Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Not only has the health minister in Victoria, Australia resigned, the state premier has just rejected calls for his resignation. This after they regained control of the second outbreak. At the peak they had just over 100 cases per day per million. On a 7-day average there were about 75 cases per day per million. I can't even produce a smooth plot of deaths per day at present.

By contrast Florida is currently experiencing between 5 and 6 deaths per day per million, and 132 cases per day per million. We are in worse shape at present than Victoria was at peak, and our governor just lifted the remaining restrictions on businesses. If that weren't enough, the fine print on the executive order prevents local officials from enforcing violations of things like mask laws with fines or business closures. Local communities can encourage people to wear masks, and try to limit crowds, but that is about the limit.

Victoria had 781 total deaths from a population of 6.689 million. Florida has had 14,083 deaths from a population of 21.5 million.

 

AXIOS has noticed that U.S. numbers are moving in the wrong direction, and substantially so. Here's the direct link to data from JHU. Just click on the entry for U.S. and wait for the graph to refresh to show the number of cases per day. Epidemiologists wanted new cases below 10,000 per day before fall and winter hit. 55,000 is way beyond that, and I don't see much active means of reducing spread.

 

I've seen many Americans (not here, but elsewhere on the internet) make the argument that once the virus takes off in the community, there is no way to eliminate/severely repress case numbers, regardless of lockdowns and border controls therefore arguing that only minimum restrictions should be applied, just enough to "flatten the curve" so that hospitals don't get overloaded and the defeatist conclusion that "we just need to learn to live with it".

The Victorian experience (like the Chinese experience, if you are willing to believe the Chinese Government) suggests that the genie can in fact be put back in the bottle. The Victorian experience also provides a lesson about, well, making sure people (such as quarantine hotel guards) actually do the right thing, and how bosses coercing their employees to continue working while ill is a terrible idea, and that income support is essential for those taking time off work to self-isolate.

In that sense, I think all the initial media and government messaging talking about how we simply needed to "flatten the curve" was a big mistake. Australia quickly moved on towards elimination early (along with NZ, Vietnam etc) but it seems most of the world have just put up their hands in defeat...

 

It now appears the White House stopped the C.D.C. from extending a "no sail" order on cruise ships. Here's an account in AXIOS. There is no question cruise ships have produced a number of "super-spreader" events.

This appears to have been aimed at pleasing Florida voters. I'm not sure how many there are here who are okay with a continuing pandemic.
BTW: Florida reported 1,948 new cases and 175 deaths today. This is far from over, or under control. It is just slow enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals and gravediggers.

 

The Atlantic has an article on an epidemiological variable you probably have not heard about. We have heard about R0 and even have a site for Rt.

Those who have been following these have been frustrated by the variations that take place, and efforts to distort statistics to portray a particular message. The new variable is called simply k, and it does not have a snappy description. The practical implication is that it tells how an epidemic depends on super-spreader events, and this one is high in that respect. The practical implication is that controlling a small number of potential super-spreader events has a disproportionate impact on the epidemic.

Japan focused on this, and succeeded without some of the extreme measures seen in other countries. Florida is at the other extreme, with some people positively encouraging super-spreader events.

 

A very long and detailed article, which explains a lot.

On a similar note:

Super-spreaders are major drivers of COVID-19 outbreaks, study finds

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/med...outbreaks-study-finds/ar-BB19CpDR?ocid=ASUDHP

 

Perhaps all those nurses at the RFH were in contact with a super-spreader and were not just young and female.

 

I think superspreader events are basically localised epidemics so the Royal Free and all the rest were examples. What they all have in common are a group of people in close contact.

 

For once I wish I didn't agree with Dr. Fauci. He basically said Florida is doomed to worse than it has experienced. In addition to reopening bars and restaurants at full capacity, the state government has undercut local governments ability to enforce mask laws with fines and business closures. They have twisted arms to force Broward county to reopen schools, by threatening to cut off state funding. Soon the cruise liner business will reopen, against the CDC's original wishes.

Today we reported 2,483 new cases and 73 deaths. This is not acceptable on a long-term basis. The flu season hits us later than those further north, but it is coming. You can be certain people fleeing cold weather will bring it here.

I went out today, and laid in more supplies for a long period of isolation. If the state won't take reasonable precautions, I'm going to hole up at home.

 

Meanwhile, Russia has quietly admitted they now have over 10,000 new cases per day. Russia's population is about half the U.S. Medical workers there never did see the dip in cases the central government reported. They are now seeing classic evidence of overload. This matches private reports from an entirely different region.

At least a few officials there recognize they need to take some action to slow spread. I'm still waiting for Florida to acknowledge reality, and stop trying to spread the virus. The reality I described above is what happens when protection becomes entirely an individual responsibility, with cities, school districts and counties hobbled by the state. Schools in Broward county and Miami-Dade, which has already been hard-hit, are still moving toward full reopening. There were big parties last week after restrictions on bars were lifted.

Some here will never figure things out. We just had a congressman argue that the CDC guidelines which Trump did not follow failed to protect him.
How's that again?

 

There seems to be a global competition for stupidity in response to COVID-19. I've mentioned a number of stupid actions and questionable statistics in Florida, and I'm sure there will be more, but the U.K. has just acknowledged a slight error in reporting thousands of cases due to an overloaded spreadsheet!

Does the scientific establishment guiding the U.K.'s pandemic response come down to one person working with an Excel spreadsheet on a desktop computer? How long did it take to notice this minor error?

For those not computer savvy, I'll point out that case numbers are integers, and modern hand-held devices like mobile phones support 64-bit integers in hardware.

(I come from a prehistoric past when we used 8-bit integers in hardware arithmetic, and still connected them together to handle big numbers in software. One of my first programs computed 99 factorial or 99! on a machine now only seen in museums. )

This would allow you to count (2^64) - 1 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 cases, or if you allow negative cases, using twos-complement representation, you might only have (2^63) - 1 = 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. I suspect this is larger than the number of cases in the entire Universe.

 

It sounds like you are probably overqualified for this job I saw advertised.. Well below the market rate for such an important role and expecting someone to take the risk of a temporary contract with little in the way of compensation to boot

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Test, Track and Trace project Manager needed in Salford £23.34ph ref 0003 938A/1

This is working full time hours on a temporary basis.
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