Florida is apparently now showing a significant amount of atypical illness:
https://healthweather.us/
Scary graphic.
ETA: just adding article about website and graphic:
alli3fire I know! That was my personal plea to King Cuomo! If you read I said, “please follow CA…”
We have a mayor trying to do the right thing and a Governor who is pulling rank and not showing good leadership.
I highly recommend listening to BBC podcasts for slightly different information.
I listened to one last night that discussed an Italian study. Researchers managed to test every resident of a village. They learned 2 things. One, they eradicated the disease in the village by isolating all positive cases. And two, they found 25% of people testing positive never had any symptoms.
Can’t they? Those in power want to stay in power. Everywhere. They all want to hear good news, not bad ones, when they’re in power.
In China, in the city of Wuhan, there’s no dispute that some officials (at least some local officials) tried to cover up at the initial stage of the outbreak. There might also be some structural or bureaucratic issues (China’s local health department doesn’t report directly to Chinese’s CDC but only to its local government, unlike in the US). In the midst of Chinese New Year preparation and celebration, the local bosses (and perhaps some people in the central government but we don’t yet know) were probably ignorant of the seriousness of the disease and had every incentive not to make a big deal of it to disrupt the celebratory mood. Once they did realize the seriousness of it, they did adopt the most draconian measures, which at least in retrospect, turned out to be not only necessary but also effective, to stop the spread. Hard to imagine how much worse the situation everywhere could be if those measures weren’t taken.
In the US, like in China, ignorance, incompetence, and political consideration also played a role. When the rational for reelection was partially based on a soaring stock market, the incentive is not to do anything to negatively affect the mood of the nation. Various officials proclaimed that the virus had been “contained”, or the problem was just a Chinese one and that we could even benefit from the crisis as manufacturers would relocate to US from China because of the virus. We didn’t prepare other than partially shutting down some travel from China (even that was incompetently carried out as airport screenings were minimal or none by all accounts).
By China’s own account, if they had shut down the city of Wuhan five days earlier, the number of confirmed cases there would reduce by two-thirds. If we had implemented some of measures we’re adopting now (BTW, they’re still insufficient) 5 days, 10 days, 15 days, or even 30 days earlier, how many fewer cases would we have seen all over the country?
Here’s an article i found discussing the study:
Why Mass Testing Is Crucial: the US Should Study the Veneto Model to Fight Covid-19
Posted on March 17, 2020 by Luigi Zingales
. . .
The Vo’ Euganeo Experiment
Vo’ Euganeo is a small town (3,341 people) located on the hills just outside of Padua (the town where I grew up). It came to international prominence on February 21, when Adriano Trevisan, a 77-year-old inhabitant, died of coronavirus.
Yet, what will ensure Vo’ Euganeo a place in the history of medicine is the decision made by the Governor of the Veneto region (which includes Padua, Venice, and Verona) to test all 3,341 inhabitants of the town twice: the first time before closing it off from the rest of Italy and a second time two weeks later.
In this respect, Vo’ Euganeo is similar to the Diamond Princess, the ship quarantined in the port of Yokohama, even in population size (3,711). In both cases, we can observe an entire population exposed to the virus over time, with comprehensive testing.
This is different from all the other cases, where only a fraction of the population is tested and that fraction is likely to be the one showing some symptoms of the disease.
The first piece of good news coming out from both these ‘experiments’ is that more than 50 percent of the documented COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic cases, similar to what researchers found in the Diamond Princess case.
Once we adjust for this percentage, we have the second piece of good news: in both these samples, the case mortality rate (CMR)—the fraction of cases that die after contracting a disease—is “only” 1 percent (1 percent in Vo’ and 1.1 percent in the Diamond Princess after adjusting for the age distribution).
. . .
The lesson from Vo’ and from the Diamond Princess suggests that the number of deaths nine days later is a much better predictor of the diffusion of the disease.
What Does This Say About The Spreading of the Virus?
The above conclusion is very important to help us estimate the spread of the disease in the United States, where testing has been very sporadic (to use a British understatement). Yet, I will leave the application to the United States for another day and focus on what we can learn from the Italian case if we use this estimator.
Figure 2 plots the spreading of the virus in the four main Italian regions, where the diffusion is measured by deaths nine days later divided by 0.01 (I use a three-day moving average to smooth the number of fatalities). If we apply this method to the top four regions of Northern Italy and we divide the number of estimated infected by population in the region (in thousands), we obtain the following picture:
Source: Author’s calculations on GEDI Visual data
Lombardy was probably the epicenter of the initial contagion. Hence, the quick rise. Yet, Veneto (which experienced its first death the same day as Lombardy) seems to have a growth of infected people much slower than the other main Northern regions.
