They are more or less the same if you count infection cases but not deaths. And this curve is pretty much the key point everybody should care about - we have to lower the maximum of the curve so that the ICU bed capacity (and other important medical needs) are not overwhelmed and we don’t get a situation like in Northern Italy where we have a war-like situation with doctors doing triaging and more or less have to send some people home to die as they are deemed less likely to survive and they don’t have enough ICU beds for everybody. Unfortunately I am afraid the US might move in the same direction when I read that the US government is only considering an emergency declaration once the world-renowned viral expert Jared Kushner has finished his research - you can’t make up this shit and we are doomed
I thought there was little I hadn’t read but I hadn’t seen this Politico piece. I continue to want to scream…loudly.
The LA Eater article that you posted reflects exactly the concern I had in my OP. Very sad.
Praise the lord, he has bestowed upon us the wisdom of the great Jared Kusher to lead us out of darkness. Praise the lord. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel
… and it’s the oncoming virus train…
Mag-Lev class
JERSEY CITY – Mayor Steven M. Fulop and city health and public safety officials announce… Venues (restaurants, bars, etc.) that hold more than 25 people are being asked to maintain attendance in case of future need to track exposure …
Actually the reason for the annual flu shot is not necessarily because our immunity weakens, but rather due to antigenic shift which are different year-to-year variations of the surface proteins of the predominant influenza virus strains in any given flu season.
It’s a combination of both factors
I can add that I was at my Pulmonologist’s office yesterday and asked him if they could test someone if they needed to. He said “no”. This is at one of the two or three largest medical practices in OC.
That’s not a great summary. There’s more than one flu virus going around each season. How effective each season’s vaccine is depends on how good a job its designers did predicting which strains will be common.
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/influenza/influenza-b-leading-charge-2020-flu-season
A couple of comments.
First, I’ve been watching this plot on coronavirus.com, which is current as of 3/11 and will change.
I personally think that the actual numbers are maybe ten times those given on this website; nevertheless, based on the limited sample data we do have (analogous to voting exit poll numbers) there may be some things that can be predicted.
First, every viral outbreak (colds, flu, novel viruses) has a “cases-vs-time” curve that has the “bell” shape (not to be confused with statistics) like the schematics in Robert’s March 10 post. Both are exponential growth initially, followed by a rate-limiting change in slope, and finally an exponential decay.
Since there are limited medical resources, the idea is to “flatten” the curve by damping the cause of spread, so it remains below the institutional health capacity. But not to flatten it so much that the disease spread goes on and on, albeit at a much more moderate level, for a long, long time, crippling normal life and exhausting toilet paper supplies.
I see the caveats on the plot above of cases-vs-time, but I’d like to hope that the peak of the “bell” curve has already passed in the US. There are indications that that’s the case in S. Korea.
In the 1918 pandemic, the vast majority of cases in the US were during a two-month period, October-November, 1918. It was essentially “gone” by early spring 1919. My DH’s grandmother died of the Spanish flu (with pneumonia complications) in October 1918.
The number of new cases of flu in San Diego has been dropping exponentially, down 85% as of today, from the peak rate. I realize that Covid-19 isn’t this year’s flu, but it started later and should behave the same as other viruses in terms of a bell curve.
What is an “exponential” change, you ask? You don’t have to have any mathematical background. It’s a simple concept. When the momentary rate of change in the amount of something (say the number of new active cases of Covid-19 that day) is proportional to the total amount of that something itself (say the total number of active infections up to that day), that’s an exponential rate of change. It can be positive or negative (rising or falling).
The total number of cases of Covid-19 will never come down. It will continue to increase indefinitely into the future. But the rate of change of the number of new cases will eventually become negative, and asymptote to near zero. That’s almost a certainty based on past, similar events.
I hope the CDC plot of new cases will continue to drop over the next several weeks, exponentially. (Now there’s positive thinking for you!)
Yes, absolutely, and not widely appreciated or understood. And the flu vaccines, partly due to this, are only about 50% effective.
Combine that with the fact that only about 50% of people get the vaccine in the first place, and it means that about 75% of us are at risk of getting this year’s flu. Or were, since it’s subsiding rapidly (in SD, anyway).
Speaking of SD, BTW, it’s true that the best place to be during a virus outbreak is outdoors in the sunshine, because sunlight kills viruses.
Perfect . I live far away from the big cities. With plenty of sunshine.
High-five, Emglow101.
[Ooops! Bad mistake! Someone bring the Purell!]
I’m checking the shelves tomorrow. I’m sure there’s plenty of purell . Not much concern here. Local bars and restaurants. Are seeing the same amount of people. Including our one Chinese restaurant . Still busy.
We were going to fly 11 hours to Europe and then to a cruise. Now we’re going off in our RV to Idaho and Montana (so far not infected) and cook like crazy. Gotta find good places to eat there.
Good for you. La dolce vita.