Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Fate]

From the NYTimes today...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/europe/Spain-coronavirus-nursing-homes.html

"In Italy, authorities have conceded that their coronavirus death toll did not include those who had died at home or in nursing homes. Similarly in France, officials have said that only those who died in hospitals had been recorded as pandemic-related — a practice they said would change in the coming days."

So yeah. There's a lot more dead in Italy than the current 10,779. Which is kind of insane given that the published case fatality rate for Lombardia is already 15% based on known hospital based deaths alone.

[Sheilbh]

Is it even possible to consider the  US a single entity for such tracking? It's even less accurate than saying where Europe's peak will be.

That's been kind of a frustration for me for a while. Canada and the US will have very different pockets and very different responses depending on the states/provinces. We're both simply too different and too varied in local governmental responses to be seen as single entities.

There are several states on the FT's regional mortality tracker (NY, California, Florida, Louisiana etc) that all look to be on a fairly bad track. And you may be right but I feel like some of that is a failure of a concerted, joined up approach at the Federal level? Like if that was in place it would mitigate the differences at local leve, because it's not they're being exacerbated instead.

Edit: I've mentioned it before but I find the CityMapper Mobility Index really fascinating at the minute. It just gives a sense of how much our major cities have ground to a halt (the last day especially):
https://citymapper.com/CMI

Even the "normal" countries that have recovered well are insane - Seoul is 36% normal, Singapore 56% a typical Saturday. But even just looking at each city's monthly statistic it's incredible how suddenly it hit in early March and then ripples everywhere.

[Legbiter]

How is London holding up?

[Iormlund]

A bit over half an hour before the country gets paralyzed, and the government still doesn't know which activities will be essential and thus will carry on working.

I've witnessed a lot of incompetence in Spanish politics, but this "government" takes the cake.

[Razgovory]

It's going to be worse in rural America.  Quite a few hospitals have closed over the last couple of decades and many people aren't within 20 minutes to the nearest hospital.  Already people in rural areas and tend to be poorer and less healthy than city dwellers.  It doesn't help that many of these people believe it this is hoax...

[Josquius]

I wonder how the US could do things.
Nationally is dumb of course.
But even by state would be weird with a lot of urban areas stretching across state lines.
Will we see : bad near future military porn thrillers become real as the US is carved into half a dozen "nations"?

[alfred russel]

So my weekend: my plans to camp in Tennessee were foiled because on Thursday Tennessee made its parks "day use only". I don't see how backcountry campers contribute to covid-19 spread any more than day users, but that shot down our weekend plans.

The North Georgia mountains are not the alps, cascades, or rockies, but they are cool in their own way. I spend a decent amount of time hiking and camping there, so that was plan b. A tremendous amount of north Georgia is on national forest land, and you can do dispersed camping if you are a mile or so away from any buildings -- that is the go to option for us. But the national forest land has been closed due to covid 19.

The Georgia state parks are still open for camping. However, the trails that cross national forest land are closed, which makes planning really difficult because who can keep track of the boundaries. Also, Georgia state parks don't allow dispersed camping--there is backcountry camping (meaning it is hike in, and without any facilities, and campers need to pack everything in and out), but you need a permit and can only camp at specified sites. Because of the limitations in place now, I spent 4 hours on the phone with various parks to get a reservation (the online system went down).

We got a backcountry campsite along a 23 mile trail at a park 1.5 hours from Atlanta. We drove straight to the parking area, and when we were done hiking and camping, went back to our car and drove home.

The parking area was a pullout, you can see it here:



Where we camped is here...from both angles. Unfortunately there were two other people at the campsite--what you see in the background is their hammocks (it was warm so they just used covered hammocks and not a tent). It was quite easy to keep our distance from them of course. For the record, this is just the second time in a few years I have camped so close to others - because it is very easy to find completely secluded camping -- at least before the authorities started closing things to make social distancing a thing.

Assuming the state parks get shut down tomorrow to promote social distancing, I will update with pictures of the city parks we are reduced to visiting instead, which are an absolute zoo.


post picture

[alfred russel]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

Nembro has a population of 11,000 people.

No. It's not single deaths, it's mortality rates.

From the paper:

Total deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 158
Official COVID-19 deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 31
Average death same time period previous years: 35

Okay, never mind.  That's plenty of statistical signal there.

I'd think you would want to know more before concluding it is excess mortality.

A few reasons I can imagine for the spike in deaths: 1) patients being transferred to the hospital because of overcrowding elsewhere, and the hospital being the place of death, 2) people moving to rural areas as cities shut down, 3) covid deaths not being officially recorded as non covid deaths.

The implication from those numbers is that 127 people died of non covid reasons in 2020 versus 35 in comparable periods. If they were denying resources to ordinary patients on such a scale that should be getting anecdotally reported.

[Barrister]

so, anyone heard anything more about the rumours that the death toll in China is actually a lot higher than what they're telling anyone?