In particular, the absolute and relative level of deaths in Veneto is inferior to those in Emilia and Piemonte, in spite of the fact that these two regions experienced their first deaths several days after Veneto.
The Veneto Model
There is an important difference between Veneto and the other three Northern regions. From the beginning, Veneto applied the strategy of mass testing applied in South Korea. As a result, Veneto has been able to isolate infected people even when they were asymptomatic. In Vo’, this strategy worked wonderfully.
On February 22, 3 percent of the inhabitants of Vo’ were infected. After two weeks in which the town was locked down, only 0.25 percent were infected. Once these few infected people were isolated, the town reopened and has experienced no new cases.
. . .
Implications for the United States
The Italian experience suggests that mass testing is a necessary component of a successful strategy against COVID-19. You have to test early and you have to test as many people as possible to isolate the infected. That is the opposite of the US strategy.
So crazy. In NJ, they won’t test my 69 year old father, even though he’s been having flu-like symptoms for a week and a half, had lunch with a friend who was subsequently diagnosed, and is presumably responsible for passing the virus from his friend to me. Because he seems to be recovering and doesn’t currently have a fever (he did last week), he is not eligible for a test. I’d put the chances that he has it at over 90%. My mother was also mildly ill last week.
Half a world away, we’re also having trouble getting approval for a test for my fiance; we live together and he has been coughing and tired.
Since there’s not much they can do, I suppose it isn’t strictly vital - but if my fiance does have it, there are people at work he might have exposed before his office went remote. Ditto for my parents. Again, just reinforces the importance of everyone staying inside as much as humanly possible.
@DadTwoGirls, I also had an opened box of masks. In my area, organizations are only accepting unopened boxes. So I asked a retired nurse friend if she knew anyone who could use the masks; her former coworker was beyond thrilled to claim them. I suggest reaching out to any health care professionals you know personally to see if they can use your supply.
People have to understand there is a shortage of tests. Plus the flu /cold/strep season is here also . There is no reason to test anyone with this massive shortage. You have to ask yourself, after testing positive, how does that change the treatment plan? Right now they treating symptoms, be it GI or Respiratory symptoms.
In a perfect world everyone would be tested.
So what to do???
Everyone needs to pretend they have it now regardless how they feel. Social distancing, wash hands and surfaces, stop touching your face. Keep hydrated. Eat some protein. Exercise if you can.
If feeling sick then isolate yourself anyway
My office manager was not feeling well after her husband was not feeling well. She is staying home for one week and isolating herself. If she doesn’t fell better on Sunday, she will stay home another week.
Yesterday I saw patients. One canceled due to her coworker diagnosed. All patients seemed not sick. But when I got home I felt tired. Went right into my son’s room (still in apartment at college) and slept. I am using his room to self isolate besides meal times. We all have sniffles, slight coughs, allergies etc. Normal winter stuff but with this craziness have to assume maybe more.
As a note 100% of the people I know who thought they had symptoms ended up testing for the regular flu or strep throat.
@DadTwoGirls Maybe there are people on here who could use the open masks? I know on the other thread @greenwitch just mentioned she is worried about her daughter who is a nurse in a Coronavirus ER as they are running out of supplies.
Mnuchin tweeted that the April 15 filing deadline will be moved to July 15.
Exactly. A CEO of a major SoCal hospital made the exact same point on a TV interview last night.
Until breathing gets bad, you will isolate at home anyway. For the masses, a cough and slight fever doesn’t deserve a test right now, nor a spot in the ER. (ER’s have even more germs, so why expose yourself?)
Cuomo just SHUT DOWN ALL nonessential business.
NYS has now tested more people per capita than China or South Korea. Last night they run 10,000 tests.
NYS cases update:
total 7,102; 2,950 new cases,
NYC 4,408 (+1,939)
Westchester 1,091 (+293)
Nassau 754 (+382)
Suffolk 371 (+193)
Rockland 101 (+48)
Rate of hospitalization:
1,255 (18% of the cases)
About time!
Cuomo is just 100% done with everyone’s crap.
He’s got the right attitude.
We just shipped a couple of masks up to my niece in Boston. She works at a hospital and has two floors of CV patients. Her husband has compromised ungs 
We have about 7 masks because H does all his own car and home repair. Two are used but we sent them new ones.
“Shut down” or said that all the workforce must stay at home? For some businesses, there is a distinction.
Remember the old adage. “The last place you want to be when sick is a hospital”. Unless you need an IV or breathing issues stay home and isolated…
DH works in a research lab and he’s been told they aren’t shut down. But they already froze most of the cell lines last week. The big concern is if they don’t get liquid nitrogen deliveries they will lose them. They are also keeping the mice alive.
You can work from home. That’s fine.
Otherwise it’s 100% out of house non essential employment
Sorry, should have been more specific.