How is the Flu doing? Are Lockdowns impacting it?

[sothereiwas]

8 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

they SLEPT. Like, two days, almost the full day, then still very tired for a full days.

I did this as well, I'm not sure what it was. My symptoms were the worst headache I've ever had, extreme fatigue for a few days and significant tiredness for weeks, as well as a 102.x fever for a couple days, maybe 30 hours or so. Could have had some congestion but with it being spring and my hay fever, how would I know it from the normal. None of my family have had any sickness, although my wife did sleep a lot for a few days and then had a few more days of norovirus like symptoms. 

But they are all quite a bit younger, so maybe they just didn't get very sick. 

On the other hand we've reportedly had virtually no COVID-19 in this county and I don't get out much at all, so how would I have gotten it? I'll eventually get an antibody test and then I'll know but for now I'm assuming it was something else. But then ... how would I have gotten something else? **Shrug**

[CaliforniaGirl]

5 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

I did this as well, I'm not sure what it was. My symptoms were the worst headache I've ever had, extreme fatigue for a few days and significant tiredness for weeks, as well as a 102.x fever for a couple days, maybe 30 hours or so. Could have had some congestion but with it being spring and my hay fever, how would I know it from the normal. None of my family have had any sickness, although my wife did sleep a lot for a few days and then had a few more days of norovirus like symptoms. 

But they are all quite a bit younger, so maybe they just didn't get very sick. 

On the other hand we've reportedly had virtually no COVID-19 in this county and I don't get out much at all, so how would I have gotten it? I'll eventually get an antibody test and then I'll know but for now I'm assuming it was something else. But then ... how would I have gotten something else? **Shrug**

Could it be because some people can be asymptomatic with CV-19?

Here's the thing: I've never had "just" the flu *not* spread around my entire family. You know? Literally not ever. But with 19 you do hear of totally asymptomatic carriers. Not saying that means that's what you or I had, just saying, both of our cases sound weird as hell.

[sothereiwas]

10 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Not saying that means that's what you or I had, just saying, both of our cases sound weird as hell.

That's basically where I'm at as well. Seems like it probably wasn't COVID. OK, it was something. What?

We've had 24 cases confirmed in the entire county, which isn't a ton of people but it's a decent area. I figure things being what they are we probably had a few hundred exposed, probably, but not certainly, fewer than 1000 I guess. That's not a lot, and I WFH, the kid's not in school now, and the wife stays home. When I go out, it's just me, and I take pretty decent precautions and stay away from any place that's remotely busy. I'm not shy about offending people if my walking the other way is offensive to them. 

So I'd put my odds of getting COVID as pretty low. 

But it was something. I had to get that something somehow. SARS-CoV-2 is apparently one of the easiest bugs to pass/catch.

Whatever. I have code to cut, you know?

Still, sometimes I wonder what that was, end of March. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

On 5/8/2020 at 7:27 PM, sothereiwas said:

Which numbers though? 

Covidtracking is a website that follows trends from Johns Hopkins datasets. They are showing a huge down trend in DAILY PERCENTAGE of positive tests. Given that the volume of testing is trending up, that's probably one of the better metrics if one wants to see a trend in infection rate. 

Globally? U.S.?

Regionally v, say, nationally can be its own ball of wax. I live near a huuuuge city whose numbers are...well, bad. We could NEVER go by national numbers as our yardstick for loosening safety measures. That's why taking averages or total numbers as applicable for specific areas doesn't work well. Added to this issue is that we're a travel hub for a number of reasons. So it's not even "just" us, we unfortunately are a great touchdown point for grabbing something potentially lethal and then bringing it home.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[Piddy]

49 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

I don't know. How would I get the antibodies test?

