tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post8638703460775004958..comments2024-03-28T10:16:44.231-07:00Comments on Cliff Mass Weather Blog: Still Flying Blind: Can Meteorologists Help Epidemiologists with Coronavirus?Cliff Mass Weather Bloghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13948649423540350788noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-85007237391909598832020-05-04T10:10:24.000-07:002020-05-04T10:10:24.000-07:00Typical panic and overreaction by government and m...Typical panic and overreaction by government and media. The risk in no way justifies shutting down the entire economy and scaring the populace. But it's too late, the sheeple are all cowering with masks as if this was some kind of hemorrhagic fever with imminent death. It makes sense to quarantine the sick and elderly, the rest should go about their business and restore the economy. If you are one of the many who's livelihood has been destroyed, vote accordingly in November.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02059221822159483655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-12719619012439724072020-05-03T06:52:41.844-07:002020-05-03T06:52:41.844-07:00I dunno if im reading it wrong or what, but on the...I dunno if im reading it wrong or what, but on the CDC website, it says 37,000 have died as of may 1 from covid19.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17681014372664105104noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-61790371816239787532020-05-02T22:42:47.007-07:002020-05-02T22:42:47.007-07:00You can. Personal responsibility is just that. Dec...You can. Personal responsibility is just that. Decisions and consequences. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE to say. <br /> BAMCIShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05285865892838328830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-49867812458133512032020-05-02T21:07:27.299-07:002020-05-02T21:07:27.299-07:00It's totally fine with me if people who are co...It's totally fine with me if people who are concerned want to stay home a bit longer. The rest of us should be allowed to go out and resume activities.EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-51971925104159155612020-05-02T10:58:07.555-07:002020-05-02T10:58:07.555-07:00There isn't a one size fits all solution for a...There isn't a one size fits all solution for all nations. Also, opening up won't guarantee business will come roaring back to where it was prior to the outbreak. Probably far from it. As long as the virus lurks, people will still weigh if its even worth it to go shopping as leisure. Everything people NEED is open right now. The rest are WANTS such as dinners out etc. Going to a restaurant doesn't even seem like a fun experience right now. Personally, I want to just wait until the full casual dining experience is back to normal. Some sparsely set room full of uneasy customers and masked wait staff who probably want to be somewhere else doesn't seem like good times. The owner is probably debating if its even worth it to be losing money just to be able to say "Yes, we have sit down dining now".<br /><br />Those who have money will sit on it. Those without, well they are not worried about buying things they do not immediately want (but don't need) as it is. Getting the outdoor activities back on line was one of the best actions that could be done RIGHT NOW to lift people's spirits a bit and allow folks to stretch their legs and not feel like they are prisoners. <br /><br />Just as an aside, Yakima now has the greatest infection rate on the entire West Coast. The factual reasons as to why are not know to me as of this post, but speculation is that rural areas are not taking this seriously. Mostly due to political ideology and not for a lack of being informed. Understandable, but still very unfortunate. We could be talking almost about self inflicted wounds. BAMCIShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05285865892838328830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-82172509983863372732020-05-01T21:04:19.155-07:002020-05-01T21:04:19.155-07:00Sweden's death rate has been 22 every 100,000 ...Sweden's death rate has been 22 every 100,000 (not 1 in 200). We need to stop believing these bogus predictions that are causing the world economy to be destroyed.EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-29859339910858582842020-05-01T20:57:30.806-07:002020-05-01T20:57:30.806-07:00I agree that "what is done is done". But...I agree that "what is done is done". But we can prevent that more damage is done to the economy by lifting the stay home order right now and going back to normal. Sweden never went into lockdown and the disease there has had the same course. Switzerland opened this week all shops including barbershops, is re-opening schools on May 11 and they have a clear plan in place how to get everything 100% back up and all restrictions lifted by August. Washington state should do the same!EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-58905061468575495502020-05-01T17:26:08.843-07:002020-05-01T17:26:08.843-07:00Cliff,
