OT: Coronavirus 2, the No Politics Version

[Lowpe]

I have posted this table before. You can see the numbers have climbed steadily which is the lag in reporting that we have talked about before and mentioned in the footnotes to the table.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Will NYC become a ghost town? 80% of one landlord's retail tenants skipped April and May rent as companies 'take a field day' from office lease payments while weighing permanently working from home - triggering an 'alarming' drop in tax revenue

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gs-on.html

The headline is a bit loaded. I'm sure one landlord has 80% of his retail tenants skipping payments. That does not mean that 80% of all retail tenants are skipping payments. One of my complaints about NYC is that in he last 10 years gentrification has eliminated so many mom and pop stores and along with that much of the street level charm of the city. So many small shops with charterer have been replaced by blocks of generic chain stores. I'd say that 60% of NYC's store front retail consists of chain stores. A typical block will have a Chase Bank, a CVS store, 2 or 3 chain fast food store (some are high end fast food but chains nonetheless), a TD Bank, A Duane Reade a Gap, a Sephora ect, ect,ect. The point is these are corporate entities and they are paying rent. So when this is all said and done there will be more chain stores and even less mom and pop stores. Add in restaurants and bars that will not make it through and you get more gentrification and homogenization. Manhattan and half of Brooklyn was already a lost cause before this started. Now commercial real estate is another thing entirely. In the short run things won't change much financially because big tenants are locked into long term leases (10 years is not unusual). Once those leases are however, who knows? The world will not be the same. The world of millions of people getting on trains and commuting into the city to sit at millions of cubes and then go out to restaurants and bars after work died in early 2020 and is never coming back. Another thing that will die is high rise condominiums full of tiny apartments that cost a fortune but you get to live in the city. Nobody wants those anymore. Commuter suburbs will be the big winner. After being locked in their tiny spaces for a few months the prospect of a house and yard is suddenly appealing. In this shattered economy house prices in the nicer suburbs have gone up instantly and some never even hang a shingle out saying for sale. It goes on the market and sells well above the asking price. Problem is those suburbs are well served by trains but people are not going to be comfortable getting on trains to commute but driving was impossible before so that is not really an option. They need to restore confidence in mass transit. NYC and the suburbs are coming back to life. The virus is on the run, hot spots get knocked down quickly, folks are good wearing masks and we have solid testing and contract tracing programs in place. Not quite there yet and we have to figure out how to reopen lots of stuff but the aggressive steps taken are staring to pay off in a big way. I'm looking forward to a few months of enjoying some of the museums and such before the tourists come back and clog everything up again. Tourism is one of he big industries here and it will be back all too soon. A necessary evil

Agree that most headlines are a bit loaded![:D]

Vornado is a long established real estate trust...from their web page: The company owns and manages over 23 million square feet of LEED certified buildings

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

There is some margin for people to interpret data differently but probably not as much as feared. If an instruction were handed down by a governor or the head of a state health department to "cook the books" to paint a rosier picture, or a bleaker picture, there would be leaks, the press would get ahold of the story, and the instigator would be hounded or demolished. It's far more likely that variations in reporting/tabulating are good faith differences in how jurisdictions or entities or individuals do things. As we've noted before, there is merit in the statistics, especially as long as a given jurisdiction is consistent in reporting. Thus, if Belgium reports 200 deaths on April 15 and 25 today, it means something, even if Belgium counts differently than Denmark.

I'm not suggesting that anyone is purposely cooking books or anything like that. I'm just saying this is a group that loves numbers, and just cautioning you that the basis for the numbers being released is NOT consistent and this is known. If you understand that statement, then you understand why I am urging caution.

The data is being released because of the need to provide something to the public that they can understand. It isn't being done to intentionally mislead, its just that at this point even the Wharton graduates need another couple of months to get all the data onto a consistent basis, and then it will take another month to get the required 3-4 peer comparables to confirm. My guess on this is Aug, but it might slip another month or two.

Until then, we use other, more consistent data to infer what we need to know. You can't explain this to the masses, it isn't that it's rocket science, it actually is considerably more advanced mathematics than that. [;)]

Have mentioned this previously but to no avail.

You can get a nice table of data by web scraping in an afternoon, but to get a suitable degree of consistency takes time, made harder by the chopping and changing of definitions. No consistency means you'll be comparing the number of apples with the average number of spikes on pineapples...

[PaxMondo]

@MM:
Correct, but worse than what you portray.

The data as presented to the public is composed of apples, oranges, pears, lettuce, and rocks etc. It isn't that numbers are wrong or in any way altered (that's why they are using JH to publish them), its just that you can't know the precise units/metrics attached to the numbers published or more accurately statistical accuracy of the numbers presented. To know this, you have to know the accuracy of the testing unit that ran each test. This has not been fully determined for all the currently COVID-19 test units in use (many are on a provisional FDA permit).