I honestly never remember being that sick in my life. I went to the doctor but had been considering the hospital. At one point I couldn't get up (stand up) for two days. I would black out. I coughed so hard and continuously that I couldn't catch my breath. Fever for a week and a half. Then I slept for a week. Like 18, 20 hours of sleep a day. My cough lasted two months. In the middle of all this my doctor was going to hospitalize me but took an xray first, didn't see pneumonia so told me to just go home and give it another week. WTF...literally nothing worked on the cough, not even codeine cough stuff. At one point lying there trying to breathe on my couch I randomly wondered, Is this the night I'm going to die? I didn't even care anymore at that point. (Or, not that I didn't care but I felt like..okay, if this happens, I can't stop it, I can't fight it and it will only hurt worse to fight it.) My husband and kids were really scared. But I made it through. 

FWIW I'm in my early 50s, not quite at that age cutoff danger zone but getting there.

The weird thing is, two weeks earlier my husband and kids all got sick. My husband: mildly. Kids: coughs, the beginnings were separated by a whole week which I thought was so odd and for both of them, they SLEPT. Like, two days, almost the full day, then still very tired for a full days. But then two weeks passed so I thought I was just not going to get sick. But I did, except about a jillion times worse than anyone else in my famiky.

You guys, I was scared. I have never literally wondered if I was going to die before. I actually wondered that and I had this vague feeling that nothing was going to stop it, I can't describe it, I'm crying, remembering this. It was so scary.

I do recall that when I went to the doctor he asked whether I had been to China recently and if not, whether I had been out of the country at all. Looking back I think it's weird that she I said no and he didn't see imminent death in my xray 😅 that he just...literally sent me home.

Now it.all just gives me chills.

It sounds like you had Covid-19 and you survived.   And your family survived.  Call your doctor and ask if they can test you for the anti bodies.  It'll give you peace of mind and you're plasma might save a life.  If I were you I'd want to know.  

[sothereiwas]

10 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Globally? U.S.?

It's tracking US data, just out of curiosity, what percentage of tests are coming back positive in your locale? Here it's obviously been 0% so that's pretty boring. The covidtracking site shows the percentage of tests returning positive growing from zero to around 22% by April 5th,and then wandering around back down to something less than 12% maybe now. It shows a clear trend downward, and I can think of several reasons for that to be so but I'd guess fewer people infected are driving it a bit. Stands to reason, if tests given are going up and positive tests are staying about the same. Non-randomness in samples can explain some of that but probably not all. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

16 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

It's tracking US data, just out of curiosity, what percentage of tests are coming back positive in your locale? Here it's obviously been 0% so that's pretty boring. The covidtracking site shows the percentage of tests returning positive growing from zero to around 22% by April 5th,and then wandering around back down to something less than 12% maybe now. It shows a clear trend downward, and I can think of several reasons for that to be so but I'd guess fewer people infected are driving it a bit. Stands to reason, if tests given are going up and positive tests are staying about the same. Non-randomness in samples can explain some of that but probably not all. 

Not good and trending fairly dramatically upward, particularly so following each nice-weather weekend. But even when we bob back down after these spikes we're still no flattening yet. Nevertheless county restrictions have lessened. I can't blame governors for this when the alternative is fat preppers shoving guns under unarmed people's noses and shrieking at nurses. What a sh*t-show.

[CaliforniaGirl]

31 minutes ago, Piddy said:

It sounds like you had Covid-19 and you survived.   And your family survived.  Call your doctor and ask if they can test you for the anti bodies.  It'll give you peace of mind and you're plasma might save a life.  If I were you I'd want to know.  

Thank you. I'll call. 💖

[CaliforniaGirl]

26 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

It's tracking US data, just out of curiosity, what percentage of tests are coming back positive in your locale? Here it's obviously been 0% so that's pretty boring. The covidtracking site shows the percentage of tests returning positive growing from zero to around 22% by April 5th,and then wandering around back down to something less than 12% maybe now. It shows a clear trend downward, and I can think of several reasons for that to be so but I'd guess fewer people infected are driving it a bit. Stands to reason, if tests given are going up and positive tests are staying about the same. Non-randomness in samples can explain some of that but probably not all. 

So I'm not sure if I'm searching this correctly. 4.1% is the first number I came across for my county? 

[sothereiwas]

7 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

But even when we bob back down after these spikes we're still no flattening yet.

