I see a slight leveling on the logarithmic chart for the US the past few days. Here is my fear

[Quixote1818]

Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2020, 01:22 AM - Edit history (4)

If the curve begins to flatten out more in the next couple weeks because we are doing things RIGHT and a lot of states still have relatively low numbers because they acted early, there will start to be a lot of pressure to open things back up. You know Trump will break from the experts and start putting pressure on Republican (and Dem) Govs and then it will just take right off again because Trump doesn't understand math and doesn't care who he kills. I am betting we will get a very premature "Mission Accomplished" speech from the Commander of Grief.

Go to the graph below to where it says 'Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States' and click on logarithmic:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

It looks like the line started sagging a bit starting around March 23rd.

Edit: Thank you Ms. Toad below for the actual change in numbers:

3/22 - 138% of 3/21
3/23 - 130% of 3/22
3/24 - 125% of 3/23
3/25 - 125% of 3/23
3/26 - 124% of 3/26
3/27 - 122% of 3/26

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213193582#post9

[SheltieLover]

1. TY!

I'm far from a math person, but I'm sure you are correct, as shitler & repukes obviously care far more about $ than people. It's a defining characteristic of repukism. That & being reactive vs proactive.

[msongs]

2. a flattened curve does not mean you wont get it from sick people still out there. nt

[LisaL]

3. I beg to differ.

I don't see anything flattening on there.

[Ms. Toad]

9. The rates of increase in the relevant time period:

3/22 - 138% of 3/21
3/23 - 130% of 3/22
3/24 - 125% of 3/23
3/25 - 125% of 3/23
3/26 - 124% of 3/26
3/27 - 122% of 3/26

Today's number is not yet available - but notice how the multiplier is decreasing.

That DOES NOT mean it is OK to let up - it means that what we have been doing is starting to work and we need to keep at it.

ETA: today's growth is 118% (still declining)

[Quixote1818]

13. Thanks for showing it a lot more clear than I did. nt

[Ms. Toad]

16. I've got a chart where I've been tracking it.

I just had to copy the numbers over.

[Quixote1818]

18. Yes, you are the go to person for the math here from way back when. Thanks. nt

[central scrutinizer]

15. So the second derivative is negative

But the first derivative is still positive. It’s still increasing but at a slower rate. Will it approach a local maximum or just another point of inflection. Basic calculus.

[Ms. Toad]

17. That's more math than I was planning on explaining here -

but yes.

Whether it approaches a local maximum or just another point of inflection may depend on whether Trump (and others) are convinced to keep the social distancing restraints in place. Yes = local maximum. No = point of inflection.

But - there are also other factors - a dramatic increas in testing (since now several new tests are available (depending on how quickly we start seeing results) could be either one.

It's been nearly three and a half decades since I've explicitly played with calculus (when I was working on my masters in applied math) - I miss it.

[Blue_true]

23. If you look at the total curve, you will see the condition that you mentioned happen

a couple times at lower infection levels.

I agree that the data could imply a couple of potential situations. One could be that big cities and blue states have gained a foothold on infections, so the rate now is being driven by a couple big places like Texas and Florida, and rising infections in a lot of small red states. Another possibility is that people are actively practicing social distancing, and that is leveling off the new infection rate.

[Blue_true]

22. That has happened several times before at lower infection levels. nt

[Ms. Toad]

28. What I look for is a multi-day trend in the same direction.

This is the first time I've seen that. I noticed it two days ago, and have been pleasantly surprised to see it continue.

The earlier erratic behavior was just that - erratic. Both up and down in rapid succession - probably indicative of new testing availability and data that flops from one day to the next becuase of different reporting times than the worldometers site (which is what I use - a single site to minimize as much fluctuation as possible).

Now - if we really do get access to more testing I would expect a dramatic increase in new cases (like the Chinese disruption on 2/12 and 2/13) That disrupted the bend of the curve that had started about 4 days earlier for two days - after which it continued to bend downward). Since it is unlikely we'll roll them all out at the same time throughout the country, I would expect more than a two-day interruption.

[Quixote1818]

11. You have to click on the logarithmic graph

Then hold the edge of a piece of paper along the line. It's not straight and the line starts to disappear below the paper near the top.

[Mike Niendorff]

42. Exactly how I've been doing it.

Still a long way to go, but this is definitely the trend we need to see more of.


MDN

[uponit7771]

4. K&R, a flat curve helps hospitals but does not end the growth of cases. We're Italy now and

... are not separating the sick from the healthy

[LisaL]

5. There is no flat curves on there.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Thats when I have it bending, as well.

