
The U.S. Has Officially Unflattened the Curve - cheeew
https://time.com/5859796/coronavirus-us-worst-day/
======
carterklein13
I have to say, living in NYC I'm pretty thankful for the quarantine
requirement from anyone coming in from outside the tri-state area. I like to
at least think we're on the downswing, although who really knows.

It's not like anyone will listen anyway, but it's a nice thought...

~~~
atyppo
FYI, only applies if coming from high-risk states. This included nine states
originally. Not sure if further states have been added.

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tibbydudeza
Wear a mask and do social distancing ... jeepers it is not difficult.

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krapp
Give us liberty, and give us death!

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nine_zeros
This explains it:
[https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1276172320965636099/...](https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1276172320965636099/photo/1)

Jokes aside, I'm afraid this is truly the administration and leadership that
will take down the US for good. We somehow made it through Bush Jr and Clinton
but by golly, this administration cannot do anything constructive.

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fallingfrog
I really don’t understand why we’re not doing full contract tracing right now,
especially in for example my state where there are only 50 new cases a day.
Are we really going to wait till it’s 5000 to do something? It’s like there’s
just literally nobody in a position of power with any initiative whatsoever.

~~~
rsynnott
Are they really not doing contact tracing? In this country we've been contact
tracing all cases since they fell to manageable numbers. It's expensive, but
not all _that_ expensive in the scheme of things.

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thearchitect1
Jeez the protests really took their toll

~~~
throwaway6734
If that were the case wouldn't we see a surge in places like NYC as well?

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redis_mlc
Still flat in Calif., same for months.

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minimaxir
Nope; CA is one of the highest-growing states.

The Bay Area _was_ flat, but it just spiked yesterday and reopening is now
paused.

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redis_mlc
Nope, just checked the data on the Santa Clara hospitalizations link - only
the number of tests is increasing, not admissions or mortality. Same for
months.

The press is saying one thing, but the official stats say flat - month after
month.

I guess newspapers value outrage over public service.

You would need a magnifying glass to see anything significant. Only 72
hospitalized patients today (2,278 more available), historical average is a
little less.

[https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx](https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx)

Shame on HN for letting non-technical people dictate public policy with a
false narrative. If anybody told me that a technical group the size of HN in
2019 was this oblivious, I would have been skeptical. But here we are - the
center of SV refuses to actually read a graph, month after month.

Can somebody explain that to me? Is everybody else incapacitated with fear,
virtue signalling, mass hysteria, or what is behind that?

Dr. VDH, who noticed the above in parallel with me, said something like,
"[We're captive to 1%'ers who have a nice life and feel it's unfair they could
lose that.]"

Is that it? Destroy our economy for individual selfishness?

Do I need to make a video on how to read the graphs?

~~~
hcknwscommenter
Are you serious? You seem dangerously self-absorbed and misinformed. Your
original comment referred to CALIFORNIA. Now you are arguing about Santa Clara
hospitalizations (a very lagging indicator), which is many levels different
from your original (and incredibly incorrect) point.

~~~
IAmGraydon
I'll just put the data in front of you and let you decide:

[https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en/test](https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en/test)

Go to the chart for California. Percent positive tests and hospitalizations
are the most important factors here. Hospitalizations have gone up,
undoubtedly (from 4,500 to now almost 6,000). That said, percent positive
tests has remained flat. Deaths in CA also continue to trend down.

What conclusion do you draw from that? To me, it appears that the
concentration of Covid in the population of California has not increased. At
the same time, there are more hospitalizations. Perhaps Covid is not getting
worse in CA, but more people are finding out that they have it due to
increased testing and are then going to the hospital out of an abundance of
caution.

As an aside, you and the guy you're replying to are obviously extremely
emotional about this. Learn to recognize that and realize that if you're
feeling emotional when looking at data, some part of your brain cares way too
much to remain objective. Both of you are clearly biased.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
Your own data shows that you are just plain wrong. Percent positives at the
beginning of the month are 4%. Number of tests have skyrocketed, if true cases
are flat, then percent positive would plummet. Instead they have almost
doubled to 7%. Your supposed lack of emotion is BS. You obviously have some
internal or external motivation to believe there isn't a problem when there
clearly is one. I live in the mountains in NorCal, there ain't a case around.
However, as a one-time virologist (it's been almost two decades since I
published a peer reviewed paper on SARS-1), I can assure you there is no
chance that you are correct in your "hypothesis" that "Covid is not getting
worse in CA."

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salmon30salmon
We. Shut. Down. Too. Early. In. Most. Places.

For the love of God. Texas didn't have an outbreak when they shutdown! Nor did
Oregon, or California. That is the difference. All of Europe shut down _after
the virus had already grown exponentially_ in most places. We shut down Oregon
when there were fewer than 100 cases. After three months of being shut down in
Oregon the curve had nowhere to go but up!

What in the hell did people expect? We shut down before there is spread, wait
three months and then reopen. How is that a plan? Did anyone really expect
that places where shutdowns were early and strong would somehow come out
unscathed?

It has been true since day 1. You either need to shut down HARD until there is
a vaccine (not possible, not sustainable, more deaths caused by this) or you
deal with the surge of cases and do your best to protect the
elderly/vulnerable.

What you don't do is panic, shut down too early, burn through all your money
and political capital, reopen and then be all "golly gee there are cases
now!". If we had waited until there was growth in cases, we could shutdown and
actually flatten the curve enough to handle the shock to the system.

It is so. damn. frustrating. that this isn't more obvious to people. What
materially changed between today and March 1?

Lockdowns where a bad idea from there start as there is no way to continue
them until there is a vaccine.

I am very curious to see if NY and the other early hot spots avoid a
resurgence like Europe has. That is what I am most interested now. If they do,
perhaps the folks who are talking about cross-reactive immunity are on to
something.

