The medical problem, even under worst-case scenarios, can be managed simultaneously with a full operating economy,
RAND has the capability to map the exit route that will take us through these perilous times and allow the US to exodus from our current state of limbo and return to being a dynamic democratic economy.
Howard Laitin
02:12 (3 hours ago)
I believe that RAND has the capability to map the exit route that will take us through these perilous times and allow the US to exodus from our current state of limbo and return to being a dynamic democratic economy.
I have listened to many of the briefings given by Pres. Trump/ VP Pence /Dr. Fauci as well as the briefings given by New York Gov. Cuomo, New York City Mayor de Blasio, California Gov. Newsom, Los Angeles city Mayor Garretti, Los Angeles County public health officials, etc. The reason given, over and over, by Dr. Anthony Fauci and most of the others for shutting down the US economy by self quarantine has been to flatten the curve in order to prevent the limited medical resources of the United States from being overwhelmed by a peak and demand generated too many cases simultaneously occurring in a short period of time .
None of the estimates and/or models that I have reviewed reduces the ultimate total number of cases (although some might argue that as time goes on increased knowledge will lead to early detection and more rapid cures, thus reducing the amount of medical resources consumed by each case) . Also, some assume that better utilization of scarce resources ( like ventilators) will mean that all patients that need these limited resources will have access to them and thus reduce the total death rate somewhat.
Frequently, various briefers refer the current data on actual reported cases (as compared to previous projections) and complement the population for having contributed to this major” reduction” by their various actions such as self quarantine, social distance etc. Thus, they implicitly claim that the current shutdown activities have resulted in a savings of lives and that if the United States reopens (too soon ) there will be a big spike in cases and additional lives will be lost. This rationale is to be the justification for national economic suicide.
Current estimates (widely broadcast ) indicates that many believe that approximately 25% of those who get the virus do not know it. Of those who get it approximately 80% do not need hospitalization. Of those who need hospitalization a relatively small number are assigned to intensive care (and those who work in intensive care know that it is generally hospital policy to keep the intensive care units operating at near full capacity). This means that not all intensive care patients need intensive care. ( And then when a patient who does require intensive care comes in and the bed is needed, a patient who is in intensive care but either not needing it or no longer needing it is transferred back to routine care.) Even with that, the number of intensive care patients in California as of Friday April 10, 2020 was approximately 1,000… far below the number of intensive care beds projected to be required by every political entity who was had access to a podium.
When I was at RAND, I was single, lived in an apartment about three minutes from Rand. I was career oriented and thus would be in the building often at night. That gave me extensive contacts with other RAND night owls such as Roberta Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, Andy Marshall, etc. All of them were well aware of some of the dreadful mistakes that the United States had made and were dedicated to helping our nation avoid such catastrophes in the future.
I have been sending you various materials on the coronavirus and alternative viewpoints. Basically, in combination ,they say that during the period [ 6 months to 18 months] before expected panaceas arrive [ such as extensive testing capabilities, vaccines, curative medications, enhanced tracking capabilities, etc.] the medical problem, even under worst-case scenarios, can be managed simultaneously with a full operating economy,
I believe, as does US Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams, that this is America’s Pearl Harbor moment. I also believe that RAND has the capability to map the exit route that will take us through these perilous times and allow the US to exodus from our current state of limbo and return to being a dynamic democratic economy.
@ Reader: Thanks for your support, Reader.
@ Edgar G.: Thanks for your support, Edgar.
“Here, we quantify background levels of non-influenza ILI over the past 10 years and identify
a recent surge of non-influenza ILI [influenza-like illnesses]starting the first week of March, 2020. This surge of excess
1
ILI correlates with known patterns of SARS-CoV-2 spread across states within the US, suggesting
the surge is unlikely to be due to other endemic respiratory pathogens, yet is orders of magnitude 50 larger than the number of confirmed COVID cases reported. Together this suggests that the true prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 within the US is much larger than currently appreciated and that even the highest symptomatic case detection rates are likely lower than 3% corresponding to approximately 9 million new ILI cases due to SARS-CoV-2.” This is from a new study by two professors, one from Penn State University and one from Montana State University. It has yet to be peer-reviewed. The jist of their conclusions is that the SARS-CoVID-2 virus did cause an increase in infectious respiratory illnesses in March of this year throughout the United States, but that most cases were not not diagnosed as COVID-19 and were not reported to the central state monitoring authorities. As a result, they think, far more people have been infected with SARS-CoVID-2 than has been reported in the press and by state governments. Many of these individuals may have recovered at home from COVID-19 without without even knowing what they had. Others may be unsymptomatic. Some might even have died without their deaths being determined to be caused by COVID-19. In any case, they conclude, far more testing is required to find out how best to deal with the pandemic (or epidemic) and what its future course may be. Their study offers some support to both “believers” and “skeptics.”
