Fauci predicts 100K-200K US deaths; Spain, Italy demand help

[left-of-center2012]

Source: PBS

Millions of Americans will be infected by the coronavirus and 100,000 to 200,000 will die, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert warned Sunday, as people in and around the country’s outbreak epicenter of New York were urged to limit their travel to contain the scourge.

The dire prediction came from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.” As of Sunday morning, the U.S. had about 125,000 infections and 2,200 deaths.

“This is off the charts,” said Dr. Teena Chopra, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the Detroit Medical Center. “We are seeing a lot of patients that are presenting to us with severe disease, rather than minor disease.”

President Donald Trump backtracked on a threat to quarantine New York and neighboring states amid criticism and questions about the legality of such a move. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel advisory urging all residents of New York City and others in New York state, New Jersey and Connecticut to avoid all nonessential travel for 14 days.

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/spain-italy-demand-eu-virus-help-new-yorkers-avoid-travel

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Notice how Fauci keeps moving the needle

He's off by a factor of 10 or 20 or 30. Seriously.

[dem4decades]

6. Maybe he should talk to Dr. Birx, she seems to think this thing is overblown.

[Lonestarblue]

17. I have lost most respect for Dr. Birx.

She stands on the podium smiling and nodding at Trump and then praising his actions, all the while telling people things like there are enough hospital beds and ventilators and no one needs to worry about that. Meanwhile, there are not enough hospital beds, with patients in hallways, in epicenters like New York. It’s one thing to reassure people, but quite another to lie to them.

[DenverJared]

31. I agree completely

She is misleading people

[Igel]

8. Absolutely.

Because if he's saying 100-200k, we know that there'll be at least 100 million to 600 million deaths from it in the US. Even if our population is 325 million.

Nobody's saying numbers that high. It would mean at least 30% of the country would get infected (possible, if not probable). It would mean that 100% of them would show symptoms. (Requiring a very specific kind of mutation. Put this in the when-pigs-fly class).

It would mean that 100% of those with symptoms require hospitalization. (Now pigs have built-in jet packs and GPS. Miracles of evolution.)

And of those with severe symptoms, 100% die. (Pigs have evolved to self-teleporting, at which point they set up kamikaze teams that by the end of 2020 have explored 10s of thousands of exoplanets, have found 20 suitable for life, and have all left.)

When everybody was doing linear, some were doing exponentials. You know, e's right. But that's not the whole story.

Now that people have glommed on to simple exponentials, it's time for something accurate. Meet the logistic and Gompertz. They help keep your equation from being darkly fictional and exploding in a way that requires more people dying this year in just the US than have ever lived. It tamps down that joyous feeling of apocalyptic gloom, but don't worry--there's still enough bad news to keep us at least moderately cheerful. Start here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function. Then with your new math chops head over to https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.00507.pdf, which discusses which is a better fit in one instance, logistics or Gompertz.

[thesquanderer]

11. re: "Nobody's saying numbers that high"

Cuomo is saying 40% to 80% are expected to get it, but he's probably talking about just residents of New York state; hopefully we're doing enough to stop the rest of the country from becoming as bad as New York. (Though as you allude to, some percentage of those who get it may never know they got it.)

Percent of those who get it who are likely to die? Well, that will depend on our ability to flatten the curve so as not to overwhelm our hospitals and other medical resources. But I've seen various estimates mostly in the 1% to 5% range.

If 30% of the national population of 325 million get it, that's almost 100 million people. If 1% to 5% of those die, that's 1 to 5 million. So saying that an estimate of 100k-200k could be off by a factor of 10 or 20 is not necessarily a pigs-flying scenario. Luckily, I think it's not a likely one, but you don't have to go far out of the range of reasonable possible projections to get there.

ETA: New York alone has almost 20 million people. If we use Cuomo's low-end of 40%, 8 million people can be expected to get it in NY alone. A 1% to 5% mortality rate could yield 80k to 200k deaths just in NY (double that at his high end of 80% infected). That's another way to look at Fauci's 100k-200k nationally as potentially substantially optimistic.

