Episode: 3078
Title: HPR3078: Coronavirus Update 2020-05-07
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3078/hpr3078.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 16:17:08

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,078 for Wednesday 20 May 2020.
Today's show is entitled Coronavirus Update 7 May 2020,
and is part of the series, Health and Health Care. It is hosted by Ahuka
and is about 15 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summer is
where we are with this pandemic.
And how should we respond?
Quote.
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Thank you very much.
Hello, this is Ahuka.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio and another episode.
I won't call it exciting exactly. These are not exciting times.
But what I want to do is provide an update on something I did a little while ago on the coronavirus,
taking a look at where we are today.
First, a few disclaimers. I am not an epidemiologist.
If we have an epidemiologist in the Hacker Public Radio audience
who wants to jump in and maybe record a few observations, I would welcome it.
My background is primarily as an economist with experience with data modeling,
statistics, data analysis, things like that.
And so there is some level of insight I can bring to it from that background.
But I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV.
So I want to get that out of the way.
Secondly, this is being recorded on May 7, 2020.
And that's important because the landscape seems to change every day with new reports coming out and so on.
It could be that something I say today by the time you hear this episode looks stupid.
Well, okay, that's the risk I'll run.
But on the other hand, I think the fact that it's changing so much creates a certain problem that I want to address here.
It creates dangers for us because it's human nature to look for the latest news and jump on it if it looks good.
It's a prime mistake because we do not in fact know enough at this point to be confident in these news reports.
I would refer you to my previous program on scientific and medical reports,
which I will link to in the show notes because it's highly relevant right now.
While I could not have predicted this pandemic when I wrote it, it contains basic principles that are always relevant.
Now, the nature of the press is that it is like the carnivorous plant in the movie Little Shop of Horrors, always crying, feed me.
And of course, we're all interested, if not to say anxious, for any news on the course of this disease and where it is taking us.
What this means is that you will see an unstoppable stream of news stories touting the latest study on one or another aspect of this.
Add in the desire of politicians to spend things to their advantage and you have a recipe for disaster.
So to keep saying, let's remember a few basic principles.
One study proves nothing.
There are lots of studies, many of them are one in done without having any effect on medical practice.
If there is an interesting result, it merely indicates an area for further study.
Now, study results are only meaningful when they have withstood peer review and have been replicated by other scientists.
This process does produce good results, but only with time.
Only in movies do scientists go into the lab and come out 24 hours later with the answer.
Real life is more complicated.
If you really want to know what all of this will end, there are two answers.
It can end very soon with an accompanying loss of life because the virus is still spreading.
And we're going to see increasing death rates and infection rates show up in places that ignore the science.
Going outside without a mask and carrying on as usual is not brave, it is stupid.
Now, the other answer is that a gradual relaxation of isolation can happen if it is guided by sound science.
Unfortunately, it is just explained that sound science is still being sought and will take time.
When you see the vast majority of doctors and scientists saying the same thing, that is your best assurance the information is accurate.
And right now, the number one priority is testing, testing, testing.
So, with that background, do we know anything at this point?
Yes, we do. But we also have a lot of unanswered questions.
The first big question is whether there will be a second wave.
And this is something that every qualified epidemiologist I have heard from says is guaranteed.
And the reason is that a certain fatigue sets in with staying in isolation and at least some people will convince themselves they don't need to do it.
They are wrong and they will guarantee that second wave.
In the 1918 flu pandemic, the second wave was far worse than the first wave.
And don't forget, there was a third wave in that pandemic until it petered out in 1920.
The best thing you can do is keep isolated if at all possible and follow all of the guidelines, such as,
wear a mask if you must go out, such as for groceries.
Many stores are offering special hours for seniors. In my state, the governor has mandated that.
If you are a senior, take advantage. Usually means going early in the morning.
Okay, that's not a problem. I still have an alarm clock.
After a shopping trip, wash or disinfect items carefully. Remember that soap is all you need to defeat the virus.
But use disinfectant wipes when soap is not practical.
After returning, strip and place all of your clothes in the washer.
The detergent should kill any virus that is there.
Wash your hands with soap frequently.
Try not to touch your face. That's a hard one.
Maintain at least two meters distance from anyone not in your household when you do go out.
Or in the United States, we would say, maintain six feet. It's about the same.
Finally, try to stay fit.
I go for walks in my neighborhood if there aren't too many others out. And when there is someone else out, I give them a wide separation.
I also do gardening in my own yard and exercise in my home.
Now that won't prevent you from getting the disease, but it may prevent you from dying of it.