@ deanblake:
I don’t find that Shmuel’s comments display poor English, in fact it’s rather good; with language simple enough that such as you can understand easily-or should. Apart from the few typos, I noticed only an occasional misuse of a word, such as-for example,- “accept” for “except”….but I put that down to his being an American, where such things have become endemic. (like “reign” for “rein”) .
Perhaps you could not do as well, considering that Shmuel is detailing specifics in rather long posts.
There are sometimes errors in the most carefully copied Torah scrolls, as even the most diligent scribe can omit a line, when his eye uncontrollably shifts.
People resort to verbal abuse when hey hve no facts or evidence with which to support their views.
@ deanblake:
“Your English language grammer”
It’s “grammar”, actually, not “grammer”.
How do you know that his grammar reflects “Russian as first language”?
Do you speak Russian?
RAND is responsible, in part, for the fractured nature of the American health care system. It had a new special division in the 1980’s that was funded by, lent its prestige to and cooperated with Big Healthcare insurers to ensure their continued role in the money machine. It cranked out phony numbers to quash reform. Unreliable bunch of martinets looking to expand being war whisperer and consultants to something, anything, outside the military industrial complex. Take your physicists and quants elsewhere. Go mine the moon. Trump’s got his eye on that ball.
@ deanblake:
In Shmuel’s case, I ascribe it to cabin fever.
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
What Russian agency are you affiliated with? Your English language grammer is atrocious Boris and reflects Russian as first language. Go back to school to take English and don’t forget to take a course in epidemiology.
@ Michael S:
CRACKPOT ALERT!!!
Another reason why the Swedes seem to accept a relatively high death rate from COVID-19 is that while the Norwegians have adopted a vigourous, combative approach to containing the epidemic, may be suprisingly great cultural differences between these two neighboring countries. Many years ago, long before anyone had ever heard of coronaviruses, I read a study in some psychology magazine which sought to explain why Norway has a low suicide rate and Sweden has a high suicide rate. The answer appears to be in Norway, as in most countries, suicide is considered to be sinful and disgraceful, while in Sweden it is socially acceptable.
But this does not mean that the Swedes are especially depressed. But people who have a terminal illness or a chronic, painful medical condition think it is OK to die in order to escape unnecessary pain. And their relatives are usually OK with their decision. Other people commit suicide because they feel they have achieved everything they set out to do, their kids and grandkids are independent and leading happy lives, so why stick around when your life is complete? I think that this cultural attitude of Swedes, that it is more important to enjoy life than to live to the very last minute possible, explains their laid-back attitude towards th epidemic.
Most of the people who are dying in Sweden, as elsewhere, are elderly and have preexisting, long-term illnesses.Some of these people may be refusing medical treatment, accept maybe pain-killers. And their relativees may be OK with that and don’t criticise their decisions.
That frees the doctors and nurses to concentrate on saving the younger patients without debilitating preconditions, who want to live. The Swedish government claims their hospitals are not overcrowded. Of course in many other countries they are overcrowded, including the New York City metroppolitian area.
As for the Swedes laid-back approach to the coronavirus pandemic, this seems to reflect their more laid-back attitutudes towards health problems and even death than in most other countries. The charts on worldlifeexpectancy.com show that they have for years had high death rates for influenza and some other diseases. They also rate high rates of alcohol use, smoking, and obesity. But they don’t worry about it as much as people do in most Western countries. Despite their relatively poor health compared to some other “advanced” countries, they rate 9th on the “happiness” scale.
And in spite of their high risk factors, their life expectancy is about average for a European country. And it is longer than in the United States.
Maybe there is something to be said for their what-me-worry give-me-another beer approach to life.
@ Michael S: It would help me to explain my view about the statistics if my explanation of why I think the figures reported by the Icelanders are significant hadn’t been trashed. One reason is that there are some indications that Icelanders are doing a better job than most countries keeping accurate statistics. They have tested more people for the virus, and that seems to have helped them keep the number of deaths small.
Iceland has reducred the number of deaths by testing as many people as possible for the virus and for immunity. That allows them to identify the people who are sick and concentrate on making them well. They have also been more “permissive” than other Western countries about allowing their doctors to treat patients with medications that have been shown to work.
I believe that the UNited States, Israel, and all of the hard-hit countries could end the “pandemic,” or whatever it is, by following Iceland’s example.
