Category: Coronapanic

Today’s numbers are out. From my big tracking post:

4/17 comment: Sweden at 613 cases/130 deaths; Denmark at 321/12; Massachusetts at 2,221/159. It is getting tougher to argue that the Danish shutdown was ineffective (but maybe Denmark will suffer its infections starting in a few weeks; kids in Denmark went back to school on Wednesday). And it is getting tougher to argue that the Massachusetts shutdown was effective (but maybe we won’t have a second wave since we were so incompetent at slowing down the first wave?). Sweden has had 1,333 total deaths without shutting down. Massachusetts shut down and has had 1,404 deaths (1.5X the rate).

American journalists and the Facebook righteous are sure that, just as it was in March, disaster is just around the corner for Sweden. The hospitals will be overwhelmed. People who could be trivially saved with a ventilator will drop dead in the street. (Example from fivethirtyeight.com hero Nate Silver.)

How is that going? The Swedes make their hospital situation public: https://www.icuregswe.org/en/data–results/covid-19-in-swedish-intensive-care/. It looks as though they have roughly 500 people in the ICU, up from 450 on April 8:

About 50 COVID-19 patients go into the ICU every day, but, if we interpreted the above chart correctly, nearly 50 are also coming out (unfortunately quite a few will be dead when they emerge, since there is no cure for COVID-19).

How do Americans maintain their faith in the face of these data. And in the refusal of God to smite the Swedes with a full ICU or a higher-than-Massachusetts death rate? One professor (of computer science, not epidemiology) simply asserted his sincerely held belief that Sweden would suffer an explosion of disease and ICU demand in the next week. Therefore, we had obviously saved lives by shutting down. Couldn’t Massachusetts have saved a lot more lives by continuing to operate our economy, maybe with a few more COVID-19 patients that had to be shuffled to a mostly-empty hospital, and sending the extra few $billion of wealth created (by the open economy) to Africa for clean water projects? No! Without a shutdown, the death toll in Massachusetts would have been staggering.

Related:

• An interesting video (thanks, Mattias!). Sweden has at least a second infidel who rejects the Religion of Shutdown, Professor Dr. Johan Giesecke, an infectious disease doc who had the State Epidemiologist job before Anders Tegnell (MD/PhD/infidel); WHO web site: “From 2005 to 2014 he was the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).” (i.e., he will be considered “not an expert” by the New York Times). In the video he says that the various policies adopted by the various western governments won’t have a significant effect on the final death toll. (His best guess is that COVID-19 will prove to be comparable to a severe flu season and kill in the neighborhood of 0.1% of the population. But he is not primarily in the prophecy business, so his larger message is that we won’t be able control what the virus does.)
• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/14/swedes-persist-in-refusing-to-die-from-covid-19/
• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/12/everything-the-gleeful-journalists-said-would-happen-to-sweden-has-happened-to-massachusetts/
• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/03/28/why-arent-a-ton-of-swedes-on-their-way-to-being-dead/

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I am informed by the New York Times and friends on Facebook that coronaplague was easily foreseeable and every intelligent person (i.e., not Donald Trump) saw it coming. Regrettably, in our own household we thought that coronavirus might be like the H7N9 avian influenza, about which WHO raised the alarm during 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 outbreaks (that later fizzled).

Because I like to be awesome at fighting the last war, what should be in our garage to prepare for a flu-like epidemic?

Here’s the beginning of a kit:

• masks (50 per household member?)
• gloves (100 pair)
• pulse oximeter
• ear thermometer
• infrared forehead thermometer (how are these different from grill thermometers, if at all?)
• hand sanitizer
• Clorox Multi-Surface Cleaner
• Clorox wipes (will these dry out between plagues?)
• toilet paper (still can’t figure out why!)
• paper towels (ditto)
• high quality webcam for any desktop computer
• high quality USB headset
• Facebook Portal or Google Nest Max for keeping in touch with friends and family from the living room? (which one is better?) Also have a similar device already set up inside the homes of any older relatives.
• ordinary cold/flu remedies

Readers: What else?

