COVID Essays, Genomics, Maps - May 7, 2020

Some COVID highlights right now....

In Forbes, Jun Wu interviews Yaneer Bay-Yam, (New England Complex Systems Institute) on COVID math, modeling, and policy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/05/07/this-professor-says-weve-been-looking-at-the-coronavirus-data-wrong/#38cc13083402

Figure from:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/

See another essayist on Flatten the Curve (or not)
https://www.drjohnm.org/2020/05/can-we-discuss-flatten-the-curve-in-covid19-my-eight-assertions/

Dr. John Mandrola.  (He describes his viewpoint as potentially controversial and welcomes comment.)   I would summarize in my own words as this:

My essay would be:

There are three different uses of home lockdown, two of which clearly make sense.

1) ABSOLUTE LOCKDOWN - SUFFOCATE VIRUS

This has worked in a few places, either very small places or places with a lot of military police.  You look people down and in 14 days there is a dramatic drop in new infections.  By 21 or 25 days there are practically no new infections at all.

2) LOCKDOWN TO "FLATTEN THE CURVE"

This has been the US approach.  You have some place where new cases, or hospitalizations, are clearly spiking, like NYC.  You have lockdown and "flatten the curve."  The new cases are 5000, 6000, 7000 instead of 5000, 15,000, 20,000, 30,000.   You have flattened the curve.  You have reduced or mitigated the "disaster state" level in hospitals.  This goes on for several weeks - 3,4,5, even 6 weeks.

3) LOCKDOWN TO "FLATTEN THE CURVE INDEFINITELY"

This is more suspicious.  This is where LA is now.   Cases rise from 100 to 500 to 1000 a day; you have lockdown; they go to 1100, 1150, 1200, back to 1150, and plateau around 800 or 900 a day.   The problem is, this can go on FOREVER.   Mayors say "one more week" or "a few more weeks" but it's unclear there will be any difference between 800 new cases in week 7 or 800 new cases in week 9 or 10 or 11 or week 20.   There is no light at the end of the tunnel.  There are 10M people in New York, 10M people in LA, you will never drain the pool of people and you will have lockdown with 1000 new cases a day practically forever.   If you have 1000 cases a day for 90 days it is 90,000 cases out of 10M people.  How many don't have the virus at 90 days?  9.999M people, which is basically, 10M people.

Although it later, this graphic from Endcoronavirus.org makes my point.  My model 1 is the first use of isolation, which is "crush the curve" (tiny yellow curve at left in figure below) whereas U.S. is barely getting to "flatten it" on the same graph.   Also from: https://www.endcoronavirus.org/ 

xxx

May 7 opened with an article from New York Times, "Travel from NYC Seeded US Outbreaks" -- Another in what will be a rapidly growing wave of articles showing how important COVID genomics, and not just COVID PCR tests, will be.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavirus-outbreak.html

CNBC and other sources  described data, released by Cuoma the day before, that most NYC new cases (in hospitals) are stay at home people.  They describe it as "very surprising" that most new hospitalizations are stay at home people.  See 18% nursing home residents, 66% stay at home.  First responders, health workers, don't make the chart.

One logical point might be that there are 8M stay at home people, 100,000 first responders and hospital workers?  Still.

Cuomo said he and public health figures were "shocked" to see the data below.  It seems like core mission critical data and I don't know how it took 8 weeks to figure it out.  I have been pointing out to friends that this is the type of data we need critically.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html