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
Shmuel, we could go on an on with what Disraeli called “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. I sometimes like crunching numbers myself, and would love to jump in on this game. Before I do, let me opine that I would not like the Rand Corp., nor anything like it, to govern my life. Frankly, I would rather be governed by a consortium of Obama, Hillary and George Soros, than by the collective intelligence of people like Rand who dispassionately behave like gods. (Needless to say, I prefer Donald Trump to any of the above).
In the number-crunching game, some points on what you said:
1. ” Israel’s infection rate has not slowed down since the country locked down. Instead, infections have steadily increased.”
a. An “infection rate” has little relevance to anything. If this bat-virus vampire is allowed to run its course, eventually the vast majority of humanity will become either infected or immune.
b. Lock-downs do not cause infections to “decrease”. They slow down the INCREASE OF THE INCREASE.
2. “Sweden has had a high death rate from coronavirus”
a. I have yet to see the “death rate” measured in any meaningful way. Worldwide, 21% of people admitted to hospital with the virus die, and somewhere around 80% of those put on ventilators die. Those are the figures that matter to people who get sick from this thing. They put COVID-19 in a class with serious conditions like heart attacks and strokes.
3. “Reasonable conclusion: lockdowns in Italy, Spain, France and Holland have had no effect whatsoever.”
Here are some “damned lies and statistics”:
China PR (draconian lock-down after early, limited laxness):
3,212 deaths (56 per million) in Hubei Province, site of the origin of the spread, and
129 deaths (0.1 per million) in all the rest of China, where draconian lock-down preceded the spread.
China has been accused of severely UNDERCOUNTING its dead in Hunan, where press access has been severely limited. The rest of China was more open to scrutiny; so if anything, the benefits of lock-down are greater than the statistics show.
Europe and the US: Open borders until the infections were already full-blown, along with a piecemeal, often lackadaisical approach:
Italy 19,899 deaths and counting (329 per million)
Spain 17,209 deaths and counting (368 per million)
France 14,393 deaths and counting (221 per million)
UK Britain 10,612 deaths and counting (156 per million)
New York State 9,385 deaths and counting (483 per million)
Iran 4,474 acknowledged deaths and counting (53 per million)
Belgium 3,600 deaths and counting (311 per million)
Netherlands 2,737 deaths and counting (160 per million)
New Jersey 2,350 deaths and counting (263 per million)
Connecticut 1,593 deaths and counting (447 per million)
Michigan 1,487 deaths and counting (148 per million)
Switzerland 1,106 deaths and counting (128 per million)
Sweden 899 deaths and counting (89 per million)
Louisiana 840 deaths and counting (180 per million)
Those numbers make it seem like poop-on-the-ground, bat-eating China has a better health system than the West. Some Western countries seem to have bucked the trend:
Germany 3022 deaths (36 per million)
South Korea 214 deaths (4 per million)
Russia 130 deaths (0.9 per million)
Japan 93 deaths (0.7 per million)
Israel 51 deaths (6 per million)
Other countries, usually considered clueless in health matters, shine as “beacons of enlightenment”:
Brazil 1,230 deaths and counting (6 per million)
Turkey 1,198 deaths and counting (14 per million)
Indonesia 373 deaths (1 per million)
India 289 deaths (0.2 per million)
Pakistan 93 deaths (0.4 per million)
Bangladesh 34 deaths (0.2 per million)
Nigeria 10 deaths (0.05 per million)
I suppose anyone can take these numbers, mix them with some lies and damned lies, and come up with anything.
See graphs demonstrating that social distancing is working.
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-deaths-projections-chart-f2725a44-160d-487a-87f5-7c54cad6a1b0.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dd41120&utm_content=1100&fbclid=IwAR1QysRt0anW4Xs7580xMA7SOfoVfiPxQqjUPrQv536ghhcfCrwPKdqRzW4
Ted, please detrash my explanation as to real reasons Iceland has had a low COVID-19 death rate, answering Michael’s comment about this.
@ Michael S: That Iceland has a smaller population in no way changes the liklihood that Iceland’s death rate is propably a representative sample of what the entire Western world’s death rate would be like if it had followed Iceland’s policies. Iceland had extensive
trade and travel to and from all the other Western countries for decades. Its population size is no reason why its death rate from coronavirus should be any different from the other other Western countries. What has been different is Iceland’s aggressive testing policies, which have allowed it to detect infected people early, and institute preventative measures and where necessary treatment of the disease. It has also allowed the use of the drugs that have demonstrated success in treating the disease. It has ordered and distributed face masks to nearly anyone. The other Western countries with large population could implement these same policies. By and large they haven’t.
Israeli number of infections from Covid-19 appear to have peaked several days ago at about 800 per day.
The last few days have fluctuated between 200 to 400 day.
