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I do not have a political bias. I am an independent. I have voted for Democratic candidates more than Republicans and I did not vote for the current President, if that is what you are getting at. I did vote for Gov. Abbott.
I do see data more minutely than most and make my own opinions, rather than align myself with the crowd.
Since you are a data guy, I request you to review the image with the hospitalization numbers for Dallas county that I posted within the post a few posts above, and provide your perspective. I sincerely want to hear it.
To be clear, I don't disagree with the idea that the hospitalizations are not as serious or that the new cases are happening in younger people, etc. A few pages ago, I posted five options that I think could explain why we are seeing a serious spike in positive tests but only a minor spike in deaths. In a nutshell, I believe we are seeing a mix of much heavier testing (literally 5x as much compared to early April) and younger people getting the virus (who may be hospitalized but less likely to die). But there has been an actual spike in deaths as demonstrated by the 7-day moving average graph:
And it's worth pointing out that if this is partially driven by younger people getting the virus, that will likely lead to older people getting the virus. I do think we have seen an increase in the real number of virus cases, although it likely hasn't been as large of an increase as the virus testing numbers would indicate. I was probably more pessimistic than most a month and a half ago, and I think the death numbers have since justified that. I'm probably more optimistic than most now, though.
The answer here seems simple. Masks. Greg Abbott is trying to placate the crowd that thinks their personal "right" to not wear a mask trumps the rights of others to live. They're morons, of course, and he has no backbone (not a disabled joke).
In Dallas, Johnson said Thursday a pop-up hospital in the convention center would not be set up because a local hospital council and the county expects medical facilities can handle an influx of patients. Plans for the overflow facility were first discussed this spring but sputtered to a halt in April due to lack of need.
One thing that I think has gotten too much coverage is the positivity rate, which is the percentage of administered tests that come back positive. While it might seem intuitive that a rising positivity rate means there are more cases "out there" that haven't been detected, that's not necessarily true. It's at least not mathematically or logically entailed. It's also possible that fewer people who don't have the main symptoms of Covid are getting tested. In the earliest days of Covid, a lot of people were afraid they had it, and it's possible that more people who didn't have the primary symptoms were getting tested anyway out of an abundance of caution. Fewer of those people might be seeking tests now, which means a higher percentage of tests would be positive since we are only testing those people who are experiencing the primary symptoms.
I'm not saying that's happening, only that it's very possible. If I were to guess, I think it is much more likely that we are actually capturing a higher percentage of positive cases via testing now, not a lower percentage (which is what the positive rate rising would indicate under the normal reasoning associated with it). I find it very, very unlikely that we could increase testing 400-500%, have positive cases only go up 100% and yet somehow be capturing a smaller portion of actual positives, particularly when deaths are still declining (nationally, they are declining still).
For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19—stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings.
Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It’s time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism.
It’s a message echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests. Their claim: If we don’t address racial inequality, it’ll be that much harder to fight Covid-19.
But their messages are also confounding to many who spent the spring strictly isolated on the advice of health officials, only to hear that the need might not be so absolute after all.
“I think what’s lost on people is that there have been real sacrifices made during lockdown,” Holden told me. “People who couldn’t bury loved ones. Small businesses destroyed. How can a health expert look those people in the eye and say it was worth it now?”
The shift in experts’ tone is setting up a confrontation amid the backdrop of a still-raging pandemic. Tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases continue to be diagnosed every day—and public health experts acknowledge that more will likely come from the mass gatherings, sparked by the protests over George Floyd’s death while in custody of the Minneapolis police last week.
“Many public health experts have already severely undermined the power and influence of their prior message,” countered Flier. “We were exposed to continuous daily Covid death counts, and infections/deaths were presented as preeminent concerns compared to all other considerations—until nine days ago,” he added.
“Overnight, behaviors seen as dangerous and immoral seemingly became permissible due to a ‘greater need,’” Flier said.
What is clear is that the only successful tactic to stop Covid-19 remains social distancing and, failing that, thoroughly wearing personal protective equipment. Yet there’s also considerable video and photo evidence of maskless protesters, sometimes closely huddled together with public officials—also sans mask—in efforts to defuse tensions, or recoiling from police attacks that forced them to remove protection.