But spikes in what measurement specifically? For instance, what is the total number of tests administered and what were the number that came back positive, those two measurements going back 30 days? 

[CaliforniaGirl]

3 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

But spikes in what measurement specifically? For instance, what is the total number of tests administered and what were the number that came back positive, those two measurements going back 30 days? 

No no, in confirmed cases. Not total tests or percentage of positive tests. Just literally, actually more sick people and more deaths.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[sothereiwas]

1 minute ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

So I'm not sure if I'm searching this correctly. 4.1% is the first number I came across for my county? 

I have no idea. I guess with large urban centers leading the charge on this circus maybe a less urban area might be showing around 4%? They are saying the national 7 day average is maybe 12% nowish, although I confess I find their chart a little vague. If one assumes the daily measurements are declining to produce that downward trend, I guess a shorter averaging window would also give a smaller but less stable result. 

[sothereiwas]

Just now, CaliforniaGirl said:

No no, in confirmed cases.

Yeah, I don't think that means a lot as far as "the peak" - if they stopped testing the new confirmed cases would drop to zero. Wouldn't mean a lot. In this case it could be that more testing is simply detecting more cases but the number of actual cases is unchanged or actually trending down.

[CaliforniaGirl]

2 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

I have no idea. I guess with large urban centers leading the charge on this circus maybe a less urban area might be showing around 4%? They are saying the national 7 day average is maybe 12% nowish, although I confess I find their chart a little vague. If one assumes the daily measurements are declining to produce that downward trend, I guess a shorter averaging window would also give a smaller but less stable result. 

I find it vague too. It's too random as well. All the numbers I've been tracking are now many people have been actually diagnosed and (sadly, I hate saying this, it never gets easy) how many have passed away.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[CaliforniaGirl]

6 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

Yeah, I don't think that means a lot as far as "the peak" - if they stopped testing the new confirmed cases would drop to zero. Wouldn't mean a lot. In this case it could be that more testing is simply detecting more cases but the number of actual cases is unchanged or actually trending down.

But jockeying in this way aside, when people *come into the hospital with symptoms* and are tested, and are confirmed, those aren't based on just maybe'maybe-not testing, and when people are planted in the ground, that can't be politically wished away.

When spikes are happening *now...with consistent testing abailable* it's less easy to just wave it all away as, for example, more people are getting tested now.

When I see my city's deaths rising, I pay attention of on my out of common sense. It's not just because I don't want to die. I don't want to kill anybody else, either.

Pretty simple and no political tap-dancing necessary.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[sothereiwas]

2 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

When I see my city's deaths rising

I agree for the most part; we're unlikely to miss counting dead people much. There are a couple caveats. The CDC seems to have been altering their guidelines as to how to attribute cause of death in a way that encourages attribution to COVID-19, and there are reportedly some financial incentives for healthcare orgs to do so as well. So that's not ideal. Also, the death figures trail infection rates by 20 days or so simply because, not to be too grisly, but that's how long it tends to take. 

A 20 day lag is a long time for this thing I guess. 

It's a tricky thing to sort out. I feel sort of lucky, I always WFH and other than an occasional dinner out or Saturday at the lake or whatever things aren't much different for us here. In fact, I went from being the only WFH person to being one of many, so that's sort of nice except for the root cause sucking. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

1 minute ago, sothereiwas said:

I agree for the most part; we're unlikely to miss counting dead people much. There are a couple caveats. The CDC seems to have been altering their guidelines as to how to attribute cause of death in a way that encourages attribution to COVID-19, and there are reportedly some financial incentives for healthcare orgs to do so as well. So that's not ideal. Also, the death figures trail infection rates by 20 days or so simply because, not to be too grisly, but that's how long it tends to take. 

A 20 day lag is a long time for this thing I guess. 

It's a tricky thing to sort out. I feel sort of lucky, I always WFH and other than an occasional dinner out or Saturday at the lake or whatever things aren't much different for us here. In fact, I went from being the only WFH person to being one of many, so that's sort of nice except for the root cause sucking. 