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Our Boston suburb, which imposes a two-acre zoning minimum to keep out the riffraff, has hung a “We’re all in this together” banner across the main road. (We can restore the Black Lives Matter banner eventually?)

What about on a national scale? Are we actually all in this together? I talked to four friends from the aviation world in the last few days. One is isolated on 40 acres of oceanfront with 12,000 square feet of interior space, a dock with a sailboat and a power boat (not in the water yet this season), jogging trails, a tennis court, a hotel-size home gym, etc. One is isolated on 90 acres of ocean inlet with more than 8,000 square feet of interior space, a pool, a tennis court, a dock with multiple boats. One is on 20 acres of oceanfront over in Europe (in a country that is smart enough to do load balancing of patients to hospitals). One is in a city in a southern state with ample health system capacity. He’s on more than 2 acres with more than 13,000 square feet of interior space.

None of the Americans are in states where the University of Washington doom prophets forecast any shortage of hospital or ICU beds.

We use the same “lockdown”, “stay-at-home”, and “quarantine” terms for all Americans, but the experience of this life can be vastly different for those at different income levels. In non-plague times, when rich and poor Americans go for a walk they might have fairly similar experiences. Right now, however, even if the rich started out in a medium-sized city apartment they’ve often managed to escape to an uncrowded vacation destination, e.g., the Hamptons, Nantucket, or Maine. No matter how tight the lockdown gets, the rich can usually get ample fresh air simply walking around on their own private property.

I’m thinking that this variation in experience of lockdown is driving some of the ruling class’s high comfort level with lockdown. It is one thing to hear about a single mother, her boyfriend, and three kids from previous sex partners all crammed into a 3BR in public housing nearly 24/7. But can people with massive suburban estates actually understand what a Victimhood Studies professor would call “the lived experience” of this quasi-family?

Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times, on March 26, 2020, demanded that the Great Father in Washington issue a “shelter in place” order. Leaving aside the issue of whether any state governor would be required to comply with such an order, let’s consider what Mr. Friedman’s life would be like under “shelter in place.” He lives on 7.5 acres in Bethesda, Maryland (a 1/4 acre lot there is now considered lavish). He and his wife (the daughter of a billionaire) demolished the house that was on it and built an 11,400 square foot mansion. What relationship does Mr. Friedman’s “lived experience” of sheltering in place on 7.5 acres and 11,400 square feet have to that of a middle class family stuck in New York City in a 2BR?

Related:

• “Shutdown decisions are made by people with no skin in the game; when would they ever decide to reopen?”
• “Entrepreneur vs. government worker perspectives on Coronaplague”
• “Time for caravans of Americans to flee to Honduras?” (still looking safe, according to latest WHO numbers!)

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On April 12, I noted “Everything the gleeful journalists said would happen to Sweden has happened… to Massachusetts”. Massachusetts has been shut down since mid-March. Swedes, on the other hand, are still going to school, eating at restaurants, and working at offices and factories as necessary. They may not even be using #StayHome and #SaveLives on their Facebook posts.

Combining what we’ve learned from U.S. media and 4th grade arithmetic lessons regarding exponential growth, we would expect most Swedes to be dead at this point. Yet as of April 12, a smaller percentage of Swedes had died compared to Massachusetts residents, and there was a dramatic difference in the rate of new cases (8X) and deaths (6X).

Maybe the sharp difference was a holiday (Easter) weekend data entry effect?

Here’s an update for today, based on WHO and mass.gov numbers:

The latest report for Sweden: 465 new cases and 20 deaths (Denmark was at 144 and 12). Massachusetts had 1,296 new cases and 113 deaths (8X the death rate).

