Coronavirus

[lucky dawg]

I would be careful with all the projections being thrown around. As someone who has to live and breathe statistical models for a career, they are all wrong. There are too many unknown variables which individually are alone enough to make the projected end results materially wrong. The key inputs to the model we are missing? Real count of infected people. There are a lot of people infected who have never been tested and we will never know until we test everyone. A lot of people infected early on just recovered. A lot of people early on did not but died of "other" causes. The exponential growth rates flatten out eventually as the disease finds its low hanging fruit of easy infections.

 

I lived in Hong Kong through SARs. That scared me with its 10% death rate. COVID-19 does not. COVID-19 looks to me to have a real death rate much lower than 1% once all the statistical error corrections are factored in. One of my wonderful employees, clearly demonstrating his lack of productivity to his boss, developed his own COVID-19 model intended to calculate an individual person's mortality using all the relevant variables. He was pleased as punch to tell me I have a 1 in 435 chance of dying from COVID-19, paragon of virtuous health that I am. His mortality probability was likely higher given I was quite stressed that day. Its a good statistical quant model too but still excludes a bunch of qualitative factors. Still thats really good betting odds in my insurance world. However, there is a lot we don't know so we should be cautious - social distancing, society lockdowns, etc - make sense to slow things down as not everyone is as good looking and healthy as me.

 

Anyway, the bigger issue is not really being discussed intelligently. When do our political leaders decide the cost of economic damage is greater than the population 'cost' (i.e. deaths) of the infections, and so restart the economy before the pandemic is over? My modeled bet that is somewhere around July based on when the second liquidity crunch kicks in for the current lot of businesses operating but impaired. Our strength as a country comes from being tightly integrated and strong as an economy. At some point the loss of strength in the economy becomes a bigger risk to the population (e.g. societal breakdown, critical supply shortage, cash shortages, rising disease/mortality risks from other causes) and so you have to make the call - which is worse? The pandemic is going to continue on into 2021 until we are all infected or a vaccine/cure has been developed and rolled out to 5 billion people. Its analogous to a war decision - you know people are going to die, whats the best way to limit that?

 

Ok - time to post some car ads...

 

Wow, a well thought out rational analysis. Haven't seen enough of those.

[xcarguy]

Thanks mike - sounds like you need to take shelter in your garage...

 

I tried to talk Croc into sheltering at the Garage Mahal...said there was no food.:jester:

[Sean]

I would be careful with all the projections being thrown around. As someone who has to live and breathe statistical models for a career, they are all wrong. There are too many unknown variables which individually are alone enough to make the projected end results materially wrong. The key inputs to the model we are missing? Real count of infected people. There are a lot of people infected who have never been tested and we will never know until we test everyone. A lot of people infected early on just recovered. A lot of people early on did not but died of "other" causes. The exponential growth rates flatten out eventually as the disease finds its low hanging fruit of easy infections.

 

I lived in Hong Kong through SARs. That scared me with its 10% death rate. COVID-19 does not. COVID-19 looks to me to have a real death rate much lower than 1% once all the statistical error corrections are factored in. One of my wonderful employees, clearly demonstrating his lack of productivity to his boss, developed his own COVID-19 model intended to calculate an individual person's mortality using all the relevant variables. He was pleased as punch to tell me I have a 1 in 435 chance of dying from COVID-19, paragon of virtuous health that I am. His mortality probability was likely higher given I was quite stressed that day. Its a good statistical quant model too but still excludes a bunch of qualitative factors. Still thats really good betting odds in my insurance world. However, there is a lot we don't know so we should be cautious - social distancing, society lockdowns, etc - make sense to slow things down as not everyone is as good looking and healthy as me.

 

Anyway, the bigger issue is not really being discussed intelligently. When do our political leaders decide the cost of economic damage is greater than the population 'cost' (i.e. deaths) of the infections, and so restart the economy before the pandemic is over? My modeled bet that is somewhere around July based on when the second liquidity crunch kicks in for the current lot of businesses operating but impaired. Our strength as a country comes from being tightly integrated and strong as an economy. At some point the loss of strength in the economy becomes a bigger risk to the population (e.g. societal breakdown, critical supply shortage, cash shortages, rising disease/mortality risks from other causes) and so you have to make the call - which is worse? The pandemic is going to continue on into 2021 until we are all infected or a vaccine/cure has been developed and rolled out to 5 billion people. Its analogous to a war decision - you know people are going to die, whats the best way to limit that?

 

Ok - time to post some car ads...

 

I wasn't even looking at number of infected or trying to get a final death tally, but just trying to see for myself if the 100K-200K projection could be anywhere near real - keep in mind, those numbers were projected a week ago. So I made a simple model to "ballpark it". I focused solely on number of deaths using published CDC numbers as the only data source (which I had already been tracking day-to-day) to derive my own determination of whether the 100K-200K death count was possible, and if so, an approximation of when that might occur. Assuming one believes the CDC numbers to be reasonably accurate, and they appear to be conservative figures comparatively, then yes, the 100K-200K projection does appear to be readily achievable.

 

I'm continuing to watch these numbers, looking for the rate to begin and maintain its decline. I remain optimistic that happy day will come soon. Until then, beer, bikinis, and humor will have to do.

[xcarguy]

[panamericano]

No F bombs in this one.

 

 

If you haven't watched it, it's too late:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]16827[/ATTACH]

[scannon]

I just pulled it up and she is still F bombing away.

 

[Sean]

Was leaving a store last week, and I commented to the cashier that not long ago, he might fear for his life if someone walked into the store wearing a mask, and now he might fear the same if they’re not.

[xcarguy]

[panamericano]

Quick, people, add more posts till that last one goes to another page.

[JohnCh]

Sadly there are some things in life you just can't unsee...

 

-John

[xcarguy]

Sadly there are some things in life you just can't unsee...

 

-John

 

SO TRUE. Someone was nice enough to send that to me.....no way I was going to suffer not being to ‘unsee’ that all by myself.

[xcarguy]

[xcarguy]

[xcarguy]

Quick, people, add more posts till that last one goes to another page.

 

Done!

[Croc]

Shane - when did you last see your feet? A decade ago? To that point, was that when you last saw your old fella?

[xcarguy]

Shane - when did you last see your feet? A decade ago? To that point, was that when you last saw your old fella?

 

Feet, fella....I know they're both still there...that's all that matters.:jester:

[lucky dawg]

[xcarguy]

 

[panamericano]

Remember, the CDC advise is too stay 6 feet apart from each other.

 

OR as we say in Texas, 12 tacos apart.

[xcarguy]

Remember, the CDC advise is too stay 6 feet apart from each other.

 

OR as we say in Texas, 12 tacos apart.