Tag Archives: Healthcare

What the ratio of positive tests to total test results for coronavirus is telling us I want to make a comment about the value of measuring the number of coronavirus tests being administered vs. the number of cases found by those tests. This is because a few people are claiming that the ratio of positive tests to total tests does not give us value. Rather, they claim, increased testing simply reveals increased infections. I will make a bold, unqualified...

 Where Are People Dying Most Intensively Now of SARS-Cov-2? More than a century later, we still do not  know the origin of the Spanish flu, with at least three currently scientifically supporte origins out thers: North America (possibly Kansas), China, and British soldiers in France. This will not be resolved.  I suspect that this may become the outcome of the current debate over the origin of our current pandemic.  While mostly this seems to have become...

We Need a Shadow Government Republican rule in the US is a horror show.  We get incoherent ramblings from our president on injecting bleach into our veins, calls for the states to file for bankruptcy from the Senate majority leader, a veto of modest IMF support for developing countries hammered financially by the virus, and a complete absence of guidance on the most crucial aspects of public health. We already know this. The greater tragedy is that the...

Heads up for tomorrow! Tomorrow morning I have a very long post quoting about 20 medical articles at length, explaining (what we think we know so far about) the whole biochemistry of how the novel coronavirus attacks the body. By the time you finish reading it, you will understand a lot about why the disease attacks the organs it does, why it progresses in the order it does, why it produces some extremely unusual complications in victims who otherwise...

The actual US coronavirus trajectory: “flattening the curve” at least until 2021 “Flattening the curve” was not such an appetizing option either, because it meant that *everybody* got infected with the disease during the period of flattening, and so the death toll would still be horrifying, perhaps 1% to 3%. It also meant that the period that the infection would curtail society was extended to several years. Shortly a much better alternative, based on...

Trends in US States compared by coronavirus response I mentioned over the weekend that I wanted to break out and look at some different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s the first: how are States at different ends of the restrictions and testing spectrums faring? Seven States have never even mandated lockdowns. Let’s look at these, alphabetically: Arkansas: Iowa: Figure 1 Nebraska: North Dakota South Dakota: Utah: Wyoming: Four of the seven...

Advocates of quickly ending the shutdowns are in the news. Mostly, because one of them is President. Like most Americans, I think reopening soon would be a mistake (and remember I am in Italy where the shut down is severe compared to any State in the USA). I’m just going to assume that reopening by May 1 is a bad idea and try to understand who advocates it and why they do. First the vast majority of Americans do not support reopening soon. There was the...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 20: a few positive development Here is the update through yesterday (April 19) As usual, significant developments are in italics. Yesterday saw the biggest number of daily tests, and ratio of total vs. positive tests so far, both positive developments.  The number and rate of daily infections and deaths also declined, but that may be a function of lower weekend reporting. Here are yesterday’s numbers. Number and rate of...

Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 18 Here is the update through yesterday (April 17) There are some extended comments I want to make about the pandemic, and some graphs comparing States, etc., that are best done separately, so this will be an abbreviated update. Here are yesterday’s numbers. Number and rate of increase of Reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com) Number: up +35,354 to 706,779 (vs. 35,219 prior peak on April...

Reposted from Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality: What is the Real Prevalence of Coronavirus Across States? Click on the image to enlarge Tests per million times cases per test gives you confirmed cases per million. But we want true cases per million. Tests per million are different across states because (a) the states are undertaking testing with different levels of effort and (b) the prevalence of the virus is different in different states. Confirmed...