Coronavirus

[thrill]

Yeah these last few months have not gone as planned. Sorry to hear about your ordeal!

[mikechamp]

mtcefc - Dude, that just sucks.

[sighyoung]

That's awful, mtcefc. I'm sorry it's been a really rough period.

[sighyoung]

My university, pretty much.

[Jocephus]

i don't know nothing, i just look periodically at a covid map/tracker via wapo. but is there an explanation on why deaths haven't risen or stayed steady, the deaths have fallen (at least on what i see on that wapo tracker). i'm not looking for more death but just trying to look at the two maps (cases and deaths). we're obviously not in the ~25k-30k cases and ~1500-2000 deaths that we had back in march and april but we are still getting around ~20k cases per day (last few weeks) and maybe 500-1000 deaths these last few weeks. i know because things are reopening, we're likely getting more chances for cases and i know we do have better testing capabilities set up to identify those cases but not sure why the deaths haven't correlated. i know theres a lot of factors involved with all this but didn't know if anything scientific about it

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Probably a factor of a few things, Joce, though I'm not sure any of this is correct.

NY was the epicenter back in March/April the last time the daily average of new cases was around 20K. It's likely, due to lack of testing, those cases were under-represented and also possible the overwhelming demand put on the NY health care infrastructure contributed to more deaths. As you note, the daily deaths were somewhere around 2100 daily from those 20K daily cases in March, but now the number has fallen to roughly 800 daily deaths.

There's also the possibility the first wave hit nursing homes particularly hard as there was little preparation. Further, while nursing homes are doing more to protect their patients, it's possible at risk personnel nationwide including those that are immunocompromised, diabetics, heart diseases, etc are taking seriously the recommendations to distance and isolate lowering the mortality rate of the disease.

I've heard theories, maybe hypotheses not really sure, that viruses weaken as time progresses. The thought is the deadly/harmful virus strains lead to sick patients who isolate or die, killing the virus as well. Conversely, the less harmful strains lead to no/few symptoms and are passed along so the virus survives. INteresting thought experiment, but not sure how much the virus is actually mutating at this point nor is there evidence that I'm aware of to back it up.

More is known about the virus and the pathophysiology which may lead to improved outcomes for those that contract the disease as the medical community continues to collectively learn more and more.

All in all, at this point, it's probably some combination of those things, but the largest contributing factor, I'd guess, is the increase in testing.

[Jocephus]

according to the wapo tracker, yesterday was most cases since 5/2. and some states are breaking records...crazy.

[ghostrunner]

Deaths also probably ought to lag cases by a couple weeks.

[Jocephus]

2 straight days of over 30k cases, and as i look at 10:15am mountain time today, we're at 15k for 6/21 already

[sighyoung]

2 straight days of over 30k cases, and as i look at 10:15am mountain time today, we're at 15k for 6/21 already

Numbers are often under-reported on Sundays, too, so even if there is a slight dip in total cases, I would think Monday's numbers will bounce back up.