COVID-19 disease modelling

David Posnett — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:02:57 +0000

Excellent article in the NY Times:

Worst-Case Estimates for U.S. Coronavirus Deaths

March 13, 2020Updated 5:02 p.m. ET

Projections based on C.D.C. scenarios show a potentially vast toll. But those numbers don’t account for interventions now underway.

One of the CDC’s top disease modelers, Matthew Biggerstaff, presented four possible scenarios — A, B, C and D — based on characteristics of the virus, including estimates of how transmissible it is and the severity of the illness it can cause…. Highlights:

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection….
The pandemic could last months or even over a year, …
As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die worldwide…
2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds. Fewer than a tenth of those are for people who are critically ill…
Studies of previous epidemics have shown that the longer officials waited to encourage people to distance and protect themselves, the less useful those measures were in saving lives and preventing infections.
Even severe flu seasons stress the nation’s hospitals to the point of setting up tents in parking lots and keeping people for days in emergency rooms. Coronavirus is likely to cause five to 10 times that burden of disease…
A preliminary study released on Wednesday by the Institute for Disease Modeling projected that in the Seattle area, enhancing social distancing — limiting contact with groups of people — by 75 percent could reduce deaths caused by infections acquired in the next month from 400 to 30 in the region.
A recent paper, cited by Dr. Fauci at a news briefing on Tuesday, concludes that the rapid and aggressive quarantine and social distancing measures applied by China in cities outside of the outbreak’s epicenter achieved success. “Most countries only attempt social distancing and hygiene interventions when widespread transmission is apparent. This gives the virus many weeks to spread,” …
During the Spanish Flu pandemic a century ago, comparing the experiences of various cities, including what were then America’s third- and fourth-largest, Philadelphia and St Louis. In October of that year Dr. Rupert Blue, America’s surgeon general, urged local authorities to “close all public gathering places if their community is threatened with the epidemic,” such as schools, churches, and theaters. “There is no way to put a nationwide closing order into effect,” he wrote, “as this is a matter which is up to the individual communities.” The mayor of St. Louis quickly took that advice, closing for several weeks “theaters, moving picture shows, schools, pool and billiard halls, Sunday schools, cabarets, lodges, societies, public funerals, open-air meetings, dance halls and conventions until further notice.” The death rate rose, but stayed relatively flat over that autumn.

By contrast, Philadelphia took none of those measures; the epidemic there had started before Dr. Blue’s warning. Its death rate skyrocketed.

The All-important Numbers for NY CD-1

David Posnett — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:23:45 +0000

Let’s look at the important numbers in NY CD-1.

Demographics:

Table I (Source: Ballotpedia, based on 2010 census)

Population	720,071
Gender	49.6% Male, 50.4% Female
Race	87.7% White, 4.6% Black, 3.5% Asian
Ethnicity	12.8% Hispanic
Unemployment	6.60%
Median household income	$83,144

Nearly 20% are minorities (Black, Asian, or Hispanic). Some Hispanics will call themselves “racially” white, but claim hispanic ethnicity.

Lesson: Don’t count on a huge minority vote because of disgust in Trump’s racial bigotry and Zeldin’s backing of Trump.

Party Affiliation:

Source: https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/enrollment/congress/congress_nov12.pdf

Table II

	raw numbers	percentages
Dems	143,917	30.4
Reps	162,212	34.3
Cons	11,806	2.5
Ind	23,215	4.9
Blank	125,516	26.6
Other	5,985	1.3

Total	472,651	100

Assuming equal voter turn out for each party, and assuming that ‘Independants’, ‘Blanks’ and ‘Other’ break out 50/50 for the Dem versus Rep candidate, Dems can not win.

Assuming all Dems vote Dem and all Reps vote Rep, we still need about 30,000 votes from the Ind, Blanks, Other. And perhaps those 30,000 votes could include some from the Rep/Cons group.

Lesson: This has long been the main point of Tim Bishop whenever he speaks: Dems cannot win in CD-1 with out help from those registered in the red, purple or blank parties.

Voter Turnout

Many are quick to claim that we can win with a high Dem turn out. The so called blue wave expected for 2018. But let’s look seriously at the data. It is the data from prior elections. Ofcourse you can claim that in the Trump era nothing from the past applies. But this is all we have got. So lets look at it.

Table III (Source: Ballotpedia )

Column 1 lists the races going back to 2008.

Column 2 tallies the vote numbers for the Dem candidate

Column 3 tallies the vote numbers for the Rep candidate

Column 4 tallies the total votes cast (some voters did not vote for either R or D candidate): notice the much lower numbers for midterm elections in 2010 and 2014.

Column 5 lists the difference between the total votes for D and R candidates: notice the trend from positive numbers (Dem majority) to negative numbers (Rep majority). Our district is becoming more and more red.

Column 6 is the vote percentage of total registered voters that went to the Dem candidate*

Column 7 is the vote percentage of total registered voters that went to the Rep candidate*

* these numbers are calculated as the votes obtained by the Dem (or Rep) candidate per total number of registered voters. 472,651 is the current number of registered voters. This does not equal the turnout within the Dem party or within the Rep party, because f.ex. an undetermined number of U (unaffiliated) would also have voted for either D or R candidate.

Note also the low numbers for the Dems in 2010 and 2014, suggesting that Dem voters did not vote (low turnout) in those years.

I have made some assumptions, see ‘Assumed 2018’, in Table III:

Dem vote numbers and Rep vote numbers might be similar to 2010
Dem turnout conservatively estimated to be similar to 2010 (historically this is a high turnout for a midterm election) – however if a country wide blue wave materializes the turn out could be even better
I assumed a similar turnout of Rep voters to prior midterm elections, for example 2010. BUT this would mean that roughly half of the voters that voted for Trump/Zeldin in 2016 fail to turn out and vote in 2018. That is probably wishful thinking. National polls suggest that Trumps base is holding stead fast with 35-40% of Americans approving Trump’s performance. I would expect that to be true in CD-1 too. See also Marc Rauch’s comment below.
It is clear from these data that LZ needs his Rep. base to turn out in 2018 and this explains his current turn to the far right, his support for Trumps immigration hawks, like Chief of Staff Kelly, and Stephen Miller in the White house, and his position attacking the FBI along with Devon Nunez etc.
Here is another scenario proposed by Marc Rauch: The 2017 off-off-year elections saw a huge turnout (to some extent attributable to the Con/Con) just for a local election in an odd-numbered year. Democrats in Brookhaven Township rolled up impressive numbers (compared to 2015), but Republicans in Brookhaven Township rolled up even more impressive numbers (compared to 2015) and beat them solidly. This shows the Republican machine in Brookhaven Township is alive and well and this is where 63% of CD-1 voters are. So, 2018 may not be a sleepy off-year Congressional election. Republicans will fight tooth and nail and spend huge sums of money (remember why that tax bill had to pass) to keep control of both houses of Congress. Dems hopefully will fight just as hard or harder to grab the House or Senate and hopefully will be reasonably well-funded. An enormous amount of attention will be focused on the November elections nationally, and it will be more like a presidential election year than an off year in terms of turnout. The bottom line is, assume high turnout for both Dems and Reps. The fight will be over who can get most of those in the middle to break their way. If this scenario proves correct, we will need 30,000 crossover votes as described above (see Table II).

Bottom line: this will not be a cakewalk.

predictions – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

COVID-19 disease modelling

The All-important Numbers for NY CD-1