How come this did not make bigger news? Let's play football.

[malonish]

If the numbers are inaccurate, they're low. Think how many people feel sick and have not been able to get tested.

Clearly the solution is to stop testing so the numbers go down.

[HubbaHubba]

Masked up at my doctors office yesterday. He commented that his name for this was the November 3rd virus. That caught me off guard. We have many ways to treat this and we should test more and early treat.

Wow. How scary. I'd definitely look for a doctor who bases his medical care on science not politics. Stay healthy!

[malonish]

Masked up at my doctors office yesterday. He commented that his name for this was the November 3rd virus. That caught me off guard. We have many ways to treat this and we should test more and early treat.

Wow. How scary. I'd definitely look for a doctor who bases his medical care on science not politics. Stay healthy!

+1

[BUS]

With the testing continuing... as it should... The death percentage is going WAY down. Key to getting behind this is testing and early treatment. Steroids, Hydrochoroquine, other forms of like drugs... all have proven better than mask and sit at home.

FYI: Cali... in March and April (2 months) had a full years count of suicide. Sad that nobody talks about that.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

[Dukie]

With the testing continuing... as it should... The death percentage is going WAY down. Key to getting behind this is testing and early treatment. Steroids, Hydrochoroquine, other forms of like drugs... all have proven better than mask and sit at home.

FYI: Cali... in March and April (2 months) had a full years count of suicide. Sad that nobody talks about that.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

It is not "mask and sit at home." It is "mask *or* sit at home."

[BUS]

I'm doing both. I do chuckle at people in their own cars - ALONE. Wearing a mask.

[JasonB]

With the testing continuing... as it should... The death percentage is going WAY down. Key to getting behind this is testing and early treatment. Steroids, Hydrochoroquine, other forms of like drugs... all have proven better than mask and sit at home.

FYI: Cali... in March and April (2 months) had a full years count of suicide. Sad that nobody talks about that.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When calculating the death rate, please be aware of what you are using as the numerator and denominator.

The numerator is number of deaths, easy enough.

The denominator, however, is NOT the number of cases. The hundreds of thousands of folks who have tested positive in the last two weeks haven't had the 6+ weeks it takes to die (for the small percentage who will die).

The denominator, in fact, should be the number of recoveries. Deaths divided by recoveries tells you the percentage of people who die from the disease.

Here in Texas, we have a much more accurate count of recoveries, because the state government has decided that if we don't hear from a positive test result for two weeks, we mark it as a recovery (in other states, they wait to contact cases, which nobody has time to do, so the recovery count is extremely low).

Our deaths per recovery rate in Texas is 2.5%. Way lower than NYC, Italy, and Wuhan from the beginning of the virus. But still not a good number at all.

As far as the other deaths are concerned, it is not a good thing, I agree. I would encourage you to compare the rising deaths (suicides, drug overdoses) with the drop in other areas (car accidents, for example). The rise is tragic, and unfortunate. But it pales in comparison from the people dying and getting really, really sick from this virus.

Oh, and now we are finding out that immunity doesn't last. So that is awesome.

Breathalyzers are going to be the golden ticket here.

[ponyboy]

Read the link from gostangs. https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/07/sec ... ven-close/

Here's what I get from it:

Research has demonstrated that “preexisting T-cell responses in 81% of unexposed individuals, and validation of similarity to common cold human coronaviruses, [provide] a functional basis for postulated heterologous immunity.”
[Source: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1]

So 20% of the population is even capable of catching COVID-19. Once that 20% is infected, you're done: "herd immunity" is achieved, corona is over.

(The population of Texas is about 30M. 20% of that is 6M. We are at about 4M infected).

The strategy in Malmo Sweden: “Naturally-acquired herd immunity to COVID-19, combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly – especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents -[resulted in] few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.”

COVID-19 is effectively over in Malmo. No massive government intervention costing untold trillions of dollars, no mass hysteria, no surrendering of freedoms -- just a little wisdom and common sense.

[ponyboy]

The hundreds of thousands of folks who have tested positive in the last two weeks haven't had the 6+ weeks it takes to die (for the small percentage who will die).

Hundreds of thousands? Maybe you're talking in the U.S. as a whole? Exactly 105,647 have tested positive in the last two weeks in Texas. (Not that positive tests mean much of anything statistically). And why did you change your infection-to-death number from two weeks to six-plus? I'm continuing to use 3 weeks in my calculations.

Our deaths per recovery rate in Texas is 2.5%. Way lower than NYC, Italy, and Wuhan from the beginning of the virus. But still not a good number at all.

