COVID19 Spread Rate and Testing Reagents

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   peoplepower73posted 5 years ago

   This is why Trump thought that only one person having the COVID19 virus was no big deal.  Therefore, he didn't invoke social distancing until much later when it started to spread.
   
   This link  shows how it spreads at an exponential rate from one person to many others to where we are today. It is also why we can't go back to work until the spread rate is no longer exponential, because all it takes is one infected person to start the whole exponential spread again.
   
   
   https://www.businessinsider.com/coronav … ead-2020-3
   
   Trump believes that all it takes to make a test on a person is a swab, but it also takes complex reagents.  This link explains  what reagents are, how they are used, and why there is a critical shortage of them globally.
   
   https://www.rferl.org/a/coronavirus-rea … 63198.html

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      wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Few people really understand exponential growth and just how fast it can explode. 
      
      But if you're saying that we have to wait until the disease is eradicated ("...all it takes is one infected person to start the whole exponential spread again.), well, that isn't going to happen.  We're going to have it around for years to come, if not forever.
      
      I doubt that Trump thinks one can look at a swab and determine infection.  Pretty sure he understands it takes a lab, and that means reagents and chemicals.  He worked to get more labs online, after all, and knows very well that it takes time in a lab to get results.

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         Live to Learnposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Not sure deductive reasoning is of much help when the goal is to bash Trump.

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            wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Frankly, it doesn't appear that any reasoning is of much help.  Deductive, Inductive, Circular, Abductive - none apply when such a goal is the driving force.

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               peoplepower73posted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Willderness:  Trump playing the blame game, misinformation, playing the victim, and using his press conferences as a platform for his rallies doesn't help either. 
               
               He and Pence should either lead a national strategy for testing, follow or, get the hell out of the way and let the experts take over.   This is no time for politics and the adoration of Trump that he so sorely requires.

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                  wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  "Trump playing the blame game, misinformation, playing the victim..."
                  
                  Are you speaking of Trump or of yourself and the Democrats?  Because that's exactly what I see and hear: Trump being blamed for everything under the sun.
                  
                  What would you like for national testing?  NY (the epicenter) gets all the tests and the rest of the country does without?  Cuomo would like that for sure, but you don't like politics, so...maybe the rest of the country gets it all to see if they can re-open and NY gets almost none?  Politics will prohibit that.
                  
                  Like it or not, politics WILL have a very large say in whatever is proposed.

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                  MizBejabbersposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  He would fire Dr. Fauci in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it, but I think even he knows what wrath firing a "National Treasure" would bring down on him. I'll bet it really irks him to hear Dr. Fauci called that. He'll never hear himself referred to as a National Treasure.

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      Sharlee01posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Here is a link to explain the exponential rate, and how the models are created. You will note as the number of infections rises the model must be reevaluated. It is well known due to lack of testing and the Virus going undetected due to it in many people not displaying any symptoms at all. Dr. Birx stated she felt the number of underlying would be large. This needs to be taken into consideration when working on the exponential rate. This is why the model has changed with more cases of the infection being discovered. 
      
      The Linear Model is only the best estimate of the Exponential Growth function, it has a certain error margin that we could inspect in further study.
      
      The Exponential Growth function is not necessarily the perfect representation of the epidemic. I have identified the best fitting Exponential Growth function, but a next point to study could be to look into Logistic Growth for example
      
      The Exponential Growth will only fit the epidemic at the beginning. At some point, healed people will not spread the virus anymore and when (almost) everyone is or has been infected, the growth will stop.
      
      https://towardsdatascience.com/modeling … a2b6f22e1f

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         CHRIS57posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Nice adstract on basic exponential growth.
         
         Another little trick (actually based on the same logarithmic transformation) is the doubling period.
         Doubling means multiplying by 2. Natural logarithm of 2 is 0,7 (ln(2) = 0,693. Expressed in percent it is 70. Just divide 70 by the days it takes to double and you the average growth percentage for doubling. 
         
         From April 05th to 19th, we have doubling. So divide 70 by 14 days and you get 5% growth per day.
         Now, the problem is: in the 6 days before April 5th we also had doubling. That is 12% average growth. But there is no switching from 12% to 5% within this short period of time. So what is the reason?
         
         Explanation: Input data is inconsistent. On April 5th nominal growth of infected was some 30.000 cases. As i could find, daily testing was and is 150.000 per day. Average hit rate is 20%. Consequently with 150k tests per day no more than 30k infected can be identified. And guess what: Every day since April 5th the growth of confirmed infections was always in the range of 30 .. 35.000. What a conicidence.
         Conclusion: As the pandemia progresses, less is known about the status. Data is insufficient. Not enough testing.
         