We need statisticians, not meteorologists....Cliff,<br /><br />We need statisticians, not meteorologists. This is missing data problem and an estimation problem. The SEIR models, to the extent they're mechanistic like many numerical weather models, actually do a pretty good job of describing this disease. The difficulty is that we don't know what the parameters are. With 3.4 million cases and 240,000 deaths worldwide, we have a lot of data, but it's definitely incomplete (i.e. there are lot of unidentified cases, wide disparities in testing, etc). The Imperial College team is doing as fine a job as anyone. They've just released a new model which importantly estimates the impacts of non-medical interventions. They show that only "lockdowns" meaning something like Inslee's stay-at-home order or stricter are effective in reducing R-naught below 1, but that they need to be maintained for quite sometime. See here: https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/<br /><br />Second, I don't know why you're saying their March 16th paper is any sense "wrong" or has poor performance. For their "mitigation" scenarios to which the 1.1 million dead number applies, they did not look at the effects of any more strict non-pharmaceutical interventions then self-isolation of suspected case, home quarantine of known cases, closing schools, and isolation of the elderly. They did not provide a total deaths number <br /> for their "suppression" scenarios, but suppression is thought to entail population-wide social distancing like the stay-at-home order. We decided, more or less, in this country to (briefly) adopt the suppression strategy. The exact effect of the suppression strategy (at least in Europe) on the reproduction rate is looked at a bit more in their more recent paper. <br /><br />Even so, take a look at Figure A1 in the PDF you linked to. The green line estimates critical care beds occupied under the strictest set of interventions they consider (i.e. population wide social distancing). That line peaks out in mid-May at something like 3.5 critical beds occupied for per 100,000 population. According to Worldmeters (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) as of 5 PM PDT on May 1st, there are 16,500 critical cases right now. That is roughly 5 per 100,000 population. So we're actually about where they said we would be under suppression. But now it seems like many states want to move to a mitigation-type strategy. Consider that Figure A is the closest they get to depicting that for the United States (really that is the do nothing scenario, under mitigation the curve would be shifted to the right). It's really hard to see with the scale of the axes, but in Figure A the deaths per day for the United States was predicted to be something like 1 per 100,000 in early May. We're at 0.6 per 100,000 right now. We're under that curve but not by much and politically moving in the mitigation direction. These observations do not make me think that the Imperial College paper is poor perfoming.<br /><br />Third, the IHME model definitely has problems. It is way too optimistic on the backside of the curve because it assumes that case will follow a symmetric distribution curve. Talk to Carl Bergstrom there at UW, he has good sense of the shortcomings in that model and can probably point you to better models.<br /><br />Lastly, I just want to point out these lines from the end Imperial College's March 16th paper: "We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. ... However, we emphasise that it is not at all certain that suppression will succeed long term; no public health intervention with such disruptive effects on society has been previously attempted for such a long duration of time. How populations and societies will respond remains unclear."<br /><br />It is becoming more clear that we could only put up with for about a month and a half.Missing@Randomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13835855193294645501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-21267432022176944662020-05-01T13:09:00.460-07:002020-05-01T13:09:00.460-07:00Missing@Random - The last thing we need is your sc...Missing@Random - The last thing we need is your scare-mongering with bogus made up 'facts'. The whole thing is a total hoax and a joke.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11205752419540502278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-53038374992973340022020-05-01T11:55:31.585-07:002020-05-01T11:55:31.585-07:00If epidemiologists were given the advantage of the...If epidemiologists were given the advantage of the infrastructure that weather systems have, we would be far along. Public health has been stripped of funding for the last 50 years: no wonder we're 40 years behind. If you're still begging for money to maintain your weather balloons, you're not going to get a tool that requires a rocket to put into orbit.Angeline Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05323319035950808564noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-32261639502635036302020-05-01T10:25:36.556-07:002020-05-01T10:25:36.556-07:00I won't bother with your link from the right-w...I won't bother with your link from the right-wing media. I also don't know why I'm arguing with somebody who credulously accepts that disinformation as valid and real, but for the sake of the audience here is a rebuttal.