I.e., Sweden (10 million population) is doing dramatically better than Massachusetts (7 million) and the stats per person are roughly comparable to shut-down Denmark (5 million). (see this post for numbers on previous days)

How does the U.S. media cover a country with a lower death rate than Massachusetts’s? “Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000” (Forbes):

Sweden’s relatively relaxed approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus has come under fire in international media and from many locals in the capital Stockholm, where more than half the country’s deaths have been recorded. Now, 22 researchers have publicly criticized the strategy and called on politicians to make changes.

Major public events such as the start of the Swedish soccer season are postponed and the physical buildings of universities are closed, but otherwise everyday life continues. Schools remain open.

(I will hazard a guess that the “22 researchers” referenced still get paid regardless of how long the shutdown lasts!)

The MD/PhD infidel (not a “scientist”) who doubts the shutdown religion does get one paragraph:

State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell quickly hit back at the researchers’ claims. SVT reported that Tegnell said there is “a fundamental inaccuracy in that article” regarding the numbers used.

How about the local newspaper in what became Wuhan-on-the-Hudson? “Sweden taking lax approach to coronavirus, top doc says it’ll ‘probably end in a historical massacre’” (New York Daily News):

Following the terrible examples of China, the United States, Britain and others, Sweden has decided that coronavirus is overrated.

The European nation known for being cold and socialist has not ordered any sort of lockdown, is still allowing up to 50 people to gather in groups and has been weeks behind the rest of Europe on social distancing advice, Time Magazine reported.

A top doctor as a large Swedish hospital told Time that this lackadaisical approach will “probably end in a historical massacre.”

What about Massachusetts? Is our forecast of suffering 12% of U.S. COVID-19 fatalities (with just 2% of U.S. population) a potential “historical massacre”? A search into the New York Times reveals only a concern about a Massachusetts roommate dispute regarding social distancing religious orthodoxy.

Update from my cumulative tracking post:

4/15 comment: Sweden at 1033/114; Denmark at 299/14; Massachusetts at 1,755/151. It seems that there was a substantial lag in reporting deaths in Sweden due partly to a three-day Easter holiday weekend. Even if all of the 114 deaths had occurred in the preceding 24 hours, the rate of new deaths in Massachusetts is substantially higher when adjusted for population. Total deaths in Massachusetts are at 1,108 versus 1,033 in Sweden, a 1.5X higher rate in the shut-down region of Massachusetts versus the up-and-running get-it-over-with region of Sweden.

It does look as though neighboring Denmark has at least deferred some infections and deaths with its temporary lockdown. As the top epidemiologist in Sweden says, “time will tell.” As noted in the comments below, we were told that, without an economic shutdown, coronavirus would kill 2.2 million Americans. Sweden did not shut down. They should be suffering close to 70,000 deaths from the exponentially growing virus, not 1,000 or 2,000. Even with the upsetting catch-up number of deaths following the holiday weekend, Sweden’s outcome so far seems inconsistent with most epidemiologists and government think that they know about coronavirus.

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The model of coronaplague with the best graphics says that Massachusetts, home to 2% of Americans, will suffer 12% of total COVID-19 deaths (8,219 out of 68,841, through August 4, 2020).

How sure can we be of this result?

“Learning as We Go: An Examination of the Statistical Accuracy of COVID19 Daily Death Count Predictions” (Marchant, et al., April 8, 2020) says “not very”:

Our results suggest that the IHME model substantially underestimates the uncertainty associated with COVID19 death count predictions. We would expect to see approximately 5% of the observed number of deaths to fall outside the 95% prediction intervals. In reality, we found that the observed percentage of death counts that lie outside the 95% PI to be in the range 49% – 73%, which is more than an order of magnitude above the expected percentage. Moreover, we would expect to see 2.5% of the observed death counts fall above and below the PI. In practice, the observed percentages were asymmetric, with the direction of the bias fluctuating across days.

So… the model was “wrong” (actual fell outside predicted 95 percent range) as much as 73 percent of the time!

