CDC Early Release – Syndrome Coronavirus 2
“High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases
Doing my usual morning reading, I ran across a comment concerning an early release article by the CDC which as the CDC points out is not considered to be a final versions. I believe what is important about the preliminary information is the increase of R-naught from 2.3 to 5.7. By now I believe you know what R-naught means; but, I will repeat it anyways. R-naught reflects the potential number of people who are infected by one contagious person. The abstract also emphasizes continued active surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, and early ‘strong’ social distancing efforts are needed to stop transmission of the virus.
Meanwhile our president wants to open up the country come May as some states have just started to initiate “stay at home” policies, and other states have yet to implement stay at home policies. Our leaders Washington D.C. are also pushing “herd immunity” which I believe is influencing our president’s desire to open up for business come May. A post by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism develops the theory of “herd immunity” as briefly explained by one of the NC readers;
“The herd is allowed to be infected and then observed the course of the disease. Those left are either immune to the disease or robust enough to fight off the infection. This immunity of course applies only to the given pathogen and can’t be easily generalized. This is not usually a strategy adopted for human beings.
The term is usually used in the context of the introduction of a vaccine where you are creating, to the extent you can, herd immunity. You then observe how well the vaccine works. If the vaccine works, you have created herd immunity for a certain period of time, a period associated with the pathogen and the immune system’s response to it. It will be different for each pathogen. For standard flu, it appears to be about a year. For covid-19, no one seems to know.”
Dominic Cummings, the promoter of herd immunity in England has come down with Coronavirus and has of yet has not returned to Downing Street after quarantining himself a week ago. That is as it should be, if a countries leader is to promote herd immunity to open an economy or keep an economy open as he did, they should lead the way and set the example for the rest of the herd. Dominic Cummings is a Boris Johnson advisor. It is doubtful we shall see many of our leaders lighting the way for us as examples.
In any case read the abstract (after the leap) and view the chart I posted. There is more information and charts in the article itself which will shed more light on the Coronavirus.
Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is the causative agent of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease pandemic. “Initial estimates of the early dynamics of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, suggested a doubling time of the number of infected persons of 6–7 days and a basic reproductive number (R0) of 2.2–2.7. We collected extensive individual case reports across China and estimated key epidemiologic parameters, including the incubation period. We then designed 2 mathematical modeling approaches to infer the outbreak dynamics in Wuhan by using high-resolution domestic travel and infection data. Results show that the doubling time early in the epidemic in Wuhan was 2.3–3.3 days. Assuming a serial interval of 6–9 days, we calculated a median R0 value of 5.7 (95% CI 3.8–8.9). We further show that active surveillance, contact tracing, quarantine, and early “strong” social distancing efforts are needed to stop transmission of the virus.
Growth rate r/day and R-naught
It appears that Trump, his acolytes, and Faux News’ strategy is to muddy the Covid19 waters to such a degree that Trump can declare victory regardless of the ultimate cost in lives of Trump and Republican actions/inaction. Given on-going confusion and misdirection we average Joes are in for a protracted period of “better watch yourself because you’re pretty much on your own”.
Kirk:
He is going to ride to victory whether our lives matter or not and declare it was all him. You are correct. ew Deal democrat has not answered me on what he thought on how this will play out in the number of deaths. If anyone would know, he would. He has been tracking this since it began.
For the record, what do you do? You sound like medical like some of the others around here. I worked healthcare supplies and making pharmaceutical (pills and ointments).
This was the plan since the beginning, including Joe Biden’s, who wanted a 6 week shutdown then reopen with a greatly expanded medical infrastructure in place to handle new cases, to where you probably wouldn’t even notice.
Trump can declare victory all he wants. Much like the other nations, he was tardy, understaffed and was unprepared.
“Herd immunity” for a novel disease is simply code for doing nothing. There is no way to track the progress and spread of the disease by looking at outbreaks since you are fundamentally 2 to 3 weeks behind. The alternative to staying at home is to have a robust testing and tracking regime that can dampen out pockets before they can propagate, but we need to reduce the overall incidence and get ahead of it before that can be instituted.
Medical care isn’t enough. We can’t do much to stymie the progress of the disease once someone is ill just treat the symptoms. The “miracle cures” that have been bandied about may be helping but that is not at all clear, and even if they are, we are already using them. In the US we’re currently seeing about a 3.7% CFR. Just counting on robust treatment you will end up with 3.7% of the US dead in 18 months.
Michael:
Thank you. You are saying the same as what New Deal democrat, Robert, Kirk, myself, and others have said. Test at 15:1 (NDd said this) which emulates Korea’s actions to get ahead of the curve and seize control.
Michael Order,
almost everywhere the initial growth in infections has been a doubling every 3-4 days. Assuming that continues without social distancing policy, the whole of the US would be infected by the end of May. Forget 18 months.
Obviously, social distancing is working but only so long as we keep it up and equally obviously we are going to have great difficulty keeping it up until we have a vaccine. The answer seems to be a rigorous testing program with quarantining and tracing of positive cases. Currently we do not have the capacity to do that–here in Indiana where we seem to still be on the upswing after 3 weeks of soft stay at home–health care workers with known exposures can not get tested. As dumb as Trump is and as much as he would like an economy in November 2020 as good as it was in January 2020, it is not going to happen and he knows it is not going to happen. He also knows that if he opens the economy too soon – – before you can test millions every day – – that the second wave will be more devastating than the first and he will not win a single state. Finally, he knows that he can not really order a state to end its stay at home policy although heaven knows he can bring a lot of pressure to bear particularly in directing the delivery of federal relief authorized by Congress. I believe his strategy will be to continually urge the opening of the economy before “reluctantly” deferring to the “experts” with whom he will increasingly disagree and then argue in October that the economy is improving and would be so much better but for the experts – – who everyone knows have a liberal bias just like facts – – and that he was the only one who fought back against the experts who wanted to ruin the country. That and the fact that African Americans are being disproportionately impacted will keep his 40% base and then the election will turn on how much he can depress turnout for Biden and whether he can thread the needle in the Electoral College. I do not think there is a chance in hell he can do it but I could not believe he did it in 2016 either.
Dawdled for two and more months at a most time, had to be herded, pushed, nudged, to do the right things; had to be held back from doing the wrong things, . . .
No evidence of leadership at any time from Trump. ‘Twas the governors who stepped up.
ken:
Were you at Economists View before? Your name is familar.
Run75441
Yeah. Just edited Name.
ok, I remember you. Welcome to AB.
Dan owns the place and I help him by moderating besides writing on healthcare, etc.
c’est moi
from 2007, 2008
http://angrybearblog.com/?s=ken+melvin