CoV discussion thread | Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry

Some articles I’ve flagged, plus emails I’ve received.

Here are some articles I’ve flagged for discussion; I am not personally endorsing anything here:

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance

NYT:  Harsh Steps Are Needed to Stop the Coronavirus

New Yorker:  The Coronavirus and better strategy for fighting pandemics

N95 Mask shortage is horrible manifestation of America’s crazy defense priorities

Victor Davis Hanson:  Some Coronavirus Humility

Coronavirus will change the world permanently.  Here’s How

How the coronavirus became a national catastrophe.

Flattening the curve:  The South Korean Approach to CoV

Dangerous Curves – American Greatness

Twitter thread from Nicholas Christakis

Friedman: A plan to get America back to work

Greg Goodman’s Italy analysis

The number of cases of COVID-19 reported in Italy is still rising exponentially as is the total number of cases. There is no obviously visible change since ten northern regions were put under restricted movement regulations on 8th March and this was extended to all italian territory between 8th and 11th March 2020.

However, studying the logarithm of the number of new cases reported each day does reveal and change.

On a logarithmic scale an exponential rise becomes a straight line. The slope represents the constant term which describes the form of the exponential.

The linear regression of the logarithm shows the slope reduced by more than a factor of two after the measures were introduced.

This will mean that ( all other conditions remaining the same ) the outbreak will take twice as long to reach its peak but the rise in daily new cases will make it more manageable for the local health services. This strategy is often referred to as “flattening the curve”. Over the limited period since these measures were put in place this appears to have had a detectable effect, though it remains limited in magnitude.

On the 21st March 2020, a limited military deployment was established in the northern region of Lombardy, the centre of the epidemic, to more effectively enforce the existing measures.

The lengthening of the doubling time for new cases will allow more time for already swamped emergency services to adapt to increasing case load but it remains an exponential growth.

So far there is no indication of a peak in cases or an end to the exponential phase of the epidemic in Italy.

For details of the analysis method, see Greg’s post at climategrog

This is really the kind of graph  we need to be looking at to detect
change during early exponential phase.

Here is a similar log graph including China and France, which looks like
it is flattening out as clampdown has had time to pass through
incubation period.

USA is still in very aggressive growth which is faster than any EU
countries even in early phase.

Only S. Korea was faster, they rose fast, peaked early and contained the
epidemic faster than China. ( Probably having gained from being
pre-warned ).

Emailed from Oregon – unintended consequences:

Today my wife and I talked to a gas station attendant who looked to be 30 or so about the situation in town due to this response.  He first just mentioned what was happening to business in the vicinity of the gas station..  After a moment, though, he told us how this was affecting him directly.  He said he has stomach cancer and fortunately he was diagnosed in Stage 1.  The prognosis was very good when he was diagnosed  because it was caught so early.  But he was supposed to get an evaluation at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland (about 90 miles north of Corvallis) on March 24th as the best course of aggressive treatment to give him the best chance of cure. It’s been cancelled without being rescheduled so OHSU can prepare for the COVID-19 epidemic we are told is coming soon, even though SARS-CoV-2 with an R0 of 3,  a doubling time of 3-4 days, and a CFR of perhaps 3% may have been circulating in the US since late December 2019.  He’s now on a maintenance protocol under the direction of a doctor here for the foreseeable future that makes him immuno-compromised and is not care that has the best chance of stopping his cancer from progressing   His entire care plan has been disrupted, possibly at risk to his life.  His actual care is being de-prioritized relative to potential care for severe COVID-19 patients projected by a model built on unreliable data.