[csziggy]

20. Estimates from a month ago were 40-70% of world population would get it

And of those, 2% would die.

So these estimates are in line with those old ones.

[Arthur_Frain]

25. The question we can't really get to the bottom of is:

What would the mortality rate be in an untreated population. Nice to have that if we want to apply modifiers like % with access to health care, % within self driving range of health care sufficient to maintain life in a respiratory emergency, etc.

Even without empirical data this appears more severe than the flu.

[unblock]

26. factor of 10-30 on an estimate of 100-200k gets you to 1-6 million, not 100-600 million.

i love a good put-down, and your post would be awesome if it weren't for the math being wrong.

[customerserviceguy]

13. I'm not sure

why people think that Dr. Fauci has any incentive to lie. Yes, he's on Trump's panel, but I've seen him give interviews on all three 24/7 news networks.

If he's right, 200K deaths would be less than ten percent of the 2.8 million deaths that the US sees annually. Surely, some of those deaths would be of people who might well have died from something else had there been no C-19 virus. Also, you will have a lowered death rate from automobile accidents and other things the are inevitable from a vibrant functioning economy.

Here's something to get psyched up for: Maybe C-19 won't be the cause of Trump's election outcome. We will need to find something else to make our case on. Getting Joe Biden out of hiding and on TV every day would be a start.

[NickB79]

14. 200,000 deaths is absolutely a horrific number that can't be downplayed

For comparison, we have 15,000 gun-related murders in the US annually (35,000 if you count suicides).

Try throwing that stat out there to downplay the next mass shooting and see how it goes. You'll get your ass handed to you in the ensuing firestorm.

[customerserviceguy]

16. Apples and oranges

Firearms and viruses are simply not the same thing.

While I agree that 200K deaths is indeed tragic, it is a far cry from the "Everybody's gonna die!" mentality that some folks are spouting. And have the 15,000 gun deaths done anything to change the laws recently?

[ThoughtCriminal]

34. Collateral damage deaths may be higher

As the healthcare system gets overwhelmed, other critical care comes too late. There will many more deaths caused by the pandemic, but not directly attributed.

Most of the deaths that were caused by the Iraq War were not combat deaths.

[customerserviceguy]

35. Good point

Of course, there will be other conditions afflicting people that would normally be treatable by a healthcare system not overwhelmed with C-19.

We'll just have to see how it shakes out.

[TomCADem]

28. 200,000 maximum assumes that social distancing is maintained

Now, if these measures are removed, then that estimate goes out the window.

[DenverJared]

32. No one can accurately predict an epidemic

There is always a fudge factor of +/- 50%

[duforsure]

2. He'll be gone very soon

For spreading the truth.

[getagrip_already]

3. add a zero - that zero is trumps contribution n/t

[gibraltar72]

4. I thihk down deep I knew. Still chilling to hear it from someone with his knowledge.

I assume he's ready to be fired and go where he can actually help. Needy Amin is not going to give him the megaphone.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Here is the blip

Link to tweet

TEXT

State of the Union
✔
@CNNSotu

Dr. Anthony Fauci says there could potentially be between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus and millions of cases. “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target, that you could so easily be wrong,” he adds. #CNNSOTU
Embedded video

10:51 AM - Mar 29, 2020

[Backseat Driver]

7. It's only purpose is to find a host and replicate...

[trusty elf]

9. If Benedict Donald hadn't been asleep at the wheel

Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2020, 12:36 PM - Edit history (1)

things likely would have been quite different.

The blood is on his hands.