<br /><br />The Imperial College team is a pretty solid statistical shop, but yes, those estimate in the Github link are old. They did just release a really cool new model which estimates the reproduction rate, the effect of interventions, the total number infected (including asymptomatic infections) and the total number dead. It's here: https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/<br /><br />If you download their data you'll see that they have an IFR of around 0.8 to 1%, it differs by country because demographics differ by country, and this disease has a different IFR for different age demographics. Your link to Nature is a news article and not the primary literature, but the 0.5% number comes from the Diamond Princess. It's not clear how representative the Diamond Princess population is when our scope of inference is to America at large. Iceland is another interesting case study given that they have their outbreak under control, they have one of the highest per capita test rates and most cases are closed, although the demographics of the infected population skews younger: https://www.covid.is/data The key thing is that Iceland test a lot of people of IFR for Iceland is 0.6%.<br /><br />So lets take 0.5 to 0.6% as the IFR for COVID-19. These are pretty optimistic, but I'm an optimist so lets roll with it. Importantly, realize that these number represent the IFR averaged over all age groups and includes asymptomatic cases (lots of testing which caught asymptomatic cases). If we want to continue with the flu comparison (which is a bad comparison because many at-risk populations are vaccinated against the flu and because it is less infectious,but you seem obsessed with it), then to make an apples-to-apples comparison we need to consider the IFR of the flu including asymptomatic cases. The commonly cited IFR for the flu of 0.1% is really the case fatality rate for *symptomatic* cases (it says so right there on the CDCs website). The CDC also estimates that something like 40% of flu infections are asymptomatic. So if we include those numbers that drops the IFR of the flu to something more like 0.06-0.07%. That number is about 10 times less than the IFR you just cited for COVID-19. So COVID-19 is just shy of 10 times as deadly as the flu. The other points remain, namely it is more infectious and there is no vaccine (the flu infects between 5 - 20% of Americans every year, that includes asymptomatic cases and accounts for vaccinations - roughly two-thirds of Americans 65+ get the flu vaccine).<br /><br />It also means that 1 in 200 people infected with COVID-19 will die. Do you know more than 200 people? <br /><br />Suppose only 10% of Americans get COVID-19 with a (very optimistic) IFR of 0.5% - that's 165,000 deaths. Let's split the difference between the Imperial College estimates and the Diamond Princess IFR (0.75%) and suppose 20% of Americans get COVID-19 - that's just shy of 500,000 deaths. Now suppose Imperial College is right and suppose also that the experts are right who say we won't be out of the woods until something like two-thirds of Americans have immunity which the only way to get right now is to get infected (maybe, we don't know whether people can get reinfected with COVID-19): 328 million * 2/3 * 0.01 = 2.2 million dead.<br /><br />Stay home. Wash your hands. Don't watch Fox News. Missing@Randomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13835855193294645501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-44103873746351648962020-05-01T06:59:09.560-07:002020-05-01T06:59:09.560-07:00The precedents from the past did not offer much in...The precedents from the past did not offer much in the way of conclusive evidence that the virus was going to make victims of only the elderly and infirm. The 1918 flu was very indiscriminate. Perfectly healthy, younger adults dropped dead from that outbreak.<br /><br />Plus, we are talking about deaths. The challenges levied upon the medical system are treating those that will more than likely live, but still require ICU resources. That can occur at any age. Hospitals still need to be able to respond to other emergencies as well. The stay at home orders were geared toward not having our very lean, "Just in time" model of medical delivery collapse. Even with the lock downs, there probably were coin toss incidents where two equally sick people needed a ventilator, but there was only one available. <br /><br />Its doubtful the virus could have been contained to just old folks homes at the onset of all this. Who knows how long it was circulating before the alarm bells finally went off. So it was too late to just state that locking up the old and the infirm was going to be all required, with the intent to maintain the booming economy. Something that certain politicians are basing their entire legitimacy upon.