On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 9:54:43 AM UTC-5, Craig Reinholt wrote:
On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 12:05:53 AM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
Yup.

Only the mortality data offers reliable trending and it's lagged 2-3 weeks.

I think one of the reasons why we may be seeing the peak in cases a bit later than the initial models predicted is we are seeing a fairly smooth increase in testing availability - adding a bit of a false growth rate. At some point we will be able to test everyone who presents for medical attention - which ought to be a fairly steady proportion of overall cases and so okay as a (still lagged) view of new case trending.

As the testing lag/backlog closes we should have a reasonably decent sense of trending. It won't be until we get broad and randomized testing (antibody tests to look at all infections since the beginning and RNA tests to get rapid identification of current infections for contract tracing and rapid isolation). That we will have any detailed sense of what is really going on - or an ability to contain new outbreaks - which will likely be many.

Life is unlikely to return to normal until sometime in 2021 with (hopefully) a broadly available vaccine. Until then we will all be sitting in a tinder box with a bunch of lit candles and a handful of fly swatters.

Until then we play with Excel spreadsheets and hope.

Andy

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 9:26:47 PM UTC-7, 2G wrote:
Agreed that there is a major limitation on the confirmed cases data, but it is all we have to work with. I expected a quantum jump in this as testing became more available, but that didn't happen, just a very smooth exponential increase. This must be because "confirmed" must include doctor's diagnosis as well as positive test results. On the other hand, deaths are deaths, so you can rely on that data.

Tom

One immediate problem is the accuracy of the current testing. One our club members has CV. Multiple doctors giving him medical care say he had all the symptoms. He was extremely sick in ICU (and feeling better now). However, 2 tests came back negative. After talking to his health care providers about the false negatives, their response was it appears to be at a rate of about 20-25%. As you say, better and broader testing down the road is needed, but the current numbers are "in the books".

Glad to hear he's on the mend. Curious as to what makes them think he had COVID beside symptoms that could arise from other infections? There are indeed both false negatives (potentially more deadly) than false positives, but it isn't the oft-referred to litmus diagnostic test that will add most value, it's the serologic blood test that shows someone had the infection, but is asymptomatic. The swab test is just a snapshot, one timepoint, that indicates current infection (one would have to be tested every few days for the data to be more valuable). IMO