1million will get it. 100,000 to 240,000 will die?

I have been wondering why we haven't seen a decline in cases in the three weeks since schools closed and we started "social distancing" - I really thought we'd have seen the peak by now.

If you look at the places where its worst - NY , NJ particularly - Those places are different than anywhere else in North America in terms of population density , how they get around , where they live. 65% of households don't own a car - they rely upon mass transit.
If the rest of the nation wants to get up and go , we get in our cars ... They get on public transportation which is usually packed like a sardine can and that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to this virus spreading.

From what I've read , ridership of public transportation is down in some area's of NY/NJ but stable in others - generally the less affluent area's and those are the places that most heavily rely upon public transportation. Then you have fewer "trains" running than before the outbreak which is making for more people on each car .... making social distancing impossible. These people have no choice - they have to get to work.
That's why we're seeing thousands of new cases every day in NY.

Social distancing isn't enough in a place like that - They need a complete and total lockdown for a 2-3 week period.

I think the rest of the country can get by with social distancing in general , outside of a few metropolitan area's that are similar to NY.

Places like Houston / Dallas / Atlanta / Minneapolis aren't going to be affected nearly as much being that we are more spread out .... out in the suburbs instead of on top of each other.


I don't see reaching 200m infections. Not when most are staying in their homes and away from other people aside from essential movement. Even in NY where its worst , only 4 tenths of a percent (0.0042938) of the population has a confirmed case. 83,901/19,540,000.

I think we'll continue to see high population density area's suffer the most while the rest of the country peaks and tapers off.

We're a long way from 200m cases .... 1/tenth of a percent of the way there.


Just stay home ....

 

Most like about 70% of the population will get infected at the end of the day, but majority will be asymptomatic or have mild episodes.

The real issue (like someone pointed out earlier) is the hospitalization rate and duration). National hospital bed capacity is about 800k and dont see it doubling in the short term.

Assuming median length of stay of 12 days and hospitalization rate of 5%, you are looking at about 10 million hospitalization. If the curve is totally flat, then we would need at least about 4 months to work through the hospitalized population.

Things get worse cos the available beds per capita are not uniform with some places having terrible ratios. Also the curve is not totally flat and will peak at some point and that is the real problem. The other key factor is that the healthcare workforce is limited and will be reduced by infection as well, while the continous pressure and long hours they work will increase fatigue and errors.

If the available local capacity (healthcare workers and/or facility) is exceeded before the hospitalization rate peaks, then people will not have access to needed treatment and the death rate rises sharply. This is what happened in Italy and some other countries, and, what we are desperately trying to avoid/mitigate as much as possible.

 

Infection numbers are still rising because we're doing more testing and our shutdowns came late. We are just outside of the two week windows of the period when infected people are still contagious. Also the all of these stay at home rules are porous to some level. Also we're no where near a cure. Even when it looks like we've flattened the curve that doesn't mean there won't be new infections. It just means the rate of infections will slow. While cities that aren't as dense as NY won't get infections as fast once things are lifted they will likely still be getting infections.

 

They have hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases right now, the number will keep going up for at least a few weeks.

 

I laffed after reading 1 million. I actually think everybody will get it at some point...too transmissable and ubiquitus now

 

Some more info. I was just listening to an epidemiologist on the news saying that about 2% of those infected will get seriously ill as in require a ventilator. That's another figure that goes along with the previous figure that 20% of people who get infected will be noticeably symptomatic. If we go with the previous figure of a 60% infection rate for the US that is around 200 million and if 2% of those require ventilators that is 4 million.

We don't have nearly enough ventilators to meet that need.

 

Of course .... no arguing that we'll be dealing with this for a while.


Just stating that "way of life" plays a big role in the numbers and that I don't believe we'll see those large numbers we see in NY in many other cities .... It'll be mostly the old north / northeastern eastern cities - NY , Philly , Baltimore , Boston & Chicago bear the brunt of the cases being that there are so damn many people in close proximity and that their way of life is a bit different from the rest of America , particularly mode of travel.

Take a look at this chart .... I don't at all believe its only coincidence that the list falls this way: https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html

 

I certainly think density plays a factor. Frankly that is why we see several diseases start in the PRC because it is very dense. This virus though is very effective at transmission. I think in the end we won't see a large difference in the total number of infections (factoring in that the population is lower in states like Minnesota) but just a much slower rate.

 

You don't comprehend do you ?


It's not about "traveling" its about how you travel.

There's a big difference between jumping in a car alone and jumping on public transportation in close proximity to many other people.

Then take a look at population density per mile , there's quite a difference between how we live in Houston to how they live in NY
https://www.google.com/search?q=new...1.69i57j0l7.6111j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/state-densities/

 

That doesn't take into account the green patches in areas of California where it's extremely rural. Why aren't they red? What about upstate New York? Western Mass? All those places are very rural.