<br /><br />Bottom line here is there were so many unknowns when this started and plenty of denial as well. Now at this stage, plenty of lip service is being paid to the fact that millions are so far not dying, and that number of deaths is too low a price paid thus far for the reciprocal damage afflicted to the economy. Which suggests that having millions actually die would be a fair trade for the obvious recession we are now in. Since anecdotal evidence suggests those who die are not productive members of the economy to start with, those millions dying would not matter much in terms of productivity or consumer demand.<br /> <br />Do we really want to go there? Make a cost/benefit analysis of it all? <br /><br />The recession would probably happen anyway, if the death toll were that extreme. People would go into lock down without being ordered to for the sake of their own safety. The virus can make its victims potentially very sick and with millions dead, most everyone would know a friend or loved one who has perished to it. That sorrow and fear will drag consumer confidence down significantly. Its easy to be brave and combative online when the crisis doesn't directly effect you, but when it strikes close to home, most people will change their tune.<br /><br />Plus the rest of the world has their own approaches. The United States can't order other nations to stay open just to preserve international supply chains, manufacturing and business travel. This isn't just a United States problem, but as a nation of mostly self centered, self absorbed materialistic citizens enthralled with toxic political infighting, we of course made it all about ourselves. <br /><br />So what is done is done. Its pretty easy to hop on the internet and state that the experts are wrong, the government is wrong or that there is a price in lives that has to be met before the damage to the economy is justified. All of it is at best conjecture and supposition. Lets not even get into all the conspiracy theories and other silliness floating around. The challenges are here, they are real and the problems need to be worked. The energy spent on blame games and shouldawouldacoulda's needs to be focused more positively. <br />BAMCIShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05285865892838328830noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-71938570401693921082020-04-30T20:44:12.332-07:002020-04-30T20:44:12.332-07:00Missing@Random, the report by Ferguson et al that ...Missing@Random, the report by Ferguson et al that the statistics you mention is based on is old (16 March 2020). Those numbers are based on models that have turned out to be exaggerated and the predictions have never materialized:<br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/worst-case-coronavirus-science-11585351059<br /><br />EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-3902380506362270922020-04-30T20:29:45.626-07:002020-04-30T20:29:45.626-07:00COVID-19 turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated b...COVID-19 turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated by media:<br /><br />https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/covid-19-turning-out-to-be-huge-hoax-perpetrated-b/<br /><br />Infections are undercounted while deaths are difficult to estimate because of other conditions present. Some studies claim an incidence of fatality less than 0.5% like this one published in Nature:<br /><br />https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0<br /><br />But I agree, this is not a flu, it's a cold virus.EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-90695387445666113232020-04-30T12:46:56.845-07:002020-04-30T12:46:56.845-07:00Man, you're way behind on your trump lies. &q...Man, you're way behind on your trump lies. "Hoax" was so early February. Since then we've had <br />- going to be zero cases in a couple of days<br />- anybody that wants a test can get a test<br />- declares national emergency (take that, hoax!)<br />- this could be a hell of a bad 2 weeks - possibly 100K deaths<br />- ingest disinfectants<br /><br />And if this is a political axe, Mike DeWine, republican governor of Ohio, owns the same axe as Jay Inslee - they shut down their states the same day.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14241817047186128354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-87586737034849871762020-04-30T11:50:13.926-07:002020-04-30T11:50:13.926-07:00One rationale I read for not opening up areas with...One rationale I read for not opening up areas with low infection rates is that people from still closed high infection rate areas will flock to those areas seeking Recreation, camping and a sit-down Burger.<br /><br />Flow force from high pressure to low pressure.<br /><br />Chris H.