COVID-19/Coronavirus NBA Thread

I think a lot of countries who didn't stop all flights, just as ours are going to be the next Italy really quick. That includes little countries like Ireland. Why we haven't stopped all passenger flights and trains period is going to come back and bite us. Spain went from 1695 cases to almost 14,000 in the last 8 days and Italy went from 10,149 to over 35,000 in 8 days. Where we go from over 6,000 in even 2 weeks is scary.

 

Our case growth is similar to Italy, but the good thing is that our mortality rate has been low. Italy is an outlier and it is being discussed now in the scientific community (I'm a scientist but not an epidemiologist) why that is. Age and medical availability are important but it's possible there are other factors. The US is generally younger and has on average better hospitals, but this varies a lot by location. So our mortality rates will likely continue to be better than Italy (we're now around 1% while Italy is around 8%), but if there is a surge in patients then our mortality rate will likely go up due to excess strain on the system.

 

That’s basically exactly what every “data scientist” on twitter is saying, and it’s extremely incorrect. Since this is clutch-fans and not twitter, I’ll explain why.

1) While the US growth case is superficially similar to Italy, in practice, they are extremely different. The US is geographically vast (fewer intermediate vectors), it’s cities run literally tens of times more efficiently (quicker response times to quarantine measures), and the cultural differences (Italians are SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to inhabit a building with an at risk family member) are just the beginning. Looking at a website with growth rates and death rates and claiming 8% of Americans who get this will die is not only useless, it’s creating a climate of fear in the community that will hurt our ability to respond and prepare.

2) Mortality rates and system strain don’t correlate nearly as high as people seem to believe, for another laundry list of reasons. Getting the right supplies to the right people is by far more important, which again, is being hurt by “scientists” who believe they understand epidemiology or predictive science, and are acting as experts simply because they understand some completely unrelated field. People are taking supplies they don’t need, and it’s a problem.

Regardless, speaking of strain, remember when China deployed a 1000 bed hospital in 10 days, and it was extremely effective in stopping the spread? The US can deploy a 9000 bed hospital in 12 HOURS.

My field is predictive science, and we have spent decades undoing the work of other scientists that have actively been hurting the profession with their arrogance. Seeing a bunch of scientists take to twitter in a time of crises and actively distress the situation because their confidence outweighs their expertise is frankly, depressing. Anyone can recognize when they are right. What makes someone a good scientist is that they can recognize when they are wrong. I hope we haven’t forgotten that.

 

Idiot Sheeple are dumb enough to go in the system and become a fake case. Lol yeah let's keep celebrities in our fake prayers too lol

 

1) The US growth in cases is doubling every 3 days, tracking Italy exactly, just 11 days back (by numbers), or 17 days back (by equiv. density). Just like all the other EU nations, thought the other nations are different days behind (UK is 3 days behind us). We're just starting to implement shutdowns that will hopefully slow this down.

2) Mortality rates do correlate for this virus. 538 estimates we have 100,000 ventilators in the US. 5% of cases need a ventilator. All cases that need a ventilator that don't get one are fed morphine until their eventual death death. It's happening in Italy now. We can build more hospital beds and temporary beds, we can't build more ventilators overnight.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...ck-but-we-only-have-about-100000-ventilators/

 

I appreciate your expertise, and given what's going on in twitter I can see why you reacted strongly. Still, you seem to have ascribed to me your feelings about twitter, not what I actually said. Nowhere did I say that we will reach an 8% death rate. In fact I said that Italy is an outlier. How to best limit the mortality rate is the crucial question. I would be curious what you think are the best actions there.

 

I don't know if you are correct or not because I am not an expert in this. What I know is the attitude of the politicians who make decisions that affect how this pandemic is handled.

The complacency of the country's leaders until about only 5 days ago was what spurred all the alarms from the medical scientists. This was exactly what happened in Italy and the rest of Europe. Scientists might be arrogant. But they literally had to shout at the policy makers to finally get their attention.

In fact, I'd blame the leaders for the hoarding frenzies. People heard news about the coming epidemic and saw that the government was doing nothing. They were scared that it would be out of control. If it had been handled the right way early on, it would not trigger so much fear.

 

Let me know when BoB, Lebron and Giannis get it.

 

Did they name the Lakers? I 'm not shocked the Lakers got it.

They were still touching each other up to the last game of the season and acting like it wasn't anything, just like Rudy acted, so careless.

I wonder if it's Lebron. He was doing a lot of hugging and shaking hands and hand touching

 

If any Laker got it, it would be Dwight.

 

And Kuzma. His hair

 

I didn't read that there are two Lakers that tested positive. 13% chance it could be LeBron. That would blow up the internet.

 

Javale is not one of them. he's negative. So the odd of it being Dwight and Lebron just increased

 

Amazing how all these NBA players get priority testing over people sick with symptons begging for tests.

 

Many of the teams are hiring private labs and doctors with their own tests and not relying on the government provided ones.

 

Dang. Now even Smart player gets it.