But - I think the same thing that prevented Trump from understanding it was about to explode in the first place will prevent him from seeing the improvement now. Things are still going up large numbers each day - I don't think he's bright enough to recognize that the amount it is going up each day is declining slightly.

Beyong that it will take heroes like Dr. Amy Acton in Ohio - and it will tke Dr. Fauci regrowing a spine.

[MerryBlooms]

7. Our household will continue to protect ourselves.

I ventured out to care for my client (home health), light grocery, pharmacy. Grocery and pharmacy were practically empty, so okay with distancing. Usual disinfect of myself, items, bags, including my shoes. Being as careful as I can. Saw one elderly woman pushing a cart with an aid- When I got a better look, the elderly woman was covered head to toe and on oxygen, her aid wasn't even gloved up. Weirdest thing I've seen so far.

[CloudWatcher]

8. I fear that's some wishful thinking (that it's slowing as of 23rd)

I'm not seeing any slowing. Not on that log chart.

Expecting to see it continue to grow exponentially, especially as testing becomes move available!

[Ms. Toad]

14. If you look carefully at the logarithmic chart

you don't see flat, but if you put a ruler against the curve you will see it bend down slightly away from the ruler.

It is still growing at a rate 20+% faster than linear growth (the number of cases grows by a fixed number each day i.e. + 12,000 each eay). In other words, the absolute number of new cases each day is still increasing (i.e. 12,000 today, 12, 264 tomorrow, 14, 962 the next day) . What the logarithmic curve tells us is that it is just not growing as fast (so the # of new cases is getting closer to the exact same number each day)

[Blue_true]

24. That has happened a couple times earlier Ms.Toad, in fact, in one case it actually reversed

for one day. I will have to give it more time. Maybe we will see the flattening that we saw in China, though I doubt that.

[Ms. Toad]

29. As I noted in another response -

I didn't chime in about bending the curve until I had seen a multiple-day donward. This has been a 7-day downward curve, with one day that had a .8 percent increase).

[Blue_true]

37. You could be right on your call. One of the periods that I looked at had only a 3

or 4 day slowing of the infection rate. I didn't see any points with more slowing days than 4 days.

[Ms. Toad]

39. Time will tell. n/t

[Blue_true]

43. One thing about China is rulers there literally put their feet on people's necks

and forced desirable behaviors. That is more difficult in a democracy, though blue states and blue cities have been as agressive as possible in a democracy. One thing that could happen is infection rates slow in populated areas, but grow in less populated areas where leaders have not aggressively attacked spreading, in that case the national rate will slow, even as some less populated areas that had bad leadership (like Mississippi) get hammered.

[Ms. Toad]

46. It's not just blue cities and states - AND some blue cities and states

have been behaving irresponsibly. (E.g. Ohio is red, and Louisiana is blue. You couldn't tell it from the early responses.)

Since DeWine has been way out on front on this, I get a bit cranky when we generalize the responses by political party. (I agree with DeWine on almost nothing else, but he has been a rock star on this issue.)

But there is definitely a growing competing narrative, particularly among Trump supporters, that the elderly and vulnerable are less valuable than the economy (and it's not really that bad anyway, etc.) that makes all the good decisions made by governors (etc.) less likely to be respected by the general public.

[Blue_true]

49. There was a time a while back when DeWine was a forward thinking, fairly rational leader.

Maybe this crisis forced him back to that.

The Legistlature in Lousiana is very red. The state does have a democratic governor, but I don't know how much power that state gives the governor constitutionally.

[Ms. Toad]

50. My point is that we ought to recognize positive actions, regardless of party affiliation

and hold our own leaders accountable.

DeWine has been admirable and way ahead of the curve. Louisiana's governor, by contrast, was very late to act.

When we lump everyone together as "red" or "blue," we're politcizing the response - the same thing we accuse the other side of doing.

(And yes, years ago Trump was a fairly rational leader. He has been far less rational recently, until this crisis. It is clear he has a ton of respect for Dr. Acton - Ohio's equivalent of Dr. Fauci - and, unlike Trump, he is actually listenting to and deferring to her science/medical-based recommendations.) Husted - an absolute nightmare running elections - has been similarly rational and level-handed.

Notably missing from the daily press conference and (the rational behavior) is the idiot attorney general, who is spending his time chasing abortion clinics which remain open.

[Victor_c3]

10. I don't mean to squash your optimism, but I doubt there is any slowdown in the rate of infections

What we might see in the near future is the capacity of testing will be met. As a nation, we won’t have the capability to test all of the people who need tests, this will cause an artificially lower number of new infections to be reported, which in turn will give those in charge a false sense that things are improving or at least leveling off when they aren’t.