So, I believe I can safely state that no one has really accurate data yet; it has not yet been complied yet but it is being worked on. Once the testing unit accuracies are known, I expect updated data to be made readily available.

Where the Wharton grads come into it is that in general these types of units do NOT have normally distributed error curves. It has to do with the nature of the beast. So again, when you hear that units have 40% false positives or 20% false negatives you might think that it might mean the data is all useless. That is not an accurate assessment, the way these things work often when it is understood why/how the errors occur, the data can be salvaged/corrected to a high degree. But this all takes time and a few Wharton PhD's ….

[RangerJoe]

Think of the information presented from the different sources as a fruit salad. A mixture of many different fruits that don't equate to each other very well but can be used in comparisons.

[Alfred]

Both PaxMondo and mind_messing are too kind.  My view is that all the international comparisons and commentary therein made in this and its predecessor thread, have been, are and will always be an utter waste of pixels.  Only ghouls can derive any interest in these discussions on the figures of country x v country y, or people who just want to show off how quickly they can trawl the internet.  For the simple fact is that there will never been international uniformity in the data collection.  The absolute best that can be eventually achieved many months down the track is for intra national data collection uniformity.  And there is no guarantee of that occurring. eventually  There are far too many vested international and national interests manipulating the data for their own ends which can be totally unrelated to covid19.
 
Alfred

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth





It's a mindless and unrelenting microbe. It doesn't care what our opinion of it is and what numbers we report, what we open or what we close. If it can find a new host, it will. It certainly isn't gone. It just isn't spreading out of control in so many places. That doesn't mean it is under control. If it finds an uninfected population in a high enough concentration it will rampage. No, there is no Superman, there is only us, and that will have to be enough. Perhaps we are getting a bit closer to figure out how it best transmits. Our understanding of that has changed, hopefully evolved, over the last few months. So maybe not surface transmission or aerial transmission but person to person transmission? I think that is the latest understanding. OK, not sure I'm ready to get on an elevator with other people just yet. Hopefully we will get a better understanding of this before schools open. That is going to be a challenge because if it starts spreading through schools, even if the students are mostly carriers, its is going to be an ugly fall.

New reports suggesting children are about half as likely to contract Coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... oronavirus

Perhaps their theory is correct. In practice, school employees that come in contact with school children die in large numbers. 65 in NYC including 28 teachers. They closed he schools fairly early but if you knowingly open them again and the virus is still around should we expect a different outcome? Can you test and protect 1 million students and teachers? Not perfectly. And when there seems to be some new pathology that effects children https://abc7ny.com/teacher-deaths-by-co ... c/6133083/

Believe me I think about these things; I'm a teacher. In a school of 1400+ kids from K-12. Another 200+ adults in the building.

So 65 adults died I nNYC from exposure in schools, but is this a higher percentage than the rate of mortality for all adults of those age groups in NYC during the last three months? Those teachers probably also took the subway and did a lot of other things that could expose them, just like teachers here in London.

Schools have been opened elsewhere without difficulty. If case numbers are low then all of this gets easier with testing, tracing and tracking. If case numbers are high then anyone going back to work anywhere into an interior space with a lot of other people would be in danger.

[RangerJoe]

And the next pandemic will be:

Lockdown measures have kept nearly 80 million children from receiving preventive vaccines

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in stay-at-home orders that are putting young children at risk of contracting measles, polio and diphtheria, according to a report released Friday by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Routine childhood immunizations in at least 68 countries have been put on hold due to the unprecedented spread of COVID-19 worldwide, making children under the age of one more vulnerable.

More than half of 129 counties, where immunization data was readily available, reported moderate, severe or total suspensions of vaccinations during March and April.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/lockdown- ... e-vaccines

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

There is some margin for people to interpret data differently but probably not as much as feared. If an instruction were handed down by a governor or the head of a state health department to "cook the books" to paint a rosier picture, or a bleaker picture, there would be leaks, the press would get ahold of the story, and the instigator would be hounded or demolished. It's far more likely that variations in reporting/tabulating are good faith differences in how jurisdictions or entities or individuals do things. As we've noted before, there is merit in the statistics, especially as long as a given jurisdiction is consistent in reporting. Thus, if Belgium reports 200 deaths on April 15 and 25 today, it means something, even if Belgium counts differently than Denmark.

I'm not suggesting that anyone is purposely cooking books or anything like that. I'm just saying this is a group that loves numbers, and just cautioning you that the basis for the numbers being released is NOT consistent and this is known. If you understand that statement, then you understand why I am urging caution.

The data is being released because of the need to provide something to the public that they can understand. It isn't being done to intentionally mislead, its just that at this point even the Wharton graduates need another couple of months to get all the data onto a consistent basis, and then it will take another month to get the required 3-4 peer comparables to confirm. My guess on this is Aug, but it might slip another month or two.

