Jackson Jambalaya

BTE's model goes down in flames again.

It doesn't appear to have gone full blown viral yet.

If you look at the graph on a line of percentage increases instead of raw numbers, there might be cause for optimism, and reason to believe that social distancing is working.

But until we have widespread testing, we're just testing the people who self-select to go to the doctor. Then that number is further modulated by availability of tests. The numbers may simple reflect the daily increase in people tested.

Trying to build models off limited data is never going to yield reliable results.

I went back and looked at the day to day percentages starting with the initial confirmed case on Mar 11. It looks like we are seeing MS's numbers _begin_ to line up with USA overall (9.7%) daily rate.

300%
25%
100%
20%
67%
70%
47%
60%
75%
48%
20%
29%
18%
29%
19%
15%
14%
12%

Sort of splitting the difference here, but around 13% looks reasonable for now. If this continues to hold, I would expect to see the following over the next 5 days.

847
957
1,081
1,221
1,379

There is a bottom limit, a mathematical asymptote, that we will not go below. Where that is remains to be seen. Also to note, even if/when MS gets to 10% daily rate, that still means just under 1k new confirmed each day by end of April.

Any model has trouble hitting a moving target. At least MS daily numbers are dropping. It's important to find new ways to not spread this thing. Stay home. Wipe down door handles. Etc.

Even at 10% daily rate, it covers the whole state by June 30.

But until we have widespread testing, we're just testing the people who self-select to go to the doctor.

So you are advocating mandatory testing of everyone?

With a little luck social distancing may be working to slow community transmission. I have little doubt that we are due for a spike. There are some sizable elder care facilities in the larger cities that could easily see multiple residents and staff test positive in a short period of time. An asymptomatic person could infect dozens before it was noticed. So far we’ve been lucky, but it is unlikely our luck will last forever.

Dr. Dobbs is correct in advocating for rapid testing to get a handle on hot spots before they spread. Social distancing won’t last forever, but we need appropriate tools in place to ensure some areas don’t turn out like New York and New Orleans with unknown and uncontrolled spread for a couple of weeks before knowing something is wrong.

Keep in mind our testing is still days behind. If you show symptoms today you might get a testing appointment tomorrow and then depending on test backlog it could take up to 4 days to hear back. People who got sick a little over a week ago could still not be tested and reported.

@10:31, he don't know, he just wants to be noticed. A better question would be, does he really believe everyone in the state is going to get it?

I'm surprised the numbers are not higher for Lafayette County & Oktibbeha County. The pictures I have seen show students continue to congregate in large numbers. When these students come home the infection numbers, in their home counties will rise also.

To 11:24am - Students ARE home. Dorms are closed to only a very few that have nowhere else to go. Classes are 100% online. You will need to rework your "the pictures I've seen" theory.

11:50 - the dorms may be closed but the kids are not all home. A huge portion of the students live in apartments after their freshman year. I have had to almost sit on one of mine to make her stay home because many of her friends are still there hanging out and socializing.

"The State Department of Health reported 847 infections and 16 deaths today. 195 virus patients are hospitalized". If our state hospital system cannot handle 195 virus patients, vent or not, how the hell will we handle a real crisis. Mass Trauma, bombing, Earthquake, one good size airliner crashing etc. Well, learned that whiskey helped the Spanish Flu folks so I'm gonna follow their leads. Happy trails folks.

Besides 847 infections is 0.0002% of population. 18 dead is 2% of the infected population. No numbers given for those released to home on PO meds. Not quite ready to panic yet.

... the medical equipment shortage which has so panicked health care workers from the onset of the crisis often seems to be largely logistical. In other words, a lot of the ventilators and masks are out there — just in unexpected and formerly off-limits places. With a more liberated FDA and Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there’s a whole lotta creative repurposing going on.

A huge portion of the students live in apartments after their freshman year.

Throw in "huge', then mention "many", you have no clue how many of those apartment dwellers actually remain.

If you want to see the "social distancing" that high school and college students are practicing just take a ride up the Natchez Trace to Overlook Point and the grassy areas just past it. I pass there every day and there are at least a hundred and possibly more gathered. Granted, they are not all in one group, but they are not isolating either. The most disgusting thing is the trash they are leaving behind. I don't understand why the Park Rangers are not enforcing the limited gathering rules. At a minimum, why are they not issuing citations for littering? It is a disgrace. So many of these youngsters love to get their faces on the news harping about saving the planet, but they can't even pick up after themselves. They are just a bunch of self-centered brats that think the rules don't apply to them.

