I don’t think history will repeat itself, because we aren’t as mobile as we were then, and people are more likely to heed the advice of medical experts because we all believe in science now.

I think the biggest threat is innumeracy. I’ve heard many well-meaning people compare the number of deaths for COVID-19 so far to those for seasonal flu. Or they divide the number of deaths by the population. For me, the rate of change is all I’m watching. It’s meaningless to look at data from a single day, particularly this early in the game.

What we really need is for Nate Silver to stop modeling the Democratic primary, and switch his talents over to this epidemic. Big data ought to be able to tell us what the range of outcomes might be.

Wow, exact same for me. At the end I was laying under a pile of blankets, shaking like crazy. I had the flu shot in January, so I doubt it was seasonal flu. I hope that was it (COVID-19) and I’m done for a while.

I thought the same thing but as my friend pointed out to me this morning, that’s just one article from China - it’s anecdotal. We need more data and analysis. But anecdotes like that do make me glad I’m bunkered down for 3 weeks.

Hell yeah. I’m becoming this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=nTYxDMYKyiI&feature=emb_logo

....and that is awful. Now imagine 10-20 years worth of that happening in one year. That’s what we’re facing if we don’t stop this.

“Claymation”? Sir, that is Supermarionation!

I’m trying to keep 2 things in mind when I post here:

1. Someone on Pinside is going to die of Coronavirus. We’re a large community of old men, it’s inevitable.

2. Some will lose their jobs, houses or marriages to the drastic but important measures taken over the next few months.

Let’s think of the families of both groups as we keep talking to each other about this.

The chart with the numbers isn’t the scary one. It’s this one (from the same site) that clearly shows the trajectory here in the US: about a 9x increase every 8 days, with no signs of slowing. If the lockdown efforts that started about a week ago are effective, they’ll start showing up in the slope of this chart around mid-April. But follow the line out another 24 days:

Mar 2 - 100 cases
Mar 10 - 994
Mar 18 - 9345 (today)
Mar 26 - 84,000
April 3 - 756,000
April 11 - 6,800,000

If we get to even 2M, the hospitals will be completely overwhelmed and mortality will shoot through the roof. Pray that everything we’re doing right now is enough, and that we can bend the curve sooner than this.

EDIT/UPDATE: the above numbers seem so ridiculous that I think it must be that the increases in testing are what’s causing the multiplier to be so high. So I’m not gonna freak out, but I’ll revisit this on March 26 to see where things stand.

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This happened to me. I was on assignment in Philadelphia last February and got hit with a bad case of the flu. I ran out of food, and I was feeling better, so I walked to the grocery store 1 block away. I was careful not to sneeze or cough. I hated to do it, but I had no choice.

Djshakes the count is a lagging indicator, for obvious reasons. I see people doing math where they divide deaths by total active cases. This doesn’t work, because it assumes that everyone who hasn’t died yet, won’t. It also assumes that quality of treatment is constant, and it may not be. Keep an eye on the total number of cases, and the current multiplier.

If I’m reading the charts right, Italy’s infection count is growing at about 13% per day while the US is growing about 30% per day. This is an enormous difference. One possibility is that the growth of the “true count” (day over day) is much lower, and the lack of testing is actually making that multiplier worse than than the reality. I really hope that’s the case.

Hi @djshakes, thanks. What’s the source for the prediction table? I’ve been looking for something like that.

10k today
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Damn you @odin, I looked all over the basement for my old BTO records and couldn’t find them. But I found some sweet John Mayall albums so I’m listening to those instead.

Hahahaha, you just reminded me, I did too. I never had the albums, just the 8-tracks.

Nah, when you're dealing with exponential growth the logarithmic scale is pretty good:

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Eugenics were popular once. I bet “Medical Ethicist” is the loneliest job on the planet right now.

They are comparing a baby pandemic to a full-grown one.

Estimates, hunches and predictions are no match for math.

I would hate to see this turn into a political thread. Best to spew that stuff somewhere else, whether it’s attacking or defending what’s happened before. All we have is the road before us, and we all gotta walk it together.

Huh? I got a flu shot in January, what was that?

If or when the US gets to the same level of infection as Italy now (679 per million), we will be at 224,000. Wonder how long it will take us to get there.