Not (yet) anywhere near ‘flattening the curve’

Pandemic

I started exploring around the Johns Hopkins map of COVID-19 cases (figure 1) a bit. If you click on “Admin1” at left, it reveals that the confirmed cases in the state of New York (Update, April 3, 2020: corrected from New York City) now exceeds those in Hubei, China by a considerable margin.^[1]

Fig. 1. Screenshot (so when I say click, don’t click on this image, but rather here, then click where I say) of map from Johns Hopkins University as of 5:38 am, April 1.^[2]

In the chaos of New York City, where coronavirus deaths are mounting so quickly that freezer trucks have been set up as makeshift morgues, several hospitals have taken the unprecedented step of allowing doctors not to resuscitate people with covid-19 to avoid exposing health-care workers to the highly contagious virus.^[3]

We are also not yet “flattening the curve,” at least globally, by any stretch of the imagination, as can be seen at lower right (figure 1). The only way you see any flattening is by clicking on “logarithmic” on lower right, which means only that the spread of confirmed cases—remember that testing has lagged in many places, including the United States—is no longer growing any more exponentially than it was. At best, this is only the barest beginning of a “flattening of the curve,” and everything we know here is heavily affected by a measurement bias in that we have not tested representative samples of the population, but rather only some people who’ve developed symptoms that weren’t mistaken for something else.^[4]

This is where anybody who knows anything about this stuff has to be having, well . . . .

Fig. 2. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, in a facepalm moment, downloaded from an article by Ethan Anderton in Film posted on May 9, 2019.^[5] I think he’s using it under fair use; so am I.

It’d help if we even had an idea what proportion of the population is immune:

The theory is that such [serology] testing could be used to divide the world into people who’ve had it and aren’t at risk anymore — and those who are. Health-care workers with immunity could return to the front lines. Large employers could test their workers to find out who could return to work first. Health insurers might use the tests to tell members whether it is risky to go out into the world. People who know they have a level of immunity could help others. In the Ebola outbreak in Congo, survivors played a special role in providing care — and much-needed human contact — to people who were sick.

“This is going to be a very valuable portion of the population,” said Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security. “They are people who are presumably protected, and can volunteer. They can have important roles if they have jobs that are critical — they can have that job, they can declare they’re not going to suddenly come down with coronavirus.”^[6]

But developing such a test is easier said than done. And researchers have to make sure the test actually says something like what it purports to say.^[7] Which is all to say we don’t know jack shit about the spread of this contagion.

It’s also worth clicking on “Admin0” at left in that Johns Hopkins map (figure 1). and wishing for per capita numbers nationally.^[8] I think, per capita, some European countries might have it worse than the U.S.

I know I said it was going to be bad. I don’t think I came anywhere close to realizing how bad.

Because this is still a worsening picture, there is still a considerable risk that I have not in fact been exposed and might yet be or might have been exposed and still in the incubation period.^[9] But the longer this goes on—I have lots of public exposure in a place with a fair number of cases^[10]—the more I think, especially given my history of generally not coming down with this shit, I may indeed be immune. Which should matter.^[11] But nobody wants me anyway,^[12] so I guess it doesn’t matter.

There is a new blog post entitled, “COVID-19 and the trolley problem.”

Ariana Eunjung Cha et al., “Faced with a crush of patients, besieged NYC hospitals struggle with life-or-death decisions,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/new-york-city-hospitals-coronavirus/

Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Testing coronavirus survivors’ blood could help reopen U.S.,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/coronavirus-serology-blood-tests/

Amber Phillips, “What you really need to know from Tuesday’s White House coronavirus briefing,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/31/trump-coronavirus-briefing-takeaways/

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1. ^[1]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 1, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
2. ^[2]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 1, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
3. ^[3]Ariana Eunjung Cha et al., “Faced with a crush of patients, besieged NYC hospitals struggle with life-or-death decisions,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/new-york-city-hospitals-coronavirus/↩
4. ^[4]Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Testing coronavirus survivors’ blood could help reopen U.S.,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/coronavirus-serology-blood-tests/↩
5. ^[5]Ethan Anderton, “Cool Stuff: ‘Star Trek’ Captain Picard Facepalm Meme Becomes an Elegant Bronze Bust Statue,” Film, May 9, 2019, https://www.slashfilm.com/captain-picard-facepalm-bust/↩
6. ^[6]Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Testing coronavirus survivors’ blood could help reopen U.S.,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/coronavirus-serology-blood-tests/↩
7. ^[7]Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Testing coronavirus survivors’ blood could help reopen U.S.,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/coronavirus-serology-blood-tests/↩
8. ^[8]Center for Systems Science and Engineering, “Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases,” April 1, 2020, Johns Hopkins University, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html↩
9. ^[9]This probably averages five days but there have been reports that the incubation period has exceeded a month in some cases: Alexander Freund, “How long is the coronavirus incubation period?” Deutschewelle, February 28, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/how-long-is-the-coronavirus-incubation-period/a-52569944; Rich Haridy, “Study affirms average Covid-19 incubation period is 5 days,” New Atlas, March 9, 2020, https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/covid-19-coronavirus-incubation-five-days-study-average/↩
10. ^[10]Justin Heinze, “12 More Die In Pennsylvania From Coronavirus, 500 New Cases Found,” Patch, March 28, 2020, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/baldwin-whitehall/s/h2bmx/12-more-die-in-pennsylvania-from-coronavirus-500-new-cases-found; Eric Heyl, “Allegheny County Coronavirus Cases Continue To Surge,” Patch, March 27, 2020, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/baldwin-whitehall/s/h2aqu/allegheny-county-coronavirus-cases-continue-to-surge; Eric Heyl, “Allegheny County Coronavirus Cases: Another Large Increase,” Patch, March 28, 2020, https://patch.com/pennsylvania/baldwin-whitehall/s/h2bkm/allegheny-county-coronavirus-cases-another-large-increase↩
11. ^[11]Carolyn Y. Johnson, “Testing coronavirus survivors’ blood could help reopen U.S.,” Washington Post, March 31, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/31/coronavirus-serology-blood-tests/↩
12. ^[12]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/↩