Compressed summer tour DCI announcement

[cixelsyd]

39 minutes ago, dbc03 said:

approximately

Sometimes

Fermi approximation

order of magnitude

isn't intended to be a high fidelity calculation

we have no idea how many cases we had yesterday

we don't have enough tests being run to get an accurate count

It is an oversimplification

My point is not to prove that the experts are right

You sound reasonable enough.

Stay safe.  Maintain your social distancing of 6 feet.  And if you see a reporter from the Atlantic, make it a lot more than 6 feet!

[cixelsyd]

1 minute ago, year1buick said:

Herd immunity is not the way you want this thing to play out initially. That would be disaster

I know that.  I only brought it up in response to a postulated disaster.

[garfield]

I don't believe a "compressed" season is even something to consider.

I used to, but now I don't think it's feasible. 

[TwoValves]

On 3/21/2020 at 3:19 PM, phd-student-TTU said:

So the people who know the most about the subject aren’t using statistics correctly? Seriously? 

Correct.  Many of them are not.

This isn't my opinion, but that of someone with ridiculously impressive resume.  (Something all academia types can appreciate).

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/?fbclid=IwAR1JV5XeviPoe_P9qGS4JMJnlKGolC-3p4orJXF7zs4gAyVQ2xuJ_iP5j2A

[TwoValves]

On 3/22/2020 at 12:05 PM, dbc03 said:

My opinion is that experts know more about infectious diseases than you. The narcissism required to think otherwise is astounding.

Narcissism is a key component in many people labelling themselves as "experts."

What exactly IS our criteria to be considered an "expert?"  A list of degrees?  Psssh.  Years of hands-on work experience in a field?  Maybe.  Stacks of research you have conducted?  Again, maybe.  Research papers are always subject to bias in many ways.  

So simply referring to someone as an "expert" is every bit as subjective as much of the data that is being thrown about in our society right now.  

Edited March 23, 2020 by TwoValves

[TwoValves]

On 3/22/2020 at 8:52 AM, DAvery said:

I haven't read through the entire thread so I don't know if anyone corrected the math in this statement. 81,000 divided by 1.435 billion is 0.000056446, but that is not a percent. The percent would be 0.0056446%. You are off by a factor of a 100. I agree the data is somewhat suspect, as reporting from both the China and the US is unreliable. If you want a direct comparison (with somewhat suspect data) to China here it is: We have about the same number of cases (26,000) as China did on day 19 after the first 100 cases were reported. The problem is the US has less than 25% of China's population, which means if we use China has a model we should of have 6500 cases on day 19. 

By the way there is a formula that is used to predict the spread of epidemics; y' = ky(M - y) where y = # of infected people, M = Maximum number of people who can be infected, and k is a constant that depends on circumstances. I do have issues with this formula, though. The first is accurately determining the number of infected people (y), as we know the data is suspect and probably under-reported The second issue I have is determining the number of people that can be infected. There does seem to be a segment of the population that appears to be resistant to COVID-19, children. Since there is not enough known about why this is, it would be difficult to determine how large of segment this actual is, so an accurate determination of M seems impossible. 

 

I apoligize for the math error.  You are correct.   

So how does your formula run out?  What is infection rate based on your formula?  Just use China, for comparison.

[garfield]

2 hours ago, TwoValves said:

I apoligize for the math error.  You are correct.   

So how does your formula run out?  What is infection rate based on your formula?  Just use China, for comparison.

Well, THERE'S your mistake.

[N.E. Brigand]

7 hours ago, DAvery said:

Last week the chief medical officer in Ohio estimated there were at that time 100,000 cases in Ohio alone. 

The basic logic behind her estimate, at a time that Ohio had fewer than 20 confirmed cases, was that some of them couldn't be traced to contact with a known infected person. In other words, Ohio had community transmission. And at a very rough approximation, community transmission implies that at least 1% of the population is infected.

And 10 million x 1% = 100,000.

But that's rough. And probably on the high side. On the same day, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins said that there were probably 500,000 cases nationally.

It's very unlikely that Ohio has 20% of the nation's cases.

Obviously I would love to have much better numbers.

But a larger point was obvious: at that point, the official number of cases in the U.S. was just a few thousand.

But that official number was highly misleading.

[N.E. Brigand]

"If it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting six feet apart, epidemiologists say, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt."

[JimF-LowBari]

4 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

"If it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting six feet apart, epidemiologists say, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt."

Needs different drugs for that lol....