March Madness and Covid-19

[BoulderSooner]

Covid-19 deaths are growing exponentially, is there another cause of death in America that is doing that?

the deaths went down yesterday that is not "growing exponentially"

 

[steverocks35]

the deaths went down yesterday that is not "growing exponentially"

Deaths did not go down yesterday, where did you see this?

 

[WTSooner]

I'm at a loss to understand some of the push people have for hydroxychloroquine. It's NOT some mystical drug that's only being held back by government red tape and bad press.

It's an intense immuno-suppressant. It keeps your body's natural immune system from going into overdrive and attacking healthy tissue and systems while "fighting" a foreign invader. In coronavirus cases this stops the accumulation of fluid as the virus replicates then kills cells in the lungs' lining. However, this is merely curtailing a symptom of the virus thus a zpack (azythrimycin?) is still used to actually fight the virus itself.

But suppressing ones' immune system comes at a cost. It's not just political red tape and ideology stopping it from being a preferred treatment regimen. There still exists a myriad of problems such suppression can create - the depth of which we can only opine unless we conduct studies.

If I'm in bad shape in the hospital, and taking a turn for the worse, there probably isn't a better option to "try" than this drug. I would hope my doctors would take that chance. We'll deal with any fall out if and when I survive, but it doesn't really matter what the drug does, good or bad, if I die without taking it.

 

[WTSooner]

The thing about hydroxychloroquine is not that it is a mythical drug, but it has shown in vitro activity "killing" the virus, and it also has immunomodulation properties which may tamper down the immune/cytokine response -- most people who end up dying from COVID do so because of a type Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) which is not the virus killing you, it's the body's overwhelming response to virus killing you. So the immune system is actually the problem in a disease like this. It's why doctors have also tried steroids, but those don't show much benefit so far.

Azithromycin is not added to fight the virus. People with viral pneumonia often develop a super infection from a bacteria, which the antibiotic would treat. Any antibiotic that treats bacterial pneumonia could be used in its place. But that French guy used it, so there we are.

Hydroxychloroquine is cheap and has widespread availability. During a mass pandemic, that's a great option when you have little else.

I can confirm that hydroxychloroquine is part of the standard treatment protocol for COVID patients at 4 different academic centers (including the Oklahoma Health Sciences Center where I work, University of Kansas, UT Southwester, and Washington). Probably many more, those were just the first places I checked because I know people there.

And there is red tape holding people back from using it. Some states have kept doctors from prescribing it outpatient (where it is probably best used) and limited it to only inpatient. Completely asinine. Doctors prescribe medicine for off-label uses all of the time. No one should be telling the doctors they can't prescribe it for their patients. It has become political, which is unfortunate.

We need better data on it. But there is A TON of stuff in medicine that we do that does not have sufficient data.

People are getting confused by Fauci saying "it's not a magic bullet and we need more evidence." I agree with Fauci, but I also believe we should be using it. You can think both of those things at the same time.

Dr. Fauci was asked if he would prescribe it for one of his patients. What did he say? Yes.

https://townhall.com/columnists/lar...ne-to-patient-suffering-from-covid19-n2565678

Good post. Thank you for the info.

 

[BoulderSooner]

Deaths did not go down yesterday, where did you see this?

sorry the 4th to the 5th of april

 

[steverocks35]

sorry the 4th to the 5th of april

Where did you see that? The deaths are not possibly dropping on any day. If there was a decline it was probably in reporting because it was Sunday.

 

[BoulderSooner]

Where did you see that? The deaths are not possibly dropping on any day. If there was a decline it was probably in reporting because it was Sunday.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

 

[coolm]

the deaths went down yesterday that is not "growing exponentially"

see? ^^^ that right there is the problem with your perspective argument. absent testing of ALL people we have to make some assumptions and use derivatives to compare these numbers and trends to one another given that we can't control all the factors. Properly evaluating those numbers depends on very strictly comparing the deltas (changes) to the exact same formulation ... otherwise the comparison is meaningless. you can't compare all the numbers to one another like that. you have to use meticulous care to only compare the apples to the apples etc... otherwise you're comparing actual numbers to trends and handrules and those comparisons are fraught with error. in the example you cite above we have no clue as to the run used to calculate the rise so your comparison may be completely inaccurate.

 

[steverocks35]

In Oklahoma from 4/5-4/6 we had 5 deaths. From 4/6-4/7 we had 16 deaths! The deaths lag behind the number of infected for obvious reasons. This is not a good trend.

 

[BoulderSooner]

see? ^^^ that right there is the problem with your perspective argument. absent testing of ALL people we have to make some assumptions and use derivatives to compare these numbers and trends to one another given that we can't control all the factors. Properly evaluating those numbers depends on very strictly comparing the deltas (changes) to the exact same formulation ... otherwise the comparison is meaningless. you can't compare all the numbers to one another like that. you have to use meticulous care to only compare the apples to the apples etc... otherwise you're comparing actual numbers to trends and handrules and those comparisons are fraught with error. in the example you cite above we have no clue as to the run used to calculate the rise so your comparison may be completely inaccurate.

in which case none of the number or studies should be even read because they all have incomplete info ..


destroying the economy for less deaths than the average seasonal flu is crazy

 

[sheepdogs1]

Good post. Thank you for the info.

