SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:
mtn (Forum Supporter) said:
Steve, have you read the COVID Updates thread?
I have. I find it overwhelmingly one-sided. It fits a narrative.
Mtn, I really respect you and all the effort you have put in. But your responses are completely contrarian to anything that doesn't fit the narrative you believe in, even though your in-depth attempts at analyzing data generally end with the (accurate) recognition that "we don't know yet". You are correct.
The problem with overly relying on the data is that it is only available after something has happened. Things are unfolding, and decisions need to be made on the fly. If you are walking into a cross-fire, you're gonna have to make decisions without being able to analyze the statistics of the death toll. The bottom line is that we HAVE to make decisions, even though we don't know yet.
I would be deeply interested in reading anything you may be able to put the same effort into that explored the damages caused by the economic impact. Mental health. Physical health. Suicide rates. Strength or weakness of the economic safety net. Projected long term outcome. This is the side of the issue you don't put much into.
I respect your data and your efforts, but it is not what I am seeing in the real world.
A pandemic has happened. Things are bad. Decisions cannot be made in a vacuum without information from all facets that are impacted. There are things we DO know, and cannot ignore. And there are things we will not know until its all over.
Thank you.
You say it fits a narrative. What narrative? I disagree. He provides facts. He states many times that there is no balance point, no right decisions, and that the answers are not the same for every state. I don’t really care to argue this one though. You have your opinion of it. I have mine.
I also think you’re reading into my posts something that isn’t there. Here are my posts from the past 15 days:
- I compare the virus to a Tornado vs Hurricane when explaining why if it was deadlier, we’d be in better shape
- PCR Testing is 67% accurate on best day, can’t throw out errors
- If it was deadlier, it wouldn’t spread and we wouldn’t be arguing
- Not really. The PCR tests are 67% accurate on their best day. You could theoretically, 3 weeks after infection, test the same person 7 days in a row and only 1 of those 7 tests would be positive. The only thing that you should really take away from it is that there is the possibility that you're contagious longer than expected, but probably much less contagious than you would have been at the height of the infection (wear a mask)
- Asking for clarification on ProDarwin post
- Don’t go looking for Zebras (Nightclub in Seoul)
- We’re seeing moonshots from Pharma (IanF and I disagreed on something not related to COVID, but a small disagreement that doesn’t matter)
- Antivaxxers are bad
- What Mike thinks his summer will look like
- Patio worthy post, but it basically says that we’re in a no win situation, damned if we do, damned if we don’t
- Wear a mask, dudes
- Eating at home>Eating outside in public, socially distanced>Eating inside a restaurant, socially distanced
- I'm not saying stay at home OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IF YOU ORDER THE ONION RINGS. (And I know that isn't what you're implying I said, but I also did not say you can only eat out if it isn't raining, which is what you seem to think I said).
- Need to look at 7 day averages
- Commented that I look forward to information coming from states opening up – “I would not be there myself, just because of my position in life (infant child, previously my daughter passed away due to a virus, immunosuppressed MIL, older parents, etc.), but if I was in college or single I'd be out there living it up for sure. Probably traveling a lot (with a mask). Hopefully we don't see much of a spike.”
- Bobzilla will kill himself in the rain on RS4’s (Bob, don’t do this – go buy a Ridgeline, they’re safe)
- We should be watching Hospitalizations
- % Of tests that are positive are not a good metric
- Hamster Study, which would indicate that wearing a mask helps both those wearing it and those not
- Please wear a mask
- Nursing Homes that I’m familiar with in terms of HVAC setup
- Asking for Clarification on what Paul means when he’s “generally choosing not to wear a mask”
- If you have positive antibodies, I’m of the opinion that you don’t need a mask (but social pressure would make me wear one)
- I thanked Paul for wearing one when he’s in closer proximity to people
- More conversation about masks, and how they’re effective
- ABC article, tracking what is happening in opening states. I state that we need to look at everything with a 2 week delay to draw conclusions
- Stating that Paul’s Georgia data is 15 days old, Georgia cases are increasing
- Agree with STM317 that Georgia’s increasing cases are less concerning because of the increase in testing, and we should be looking at hospitalizations (Incidentally, 106 new hospitalizations in 2 days from this one… Not sure if that means anything, as I haven’t been able to find backdated data)
I don’t see anything in there arguing that we shouldn’t open up. In fact, I don’t see anything controversial there… Except wear masks, which I’m kind of astounded that we’re finding controversial. Thanks to the CDC for that, I guess?
Ultimately, like you say, “A pandemic has happened is happening. Things are bad. Decisions cannot be made in a vacuum without information from all facets that are impacted. There are things we DO know, and cannot ignore. And there are things we will not know until its all over.” One of the things that we DO know is wearing a mask prevents the spread, is cheap, and is easy to implement. So why wouldn’t we encourage wearing masks?
Ok, you asked for a look at what it is doing to the economy. Full disclosure, I minored in Economics in college, was close to a major in it (I majored in Math). I think I had four 300 level Econ classes. I think – college was many beers ago at this point. In college, I think I would have looked at this analysis below and laughed and thrown it away. It is way too simplified, way too problematic, the input data is E36 M3ty. I am not going to do a research project on this. I don’t have the resources to do so.