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A friend in Holland in is his 60s and therefore beginning to enter the real risk window for COVID-19. When I call to check on him, he is usually out in the busy square of his university town. “Some students just walked by with six crates of beer,” he remarked. Holland never truly shut down. Unlike Sweden, however, the schools closed. “The teachers are unionized,” my friend said. “So they knew they’d get paid whether or not they went to work. Of course they immediately refused to work and said that the schools had to be closed in the name of protecting everyone.” How about the stores? “Everything is open except for the red light district,” he responded. (If the gals working there could somehow make it to Boston, they could earn a lot more than they’d been getting in Amsterdam!)

(How’s Holland doing? The Population is 17 million. As of April 9, they’d suffered 2,248 deaths compared to 10,853 in France, population 67 million. I.e., the Netherlands has had a lower death rate than France. France began locking down on March 13.)

If people making the decisions on shutting down continue to get paid, when would they ever suggest reopening? Who is involved in or has influenced decision-making in the U.S. on this issue?

• State governors
• CDC bureaucrats
• NIH bureaucrats (such as Dr. Anthony Fauci)
• WHO bureaucrats
• Tenured professors at top research universities

One thing the above folks all have in common: they will still have the same job at the same pay regardless of the length of the shutdown. What’s their lockdown experience like? I was on FaceTime yesterday with a (flying friend) professor of “science and public policy,” i.e., exactly the kind of person whom a government might turn to for advice. He is suffering through the lockdown at a 20-acre family property right on the ocean.

If your job is engineering or manufacturing widgets, on the other hand, every additional day of shutdown is additional risk that a customer will decide to buy widgets from Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, or Chinese suppliers that remain up and running. You will come back after the shutdown to reduced revenue and a much tougher competitive environment in direct proportion to the length of the shutdown.

Given that even one death is one death too many from COVID-19 and that we should always act out of an abundance of caution and that we assume that our shutdown has had a tremendous life-saving effect, when would folks who are immune to any negative effects of economic/societal shutdown ever decide that it is time to reopen?

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While the rank-and-file righteous were posting on Facebook their hopes for continued exponential growth through November in American deaths, journalists were publishing their hopes for dramatic near-term exponential growth in Swedish deaths. As infidels against the religion of “saving lives” via social and economic shutdown, the Swedes deserve to experience the full wrath of the coronavirus god:

• “After Rejecting A Coronavirus Lockdown, Sweden Sees Rise In Deaths” (Forbes, 3 days ago)
• “Sweden Continues With Controversial Coronavirus Strategy: Is It A Big Mistake?” (Forbes, 2 days ago)
• “Sweden Girds for Thousands of Deaths Amid Laxer Virus Policy” (Bloomberg, April 4)

After 8 days of unimpeded exponential growth since that April 4 article, how many thousands of deaths did 10 million Swedes experience in the last 24-hour period, according to the WHO? 17. Seventeen thousand? No: 17. Locked-down Denmark, with a population size half of Sweden’s, had 13.

My latest update to “Number of new COVID-19 cases worldwide is declining now?”:

4/12 comment: Sweden has 466 new cases; locked-down Denmark has 177. Sweden suffered 17 deaths; Denmark 13. I.e., adjusted for its 2X population, wide-open Sweden has a higher rate of new cases and a lower rate of deaths. Massachusetts has gone off the rails compared to Sweden. With 2,615 new cases, Massachusetts has 8X the new case rate of Sweden’s. With 70 deaths, locked-down Massachusetts has 6X the death rate of Sweden.

In other words, the exponential doom forecast for schools-/restaurants-open Sweden has actually happened, but to schools-/restaurants-/offices-closed Massachusetts. The University of Washington prophets are still showing that Massachusetts will suffer a higher death rate, adjusted for population, than New York (though Sweden’s death rate will be yet worse, say these lockdown advocates, roughly twice as high as New York’s).

Graphic from today’s NYT:

Separately, I still think it is an open question as to whether the number of worldwide new cases of COVID-19 is declining. Testing continues to ramp up, but the number of new cases is only 17 percent higher than it was on April 1.