Deaths per recovery? That number by definition is zero. I think you mean percent of deaths for those who contract COVID-19. That number is currently .183%. And, yes, it's continuing to fall day on day -- as it has since we've had good data.

Again, let me know if you want to see my calcs.

Oh, and now we are finding out that immunity doesn't last. So that is awesome.

Source?

[BUS]

Ponyboy and facts - Not good if you want to keep arguing. lol

This is real for now. Especially on TV.

[mustangxc]

Facts by themselves mean nothing if they aren't put in the proper context.

[SMU Pom Mom]

When calculating the death rate, please be aware of what you are using as the numerator and denominator.

The numerator is number of deaths, easy enough.

The denominator, however, is NOT the number of cases. The hundreds of thousands of folks who have tested positive in the last two weeks haven't had the 6+ weeks it takes to die (for the small percentage who will die).

The denominator, in fact, should be the number of recoveries. Deaths divided by recoveries tells you the percentage of people who die from the disease.

One tiny correction: The denominator should be the sum of deaths and recoveries, i.e., total completed cases, not just recoveries.

[HubbaHubba]

Deaths per recovery? That number by definition is zero. I think you mean percent of deaths for those who contract COVID-19. That number is currently .183%. And, yes, it's continuing to fall day on day -- as it has since we've had good data.

Source?

[ponyboy]

The data is from covidtracking.com. I’d be happy to share my spreadsheet.

[JasonB]

When calculating the death rate, please be aware of what you are using as the numerator and denominator.

The numerator is number of deaths, easy enough.

The denominator, however, is NOT the number of cases. The hundreds of thousands of folks who have tested positive in the last two weeks haven't had the 6+ weeks it takes to die (for the small percentage who will die).

The denominator, in fact, should be the number of recoveries. Deaths divided by recoveries tells you the percentage of people who die from the disease.

One tiny correction: The denominator should be the sum of deaths and recoveries, i.e., total completed cases, not just recoveries.

Than you, yes, great correction.

Ponyboy, I haven't changed any of the formulas.

T0- when you are infected.
T1 - when you start to show symptoms - 1 to 2 weeks later on average
T2 - If you have to go to the hospital - 2 weeks after you show symptoms.
T3 - if you die - 2 to 3 weeks after you go to the hospital. Plus, in Texas, they are doing additional confirmation of Covid as the cause of death, which delays death reporting an additional 5 days.

When you look at the graph of the "number of cases" and how they rise - the majority of testing is still being done at point T2. More T1 than before, but the very high positivity rate indicates that T0 and T1 aren't happening as much as we would like.

When you are looking at the graphs, look at the number of active hospitalizations. You will see a gradual increase of hospitalizations from last week of May until mid June, and then acceleration of hospitalizations at that point forward.

For deaths, because we don't do analysis on the weekends, they tend to burst up and down, peaking on Wednesday each week. So, have your graphs illustrate the 7 day rolling average - it will give you a better trend line to follow than the up and down of individual days. If you look at that graph, you will show a gradual increase in deaths starting in mid June (3 weeks after the increase in hospitalizations) until last week, when (3 weeks after the accelleration of hospital cases) we saw a significant increase in deaths.

Hopefully, that helps. But taking the current number of deaths divided by current number of cases isn't accurate, because you haven't given about 100,000 cases a chance to die yet. Right now in Texas we have had since the beginning 274,712 cases.134,953 are considered to be active cases. So your rate right now is 3,340/(274,712-134953). Which has dropped since the other day, thankfully, to 2.3%.

The same thing happens with the flu, BTW. If you try and calculate a death rate from the flu in January, when cases are peaking, you are going to get a really invalid number if you divide deaths by the total number of cases. Flu doesn't have as long of a drawn out hospitalization before deaths, so the difference between the numbers isn't as bad, but it still would be inaccurate at that time.

Now, the Covid death rate thing comes with two HUGE caveats: 1) the denominator is based on the number of people tested. As we all know, there are a lot of non-symptomatic or very minor cases with this thing, where people never get tested. Same thing happens with the flu, but I would say the percentage of people who get Covid and don't have symptoms and won't get tested is much higher than the flu because we know there is a good number of minor cases. So there are problems with the denominator. 2) If you look at the CDC Excess Deaths counts, in Texas, we have been running above the normal expected deaths since April, and by those counts, we are closer to 4K excess deaths. so, our total deaths number from Covid might be a little bit off.

Hopefully that helps!