Corona Virus and ASL

[Paul M. Weir]

One slightly good (well good-ish) report I read today came from South Korea. Due to their early and massive testing campaign they had a decent handle on the base line of numbers infected. They then calculated that their death rate was 0.6%. They likely missed some asymptomatic and very mild cases, so the death rate might be a little lower still. Of course that is in a country where the health care system was not almost collapsing. Early testing definitely helped there.

Over the past week the calculated death rates seemed to have dropped from 3.4% to 1.5% to 0.6%

 

[Mister T]

The British government was among the last in Europe to introduce stringent measures.

They had this very darwinian idea of "herd immunity" whereby the authorities accept a massive contagion among the population in a bid to bolster its long-term resilience to the virus. It implied heavy losses for the population. Apparently reason prevailed and now the UK has aligned itself on other EU countries, although it seems its southern neighbour had to make its case eloquently.

France was ready to shut border had UK not toughened coronavirus measures

London denies that stricter rules were eventually announced because of another country’s threats.

www.politico.eu

Gaining control, they said.

 

[MajorDomo]

The TP hoarding mystifies me. There are millions in the world who have never used TP. I am old enough to remember cloth non-disposable baby diapers

In must be herd hoarding mentality learned from a Mel Gibson apocolypse movie.

I will start using my 6+1s, should it come to that.

 

[Jacometti]

For all those in despair......remember 14 September 2014:

Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million Within Four Months, C.D.C. Estimates

 

[jrv]

For all those in despair......remember 14 September 2014:

Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million Within Four Months, C.D.C. Estimates

There are a lot of reasons why ebola is a bad choice for model. First ebola does not spread as easily. Second even under the worst estimates for corona, ebola is a much, much worse disease to have. Flu, especially a really dangerous flu like the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, seems a better model. One-point-four million people with ebola would be a catastrophe, because ebola has a very high death rate. The numbers vary, but around 50% may be right. That's 700,000 deaths from a very small population (compared to the total world population) infected.

Right now the number of reported corona cases is around 300,000. The true number may be much higher as there seem to be a large number of people that get it but are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and are not tested/counted. Given how easy it is to spread, one-point-four million with corona will be trivial to reach and may already have been reached. The "good" news is that corona is a lot less dangerous than ebola. A major problem is that everyone is getting sick at the same time, and that strains the health care system.

Simulations for Great Britain and the US show that mitigation (slowing but not stopping epidemic spread), as well as suppression (reversing epidemic growth), has major challenges. Optimal mitigation policies might reduce peak healthcare demand by 2/3 and deaths by half, still resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems being overwhelmed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic#Outbreak

As one researcher put it, "This is not a zombie apocalypse. It's not a mass extinction event." If ebola were as easy to spread, he might not have said that. But that's the glass half-full. The glass half-empty is a serious outbreak that shouldn't be ignored. In the end this will probably not be remembered as "black death" but it will not be remembered as a "War of the Worlds" situation either. We have already passed that last point. I expect that a lot of people will die in the end anyway. If we do little or nothing, that number will be higher. If we do a lot, we will pay a cost in other ways. It's a dire choice. Decisions need to be made that may result in or prevent many thousands of extra deaths. This is not drill.

JR

 

[Paul M. Weir]

India/Pakistan sourced spam in GS seems to have dramatically fallen over the last week. Maybe another moderator has been bagging spam before me but yesterday and today no spam. Due to the timing of the historical spam attempts I guessed that it was school kids using publicly placed PCs in places like libraries, internet cafes, etc after school hours. Now that India has gone on lock down those sources are no longer available.

 

[Paul M. Weir]

While in post #61 I passed on the South Korea 0.6% death rate, don't get too complacent. Given the long Corona latency, I'd be very, very surprised if the infection rate was below 50% of a nation's population. That means that US deaths will be about 1m and Irish (RoI only) about 15k. All that is my expected minimum, assuming both no collapse of a nations health system and a sufficiently vigorous, consistent and prompt national governmental response. Absent such response or with overloading of the health system you could be talking multiple times those figures, I don't even hazard a guess what that multiplier would be.

 

[von Marwitz]

India/Pakistan sourced spam in GS seems to have dramatically fallen over the last week. Maybe another moderator has been bagging spam before me but yesterday and today no spam. Due to the timing of the historical spam attempts I guessed that it was school kids using publicly placed PCs in places like libraries, internet cafes, etc after school hours. Now that India has gone on lock down those sources are no longer available.

A unique piece of information. While we don't know for sure your assumption is correct, yet it is a reasonable guess. And as such quite amazing, what bizarre factors influence to a certain extent, whether I get to know if I can bounce a bypassing unit by dropping HIP during its bypass...

von Marwitz

 

[dlazov]

My prediction is that there will not be 1.1 million deaths due to this virus.

 

[Paul_RS]

Here in America I've seen at least one report of a fight over toilet paper in a store.

Looks like our weekly meetings at local game stores here in southern California are now on hiatus

Hence the rush for guns and ammo. Gotta defend those toilet rolls

 

[holdit]

 

[The Purist]

In face to face ASL games, please include the Hand Washing DR; which is part of every Wind Change DR.

If the HW DR >= 7, both players must wash their hands.
If the HW DR <= 5, only the Moving player must wash his hands....

Maybe I missed it but what happens if a player rolls a 6?

No hand washing?

Is that a forfeit or just bad form?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Maybe I missed it but what happens if a player rolls a 6?

No hand washing?

Is that a forfeit or just bad form?

That's some Critical Hit quality proofreading, right there.

 

[Ed Donoghue]

Virus Poetry:

 

[holdit]

Description of a certain type of non-social-distancing Irish person...

 

[Paul M. Weir]

Up to and including yesterday RoI has 2615 cases and 46 deaths. The growth rate of new cases seems to have peaked a week ago at 24% per day, now down into the low teens, but it's still very, very early days. Average increase in new cases over the last 10 day period was 16.7% per day. Due to the low number of deaths so far, no significant trends can or should be drawn (yet).

US figures to yesterday were 141,701 with 2,462 deaths. New cases rates have been all over the place with one 50% increase. Over the last 10 days the average increase in cases has been 28% per day. 10 day average increase in deaths was 30.3% per day.

Both the US and RoI have almost the same mortality rate of 1.75%. The usual caveat about that number likely being too high until we have a better handle on asymptomatic and mild cases, IE not enough testing. Even the best and brightest and in the front line have no firm handle on the underlying numbers.

COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

COVID-19 pandemic in the United States - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

EDIT: I took a 10 day period to calculate a geometric increase rate as (a) 10/3/2020 was when the US confirmed cases breached 10k, (b) 10 days is a nice round number and (c) 10 days is half way between a week when most cases would become evident and 2 weeks when they would be regarded as "safe".

I'll post updates every 2-3 days. I'll only do RoI as I live there and the US which seems to be headed for an Italy/Spain like outcome, quite possibly worse due to uneven application of stay-at-home orders.

 

[holdit]

This is long-ish but well worth a look. It shows how statistical modelling indicates the effectiveness of hygiene, isolation and social distancing.

 

[Jacometti]

These are of course the same models that predicted 1.4 million Ebola deaths, just 6 years ago.

Fear is not the same as common sense.

 

[holdit]

That guy isn't making predictions, he's showing how different factors can influence the infection curve. Did you actually watch it? He uses different scenarios with different values for R0.

As for fear, you'll have to direct me to the relevant part of the presentation. I didn't pick up on it at any point.

 

[Mister T]

A great vid providing a toolkit for analysis. People are free to set the parameters as they wish. What is important to know is the sensitivity (or elasticity) of outcomes to parameters.