Let's be frank here. A large portion of the red is due to Evangelicals and Trump fanboys and girls who disproportionately live in the south who haveaa massive distrust of news media and bought into the "mainstream media is trying to take down Trump with a pandemic scare" narrative and many of them are purposefully ignoring social distancing orders because they love to give a middle finger to the libtard media as much as possible.

Pretty much every Trump supporter I know from my time in the Marine Corps believes the media is overblowing the pandemic to make Trump look bad and most of them are bragging on Facebook about having large cook outs and purposefully ignoring social distancing.

I'm sure that is a similar sentiment with a large portion of Southerners.

 

You are inserting your own biases into this argument. First, I have already commented on another post (the NYC subway post) that high density mass transit contributed to virus spread (and more than just density play factors).

But you are also missing/ignoring/distracting from other takeaways. That people traveling longer distances can have on the spread of the virus. And that the recency of that travel has an impact on virus spread. And when you consider those you can also look at how long it will take for the spread to be "flattened" in those regions where people traveled longer distances and more recently. Which points to Governors being slow to take action.

 

Sure, Trump would like to set expectations for high deaths so that he can outperform that number. He might not campaign on it, but he at least wants to inoculate himself from being campaigned against on it. But, I'm not really paying attention to the projections now as a measure of performance. The number is as high as it is now because of the poor leadership we've suffered over the last 3 months. To accept that figure as a benchmark is to forgive Trump for pretending the virus didn't exist. My metric is deaths per capita vs other countries.

 

Hey we're more spread out than they are. Granted even adjusting for that, we're probably not doing as well in that regard, but it's not as simple as "in a word", as simple as now often over a given distance traveled.

Is this the cell phone tracking data btw? Does anyone know if they've compiled for instance how often a given number of ppl get together, regardless of how far or close?


Edit: nm only got here through new posts list, and didn't realize I'm in the fight section (prison rules).

 

Current percentage of population infected.

NY - 0.00429 4.2/1,000
New Jersey - 0.00239 2.39/1,000
Massachusetts - 0.00112 1.1/1,000
Illinois - 0.00054 5.4 / 10,000
Pennsylvania - 0.00046
Florida - 0.00036
Maryland - 0.00032
California - 0.00024
Texas - 0.00014 1.4 in 10,000
Minnesota - 0.00012 1.2 in 10,000


Tie that into the population density chart .....

 

Ya it pretty much marches. Both Illinois and New York have the two most dense metro regions in the US.

Texas even though it has major cities are far more sprawled and less dense then the NYC metro area and the Chicago metro area. And parts of New Jersey are part of the NYC metro area where it's far more dense than most if not all Texas cities.

 

If you don't get it .... I aint explaining it. Take your political blinders off , put your engineer goggles on and examine the evidence.


I don't at all believe this is overblown - I'm pointing out some basic facts about why some area's are harder hit than others.

Population density and mode of travel obviously play a role.

 

I never once even remotely implied YOU are taking this lightly. Where would you get that implication from?

If your excuse is rural people have to naturally travel more to get essential stuff like groceries than that excuse doesn't line up with Western Mass, upstate New York and the agricultural areas of Cali.

Yes, there are multiple reasons but a large reason is that the south disproportionately have people who don't trust mainstream news sources like CNN compared to other regions and have a disproportionate Trump following. Many Trump supporters believe thanks to the rhetoric of Trump and his surrogates a month ago that this is just a media creation to tank the market to prevent Trump's reelection.

 

Agreed, a super dense city like NYC, the subway has to be a very effective vector for spreading.

But I think you're overlooking that everybody in rural America also touches stuff at the grocery store, waits in line at the store, their kids attended school and spread asymptomatically, and just like New Yorkers they go to (/went to) restaurants and movies and shows and sporting events... and they attend church at a far higher rate.

There was a choir rehearsal in WA a few weeks ago for about 120 people- 45 are infected now and two dead already. Likely standing in proximity and singing transmitted a lot more droplets than usual... as one does at church.

Remember that a major nexus of spreading the virus in South Korea before containment was a church.

I fear that the southern evangelists who think this is a hoax and ignore the calls for distancing will be in for a terrible reckoning in the next month.

I hope it never comes to that, and that civic duty, social distancing, and luck prevent a widespread infection.

 

I think the people who aren't taking this seriously at this point are very few in number.

Two weeks ago .... I probably would have agree'd with you but not now - everyone is scared of this ****.

My wife works with a lot of non-profits / churches as their insurance agent and the vast majority have either canceled services or gone to video services.


Sure , there are some idiots out there ....