         It is up to politics to make decisions on how to proceed. But if initial directive was "health first" and that led lockdown, then i don´t see how to reopen if even less is known than 2 weeks ago.
         Currently the US has a daily Corona death toll in the range of total losses in Irak wars 1991 or 2003 respectively.
         Nationwide Corona mortality is some 20 to 30% of natural mortality. Is this acceptable?
         
         Last question: Are the recovered tested? There is a binary outcome of the pandemia. People either get through with it (recover) or they die. Testing all recovered and all deaths will probably help more to reveil the status than undercounting the infected.

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            peoplepower73posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Sharlee:  I understood the first part of your article about exponential growth, but the linear regression is very abstract and way beyond my pay grade.  Let's just say it is a model that uses "what if" variables as the input to predict the outcome of the input variables.

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               Sharlee01posted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Yes, This is getting way beyond me. I have been listening to Dr. Birx on her feelings more titer testing is needed to find out how many actually had the virus to be able to determine death toll to actual persons having had the virus. It would interest me to know how virulent the virus is. I can see it spreads quickly, easily between humans. If many millions have had it with little symptoms this would be promising for the majority of the population.

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                  peoplepower73posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Sharlee:  As an RN, you may be interested in this.  It is a white board lecture on the virology of COVID19.  It is long but very informative.  Just follow it until it gets over your head.  I watched the whole 42 minutes and it is very interesting to see the chain reaction that takes place in our body when infected by this virus. 
                  There is no way I could retain all the terminology, but the first part explains the spread interval (SI) of the virus which is the time it takes for symptoms to present when it is spread among groups of people. That should give you an indication to answer your question about how virulent the virus is.
                  
                  
                  https://youtu.be/YRfwZcLeOm4

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                     Sharlee01posted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Thank you for the link. I will check it out. Lots of time on my hands.

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         MizBejabbersposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Sharlee, did I read in a comment that you were an RN? Have you heard much or anything about people who exhibited symptoms before the government announced that the virus had entered the country? My husband visited the VA in January for a regular checkup and a week or so later he thought he had the flu. He was treated, but not tested, for flu. A week later (early Feb.) I went to my doctor for a regular checkup and they found that I had a fever of 101.4 along with some of the symptoms that I thought were just early seasonal allergies. I had no idea that I was running a fever. I was tested for flu and was negative. We both had our flu shots in early autumn. I since talked with people on facebook who had symptoms as early as August and September. If, by some chance, we had CV 19 rather than flu, that also would skew the exponential rate, I think. I also wonder if those of us who may have had CV-19 unknowingly exposed anyone.
         Does anybody really know what was going on then? My husband is military trained in biological warfare and he says this virus is following the pattern of planned infections when terrorists want to infect a country.

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            peoplepower73posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            MizBejabbers: Did you and your husband recover?  I can understand why terrorists would want to infect a country, but not the whole world. Does he think it was aimed at one country and that it got out of control because it was spread by travel between countries?

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            Sharlee01posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            MizBejabbers,  Thank you for sharing your concern about your husband and your illness early on in January. I became ill along with my son, and grandchild in late Nov. We all had the symptoms that present with COVID19. None of us ever having any lung problems prior to this illness.  We actually presented with the three most common symptoms, fever, cough, and problems breathing. My grandson rallied quickly within four days he was well, and even returned to school. My son and I were ill and doctored for over a month. We both had several bouts with severe breathing problems that required emergency visits to urgent care for breathing treatments. We both were on steroids and several different antibiotics for a good month. I also had the yearly flu shot and tested negative for the flu. We were told we had bronchitis. I might add my husband also had minor symptoms that lasted only two days, and subside.
            
            My son's employees also quickly caught what he had, and all required to be off work off and on for at least a month. None became ill enough to not be treated in their homes. Most were told as we were we had bronchitis.
            
            When COVID19 became evident I talked with my doctor. He has advised me to get the titer test as soon as it becomes available. He knows my health history, and he was concerned that out of the blue I would be having problems with Bronchitis.  I live in Michigan, my doctor admitted to me that he saw many that had my symptoms from mid-Nov on...
            
            I know I will most likely get some negative feedback on my opinion in regard to this virus. However, I have never seen a virus that gives such specific symptoms.  Most flu will present patients with many symptoms. This illness seems geared toward presenting three symptoms in patients that are hospitalized, fever, cough, and lung inflammation that comes on quickly.  I am of the same thought as your husband. I will go one step further, I truly feel our Government is well aware of it. Hence the closing down of the world...  Most here know me as a very common sense person. With me, it's either black or it's white. I think your husband is right on. And hopefully, once this titer test becomes available more of us that feel we had COVID19 before we knew about it, will be able to speak up.

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