Yeah, this is all of the stuff we've been hearing all along. But annoying as it is, it does work if you do it.
Next question is the virus mutating? Yes. In other news, water is wet.
Face it, mutation is what organisms do, and it has been true for billions of years.
The question you really have is, is it getting worse? And right now, the answer is, we don't know.
Sorry I can't give you any more determinative answer, but we are only at the one study phase right now.
And we are ways off from the peer-reviewed replicated consensus phase that will resolve this.
There are indications that at least this virus does not mutate as much as influenza, but even that probably requires more study.
Am I immune? Well, we'd all love to know if we are immune. This requires two big things to give a good answer.
First, does having the disease and then recovering give you immunity?
And the sad truth is, we don't know yet. The common cold is a coronavirus. You never get immunity from that.
Influenza is a virus and getting it one year provides no immunity the next.
And if this coronavirus is one where getting it once does provide immunity, we still need testing to discover this.
The number one priority, as we said, right now in all locations should be testing, testing, testing.
That is the prerequisite for doing any decent epidemiology.
There was a report, and note this is one study, out of South Korea that indicated that some people could get the disease twice,
but they re-analyzed the data and decided it might have just been false positives.
Now, that's the kind of thing that happens when scientists are trying to do a year's worth of work in a few weeks, which is essentially what they're doing.
Is it more infectious than we thought? Again, very unclear. It's even less clear what this implies.
An argument is being made that if the rate of infection is higher for any given number of deaths that would imply it is less lethal.
So we basically have a fraction where total number of people infected is in the denominator, deaths are in the numerator, and if you increase the denominator, the fraction goes down.
Okay, so that's basic math. This is being used to argue in favor of this not being a big deal.
So go ahead and reopen everything. Hey, it's less lethal than we thought. We don't need to worry.
But to put it in perspective, in the 2017 and 2018 flu season, which was on the higher end of deaths from flu.
That's why I picked it to give the most reasonable comparison here. I picked a high flu season.
We had 61,000 deaths in the United States over the entire season. Today is May 7, 2020.
We have 75,000 deaths in the US, and that is with all of the extraordinary measures we put in place to keep people safe.
To make an argument that COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the flu is to be criminally stupid at best.
And if you're doing it because you just want to force people to get off unemployment and go working your business, it is criminal.
It is evil. That's just something we shouldn't be doing.
Now, another question. Didn't they predict more deaths? Why yes, they did.
A widely used model for the US is from the Institute for Health, Metrics, and Evaluation, also known as IHME at the University of Washington.
And you may or may not know that Washington State is the place where the first coronavirus outbreak seems to have occurred in the United States as best we know.
And they have issued forecasts that have ranged from hundreds of thousands of deaths to around 60,000 deaths.
Well, they're all over the place. Clearly, they have no idea what they're doing, right? Not so fast.
As the statistician George Box famously said, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
In this case, you have to factor in two things. One is uncertainty, of course.
To forecast how many people will die, for instance, it helps to know how many people have died.
And there's been a lot of argument over this one.
What counts as a COVID-19 death?
And does each of our 50 states have their own definition of that?
Because every state has their own health reporting system, there is no national standard as yet.
There could be one if we had leadership at the national level.
So one example of the problems you run into is something called excess deaths.
And New York City is a good example of this.
If a given area has a pretty regular death rate for a number of years, which was the case in New York City for about 10 years.
And then suddenly the death rate jumps to five times higher in the midst of a pandemic, it is reasonable to suspect that those excess deaths are a result of the coronavirus.
But if those deaths get counted, others will argue that you're inflating the numbers to make it look worse than it is, and that only a positive coronavirus serum test should count.
Well, with each state going their own way on this, we get the interesting result that the lethality of the disease appears to depend on where your state is.
And that's ridiculous. The disease is the disease. It isn't better or worse in a New York state or Kansas.
But many politicians have an incentive to get the numbers they want.
Now, the other factor complicating things is the phenomenon known as self-preventing prophecy.
You see, the initial high estimates that we got from IHME and other models were along the lines of this is what will happen if you don't take strong measures.
And of course, they were very high.
And we know that governments, such as the UK and the US, looked at those predictions and started to take some stronger measures.
So, after a little bit, new predictions came out that were lower as a result of those measures.
And now we are seeing misguided efforts to get people to go out and resume normal life.
And as a result, the newest forecasts are going up again. This is a feedback loop in other words.
So, this is just a quick look at what we do and do not know at this point.
This is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off and reminding you to stay indoors and wash your hands. Bye-bye.
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