They seem to be altering that determination? I'd like to see where you find that imfo, by any chance do you have links to previous v. current criteria?

Because so far I've only heard that sort of assertion on Facebook memes but if you have solid info would be willing to look at it. And that is not sarcastic. So far I've asked that of every conspiracy theorist I've come across who has made the claim but nobody seems to have anything credible. Just angry tweets.

 

[sothereiwas]

5 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

They seem to be altering that determination? I'd like to see where you find that imfo, by any chance do you have links to previous v. current criteria?

Because so far I've only heard that sort of assertion on Facebook memes but if you have solid info would be willing to look at it. And that is not sarcastic. So far I've asked that of every conspiracy theorist I've come across who has made the claim but nobody seems to have anything credible. Just angry tweets.

 

From Reuters:

Quote

Connecticut on Monday reported the state’s highest one-day totals for novel coronavirus cases and related deaths, attributing the jump to a revised total count due to new classifications from federal regulators.

Connecticut recorded 1,853 new cases for a total of 19,815, and 204 additional deaths, bringing total fatalities to 1,331, according to a daily disclosure by the state’s health department, which it said incorporated a “catch up of cases and deaths reported” since April 16.

Governor Ned Lamont told a daily briefing the jump reflected new classifications required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which he said had made revisions on how to count deaths and cases.

I can't link or we'll have to wait a potentially long time for the embargo to lift, but you can google this, and from there find a lot more info. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

16 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

From Reuters:

I can't link or we'll have to wait a potentially long time for the embargo to lift, but you can google this, and from there find a lot more info. 

Yes, can you? Just to the "new classifications." What those are might or might not mean more cases. Sometimes classification changes make things more, not less accurate. I also don't see where they're financially motivated and does your link cover that? They could be anything and I'm always interested in anything related to data. ETA: Also to that article, please? So I can read it. I appreciate it a lot.

ETA: Wait, what do you mean, you can't link? You can't even link the article? And you can talk about "new classifications" but not link to what they are? Let's at least have a look at that article. You did make some assertions (extrapolations?), in particular that "new classifcations" were financially motivated. Now you give a snippet but say you can't give links and mention an embargo. (?) You can see where this doesn't give a lot of support and why it makes things a little confusing. If you can start with the link to wherever this article came from maybe that could be a start. Thanks.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[CaliforniaGirl]

20 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

From Reuters:

I can't link or we'll have to wait a potentially long time for the embargo to lift, but you can google this, and from there find a lot more info. 

Ah. okay. I found it. It's from back in April.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-connecticut/connecticut-reports-spike-in-coronavirus-cases-cites-cdc-classification-changes-idUSKBN22230S

It doesn't cite what this governor claimed the changes were. He doesn't comment what they are, in this statement. He's vague and kind of accusatory but...gives zero details. Anybody have any idea what those changes were, at that time?

Also, to sothereiwas, in addition to this...I still don't see this financial motivation assertion. 

I'm sorry to nit-pick but without any backup or specifics at all, these are just words. Even the Reuters report here gives no backup at all to what Lamont said was happening. A closer look is warranted to figure all this out.  

[sothereiwas]

23 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Now you give a snippet but say you can't give links and mention an embargo.

If you google a chunk of the text of the quote you will get the article. It's from reuters. If I add a link it will have to go through the moderation process and that can take hours. I initially just googled "CDC covid attribution guideline history" and got a lot of results. The CDC may not provide a revision history of their guidelines though - they likely just publish the latest. The financial incentives are second hand info; the poster who had that information gave billing codes and so on for insurance as evidence but I wasn't really that interested. I would not consider it an established fact without chasing it down a lot more. 

The 20 day delta in exposures vs deaths is pretty hard to reasonably dispute I reckon. 