"Even at 10% daily rate, it covers the whole state by June 30."

Name the last epidemic that infected 100% of an exposed population.


I'll wait.............

Here’s a link to the model referenced in Trump’s briefing yesterday. You can pick Mississippi individually.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

He still has exponential growth for the next three weeks with almost 9,000 hospitalized on April 22. That isn’t lining up with the last ten days of actual numbers so I hope he is wrong and the final tally is much lower.

He also has deaths at almost zero by the end of May. I personally think we’ll see a significant spike after Memorial Day as even the most die hard social distancers head out on vacation.

Stay home, keep your distance, and maybe it won’t be as bad as it seems.

Just to add to my previous comment. The model shows 9,000 hospitalized in Mississippi in three weeks. That’s more than is currently hospitalized in the entirety of Germany now (7,000) and almost as many as currently hospitalized in New York (9,500). I can’t fathom things will get that bad here.

@2:01 That's the nature of exponential growth. It's really really hard for most anyone to wrap their brain around. It's HUGELY loaded on the back end.

Coming from the hard sciences I understand it intuitively by this point, but I don't trust my gut for approximations because the numbers get so big so quickly at the end. I always go and run the actual numbers themselves.

By the time deaths start getting scary the infection numbers, running 2-3 weeks ahead, will be all but unstoppable.

Cases are likely 10x higher. I know of many people who have mild symptoms who are not testing as they were initially instructed not to do so by the MS department of health. I also know of 3 people who have no symptoms, while their significant others are infected. They are likely infected as well, but the health department will not allow them to test since the do not have symptoms.

@2:50

Reminds me of a Booray game I was in many years ago. A penny-ante pot turned into a thousand dollar plus loss for one play. Of course it was a thousand dollar win for the other guy.

Nation-wide mandatory testing for all should be required within 1 year.

With no one staying in hotels, could they be used for additional hospital beds?

There are now a lot of known knowns about the coronavirus: It's here, it's spreading, it's stressing hospitals, it's crippling the economy, it's slowed only by distance and isolation — and it's sure to get much worse before it gets much better.

Why it matters: Similarly, there is a sameness to the patterns and known unknowns. So now we hit the maddening stage of waiting.

We wait and watch Wuhan and China to see if life really does return to normal once the virus is contained. The global economy hinges on this light at the end of the tunnel.

We wait and watch Italy to see when its daily death rate peaks, plateaus and then plunges. This will give us a sense of how long highly concentrated outbreaks elsewhere might last.

We wait to see when New York hits its apex (two to three weeks, experts say) and watch how bad it gets. We also watch New Orleans and Detroit to see if New York is an early indicator or an anomaly.

We wait for widespread testing to be a reality so we can find out if the virus has spread far beyond our fears.

We wait to see if Dr. Anthony Fauci's projection of 100,000 to 200,000 potential U.S. deaths is accurate — and, if so, how the media, public and markets might react to multiple days with death tolls beyond the nearly 3,000 lost on 9/11.

We wait to see Trump's next move in his itch to "reopen America" after his extension Sunday of social-distancing guidelines through April 30. Does he continue to listen to his scientists, or eventually side with advisers who fear economic disaster if America stays home too long?

We wait and watch as drug companies race for a cure, which industry insiders say won’t happen at scale until 2021. We wait to see the consequences of using experimental medications to slow or salve.

The big picture: This waiting period will expose whether coronavirus was an awful three months we will never forget — or a once-in-a-lifetime disruption and destroyer of life.

We’ll have a vaccine in the next year. At that point widespread testing won’t be necessary.

@ 1:39, I see no one has answered you. That's because there has never been a 100% Infection rate. Between Herd Immunity and Herd effect it is impossible.
"Herd immunity applies to immunization or infection, human to human transmitted or otherwise. On the other hand, herd effect applies to immunization or other health interventions which reduce the probability of transmission, confined to infections transmitted human to human, directly or via vector". Source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11078115