~~~
perl4ever
By and large, places that weren't hit as hard as NY and western Europe assumed
that they had some inherent privilege or immunity, and many of them are being
proved wrong. It's a basic human behavioral characteristic. Even if you don't
understand why you are better off than someone else, the default assumption is
that you are intrinsically better. It might be true! But it's dangerous to
assume it when you don't know the reason why.

So I think it's more of a tragic flaw of human nature than a particularly
unlucky failure of timing.

The other issue with human nature is that people need feedback, so when you
have 2-4 weeks of delay in the loop, things get out of control. You have weeks
of believing falsehoods before reality starts to kick in.

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fallingfrog
47341 new cases yesterday. Skyrocketing fast. But you know, gotta reopen
everything to keep the stock market happy.

~~~
twblalock
No, we have to reopen so people can have jobs and feed their children and pay
their housing bills.

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vondur
They don’t mention hospitalization or deaths. Those are the two to keep track
of. I’m guessing far more people are getting tested than previously, hence the
larger numbers.

~~~
mikedilger
Those are immune to the sampling rate bias, but they are lagging indicators.
Based on the recent widespread failures to socially distance (e.g. George
Floyd protests, campaign rallys, etc), I suspect those lagging charts will
start trending upwards.

You can also correct for the sampling rate bias by looking at the number of
cases per 100,000 tests (or similar). Does anyone have a link tracking that?
EDIT: percentage positive tests:
[https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-
states](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states)

~~~
danaliv
Areas with BLM actions have not seen an increase in rates of infection.

[https://www.popsci.com/story/health/black-lives-matter-
prote...](https://www.popsci.com/story/health/black-lives-matter-protests-
covid-19-transmission/)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That seems... very suspicious. I doubt that the virus cares what the reason
for a large gathering is. I don't think the BLM actions were using proper
social distancing. But what does that leave? People who went haven't bothered
to get tested since? Everybody wore masks, and that's way more effective than
we thought? The gatherings were outside, and the Vitamin D is saving everyone?

~~~
derbOac
There have been epi efforts to oversample people in the blm protests
specifically to examine its impact on infection rates and find it didn't
matter. They didn't have an explanation but suspected it had to do with the
protests mostly being outdoors.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
I suspect being outdoors makes a huge difference.

If the protests were a hotspot for new infections the states that are doing
contract tracing should show that. I haven’t seen any evidence of it.

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ngcc_hk
Need both raw and averages. But not ease for reporter. Stat telling “lies” and
the truth at the same time. And said you have to dig in. Like % of test
positive per test, death and hospitalised vs recovery. The fundamental is you
want to use a number to say it all, but one number cannot tell the truth in
many situation. One might not work, even simple like average vs median and
mode. And a random bell shaped curve need two parameters.

Multiple angles are hard.