I believe the governor of Michigan was wanting those in the health sector to be punished via "administrative action" for using the drugs mentioned in the article and, lo and behold, she changed her mind and now wants federal assistance so her state can receive the medications.

 

[coolm]

in which case none of the number or studies should be even read because they all have incomplete info ..

No, you're missing the point. To those numbers steve brought up above as an example. 5 deaths on one day and 16 the next. do we know all the variables that can change these numbers from one day to the next? there may be some admin crap affecting our numbers ... they may be including different periods or differing symptoms to be included in the overall number etc ... so those individual numbers could be useless. BUT if we keep taking the same numbers the same way we may use the delta to establish trends without knowing the factors involved. Some things we use numbers for, some things trends ... and intermixing the two is problematic when you try to determine causation. simple calculus.

 

[Stikboy]

Anybody seen this? SIAP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg&feature=youtu.be

 

[steverocks35]

i thought we weren't doing politics in this thread anymore...

 

[stormspencer]

By the way, the death toll for Covid-19 passed 12,000 today, it passed 11,000 earlier today. That puts it in perspective and shows the logarithmic growth pattern.

First, one death is too many (we can all agree on this).

However, the death rate is below the University of Washington Model projections and is continuing to trend below future projections. Expect more downward adjustments in the near future. At the theoretical peak, they've tremendously adjusted downward the amount of hospital capacity including beds (240k to 140K), ICU beds (39k to 29k), and Vents (32K to 19K) necessary to accommodate COVID patients. And this is the issue I have with models. The model attempted to project out disease vectors with incomplete data as well information from Wuhan and Italy. And we based our policy/recommendations on that. I don't fault the "experts' for making decisions off variable and incomplete models, but I would like a little more transparency in the variables as well as the uncertainties/unknowns.

All models are wrong, but some models are much more wrong than others.

 

[dksooner]

i thought we weren't doing politics in this thread anymore...

I missed that, I'm sorry guys. I just wanted to see if you were excited that your 80k floor looks like it won't come close and I actually see you still talking exponential growth.

 

[steverocks35]

I missed that, I'm sorry guys. I just wanted to see if you were excited that your 80k floor looks like it won't come close and I actually see you still talking exponential growth.

Because there is exponential growth, and of course I will be happy if we have fewer deaths, which can be attributed to the extreme social distancing measures put in place. Many of the early models assumed no social distancing.

 

[coolm]

3k deaths a day in the US in vehicle accidents alone. The walking back is happening and the over hype is exposed. Started at 2 million deaths then 200k now 50k. The left is disgusting, celebrating the death count hoping for so called exponential growth and excited about the loss of jobs just so he doesn't get re-elected.

excuse me. I'm not celebrating death counts or anything of the sort. I have had a triple bypass and worry about my personal health plus I have friends and a brother-in-law infected. So I take offense at your suggestion.

 

[steverocks35]

First, one death is too many (we can all agree on this).

However, the death rate is below the University of Washington Model projections and is continuing to trend below future projections. Expect more downward adjustments in the near future. At the theoretical peak, they've tremendously adjusted downward the amount of hospital capacity including beds (240k to 140K), ICU beds (39k to 29k), and Vents (32K to 19K) necessary to accommodate COVID patients. And this is the issue I have with models. The model attempted to project out disease vectors with incomplete data as well information from Wuhan and Italy. And we based our policy/recommendations on that. I don't fault the "experts' for making decisions off variable and incomplete models, but I would like a little more transparency in the variables as well as the uncertainties/unknowns.

All models are wrong, but some models are much more wrong than others.

We should be basing our policies on worst-case scenarios. We are not out of the woods, we are about to start seeing deaths in the 2k-3k per day range. Also, South Korea is seeing a resurgence in cases, and there have been reports of reinfections. I'm not trying to be the bad guy, but look at Oklahoma, it's just starting here, look at the graph, go to the OSDH website. I don't understand why everyone is acting like this is over and we can stop worrying about it. We probably are not going to be able to completely stop the mitigation efforts until a vaccine is developed.

Also, if you do mitigation properly it's going to look like you never needed to do it in the first place. Look at Y2K. Everyone says "Y2K was nothing!" Yeah, it was nothing because thousands of programmers worked day and night to make sure it was nothing.

 

[sheepdogs1]

First, one death is too many (we can all agree on this).

However, the death rate is below the University of Washington Model projections and is continuing to trend below future projections. Expect more downward adjustments in the near future. At the theoretical peak, they've tremendously adjusted downward the amount of hospital capacity including beds (240k to 140K), ICU beds (39k to 29k), and Vents (32K to 19K) necessary to accommodate COVID patients. And this is the issue I have with models. The model attempted to project out disease vectors with incomplete data as well information from Wuhan and Italy. And we based our policy/recommendations on that. I don't fault the "experts' for making decisions off variable and incomplete models, but I would like a little more transparency in the variables as well as the uncertainties/unknowns.

All models are wrong, but some models are much more wrong than others.

The models should have incorporated various degrees of social distancing instead of the parameters set to the least or most. Perhaps this was done, but it appears certain possibilities took precedence over the rest.