Anybody that knows me knows I am a numbers junkie and base most of my opinions on statistics.
They also know I don’t blindly accept “statistics” without knowing the underlying methodology.
Two recent incidents come to mind, one national and one close to home.
One is the Sturgis “super spreader” myth.
In order for the 260,000 number that was droned on about, the R naught factor would have to be over 2 at a daily rate. Meaning that each infected person would have to infect 2 more, then the next day the 2 new would have to infect 2 more each, etc. This is impossible.
Two was my kids school district. There have been 5 positives so far in the school year, all staff, no students. The official communication from the County Health department states that persons in contact with the infected need to quarantine for 14 days, and only get tested if they show symptoms. The same health department wants to stall opening up the economy until the positive test rate drops below a certain percentage, but by only testing symptomatic people, you are artificially keeping the positive percentage high.
In both of these instances this isn’t advance statistical knowledge, this would fail a High School stats class, yet we are using it to determine public policy.
Interesting they’d say 14 days. The current recommendation is 10 days.
I still believe this was overblown. None of the numbers match the predictions which means either Trump did an amazing job or the predictions were wrong.
It’s interesting to see anti-trumpets spinning Trump screwed up
That’s why here in CA, they’re looking at both the # of cases per 100K population AND the test positivity rate. And why experts have been calling for more tests, but the administration doesn’t want more tests. You need to test aysmptomatic people.
I think they say 10 working days.
Just 10 days. The virus doesn’t take weekends off.
It’s use to be 15 days.
As we learn more then virus has become less sacry
Went back and looked at the County Health departments correspondence, they said 14 days.
I am not saying they are right, just that is what the letter says.
- At least 10 days since symptoms first appeared
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/isolation.html
Also, the SD rally study was flawed, but it was likely a superspreader event and should not have been allowed. I glanced quickly at the state/county data and these appear to be roughly correct.
Oh, and some potentially good news today from Trump. This is what many have been wanting for months.
California deaths per million = 396
South Dakota deaths per million = 246
Source worldmeters
I am not sure what they’re trying to prove. I believe South Dakota had issues with meat processing plants.
All in all this is coming out to be a nothing burger. Sweden is still viewed as the model who recommends. Obviously we won’t know until winter but they’re not having the second wave everyone else is having.
It’s not not having woody turning everything into a political shit show.
Sweden followed the plan that was similar to our plan under Obama. I do want to understand why we veered from our plan and started to shoot from the hip. The whole lockdown for months was never part of the plan. The Mortality of Covid is fairly low and doesn’t justify a lockdown.
A good example of when a low down would be appropriate is when had a large outbreak of Ebola. Since symptoms show quickly, a lockdown could stop the spread.
A disease like Covid doesn’t justify the damage to the economy or the health of people.
Do mask work? Not sure. The science isn’t strong on mask. Often we were trained to wear mask because people though we wore mask. The new theory is they’ll lower the viral load which will lower the infection but you’ll still have Covid. That I can easily buy. I do wear a mask.I think everyone should.
Does social distancing work? Yes. Huge fan of it. As someone who doesn’t like people in general I love social distancing. People laugh when I say I dislike people because I seem “extroverted”. I am not. I play the part because it’s my job. I strongly dislike people. That doesn’t mean I don’t like to be social but I like it for short periods of time.
I don’t fear Covid. I think had we followed the Swedish model (our own pandemic plan) we would be on the tail end of this. Of course we didn’t. We tried something new that failed and failed badly.
Sweden doesn’t appear to be at the tail end.
Look at their curve.
Look at the log view. They’re on the downside of the curve.
People keep fretting over deaths but look at the age of the deaths. Mistakes were made. It’s cliche but if it gets into an old folks home, you’re going to have mass deaths.
Look at our curve. We are still growing