Vox’s Analysis of Corona Model
Vox has an article well worth reading about a certain coronavirus model that the administration uses. It points out that this model has consistently underestimated the death rates (it previously said that the cumulative death rate would be 60,000 and then later revised to 72,500 when it was obvious that we were breaching the 60K levels). Now I don’t want to focus on how wrong the model has been, because Vox is doing a good job of that, but I do want to point out that learning about the assumptions behind the models is very important.
Now I want to point out that I would imagine most models would be wrong (just like most corporate internal forecasts are off) because very little is known about the virus at this stage of the crisis. We just don’t know a lot. But it is good to review the assumptions to see if there are any weak assumptions that would need to be bolstered or changed.
One assumption of the administration’s model that stood out was the idea that after the peak infection, the death rate would rapidly drop off. I’m not sure why the death rate would necessarily drop off after the peak. Unless the doctors have figured out a way of saving people who are in the pipeline of infections, there is nothing to say the death rate should go down. If the infection rate after the peak declines rapidly, then maybe after 2 weeks, the death rate would also go down.
One thing I’m not seeing: infection rates rapidly declining after the peak. Of course, there are not that many countries or states that have reached peak infection. But what little there are, it seems like the infection rate flattens out rather than decline, so the assumption of rapid decline after peak will need to change.
Then there is the assumption that people will social distance and do all of the other necessary things. Unfortunately, news indicates that there are some who will not social distance or wear masks so that could derail the model’s outcomes. This particular assumption should be tweaked to reflect the resistance.
All in all, the article is a good read and shows the kind of thinking we should be deploying. Unfortunately, a lot of us are not able to do any kind of critical thinking; we prefer to ignore the experts out right rather than to probe their reasoning to determine the strengths of the reasoning. Or we prefer to just accept what we are told.
Okay, it looks like the coronavirus is starting to pop up in the rural areas. Hopefully the rural areas automatically do a lot of social distancing because their living spaces are far apart rather than being densely co-located. But if they have a central place where everybody meets, maybe a central grocery store or maybe a central church or a fair, then it could be bad news for the rural areas.
I’ve been reading about how the rural areas 1) do not have a strong healthcare infrastructure, 2) do not have a lot of ICUs or ventilators or experts, 3) experienced hospitals closures during the past decade and 4) have a lot of elderly living in the area. All of that is a bad recipe for disaster.
Those protesters…are they mostly from the rural areas? I don’t know. If they are, then they are most likely bringing the virus back to their rural communities that do not have the infrastructure to handle the spread. It’s a shame that the protesters, who apparently are a very small minority, have to learn the hard way; it seems like they will learn only from disasters, but they don’t really learn deeply enough because they seem to keep doing the same mistake over and over again. And unfortunately for the rest of the rural folks, they will be living with the consequences of those protesters.
Can we charge those protesters for murder?
I have read somewhere about medical personnel being exasperated with the evangelicals attending churches in direct contravention of the social distancing orders. One of them briefly said, before correcting himself, something to the effect of placing those evangelicals as low priorities during times when there are not enough resources for all the critically ill. The thought was, “if they knowingly place themselves, as well as others, in danger, thinking that God will save them, then they should not receive health priority – because they can just turn to God for help.”.
Yes, it is a good thing that we don’t know who all of the protesters are or who are breaking the social distancing orders because it could lead to subconsciously giving them a lower priority to healthcare.
I don’t know what will happen, but the crisis is not over yet.
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