The real number to watch will be the rate of new reported deaths. When that number starts to flatten or decrease, then things will truly be improving.

[Quixote1818]

12. That's a good point. What drives the news is hospitals being overrun.

That is likely to continue in NY and we will probably start to see it in a few other states in the next few days.

[GopherGal]

19. Re: the Deaths..

I noticed perhaps the tiniest tailing off in the rate of increase of the "cases" curve, but the deaths, if anything, looked to be speeding up.

[Quixote1818]

21. Yes, they will trail probably for a couple of weeks. In China there are people just now dying who

got this a month ago.

[Blue_true]

25. Very possible. nt

[Blue_true]

20. Check me if I am wrong, but deaths more than doubled in two days?

I agree with another poster. I don't see leveling in the curve. I see slowing in the rate, but if you look at the expanse of data, that has happened at least a couple times earlier at lower infection levels.

[Ms. Toad]

32. The change in death rate will lag any change in new cases

by at least 2 weeks. Those are going to continue to increase exponentially, corresponding roughly to the increase in new cases two weeks earlier.

[Blue_true]

35. I get that.

The other question is whether the apparent slowing is what happened earlier in time, where there appeared to be slowing, but then the rate exploded upward. One person pointed out that the slowing could be driven by the lack of adequate testing, that there are lots of spreaders out there that have not been tested. Or, the curve could be slowing due to lockdowns and people practicing social distancing at a higher rate. I prefer to wait another week, until the curve shows signs that it has reached a point where it shows early signs of flattening, the data that you displayed is not that, it shows slowing, but as I pointed out, that has happened before.

[Ms. Toad]

38. Having watched it in China

I'm comfortable that the curve is turning. This series of 7 days, with one very small blip is different from the earlier, more erratic, changes.

But I was skeptical when others started claiming that about China - so I understand it.

And - if the growth rate continues to slow - all it means is that we're still on the uphill climb but it's on a hill rather than the mountain. But still an uphill climb, so we need to keep up the social distancing efforts.

[JCMach1]

26. The numbers are not correct... Reporting tends to be all over the place

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

27. During the same time... did TESTING RESULTS ALSO DECLINE?

Playing with statistics is this administrations weak-point.

[Ms. Toad]

34. I don't think testing results declined -

But I do expect a jump in cases like we saw in China on 2/12 & 2/13 when we finally ramp up to full testing.

[FreeState]

40. I'm not sure about that

Check out the CDCs numbers - unless I’m reading this wrong there’s been a drop since the 20th.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/testing-in-us.html

[Ms. Toad]

41. There are two groups of data there

The CDC direct data - but also the public health lab data. All of the public health lab data starting on 3/21 is marked

§ Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when specimens are accessioned, testing is performed, and results are reported. Range extended from 4 days to 7 days on March 26.

[FreeState]

48. Thanks!

Glad I was missing something!

[FreeState]

61. So now it's evident

Enough days have passed to see the testing had not increased - but the number of positives have. The falling number isn’t showing a bending in the curve. It’s showing a failure of testing.

[Ms. Toad]

62. No. The curve is bending.

The number of new cases is growing each day. That's the nature of exponential growth. As long as the daily multiplier is greater than one (it is currently 1.13), the absolute number of new cases eacy day will be larger than the previous day. But over the last 11 days, the rate at which those new cases are increasing has decresed from about 1.5 to about 1.13. There have been two minor blips that went up by less than .o1. My curve has the multiplier >1.0 until around April 15. That menas that the absolute number of new cases will continue to increase each day until then.

Think of it as having your foot on the accelerator any time the multiplier is greater than 1.0. If you look at the numbers below (the death multipliers), the bigger the multiplier, the harder you are pressing the accelerator. When you press it really hard, you are picking up speed (new cases) really quickly. You're going from 0 to 60 mph in 10 seconds flat. When you press it lightly, you pick up speed (new cases) more slowly - but you are still speeding up - you're going from - to 60 in a minute. That's where we are right now. We've let our foot up off the accelerator; but not enough yet to hold the speed steady. When we reach a multiplier of 1.0 - that's when we're going at a steady speed. At the peak the number of cases are we are still growing at exactly the same number of cases each day (just like the speed stays the same when we hold the accelerator steady)) - but when the multiplier drops to below 1.0 then we'll see the number of new cases decline each day.