I do not have a political bias. I am an independent. I have voted for Democratic candidates more than Republicans and I did not vote for the current President, if that is what you are getting at. I did vote for Gov. Abbott.
I do see data more minutely than most and make my own opinions, rather than align myself with the crowd.
Since you are a data guy, I request you to review the image with the hospitalization and death numbers for Dallas county that I posted within the post a few posts above, and provide your perspective. I sincerely want to hear it. I maintain my premise that the focus on daily new positive cases for making day-to-day decisions is misguided. You have 200 hospitalizations on a weekly basis for around 10000 positive cases in Dallas county. The data for positive new daily cases is required for health experts at the local level and federal level for macro level decision making and long term data analysis. Having the new case numbers for the general public is creating all this panic. I rest my case. You all carry on.
I'll respond to this post rather than your reply to me because you added a bit more detail.
First... what are you basing your assessment on? Do you have some knowledge of statistics or data analysis you can share? Because the people that put out these numbers have years of experience and lots of education behind both and they do quite a bit of analysis of those numbers. And there's usually not just one person that draws this conclusions in his corner office. This usually takes teams of people. People that know a little something on the subject. The fact that YOU don't understand the data does not make it wrong.
Hospitals are not built to function at full capacity. And in the case that they are, they aren't meant to be at capacity because they are full of critically ill patients in need of life sustaining equipment and isolation. Most cant handle having 20 such patients on a normal day. That's is not how they are staffed, equipped or run. That is why when you visit the ER which requires a lot of staff and equipment they are quick to send you home or to the main ward of the hospital as soon as you stabilize. Similarly the ward is quick to discharge you as soon as there isn't any need for you to stay. Hospitals are meant to be in and out facilities for the most part and ICU's, due to their expensive and extensive nature are meant for the MINORITY of people that come to a hospital.
When a person is hospitalized for a long enough time (lets work with 3+ weeks here) it puts a certain amount of strain on hospital staffing, meds, and equipment. While that person is in there, some get discharged, some expire, more come in through the ER and other departments and so on. For the hospital to work, more people need to be leaving than staying and the vast majority shouldn't need critical care or isolation.
As with any system when you have more coming in than the system is designed to handle, you have a problem. Most COVID patients average 3 weeks in the hospital, many stay longer. In addition they require isolation and unique infection prevention protocol. Many of those patients are in critical care which requires the most resources and staff. In the meantime, patients still come to hospitals for the normal things people come in for.... accidents, heart attacks, poisoning etc etc... outpatients that are well or recovering but need be in hospital for this procedure and that are also seen. In the meantime there is about a 2-3 week delay of soon-to-be more patients coming to stay because we cant be bothered to socially distance or wear masks.... so they stop doing surgeries and start using Children's hospitals to allow them the capacity to handle the inevitable surge on their critical care resources.
When this happens and it will, death numbers increase by quite a bit. Mostly because its simple math, but also because stretched staff won't have time to monitor every sniffle and the level of care likely wont be what it was. And even if they do their level best, strained resources (plasma for example) wont help.
In the meantime, i guess we can sit on the internet opining on how this is all panic and nonsense...
I think, you did not check the data that I presented. Hospitalization numbers for Covid-19 patients in Dallas has remained constant for 3 months or decreased a bit in June. Anyways, I never said that the data is wrong, although I do not agree with media focus and the focus of many here on the forum on daily new positive cases. I have been maintaining right from the start to focus on hospitalization numbers and number of deaths. Hope you remember that last time around in the first week of April, Dallas county officials thought that we will need the Kay Hutchinson Convention center as an overflow hospital. We ended up dismantling it within a day or 2 of setup.