Until then, we use other, more consistent data to infer what we need to know. You can't explain this to the masses, it isn't that it's rocket science, it actually is considerably more advanced mathematics than that. [;)]

Yeah, maybe stuff like this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/us/p ... e=Homepage

As it tracks the coronavirus’s spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing.

Now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One of the agency’s data tracker websites has been lumping them together.

Stunned epidemiologists say data from antibody tests and active virus tests should never be mixed because diagnostic testing seeks to quantify the amount of active disease in the population. Serological testing can also be unreliable. And patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice in the totals.

Epidemiologists, state health officials and a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. said there was no ill intent; they attributed the flawed reporting system to confusion and fatigue in overworked state and local health departments that typically track infections — not tests — during outbreaks. The C.D.C. relies on states to report their data.

[sPzAbt653]

The Duke Appointed as Virus Szar

The new post of Virus Szar has been filled by John 'The Duke' Wayne. In his first official statement in his new capacity, Mr. Wayne stated 'The best way to combat this new plague is to grab the nearest broad and give her a couple wacks on the fanny. By god that'll cure anything!'.

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: obvert




New reports suggesting children are about half as likely to contract Coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... oronavirus

Perhaps their theory is correct. In practice, school employees that come in contact with school children die in large numbers. 65 in NYC including 28 teachers. They closed he schools fairly early but if you knowingly open them again and the virus is still around should we expect a different outcome? Can you test and protect 1 million students and teachers? Not perfectly. And when there seems to be some new pathology that effects children https://abc7ny.com/teacher-deaths-by-co ... c/6133083/

Believe me I think about these things; I'm a teacher. In a school of 1400+ kids from K-12. Another 200+ adults in the building.

So 65 adults died I nNYC from exposure in schools, but is this a higher percentage than the rate of mortality for all adults of those age groups in NYC during the last three months? Those teachers probably also took the subway and did a lot of other things that could expose them, just like teachers here in London.

Schools have been opened elsewhere without difficulty. If case numbers are low then all of this gets easier with testing, tracing and tracking. If case numbers are high then anyone going back to work anywhere into an interior space with a lot of other people would be in danger.

Valid point. 1st Responders (EMT &PD) got hit hard at first but they got good PPE in the 1st week or so. After the initial hit they have a lower rate of catching this than the general public. Teachers got hit hard, but that stopped when the schools closed. The got hit before anybody knew anything. Transit workers were hit the hardest. With over 100 dead and counting. They were semi-prepared but continued to get sick more than anyone else. If I had access to all the cases I would like to check a theory. This thing traveled along the subways and commuter rail lines. That is why Long Island, Westchester and Northern New Jersey had so many cases. All of those places are well served by commuter rail. Perhaps this why parts of Europe were hit hard. Like NYC, they are heavily depended upon Public Transportation. I suspect populations that mostly drive were less impacted.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Yesterday, radio news said that the Mall of American had missed a mortgage payment or two. The loan is more than a billion dollars.

Close it, convert it into housing. Solve two problems at once! [:D]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

There is some margin for people to interpret data differently but probably not as much as feared. If an instruction were handed down by a governor or the head of a state health department to "cook the books" to paint a rosier picture, or a bleaker picture, there would be leaks, the press would get ahold of the story, and the instigator would be hounded or demolished. It's far more likely that variations in reporting/tabulating are good faith differences in how jurisdictions or entities or individuals do things. As we've noted before, there is merit in the statistics, especially as long as a given jurisdiction is consistent in reporting. Thus, if Belgium reports 200 deaths on April 15 and 25 today, it means something, even if Belgium counts differently than Denmark.

I'm not suggesting that anyone is purposely cooking books or anything like that. I'm just saying this is a group that loves numbers, and just cautioning you that the basis for the numbers being released is NOT consistent and this is known. If you understand that statement, then you understand why I am urging caution.

The data is being released because of the need to provide something to the public that they can understand. It isn't being done to intentionally mislead, its just that at this point even the Wharton graduates need another couple of months to get all the data onto a consistent basis, and then it will take another month to get the required 3-4 peer comparables to confirm. My guess on this is Aug, but it might slip another month or two.

Until then, we use other, more consistent data to infer what we need to know. You can't explain this to the masses, it isn't that it's rocket science, it actually is considerably more advanced mathematics than that. [;)]

As long as one isn't trying to mix numbers from different models at this early stage, and knows the limitations of the numbers being cited (such as how deaths are counted, in this particular example), then one can make reliable observations over time. If you're only looking at one model, know its limitations (and its changes/updates and how that affects the numbers, if applicable), and you are using it as a barometer for "are things getting better or are they getting worse", then you're OK to make general observations using that.

