The alternative in unconscionable.



It depends on the severity of the response, but it looks like that's going to be the ballpark regardless. I'd be thrilled to be wrong. I'm not a panicking type. But the data is there.

and your one of the guys buying all the toilet paper. The only people at risk to die from this are the sick and elderly. Stop spreading fear.

Karl

 

[Autoholic]

"Data is there"

Anyone who is an engineer knows that data can be easily manipulated, depending on how it is analyzed and that is assuming it's correct.

Let's start with the bit about the US only having 250 ventilators. That's incredibly wrong. Sure, we can't cover a million Americans but right now, we aren't anywhere close to using even 1% of how many ventilators are on hand in the US. As far as having enough right now, we're fine but this is an area of concern. It also helps to have actual data on how many we currently have. Your info, makes it seems like hospitals don't know what a ventilator is or why they would need a handful for use all the time at bare minimum.

"A February report from the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins revealed the US has about 160,000 ventilators ready for use in hospitals, with another 8,900 held in a national reserve. The report doesn't say how many are typically in use, but notes that demand could increase by at least 25% during an influenza pandemic."

Expert estimates reveal that US hospitals may run short on life-saving ventilators as the coronavirus outbreak ramps up

The US has about 170,000 ventilators, which could help keep very sick coronavirus patients alive. That may not be enough.

www.businessinsider.com

Getting back to the data, the US only has 1,629 confirmed cases right now. There could definitely be more that haven't been tested but hospitals are limited on how many tests they can run due to supply right now. How many have died? 41 as of 3/13. That's 2.5%, but there is a huge issue with this data. It's not nearly a big enough sample size for virology and too many people haven't been tested.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S.

Even if you look at the data from China, they haven't tested enough people. China has over a billion people, they haven't even come close to testing 1% of their population. If we really want to dive into preventative measures, you have to test everyone and quarantine anyone who is positive even if they aren't showing symptoms yet. That can be almost impossible to do in reality. So, we focus on people who are sick. Looking at China's data...

"China has seen 80,754 confirmed cases, 3,136 of whom have died"

Coronavirus: China says disease 'curbed' in Wuhan and Hubei

President Xi Jinping says the spread of the disease had been "basically curbed" in Hubei province.

www.bbc.com

That's roughly 3.9% mortality at the epicenter of the outbreak. Current data shows that China seems to be past the exponential growth with fewer new cases. China has over a billion people and this didn't manage to reach even 0.01% of their population. Yes, China's iron fisted management of the problem helped that. But, China is also far more densely populated in Wuhan and Hubei than in America. That made it very easy for the virus to spread.

What I'm getting at, is this. If the country where it started and with roughly 4 times as many people as the US didn't see even 10,000 people die, it's nuts to think that will happen here, let alone a million Americans which would dwarf China's fatality by a factor of roughly 100,000. For that to happen, State governments and the Fed government would have to do absolutely nothing to tackle this problem. Yes, we can do more but spreading a belief that millions will die in America because of covid-19 is 1, not actually backed by data and 2, only going to increase hysteria which doesn't help.

Matt, as kindly as I can say this, stop spreading unfounded fear and hysteria. It's good to be concerned, but right now you're screaming fire in an auditorium because of a lit candle. Let the medical professionals who actually know what they are doing be the source of information and how it should be interpreted with advice on how to proceed. Spreading unfounded fear isn't going to help anyone, stop blowing things vastly out of proportion.

 

[OrangPeEL]

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) -- Scroll to the bottom, middle column (CDC). Monday-Wednesday. 28, 23, 0 = 51 total.

Thanks Matt! Some brighter info in there...51 collected by CDC labs, plus additional 3900+ collected from US public health labs during same 3 days.

Just me speculating future totals will improve as testing becomes increasingly accessable, and ratio in cdc/public collection will widen. Not a knock against the CDC, just a limit of fed program scope and applied reach.

 

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

And your one of the guys buying all the toilet paper.

Uhh, no? I'm not.

The only people at risk to die from this are the sick and elderly. Stop spreading fear.

If you're not afraid, you're not informed.

The sick and the elderdly are most affected, yes, at 10-30x the rate of the average flu, and this flu is massively more contagious.