Further - if it was just a failure of testing, the rate of increase in the number of deaths would also be getting larger each day (a bigger multiplier each day). It's a jerkier decline, but still trending down, lagging about 5-7 days behind the number of new cases.

3/26 - 1.490763746
3/27 - 1.404565217
3/28 - 1.248877883
3/29 - 1.385797497
3/30 - 1.303732189
3/31 - 1.253526924
4/1 - 1.244204075
4/2 - 1.252510592

[Turbineguy]

30. This is good news but no reason to let up

Hopefully the fact that many people are working to lower the rate will help. I don't think it will drop off as steep as the China curve because there are too many trumpsters who think this is a hoax and hysteria and think that participation infringes on their freedom.

On the other side of the curve there are many people building antibodies.

And there is a world wide effort for treatment and vaccine.

Ironically, it will be the trump supporters who hold up any chance of an early opening up. If they want to open things up they need testing for the virus as well as antibody. The death and suffering is owned by trump and his republicans.

[Ms. Toad]

33. Absolutely not the time to let up.

This thing is still growing faster each day - it is just that it not growing quite as much faster on a daily basis than it has been. In other words we're flattening the curve. If you imaginge the two curves that have been floating around - we're still on the climbing side of the lower curve - we're just moving toward climbing a hill instead of the mountain we started climbing.

If we let up we'll be right back where we were climbing that mountain.

[Demovictory9]

31. i saw the curve flatten a abit also. assumed it was good n ews

[GeorgiaPeanut]

36. There are many states which are at the beginning of the curve

when they start reporting, it is going to rise again

Most of them are red states which don't have many foreign visitors and whose residents don't travel abroad all that much

[Igel]

44. Maybe.

Too many confounds.

When the daily death toll's slope decreases I'll grow some optimism.

But these aren't the graphs I want (and I'm too lazy to make the ones I'd like to see).

What I want is the death toll for NY plotted. It's been driving the numbers for the US.

Detroit, Miami, NOLA are coming on line. (Don't use the states. In TX Dallas/Ft. Worth accounts for an outsized portion; in Louisiana, NOLA is even more of a distortion--they need separating out, otherwise any flattening in NOLA, NYS, Detroit could be masked by spots getting a bit hotter elsewhere in the state.)

[genxlib]

45. Help me out with some math here

I have statistics and calculus in my distant past but am really rusty.

If the rate of infection is growing at a multiplier, doesn’t the rate of testing have to grow faster than that to get an accurate count?

Said another way, if the rate if the testing was growing at 1.2x and the infection was growing at 1.35x then wouldn’t our undercount be getting worse even though we are doing more testing?

[doc03]

47. Looks like it could be more than 10000 by next Saturday nt

[GulfCoast66]

51. I think you are making the mistake of using the data you have as the real situation.

Right now N.Y. is driving the bus and they are starting to control the virus rather than the other way around. They are going to start flatting the curve. And a plurality of the case are there. And they are actually testing.

Florida has done little testing compared to NY and our governor is not going to do the things necessary to squelch it until it is too late.

Same for so many other places around the nation.

It is a huge mistake to use Italy as a comparison. When the government got serious they locked down the entire nation. We don’t do that here.

Few Republican governors outside the NE have done anything. Ohio is an exception.

Think of the US as 50 Italys. Over half are screwed. And while the numbers might not seem be that high, because states like Mississippi have relatively few residents, the percentages will be off the chart. The governor there actually overrode local orders to close non-essential businesses.

[ismnotwasm]

52. The hospital I work at in Seattle

Has around 12 active cases with 10 more pending. In our hospital system, there’s another hospital with 16, another with 20 — anyway, as of today there are 84 active cases through the five hospital system, plus oncology We tract those numbers every day. We send positive cases home, who don’t need isolation. I don’t know the number for those. (The daily positives vary)

I work with a nurse who had an exposure who is pregnant with her first child, and while she has no symptoms her husband has a cough and a fever, yet can’t get tested yet. I’m not sure why. (She told me this today, they are planning on raising hell about it)

We are learning from New York, there are already plans the split ventilators in the ICUs, we are trying to isolate covid-19 patients from vulnerable other patients using a dedicated unit, we have one hospital with less acuity taking more positive patients.

There is a fearful hush across the hospital because with no elective surgeries the census is low on many units. Not mine, well, not too bad, because we are a solid transplant unit, and of this time we will still do deceased donor transplants.

We are avoiding positive covid patients on my unit, because of the immunosuppression and if someone screens positive, they will not get the transplant. And we now screen everyone.