But not much more than that, at least not with any reasonable degree of certainty. Basically anything else falls under conjecture, at which point we're entering into the realm of "opinions are like... and everybody has one."

[Nomad]

I found this report interesting. https://justthenews.com/politics-policy ... ome-degree

[sPzAbt653]

Fans of The Walking Dead series have seen this before! In the S1 finale, the CDC doctor Edwin Jenner reveals to Rick that everyone is already infected.

[RangerJoe]

My test:

SARS-CoV-2 RNA (COVID-19)
SARS-CoV-2 RNA absent. This result does not rule out
COVID-19 in the patient, as the sensitivity of the test
depends on the timing of the specimen collection and the
quality of the specimen. Result should be correlated with
patient's history and clinical presentation.

This test using the cobas SARS-CoV-2 assay (Roche Molecular
Systems, Inc.) performed on the cobas 6800 System
.
.
.
Test Performed by:
Mayo Clinic Laboratories

[:D][:D][:D]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

My test:

SARS-CoV-2 RNA (COVID-19)
SARS-CoV-2 RNA absent. This result does not rule out
COVID-19 in the patient, as the sensitivity of the test
depends on the timing of the specimen collection and the
quality of the specimen. Result should be correlated with
patient's history and clinical presentation.

This test using the cobas SARS-CoV-2 assay (Roche Molecular
Systems, Inc.) performed on the cobas 6800 System
.
.
.
Test Performed by:
Mayo Clinic Laboratories

[:D][:D][:D]

So how did you present yourself at the clinic? Cleanshaven? A week's growth? Rumpled or neat? Sober or not? It seems the outcome of your testing depends on this clinical presentation.

[sPzAbt653]

Georgia COVID-19 cases, deaths tick up over last week

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/he ... 04a0367866

Let's start with new cases. The past two days, we've seen a slight uptick in new cases reported. We also noticed a change in the number of deaths we're seeing. In just the past day, 78 more deaths were reported - marking the fourth-highest daily total so far.

Are folks in other areas that opened first seeing the same?

[Canoerebel]

The report you linked to (by Channel 11 news) is incorrect or incomplete and therefore misleading.

The increase in positive test results (new cases) has been modest and seems to be tied to an increase in testing rather than widespread outbreaks. The number of hospitalizations (serious cases) and deaths continue to decline. As for the 78 deaths referred to in the linked story, that doesn't match the state department of health statistics, which currently shows 11 on the day in question, May 22 (and a high of 55 on April 16).

Here's a CNN report yesterday that gives a pretty good overview of the situation here, which continues to be encouraging: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/georg ... index.html

[Sammy5IsAlive]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The report you linked to (by Channel 11 news) is incorrect or incomplete and therefore misleading.

The increase in positive test results (new cases) has been modest and seems to be tied to an increase in testing rather than widespread outbreaks. The number of hospitalizations (serious cases) and deaths continue to decline. As for the 78 deaths referred to in the linked story, that doesn't match the state department of health statistics, which currently shows 11 on the day in question, May 22 (and a high of 55 on April 16).

Here's a CNN report yesterday that gives a pretty good overview of the situation here, which continues to be encouraging: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/georg ... index.html

I think this is an example of what was being discussed previously about the dangers of getting too caught up in the daily numbers.

The 78 deaths figure is not a 'wild' number that has been picked out of nowhere - it is the figure that you get for that day on Google's dashboard. Google say that they are taking their figures from Wikipedia, who in turn are showing 78 and saying they have taken that figure from the Georgia Department of Public Health.

As Canoerebel says if you then go to the GDPH website you get a different figure for that day.

How can that work? If you look at the GDPH graphs they give themselves a 14 day 'reporting window' in which the numbers are 'preliminary'. It appears that as deaths are being recorded they are being assigned to the day on which they actually occurred. I think if you follow their figures day to day you will see not only the most recent data point be entered but also the c.13 data points prior to it increase also.

The 78 'new deaths' reported by Google/Wikipedia for the 21/05 is the basic increase in overall death toll reported by the GDPH on that day and will include deaths that occurred during the previous c.14 days. By the same measure the 12 deaths that are currently recorded by GDPH for that day will continue to rise over the next week or so by which point you should have an accurate figure for the actual day.

I think the above is why Worldometers have daily case/death graphs for some states and not others.

The way Georgia is reporting gives a more accurate picture over the long run because the cases/deaths are being assigned to the actual date. But in the short-term it can be a bit misleading - the current graph for deaths in particular suggests a precipitous decrease in deaths over the last week or so when I think the reality is that these deaths simply haven't been recorded yet.

If you look at the GDPH graphs and look at the trend up to and around the beginning of the 'reporting window' there does seem to have been a significant uptick in cases from around the 12/05. Canoerebel will be better placed to advise whether this is more likely to be to do with increased testing than a higher infection rate in the population.