Even 1 in 500 healthy people will die. That's at least one kid in every school.

And everyone else who needs medical attention in the coming months for all the normal things that people have go wrong for them and the reasons everyone already has health insurance? It will functionally be like there is no medical system at all, since it will already be several multiples over capacity. It will be like going back to 150 years ago in terms of the ability to be treated.

"Data is there"

Anyone who is an engineer knows that data can be easily manipulated, depending on how it is analyzed and that is assuming it's correct.

So, the experts at analyzing this data, the World Health Organization, and the national health departments of just about every country in the world, who agree on the scale of the problem... they're all wrong?

"A February report from the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins revealed the US has about 160,000 ventilators ready for use in hospitals

Sorry I misquoted. 250 ECMOs (Extra-corporeal oxygenation). Which are used with ventilators in the most severe cases (i.e. those that are going to die, the ones we're talking about).

Getting back to the data, the US only has 1,629 confirmed cases right now. There could definitely be more that haven't been tested but hospitals are limited on how many tests they can run due to supply right now. How many have died? 41 as of 3/13. That's 2.5%, but there is a huge issue with this data. It's not nearly a big enough sample size for virology and too many people haven't been tested.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S.

The article I linked in the previous post covers this in detail.

Why would the death rate in America be different than in the other countries that are ahead of us in this outbreak?

You don't have to say that the sample size is too small to draw conclusions, it's the same damned virus, you can just look at the data from other countries.

Death rate is somewhere between 2 and 4%.

The governor of Ohio stated today that they suspect there to be 100,000 current undetected cases in Ohio alone.

Even if you look at the data from China, they haven't tested enough people. China has over a billion people, they haven't even come close to testing 1% of their population.

That's not now that works. You don't just test the entire populace.

I don't get your logic. You think you know how to handle a pandemic better than the nation health agencies of most of the developed world? If something doesn't make sense to you evidence-wise, but the concensus of world experts agrees that it does, the question you should ask is "How can I educate myself?" not state "Well everyone else must be wrong."

If we really want to dive into preventative measures, you have to test everyone and quarantine anyone who is positive even if they aren't showing symptoms yet.

Again, would you say you're qualified to lecture the health experts and disease control decisions?

Yes, China's iron fisted management of the problem helped that.

China put whole dozens of cities on lockdown.

China had 1800 teams of 5 people each who were functionally a Coronavirus Gestapo. China has every citizen in a database where they assign them a "social credit" score (how favorable you are to the regime, and thus what you are or aren't allowed to do in society). So they know just about everything everyone does. These teams went out to people who were infected and said "Give us the names of everyone you've interacted with in the last week and how", and then they went out and asked the same questions of all of those people, and the next, etc.

China built 2 hospitals in 10 days specifically to deal with this.

Most of that isn't even possible in a free country.

With exponential growth, small changes lead to gigantic impacts.

Yes, we can do more but spreading a belief that millions will die in America because of covid-19 is 1, not actually backed by data

96 million infected is the current conservative concensus for what is likely to happen with the US. 40-70% infection rate.

Let the medical professionals who actually know what they are doing be the source of information and how it should be interpreted with advice on how to proceed.

... I am?

I'm literally quoting the articles from the experts tracking the disease and making recommendations to the governments of the world.

Spreading unfounded fear isn't going to help anyone, stop blowing things vastly out of proportion.

There has been international (and national) outrage at the gross ineptitude of the American federal response to the crisis, and the soon to be catastrophic consequences thereof.

Have you been watching Italy? The health system is more than overwhelmed because they acted too mild and too late. There's no resources to help. Hallways and lobbies are filled, people are dying untreated.

An interesting phrase I heard today: "China bought the world time, and the US squandered it."

On interesting but unsatisfying thing I heard today is that an over-the-top response will appear the same as the correct response, because of how sensitive exponential growth is to early change in variables. "If we do everything right, it'll seem like we overreacted". Which, doesn't actually tell you whether you acted appropriately or did actually overreact, because the result is the same, some economic impact and only minor medical impact. On the flip side, the way you get to find out that you're wrong is when the infection explodes through the populace and people are dying everywhere. Then it's pretty easy to say "Oops, maybe we should've cancelled some events to slow this down."