My point here is there is a lot of noise and focus on wrong data metrics. There was discussion again this week about the need to setup Kay Hutchinson Convention center as an overflow hospital. The city officials finally decided against it. The hospitalization numbers in Dallas county have remained between 60% and 70% (around 4000 beds out of 6000 beds) throughout the crisis, out of which hospitalization numbers for Covid-19 has remained under 200 throughout (3.33 % of the total beds available). I am quite sure that most of that total number of 200 is concentrated in a few hospitals (and not spread evenly across all hospitals in the county) where there were cluster of cases.
The numbers for hospitalizations for Covid-19 patients in Dallas county will hover around that 3.33% in a month's time (may jump a point up maybe, but not enough to warrant panic). If you focus on local numbers for county/city within each state, the only 2 hotspots currently that they have to pay attention to hospitalization numbers to plan for increase in capacity are Houston and Phoenix. (However, you see media headlines saying everywhere "Case numbers are increasing in 29 states".)
If those numbers above do not explain to you what I am saying, then I suggest we get back to this topic after a month.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BLDSoon
I'll respond to this post rather than your reply to me because you added a bit more detail.
First... what are you basing your assessment on? Do you have some knowledge of statistics or data analysis you can share? Because the people that put out these numbers have years of experience and lots of education behind both and they do quite a bit of analysis of those numbers. And there's usually not just one person that draws this conclusions in his corner office. This usually takes teams of people. People that know a little something on the subject. The fact that YOU don't understand the data does not make it wrong.
Hospitals are not built to function at full capacity. And in the case that they are, they aren't meant to be at capacity because they are full of critically ill patients in need of life sustaining equipment and isolation. Most cant handle having 20 such patients on a normal day. That's is not how they are staffed, equipped or run. That is why when you visit the ER which requires a lot of staff and equipment they are quick to send you home or to the main ward of the hospital as soon as you stabilize. Similarly the ward is quick to discharge you as soon as there isn't any need for you to stay. Hospitals are meant to be in and out facilities for the most part and ICU's, due to their expensive and extensive nature are meant for the MINORITY of people that come to a hospital.
When a person is hospitalized for a long enough time (lets work with 3+ weeks here) it puts a certain amount of strain on hospital staffing, meds, and equipment. While that person is in there, some get discharged, some expire, more come in through the ER and other departments and so on. For the hospital to work, more people need to be leaving than staying and the vast majority shouldn't need critical care or isolation.
As with any system when you have more coming in than the system is designed to handle, you have a problem. Most COVID patients average 3 weeks in the hospital, many stay longer. In addition they require isolation and unique infection prevention protocol. Many of those patients are in critical care which requires the most resources and staff. In the meantime, patients still come to hospitals for the normal things people come in for.... accidents, heart attacks, poisoning etc etc... outpatients that are well or recovering but need be in hospital for this procedure and that are also seen. In the meantime there is about a 2-3 week delay of soon-to-be more patients coming to stay because we cant be bothered to socially distance or wear masks.... so they stop doing surgeries and start using Children's hospitals to allow them the capacity to handle the inevitable surge on their critical care resources.
When this happens and it will, death numbers increase by quite a bit. Mostly because its simple math, but also because stretched staff won't have time to monitor every sniffle and the level of care likely wont be what it was. And even if they do their level best, strained resources (plasma for example) wont help.
In the meantime, i guess we can sit on the internet opining on how this is all panic and nonsense...
Last edited by CDContribuitor; 06-26-2020 at 11:13 AM..
My point here is there is a lot of noise and focus on wrong data metrics. There was discussion again this week about the need to setup Kay Hutchinson Convention center as an overflow hospital. The city officials finally decided against it. The hospitalization numbers in Dallas county have remained between 60% and 70% (around 4000 beds out of 6000 beds) throughout the crisis, out of which hospitalization numbers for Covid-19 has remained under 200 throughout (3.33 % of the total beds available).
I am quite sure that the numbers for hospitalizations for Covid-19 patients in Dallas county will hover around that 3.33% (may jump a point up maybe, but not enough to warrant panic). If you focus on local numbers, the only 2 hotspots currently that they have to pay attention to hospitalization numbers are Houston and Phoenix. (However, you see media headlines saying everywhere "Case numbers are increasing in 29 states".)