Our question that we need to ask is: Were the various “lockdown” measures worth it? To do this, we need to do the impossible: Place a value on a human life. I’m not going to try to do that – but, there are a few different numbers already out there:
- Dialysis Standard, $50k a year (Annual Estimate)
- Quality of Life standard (updated Dailysis Standard), $129,000 a year (Annual Estimate)
- EPA 2010 Estimate, $115,776 (9.1M, divided by 78.6, average age of death – non Covid)
- FDA 2010 Estimate, $100,509 (7.9M, divided by 78.6, average age of death – non Covid)
- DoT, 2014, $117,048 (9.2M, divided by 78.6, average age of death – non Covid)
- DoT, 2016, $122,137 (9.6M, divided by 78.6, average age of death – non Covid)
I’ll use the Dialysis standard as my low bar, and QoL as my high bar.
What is the average age of a Covid death in the US? Surprisingly, I was not able to find this specifically. If someone is able to, please, provide a figure to me.
- I’m using 75.8 for the average age of COVID Death.
- I come to this number in an imprecise manner – Using https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku, I take the mean age for each group (So for deaths aged 15-24, I used 19.5), and I multiply by the percentage of total deaths for that age group.
- Age 25-34 represents 542 deaths out of a total of 81,372 in the US (Remember, 5/23 data). So I multiply (29.5)*(542/81,372)=.1965. I do this for all ages (85+ uses 89.5), and add them together. THIS IS AN IMPERFECT METHOD. There are a lot of issues with this, but again, I’m not doing a research project here.
- This means that we are losing an average of 2.8 years per life due to Covid.
- There are other estimates on this. WSJ, behind a paywall, cites a study that says that COVID kills people an average of a Decade before their time. We will also use 10 years for the calculation to compare.
How much does the average COVID Death cost in opportunity cost?
- Using my number of 2.8 years lost (which, incidentally, I think is low), each death costs between $141,726, and $365,654.
- Using WSJ estimate of 10 years (and I can’t find this study, because I didn’t look, shame on me), the figure is between $500k and $1.29M.
Ok… Well, how many deaths have we prevented by our measures? This projection from NPR (April 21) uses 302,000 as a best guess of new deaths with no further social distancing, and extremes of 94k and 1.81M: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/21/839456638/what-happens-if-u-s-reopens-too-fast-federal-documents-show-coronavirus-projecti.
- Using that best guess of 302,000, we’re at $42.8B on the low end, $110.4B on the high end using my 2.8 Years lost. Using 10 years, it is $151B to $389.6B.
- Using the low extreme of 94,000 additional deaths, we’re at $13.3B to $34.4B, and $47B to $121.3B
- Using the high extreme of 1.81M additional deaths, we’re at $256B to $662.2B, and $905.5B to $2.3 Trillion… That is over 10% of our GDP. I’d say all of these actions are definitely worth it in that case.
- This was from an article on 4/21, so after social distancing was in place, after we’d figured out some plans of attack, and about 3 weeks after CDC started recommending that we wear masks. So I’d assume this was baked into their calculations.
I’m not happy with my input data here in terms of projected deaths. It doesn’t answer the question of “Were the various measures worth it”. What we need are projections (which we will never be able to prove), if we hadn’t done anything. So I tried to come up with my own numbers – there are probably better numbers to use, but I wanted to take my SWAG at it. Using this website: https://covid19-projections.com/#view-projections, which is the one I’ve found to be most accurate, our R-naught for reproduction on March 1 was 2.2, and declining steadily from there with social distancing, etc.
- That means that every person infects 2.2 other people.
- I used 14 days for the time it took to get those 2.2.
- I used a mortality rate of 0.4%, based on latest CDC numbers. This may be high. It may be low.
- On March 1, we had 89,634 cases.
Using that 2.2 R-naught, and the 14 day period, by June 7 we’d have had 22.3M cases, and 89,431 deaths. By July 19, we’d have had 238M cases and 952k deaths. Going beyond that is pointless, as we’d be past the US population. THIS IS BAD MATH. For one thing, we’re already at 100k deaths. Using this projection, as mentioned above, we’d be at 89k deaths. Most likely, the death rate has been significantly decreased as we have figured out how to deal with it somewhat, and as we opened up ICU units to allow people to actually be treated. Nonetheless, plugging my 952k deaths in, our economic cost just in lives lost is $134.9B to $1.23T.
To address some other things… You mention physical health. Can’t quantify this – frankly don’t know how. Mine has definitely taken a step back. But I view this as temporary.
As to the mental health aspects of it… Well, I think that COVID is exposing the gigantic gaping hole in the US healthcare system that is mental health. Hopefully this actually ends up improving it. Germany has seen a decrease in suicide rates. I haven’t been able to come up with US numbers. I know we didn’t really see a spike in suicide after 2008. This is on an order of magnitude larger than 2008, so time will tell. A hard one to put blame on here. Suicide is eminently preventable, but mental healthcare in this country is atrocious.
CBS says it could lead to 75,000 deaths: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-deaths-suicides-drugs-alcohol-pandemic-75000/. If we use this number on my above calculations – and I’m doing this by subtracting 75k deaths from the deaths I was using in my calculations, using the understanding that we’re “saving” money by preventing people from dying, but this is causing people to die, the economic costs varies from $2.7M (totally not worth it) to $2.24T (totally worth it).
This doesn’t really tell us anything, because I do not have good data to throw in there. It is quite obvious that, had we taken this seriously in February, we would be in a MUCH better position now – both in terms of the economy and lives saved, as well as mental health. If I go any further, I’ll flounder.