How about this - China re-closes movie theatres, a week after partially re-opening them.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3077398/coronavirus-chinese-cinemas-told-close-just-week-after-reopening

[mongers]

So my weekend: my plans to camp in Tennessee were foiled because on Thursday Tennessee made its parks "day use only". I don't see how backcountry campers contribute to covid-19 spread any more than day users, but that shot down our weekend plans.

The North Georgia mountains are not the alps, cascades, or rockies, but they are cool in their own way. I spend a decent amount of time hiking and camping there, so that was plan b. A tremendous amount of north Georgia is on national forest land, and you can do dispersed camping if you are a mile or so away from any buildings -- that is the go to option for us. But the national forest land has been closed due to covid 19.

The Georgia state parks are still open for camping. However, the trails that cross national forest land are closed, which makes planning really difficult because who can keep track of the boundaries. Also, Georgia state parks don't allow dispersed camping--there is backcountry camping (meaning it is hike in, and without any facilities, and campers need to pack everything in and out), but you need a permit and can only camp at specified sites. Because of the limitations in place now, I spent 4 hours on the phone with various parks to get a reservation (the online system went down).

We got a backcountry campsite along a 23 mile trail at a park 1.5 hours from Atlanta. We drove straight to the parking area, and when we were done hiking and camping, went back to our car and drove home.

The parking area was a pullout, you can see it here:

Where we camped is here...from both angles. Unfortunately there were two other people at the campsite--what you see in the background is their hammocks (it was warm so they just used covered hammocks and not a tent). It was quite easy to keep our distance from them of course. For the record, this is just the second time in a few years I have camped so close to others - because it is very easy to find completely secluded camping -- at least before the authorities started closing things to make social distancing a thing.

Assuming the state parks get shut down tomorrow to promote social distancing, I will update with pictures of the city parks we are reduced to visiting instead, which are an absolute zoo.

Good to know AR, seems to pretty low risk vs using a park in an urban area.

[DGuller]

I've gone shopping for the first time in eight days.  One thing I have trouble understanding:  what's the point of store clerks at checkout wearing gloves if they don't change them?  If someone infected with coronavirus went shopping and handled his items in cart, and then the clerk handled those same items at checkout, then won't every customer after that have their items contaminated from those gloves?

[ulmont]

I've gone shopping for the first time in eight days.  One thing I have trouble understanding:  what's the point of store clerks at checkout wearing gloves if they don't change them?

...saves the health of the clerks?

[DGuller]

I'd think you would want to know more before concluding it is excess mortality.

A few reasons I can imagine for the spike in deaths: 1) patients being transferred to the hospital because of overcrowding elsewhere, and the hospital being the place of death, 2) people moving to rural areas as cities shut down, 3) covid deaths not being officially recorded as non covid deaths.

The implication from those numbers is that 127 people died of non covid reasons in 2020 versus 35 in comparable periods. If they were denying resources to ordinary patients on such a scale that should be getting anecdotally reported.

Yes, you'd want countrywide numbers ideally.  Looking at statistics of small towns may lead to inadvertent cherrypicking, like you're getting at.  We don't really know how representative that small town is, maybe this one is the most dramatic of all the towns they looked at, and there is some quirk on the ground that makes these numbers non-representative.

[Fate]

Here's an example of the excess mortality in a smaller town near Bergamo which has one of the highest death rates:

8 people died in a single smaller town--6 from non covid causes-- and you think that is an example of something?

If that was something other than noise the number of non covid deaths in all of north italy would be something like 12 times normal.

Nembro has a population of 11,000 people.

No. It's not single deaths, it's mortality rates.

From the paper:

Total deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 158
Official COVID-19 deaths Jan 1 2020 - March 24 2020: 31
Average death same time period previous years: 35

Okay, never mind.  That's plenty of statistical signal there.

I'd think you would want to know more before concluding it is excess mortality.

A few reasons I can imagine for the spike in deaths: 1) patients being transferred to the hospital because of overcrowding elsewhere, and the hospital being the place of death, 2) people moving to rural areas as cities shut down, 3) covid deaths not being officially recorded as non covid deaths.

The implication from those numbers is that 127 people died of non covid reasons in 2020 versus 35 in comparable periods. If they were denying resources to ordinary patients on such a scale that should be getting anecdotally reported.

Italy has admitted it isn't reporting any COVID-19 nursing home or home deaths in their totals. Only patients who die in the hospital. The death rate is much higher than what is being reported right now.

[DGuller]

I've gone shopping for the first time in eight days.  One thing I have trouble understanding:  what's the point of store clerks at checkout wearing gloves if they don't change them?

...saves the health of the clerks?

Does it really?  I can see how full face masks protect the health of the clerks, but not the gloves.  I thought the point of the gloves was to prevent the need to wash your hands all the time?