If those numbers above do not explain to you what I am saying, then I suggest we get back to this topic after a month.
Again there shouldn't be focus on any single metric. Hospitalization and Deaths is not the only data to consider because those are current numbers that probably resulted form past infections. Infection rates aren't the only data to consider as not all those positives are patients in a hospital today.
What officials are tasked with is trying to predict how the rates of positive infections translate into hospital patients and deaths tomorrow.( or in about 2/3 weeks)That is why sustained record breaking daily increases in new cases are concerning. Dallas county stands at a over 18K cases. 3.33% of that number is still quite a few potentially critical patients.
You say you are "quite sure" of your interpretation of the numbers. If that's the case, put yourself out there, stop talking to us and call the CDC or the governors office. Present your case, ask to join a task force. Educate them on what they are missing. Give your evidence based recommendations on how they should beat this thing back.
3.33% number corresponds to 200 covid-19 related hospitalizations out of 6000 beds available in Dallas county. Please review the graph again. It is not 3.33 % of 18,000 cases. Also, hopefully you realize that the number 18000 is the total number of positive cases identified since the start. They are not tracking recovered cases because of staff shortage. I will be surprised if there are more than 3000 active cases recovering at the moment within the Dallas county.
Again, while you focus on the daily new cases, my premise is that the daily new cases will not necessarily convert to hospitalizations at the same % as you saw back in March/April, for various reasons. The same premise holds for the number of deaths.
To add to that, here is what Fauci is saying now and I cannot help but get frustrated reading this article below. "Something's not working," Fauci said of the nation's current approach in an interview with The Post. "I mean, you can do all the diagramming you want, but something is not working." I am not clear on why he wants a new strategy. Are those daily new positive cases reported until now reliable or not? If we are going to follow what Chinese govt seems to be prescribing, that is not a good sign.
Coronavirus testing: Anthony Fauci says task force 'seriously considering' new strategy https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/polit...rce/index.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by BLDSoon
Again there shouldn't be focus on any single metric. Hospitalization and Deaths is not the only data to consider because those are current numbers that probably resulted form past infections. Infection rates aren't the only data to consider as not all those positives are patients in a hospital today.
What officials are tasked with is trying to predict how the rates of positive infections translate into hospital patients and deaths tomorrow.( or in about 2/3 weeks)That is why sustained record breaking daily increases in new cases are concerning. Dallas county stands at a over 18K cases. 3.33% of that number is still quite a few potentially critical patients.
You say you are "quite sure" of your interpretation of the numbers. If that's the case, put yourself out there, stop talking to us and call the CDC or the governors office. Present your case, ask to join a task force. Educate them on what they are missing. Give your evidence based recommendations on how they should beat this thing back.
Last edited by CDContribuitor; 06-26-2020 at 11:41 AM..
Again there shouldn't be focus on any single metric. Hospitalization and Deaths is not the only data to consider because those are current numbers that probably resulted form past infections. Infection rates aren't the only data to consider as not all those positives are patients in a hospital today.
What officials are tasked with is trying to predict how the rates of positive infections translate into hospital patients and deaths tomorrow.( or in about 2/3 weeks)That is why sustained record breaking daily increases in new cases are concerning. Dallas county stands at a over 18K cases. 3.33% of that number is still quite a few potentially critical patients.
The rub is that cases started spiking long enough ago to see a death spike by now, but at least on a national level, that hasn't happened. In Texas, there's been a small spike in deaths, but it hasn't been close to proporitional to the spike in cases. I agree that deaths and hospitalizations run on a lag, but there's been enough time now that we should have seen the deaths jump as well.
I'm not saying there's zero actual spike in real cases, but I think it's a lot smaller than many are currently thinking. Nationally, we are literally testing 500% more than we were in early April.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BLDSoon
You say you are "quite sure" of your interpretation of the numbers. If that's the case, put yourself out there, stop talking to us and call the CDC or the governors office. Present your case, ask to join a task force. Educate them on what they are missing. Give your evidence based recommendations on how they should beat this thing back.
Is this a serious suggestion? I can't imagine that someone would think this was a real possibility.
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