Certainly the Swedish numbers will not convince Americans who bought into the shutdown religion, any more than a high death rate during the Black Plague sowed doubt in the minds of the Flagellants (if half the people in a town were killed, the Flagellants would say “if we hadn’t whipped ourselves, the death rate would have been nearly 100 percent”!).

[Separately, a friend asked privately “What is your ultimate Sweden prediction? It is nice we actually have a control that rational people can look on.” So that I can’t go back on this and deny him the opportunity to ridicule me later, I will put my answer here. Massachusetts and Sweden are fairly comparable in terms of percentage of the population that live in an urban area. Sweden’s population has a slightly older median age, but, perhaps healthier so that’s a wash. My prediction is based on the Massachusetts “curve flattening” efforts, including shutting down schools, restaurants, and offices, saving zero lives compared to Sweden’s shutting down mass gatherings. Neither Sweden nor Massachusetts will run out of health system capacity and therefore every patient will get whatever medical interventions are available. Sweden spends 11 percent of a lower per capita GDP on health care versus 17 percent here in the U.S., but our incompetence could easily soak up the difference in spending and therefore the systems should be equally effective (actually equally ineffective would be more accurate right now due to the lack of any drug or procedure that seriously impedes the virus). The American system will not let anyone die, regardless of how many organ systems are destroyed, so long as Medicare can still be billed, and this will be the basis of a differential. My prediction is that Sweden’s death rate from COVID-19 for all of 2020 will be 1.15X the Massachusetts rate.

(Where are they right now? Sweden has 887 deaths, or 90 per million inhabitants. Massachusetts has suffered 756 deaths so far, roughly 110 per million.)

As long as we’re making predictions, what about the total for Massachusetts and Sweden? The University of Washington right now says that doom is in store for Sweden. They’ll have 13,259 deaths through August 4, 2020. They’ll have 79 ICU beds and need 3,378(!).

Shut-down Massachusetts is forecast to suffer 6,739 deaths through August 4, 2020, out of a total U.S. death toll of 61.545. I.e., with 2% of the nation’s population, we will have 10% of the COVID-19 fatalities. This seems like too large a share, even for a population that spends most of its time reflecting with satisfaction on how stupid people in the south and Midwest are (imagine if we’d put that effort into stockpiling masks and coming up with a plan for a flu-like epidemic!). So let’s cut this back to 7% of the U.S. fatalities: 4,300 (if we believe the 61,545 prophecy). This implies that Sweden will lose 5,000 citizens by August 4, 2020. I have much less confidence in these numbers than in the idea that the death rates in Sweden and Massachusetts will be within 20% of each other.]

Update 4/14: The latest report for Sweden: 465 new cases and 20 deaths (Denmark was at 144 and 12). Massachusetts had 1,296 new cases and 113 deaths (8X the death rate).

Related:

• https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/04/12/google-is-monitoring-our-social-distancing-failures/ (the Swedes are not, as some people have suggested, hiding in their apartments)
• urbanization in Sweden versus the U.S. (a higher percentage of Swedes live in cities; it is not that Swedes are isolated in their ice fishing huts)
• obesity in Sweden: “Around 50 % of adults in Sweden are overweight or obese.” (i.e., Swedes are not immune to coronavirus because they’re slender)
• countries ranked by smoking rate (the U.S. and Sweden are similar)
• “As the rest of Europe lives under lockdown, Sweden keeps calm and carries on” (Guardian, March 28), in which Sweden’s top epidemiologist explains his rationale
• An attempt to calculate Rt, the effective reproduction number, in each state: Which states have the epidemic least “under control?” To answer this, I plotted states where the best case (eg. low end of HDI) is above 1.0, indicating the true value of Rt is almost certainly above 1.0. Surprisingly, Rhode Island, Maryland and Massachusetts sit at the top. Part of this may be that Rhode Island is earlier in its infection curve, but seeing large states like Massachusetts and Texas above 1.0 is worrisome —especially because none of these states have hit the headlines as being trouble spots.

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