Coronavirus Daily(ish) Updates

The only autism-powered COVID-19 intelligence aggregator on the internet

2020.04.02

Official Numbers

Johns Hopkins dashboard is back

WOOO WE HIT ONE MILLION. By which I mean holy fuck. Don’t forget, exponential growth means that the correct way to think is not “ok, another two months to get to 2M”, it’s “ok, another two months to get to 10M” or whatever

Site Updates

I am getting increasingly frustrated with the coronavirus-related subreddits, and this is my primary source of news. Consequently, I will be cutting back dramatically on what I report from there. I will continue to post any news that I get sent or otherwise fine, and I will continue to post the scientific papers, but expect something of a decrease in various news stories around this unfolding crisis

Personal Updates

Today marks two weeks since I stopped showing symptoms. Did I have COVID-19, or did I have a regular illness? I don’t know, and probably won’t know for months, but I have taken precautions as if I have. Today marks the day where I can actually interact with other people safely again

Additionally, I need to post a public update on my views. When I first discovered this plague, I was convinced that it was a society-wide x-risk. I actually literally called up my parents and said “I know this sounds crazy, but I think we’re all going to die of plague, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen, and on the off chance things get shut down way faster than I expect, and I don’t get the chance to say it again, I love you all and stay safe”. This was in the first week of February. Yeah yeah, I may have overreacted a bit, but I present this only to illustrate my mind-state.

Over the past two months, as this pandemic has developed, I have found myself significantly lowering my estimate of how bad this is. I can’t point to any particular data point that has changed my mind on this, it is more a general synthesis of things. Like Italy. The data in Italy is alarming, with 12,000 fatalities and counting, but it really is for the most part only impacting older people. Their deaths are a tragedy, but don’t pose an x-risk to society the same way that decimating the working population would. Even then, most of the deaths outside of the eldery have been people with pre-existing conditions.

Then I consider Seattle, or California. Seattle was the first place in the US to see significant COVID deaths. So imagine my surprise when I went to look up their death stats and see that their total deaths (at least as of the other day) was 195. New York is posting more than that per day. Now I’m not sure exactly what measures Seattle has taken, but I promise you that whatever they’ve done, it’s not nearly to the extent that China did. Which means that some kind of half-assed lockdown measure is more than enough to completely halt this pandemic.

I think about the Diamond Princess. When I first heard about that boat, I expected like half of the people on that boat to end up in severe condition, and like 5 or 10% to die. This has not happened. The death rate on that boat, as far as I know, is under 1%, and that boat skewed heavily towards the elderly (an at-risk group).

I think about the people I know who have caught this. Four people I know have been confirmed-positive. Another almost dozen are presumed-positive. All of those people, except one, have had mild-to-trivial symptoms, and the one guy who has had more severe symptoms is almost two weeks in and still not bad enough to bother going to the hospital.

I think about all the asymptomatic-transmission data that keeps coming out. I think about the Influenza-Like Illnesses paper linked below, which suggests that there are 10M infected Americans already. Even at a relatively conservative 10% severe-disease rate, that should mean that 1 million Americans are already overloading our nation’s 100,000 ICU units. And yet they aren’t

Given all of the above, I am formally downgrading my estimate of the risk of this pandemic. I still think there are massive error bars. I still think that this poses significant danger. I am still, for now, begrudgingly convinced that closing all public places is a necessary public health measure.

I will observe the events of the next few weeks and update my beliefs appropriately.

Updates