The new guidelines might be more accurate, that's not the point. The point is that the new guidelines tend to classify more deaths as COVID related, and that classification is being applied retroactively as old cases are reexamined. As this happens, the reclassified deaths are placed in the COVID bucket for the date they died, so far so good, but if one doesn't look past the surface what one sees is a total death by COVID value that increases faster than the current batch of deaths would warrant, if that makes sense. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

3 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

If you google a chunk of the text of the quote you will get the article. It's from reuters. If I add a link it will have to go through the moderation process and that can take hours. I initially just googled "CDC covid attribution guideline history" and got a lot of results. The CDC may not provide a revision history of their guidelines though - they likely just publish the latest. The financial incentives are second hand info; the poster who had that information gave billing codes and so on for insurance as evidence but I wasn't really that interested. I would not consider it an established fact without chasing it down a lot more. 

The 20 day delta in exposures vs deaths is pretty hard to reasonably dispute I reckon. 

The new guidelines might be more accurate, that's not the point. The point is that the new guidelines tend to classify more deaths as COVID related, and that classification is being applied retroactively as old cases are reexamined. As this happens, the reclassified deaths are placed in the COVID bucket for the date they died, so far so good, but if one doesn't look past the surface what one sees is a total death by COVID value that increases faster than the current batch of deaths would warrant, if that makes sense. 

Oh! I understand now. I didn't know links take moderation.

So, I found it. And these "new" guidelines are coming up on a month old. So...again, they don't impact "more" cases week-on-week in very recent history. They can't, for example, account for my own county's continuing uptick in hospitlaizations and fatalities during May as compared to April before April 17.

We're still going up.

I'm still being careful.

ETA: I still don't see where you're getting that the "changes" (which actually are standard for previous flus of any type and are the guidelines for estimating influenza every single year) are financially motivated. Can you explain that?

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[sothereiwas]

6 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

They can't, for example, account for my own county's continuing uptick in hospitlaizations and fatalities during May as compared to April before April 17.

If you're looking at the current totals and they're still working back through the old cases it could account for additional deaths being tallied into the total. 

 

7 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

you're getting that the "changes" .... are financially motivated.

No, that's not what I meant. The CDC making the changes wasn't financial incentivised as far as I know. The alleged financial incentives are apparently in the amounts that a healthcare provider can bill for various codes, with COVID related stuff being more billable than the heart attack that might have put the final nail in someone's coffin. If the treatment can be billed under a COVID related code, the allegation says this makes a more generous payout possible. I'm not sure if this only applies to fatalities, I'd guess probably not, but it seems like it could have a grain of truth to it. As I said, I'd not call it fact without more digging but I would say it's plausible.

[CaliforniaGirl]

7 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

If you're looking at the current totals and they're still working back through the old cases it could account for additional deaths being tallied into the total. 

 

 

If that were true, sure, but I doubt it. Why would we still be "working through" month-old numbers? The CDC updates daily, correct? Who do you mean by "they"?

Four weeks from now will you say numbers continue to go up because we're still working through two-month-old numbers?

Why would numbers rise and then fall but with an ongoing upward trend if old numbers that account for new parameters were still being counted?

This is a whole lot of tap dancing, working around, assumption and, well, just overall (unsupported...I'm sorry...but you keep saying "if, if") hopeful guesswork in order to convince yourself (and us?) that the numbers are wrong and that new cases are flat or are even going down.

I wonder if the family of the dead and ill agree with you.

Nope...

Still being careful over here.

Edited May 12, 2020 by CaliforniaGirl

[CaliforniaGirl]

8 minutes ago, sothereiwas said:

 

 

No, that's not what I meant. The CDC making the changes wasn't financial incentivised as far as I know. The alleged financial incentives are apparently in the amounts that a healthcare provider can bill for various codes, with COVID related stuff being more billable than the heart attack that might have put the final nail in someone's coffin. If the treatment can be billed under a COVID related code, the allegation says this makes a more generous payout possible. I'm not sure if this only applies to fatalities, I'd guess probably not, but it seems like it could have a grain of truth to it. As I said, I'd not call it fact without more digging but I would say it's plausible.

If. If. Grain of. Plausible. Allegation. Not sure. Probably not. Seems like. 

I'm not betting public health on words like these...I'm sorry...  Not good enough to support throwing open businesses hither and yon.