<br />Heli-free North CascadesChris H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/10922945102509424248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-53647295438182045482020-04-30T10:19:00.384-07:002020-04-30T10:19:00.384-07:00The worst flu season of the last 10 years in the U...The worst flu season of the last 10 years in the United States was 2017-2018 when 61000 people died. COVID-19 surpassed that yesterday. Yesterday's death toll was just over 2400 people. Two weeks ago the daily death toll was just over 2800. I would expect we will average between 1500 and 2000 deaths per day nationwide for at least the next two weeks. This is a disease with a incident fatality rate at least 10 times the flu. That applies to all age groups: i.e. the 18-49 demographic has a flu IFR of around 0.01% (1 in 10000) for COVID-19 it is closer to 0.1% (1 in 1000), for those in the roughly 65 - 74 group seasonal flu IFR is 0.25% (1 in 400), for COVID-19 it is more like 2-3% (1 in 50). Data here: https://github.com/clauswilke/COVID19-IFR<br /><br />COVID-19 is not the flu. It is 10 times as deadly. It is more infectious. There is no vaccine. These are facts.Missing@Randomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13835855193294645501noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-12393046262276453352020-04-30T09:41:23.924-07:002020-04-30T09:41:23.924-07:00How much are we spending on weather forecasting, a...How much are we spending on weather forecasting, and how much were we spending on pandemic forecasting over these last 5 years? The US was getting hints of a problem the last few days of December. Limited action was taken in late January, but no decisive action until mid March. Testing capability is still not up to our needs. Cliff is right that a fairly massive system should be built out. But with viruses some of the building out needs to be done anew for each virus. As I understand it the UW IHME model was mostly designed for hospital planning over the next few/several days. It was better than nothing, but still obviously not close to what is needed. RLLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13850927095383579725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-31534929712746146722020-04-30T08:44:50.566-07:002020-04-30T08:44:50.566-07:00Perhaps focus on areas of success. Here in Moses l...Perhaps focus on areas of success. Here in Moses lake, population 25,000, we had no new cases (again) and remain stuck at 33 cases. Closing down the city makes absolutely zero sense. Am I wrong? jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11074848596330521566noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-42111844249318552122020-04-30T08:27:20.670-07:002020-04-30T08:27:20.670-07:00Genuine research question: with mass testing, assu...Genuine research question: with mass testing, assuming a critical mass of people has already had the disease then the testing will provide us a macro view of potential (though lagging) people that still "need" to get the disease to reach societal immunity (we're not cattle). the concern is that testing is used as a method of entry, which is to say (using baseball as example) that MLB will open their season and test all players before the season/games...but if i test negative today, i could possibly test positive tomorrow and then testing fails as an "entry metric" - help me understand mass testing and uses of mass testing?Scott Linklaterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11780756125777258333noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-53678926736394061402020-04-30T08:08:22.595-07:002020-04-30T08:08:22.595-07:00This is the inevitable course we as irrational hum...This is the inevitable course we as irrational humans will take. Cliff doesn't seem to understand that 99% of the population aren't scientists, or even engineers, and lead their lives by "gut feel" and by the unspoken mantra "it's all about me and my survival, and the survival of my bank account". That is except perhaps for a few very short examples of larger thinking, such as America during WWII, but these episodes quickly pass and things soon return to normal. John K.https://www.blogger.com/profile/03575682658318674003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-8355760251779249372020-04-30T05:54:34.130-07:002020-04-30T05:54:34.130-07:00I do not trust ANY weather model beyond 96hrs.
So,...I do not trust ANY weather model beyond 96hrs.<br />So, how can the WHO trust any beyond 1wk.?kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06139522575152635422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-19012896386238706232020-04-30T04:28:46.661-07:002020-04-30T04:28:46.661-07:00There are met folk looking at the Covid problem; s...There are met folk looking at the Covid problem; see https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/model-calibration-nowcasting-and-operational-prediction-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/William M. Connolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-88472315316801299412020-04-29T23:07:45.984-07:002020-04-29T23:07:45.984-07:00Annually, up to 1/2 million people die worldwide f...Annually, up to 1/2 million people die worldwide from the seasonal flu.EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7478606652950905956.post-33555670283442523432020-04-29T23:04:01.532-07:002020-04-29T23:04:01.532-07:00"do not be surprised if the USA, and maybe th..."do not be surprised if the USA, and maybe the world, decide they might just take their chances, accept the collateral damage, and tough it out by staying open"<br /><br />You would hope so. But governments have savored how easy it is to keep people under control by instilling fear about some virus. 25% of all deaths have been in senior homes that could have been easily isolated early on!EuropeanManhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16989032380024260304noreply@blogger.com