[liberalmuse]

10. If we had a competent President like Obama, Clinton, or hell, just about anyone.

We could have been on top of this and been able to help other countries. I'm not talking about Trump sending thousands of masks and medical equipment to China and Taiwan, probably as an attempt to protect and expand own businesses there, while doing absolutely nothing to prepare the US for this pandemic. He didn't even implement the fucking step-by-step playbook. Now Americans have a severe shortage thanks to his criminal negligence because he prevented his administration from acting. He and his family will not fair well after Americans start seeing large numbers of their loved ones needlessly die.

[not fooled]

12. Yep. Plain as day.

Yes, with Clinton as president the virus still would have entered the US, and still would have spread. But, the differences between how she would have handled the situation vs. the psychopathic buffoon are stark. The infectious disease expert would still have been in China, the pandemic response team would have been in place, and measures would have been taken starting months ago. The impact would have been orders of magnitude less.

It's infuriating.

[liberalmuse]

18. It really is infuriating to watch.

And not only that, Trump is actually making things even worse. I despise him.

[sop]

27. All Trump had to do was keep quiet, stop tweeting and let Fauci and other professionals

take charge from the very beginning.

[Lulu KC]

15. Two weeks ago it was estimated at 2.2 million

by the UK epidemiological study. Things are changing as data trickles in, but I really think Dr. Fauci is being very conservative.
If you look in the dictionary under "rock and hard place," there's his picture.

[bucolic_frolic]

22. 1918 had a lower fatality rate

and 1/3 of the current U.S. population. 675,000 died. So the math is there. Tell us how this becomes less that 200k.

[Blasphemer]

36. Jack Nicholson's famous scene in "A Few Good Men" comes to mind...

"You Can't Handle The Truth!" They are trying to avoid mass hysteria (and in Trump's case, trying to hang on to any shred of hope of re-election).

[Yeehah]

19. I hope it's not more than that.

Fauci might have been in an optimistic mood.

[Rube Icon]

21. Kick for Original Thread

[IronLionZion]

23. It's probably impossible to make accurate forecasts nationwide

considering the many variables at play in various locations and the measures state and local governments are taking.

[EarthFirst]

24. Meanwhile Trump is accusing state officials of being petulant little children for begging for items

Congress needs to step forward and take Trump out of the planning process.

Fuck it. Just send him to Mar Lago and let the adults handle it at this point.

We don’t need him...

[nitpicker]

29. It all depends on the "days to double".

In each state.

On the 24th, 25 states gained 25% or more in new cases over the day before, and 25 states plus DC increased by less than 25%.

At 25% daily increase, it takes about 3 days to double. By the 15th day after the start, that's a 28 times increase.

On the 29th, 18 states reported daily increases of 25% or more, 23 states reported increases of 15-24.99 percent, and 9 plus DC reported increases between 5-14.99 percent.

At a 15% doubling rate, that takes about 5 days to double, or 8 times increase after 15 days.

IF we were continuing to have daily increase of 25%, in 30 days the increase would be 784-fold, or over 100 million cases and 1.5 million deaths.

I'm hoping for a 15% average; in 30 days this would be a 64-fold increase, or about 10 million cases and about 120000 deaths.

BUT most states aren't there yet.

That's why we need to continue the restrictions.

[tclambert]

30. He's way low on those predictions.

We aren't stopping the spread of the disease, only slowing it down. Italy has done more than we have and they have slowed the rate of growth so their number of cases now takes 11 days to double. It used to double there in 4 days. But it's still growing exponentially.

We are doubling the number of cases roughly every 3 days. I expect we will slow it down a little.

Here's my predictions: 1 million cases and 10,000 deaths by Easter. 10 million cases and 100,000 dead by early May. 100 million cases and 1 million dead sometime in June. At that point, the growth rate may slow enough that some people think we've beaten it. And we will let up our guards. And it will get bad again. We may repeat that cycle one more time. (The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic had three peaks.)

By the time a vaccine arrives, we'll hardly need it.

[Blasphemer]

37. That sounds right to me. The next few months are going to be brutal... nt

[Harker]

33. His failure to provide a best and worst case scenario

isn't what media want.

[greyl]

38. K & R nt