I believe that continuing to flatten the curve helps us.  Yes, to some degree it's moving infections and mortality into the future, because of course more cases will appear when more people associate.  

BUT - buying time also buys us the opportunity to improve the situation when that new peak develops.  How?

- The potential for building toward herd immunity, even if immunity is not confirmed yet as a result of having had the disease.

- More time to get test kits in place and build our reserves of critical care equipment such as ventilators and emergency care beds.

- We will get closer to a vaccine, which won't be created as soon as we want, but it's reasonable to assume we will have one, since we have them for closely related diseases. 

- More time to resolve questions about how widespread the infection is, improve the reliability of testing, and resolve questions about possible post-infection immunity, as well as explore the potential and effectiveness of sharing plasma antibodies (something that's available NOW, not waiting on a vaccine.)   

Those are plenty of good reasons to keep flattening the curve and push the new curve of infections as far into the future as possible. 

Edited April 28, 20204 yr by Pilgrim

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/04/28/mike-pence-visits-mayo-clinic-without-mask-215841
 

Really ? 

I'm a plan guy. Always have one or two at least. These people in control do not. It's very tough on us. I'm not dealing very well with the uncertainty, deceit fulness that I read/hear daily. I don't think we can take the yo yoing much longer. Somebody needs to stand up and be consistent with a plan. The potus wants to reopen schools for a month. Why?

 

2 hours ago, madkaw said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/04/28/mike-pence-visits-mayo-clinic-without-mask-215841
 

Really ? 

I had thought that Pence was actually a guy who "got it" but just couldn't really do anything.  In the early days I had wished that he was in charge instead of the other guy.  But now I see that he's just part of that crowd.  Just a politician.

Here is what happens when you have an effeminate leader, a minister of health who has no health experience and chief public health officer who lies:

Go CANADA!  Catch Sweden (who is taking very few steps to contain the disease) .... ****! what a stupid situation because of bad leaders!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

1 minute ago, 240260280 said:

Here is what happens when you have an effeminate leader...

 

How does being "effeminate" (in your opinion) have a negative impact on his work?

Appearance, showmanship, pageantry or whatever like our POTUS detracts from real work. My opinion and I get one too.

Regardless what you think of Pence , he basically disrespected every scientist and doctor at the Mayo Clinic by disregarding their policy . I expected this from Donny, but Pence - no . Once again the messages are mixed or contradictory from the WH and that why we aren’t doing better . Let’s tell the people what they can or can’t do for the betterment of their health , and do just the opposite. 

1 hour ago, madkaw said:

Regardless what you think of Pence , he basically disrespected every scientist and doctor at the Mayo Clinic by disregarding their policy . I expected this from Donny, but Pence - no . Once again the messages are mixed or contradictory from the WH and that why we aren’t doing better . Let’s tell the people what they can or can’t do for the betterment of their health , and do just the opposite. 

Somehow it just represents their continual denials of reality about the danger of the pandemic. I can't say I was surprised at all.  Don't expect an apology from Pence, either.  

He seems to be learnable.  The polls probably showed a drop.

 

The charts seem to be showing more new cases and more deaths over the last couple days per the mdmetrix charts.  I believe these trends will continue for most of the US states for at least another month or two. As I said before, the better we quarantine, the longer we get to do it.

 The lockdown is pushing the peaks to the right.  New York, Louisiana and New Jersey are on the right side of the peak and are in the best shape.  I would also add Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee,  Vermont, West Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming as states that are doing well. 

https://covid-19.mdmetrix.com/grid.html?list=death_curve

https://covid-19.mdmetrix.com/grid.html?list=new_case_curve

https://www.mdmetrix.com/covid-19-projections

"Update for April 30, 2020

New York remains on its 20-day descent path for reported daily deaths from COVID-19. Louisiana also remains on a descent phase, with the last 18 days' data signals indicating a stable decline (albeit with a shallow downward slope). We’ll monitor closely as Louisiana begins "phase 1 reopening" this week.

Encouragingly, Pennsylvania is now showing overlapping improvement signals for the state's reported daily deaths. Pennsylvania joins 18 other states that have been showing overlapping data signals indicating that they have moved away from the exponential growth curve for reported daily deaths: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

—Dr. Dan Low, Chief Medical Officer of MDmetrix"

I still do not agree with the second paragraph assessment and think that Pennsylvania is not doing so well based on daily deaths.  Their infection rate does however seem to be slightly slowing.  I added them into my charts just to see how the data looks with the Polynomial indicator.

Also, there was a spike in the US daily deaths that was again over 2000.  Most of those (59%)  were from New York, New Jersey and......Pennsylvania.

 

 

I'm perfectly happy to stay home for now.  I have tickets for The Who this Saturday in Denver, and a mini-plan of tickets for the Colorado Rockies, but my health matters a lot more.  Those tickets will get sorted out.  I also had two ski passes to Snowy Range in Wyoming that they just carried over to next season, which is fine with me.  

It's great to see that the peaks are getting smoothed out and moved to the future.  We just need to keep up the good work, which will be VERY difficult when the mouth-breathers decide the pandemic is over and they can go back to everything the way it was before.  Hint: it won't be the way it was before.

Edited April 30, 20204 yr by Pilgrim