Everyone is anxious, because the wave hasn’t hit yet. We are predicting over the next week we will start to see the real influx of patients and every then unit will do what they can.

So much fear and anxiety

Talked to a patient who is losing his business as a travel agent. Wives and husbands and family can’t come up to see their loved ones. So much damage.

This is fucked up.

[pat_k]

55. 3/27 6:30 pm ET WA: 254 confirmed cases currently hospitalized / 175 to date ending in death to date

It is my understanding that these numbers do not include admissions with COVID-19-like symptoms that have yet to be confirmed as COVID-19 positive (but who are presumably being treated as positive for safety pending results).

The data is from a project spearheaded by the Atlantic.

As far as I can tell, as I follow the data coming from different states from various sources, the project is doing a great job of accurately compiling verified information and "grading" reliability based on the reliability of systems a state as in place for tracking and reporting across jurisdictions.

WA data is given an A.

https://covidtracking.com/data/#WA

The site also provides links to the best sources in the state. And perhaps the best part are the links to daily historical data with links to images of the source. And if you are a data nerd like me, you can download as a spreadsheet and add population data and calculations to determine tests per capita, etc.

Another site I think is worth tracking is the UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation hospital resources project site. It provides data/graphs for projected hospital resource availability vs need, along with projected COVID-19 deaths by state over time (projections assume the continuation of strong social distancing measures and other protective measures).

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

[pat_k]

53. Testing continues to be so limited, the "real" numbers are essentially unknown.

Unfortunately, in many states, testing has been so limited that many hospital admissions for COVID-19-like symptom are never confirmed one way or the other (they are treated as if they are positive for safety of staff). Those who die sans confirmation have not been/are not being counted as COVID-19 deaths.

Also, it appears that many states, like CA, have yet to set up an reliable infrastructure for gathering testing data, hospitalizations, deaths, and compiling trustworthy numbers for reporting. I would therefore be incredibly cautious about over interpretation of numbers that in many cases are an artifact of "catch up" (spikes) or "backlog" (dips) in particular states.

I think data coming from states will be more reliable as time goes by, so trends over the coming week may be more meaningful than trends over the past week.

One good place to track progress in the US is https://covidtracking.com/data/ -- you can look at historical data by state, download data as a spreadsheet and add info like population to get a better sense of how reliable a state's data is (e.g., clearly data from WA or NY, which have tested about 800 per 100,000 is more reliable than data from TX, which has tested about 90 per 100,000).

Another good site for projections is the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at University of Washington -- they have a project site going that provides models (which they are updating based on emerging data) for projected hospital resource use and COVID-19 deaths by state (projections assume the continuation of strong social distancing measures and other protective measures).

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

If you have any doubt about how broken the system is in CA, here's a quote from an article in The Guardian:

California’s patchwork response to testing has also left it struggling to keep pace with the virus, and the state is now looking to establish a coordinated approach. At least 22 state laboratories, seven hospitals and two private outfits are conducting tests in California, but it remains hazy how testing at those sites is being tracked.

“We are cobbling together various approaches,” Susan Butler-Wu, an associate professor of clinical pathology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told the LA Times. “The whole thing is badly discombobulated ... I think 100% that the system is broken.”

It is unclear how many other states are dealing with similarly "broken" systems. Reported numbers must not be over-interpreted given the questionable reliability.

As an example of how inadequate the data reported to date is, consider this. If you think it is reasonable to assume that at least 1% of the population of the US is currently infected (ignoring recovered), then are are over 3.3 million cases to be detected "out there." If that is the case, we have only detected a small fraction.

[Captain Stern]

54. I've been watching that too, and it's good to see.

The challenge here is getting folks that make the decisions, and even folks that don't make the decisions to understand that these numbers mean we should KEEP doing what we are doing. Not that we should stop and go back to normal.

[DFW]

56. I remember the last time we got a big "Mission Accomplished" from a Republican president

That one was premature, too. YEARS premature.

[elias7]

57. Sorry, but this corresponds to CDC changing testing parameters

it was about 10 days ago that the CDC changed testing standards so that a lot of minor illnesses could not be tested. This was due to a back up in testing. I think you’ll see the rates rise again, especially when testing becomes more prevalent

[muriel_volestrangler]

58. Those are positive test case results

and thus are as much about how many tests they are able to do in a day as about the actual spread of the virus.

[FreeState]

59. Today's numbers dipped again

It’s not over yet but the total deaths stand at 287. Yesterday’s were 484.

Numbers from: https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en

[Roland99]

60. Sunday seems to result in fewer results posted

Seemed slower last Sunday too