The rate of recovery is going up.to about 300 per day.
The amount of daily deaths has steadily gone down from a max. of ~12 down to ~2 -3 per day with some fluctuations at this point.
The Social Distancing to this point has been working in Israel.
Data provided above found at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
@ Michael S: Sweden has had a high death rate from coronavirus while not locking down the country. However, the death rate in Spain and Italy has been higher than Sweden and the death rate in France and Holland have been about the same. Reasonable conclusion: lockdowns in Italy, Spain, France and Holland have had no effect whatsoever.
@ Michael S: I’m not lying. Israel’s infection rate has not slowed down since the country locked down. Instead, infections have steadily increased.
Covid- 19 Death Rates to Date per Million Population
Iceland population 364,000 Deaths 8 – Deaths per million population 23
Israel population 9 million Deaths 110 – Deaths – per million population 13
USA population 340 million Deaths 22,000 – Deaths – per million population 67
Spain population 47 million Deaths 17,000 – Deaths – per million population 374
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Iceland population 364,134 not even the size of a big city, is certainly not representative geographic locale.
Median age in Iceland is 36.5
Median age in USA is 38.5
Median age in Europe 42
As we know age matters with Covid-19.
“REPORT: 30%-50% Of Patients In Chicago Tested For COVID-19 Already Have Antibodies In System
Testing at a hospital in Chicago found that 30-50% of patients who have been tested for COVID-19 have antibodies in their system, which means they likely already had the virus and are immune, at least for an unknown period of time.
“A phlebotomist working at Roseland Community Hospital said Thursday that 30% to 50% of patients tested for the coronavirus have antibodies while only around 10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus,” Chicago City Wire reported on Thursday.
Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician, said she tests between 400 and 600 patients on an average day in the parking lot at Roseland Community Hospital. Drive-thru testing is from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. each day. However, the hospital has a limited number of tests they can give per day.
Owaynat said the number of patients coming through the testing center who appear to have already had coronavirus and gotten over it is far greater than those who currently have the disease.
“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore and their bodies built the antibodies,” Owaynat told Chicago City Wire.
More than 500,000 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 20,000 have died. According to one model, the number of deaths per day peaked on Friday and will begin to fall.
“Iceland finds half of the population are asymptomatic but infected with Covid-19
Iceland has tested one-tenth of its population for coronavirus at random and found that half of people have the disease without realising.
They also discovered that 1,600 people have been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the outbreak. Of these cases, there were only seven deaths, indicating a fatality rate of just 0.004 per cent, which is significantly lower than other countries, including the UK.
The findings were made during Iceland’s rigorous testing campaign, conducted with the help of Reykjavik-based biopharmaceutical company deCODE genetics, which has seen 10 per cent of the 364,413 population swabbed, something yet to be achieved by any other nation.
An estimated 50 per cent of those infected with the virus, the company found, do not show any symptoms. ” More evidence that we’eve been had.
Step 1 : A protective mask with fine particles filter (FFP2-FFP3 ) costs 2€ to produce.Distribute it to all citizens and makes its wearing compulsory .
Step 2: Testing in all enterprises ( a slab + test costs 30 € ) tests results are ready in 2 hours .
Step 3 : Home staying for all population at risks
Step 4 : the best proven remedy that erases the pathologic effects of the virus is cheap ( less than 10 € ) and is hydroxychloroquine HCO + Azomithrycine AZT at the very beginning of the first symptoms . Professor Didier Raoult head of infectious diseases department in Marseille has saved more than 1000 patients .
I am not from the RAND ..)
@ Shmuel Mohalever:
“Israel’s lockdown and “social distancing” have done absolutely nothing to halt the spread of the disease.”
Shmuel, Bear just proved you wrong. Why are you lying?
Countries that tried Herd Immunit Approach to Covid-19 have had many dying.
Netherlands dead 2,737
Switzerland dead 1106
Sweden dead 899
Countries practicing Social Distancing:
Israel Dead 103
Taiwan Dead 6
Singapore 8
At least for now social distancing is having a positive effect in sparing lives. Those practicing the herd effect theory are having far more deaths.
“11,103 COVID-19 cases in Israel; 174 in critical condition – Inside Israel”
From today’s Arutz Sheva. Israel’s lockdown and “social distancing” have done absolutely nothing to halt the spread of the disease. No surprise there. Keeping people cooped up, deprived of fresh air and sunshine, is the best way to spread the disease. Preventing non-infected people and those who test positive for immunity from mingling also increase the number of infections infections , since the population is denied the opportunity to acquire “herd immunity.”
Social Distancing may have worked better than anticipated in some cases such as California and Washington State. That is a good thing.