Highly recommend this week's Radio Open Source interview with Laurie Garrett who is an eloquent expert on the pandemic. I had heard her interviewed elsewhere, this time she gets all 50 minutes, and she's brilliant, deeply informed and passionate. #
This is great. Stanford University is setting up a network of Americans around the country to track their symptoms and exposure to people with CV. When NakedJen traveled through Seoul on her way home, she had to install a mobile app to keep a diary of her symptoms, if any. This is how they do containment, and it's great to see a similar system starting in the US, from a credible institution like Stanford. We're on the road now. Every American reader of this blog should sign up for daily reminders, and do it. If I could make it a requirement, I would. America being smart. #I am old enough to remember what was left after polio. Not old enough to have gotten it myself, the vaccine already existed when I was born. But there were kids in my school that had been crippled by it.#
I'm okay with people going to church as long as we can lock the doors after they're all inside. They should not be allowed to re-enter society after being so reckless with their own health. On FB they're saying they should stay inside for 14 days and those without symptoms be allowed to leave. I am reminded of the famous New Yorker cartoon. I think "never" is a better time to let them out.#
- Here's what Enoch Choi said about the Stanford project.#
- How would you like to help to predict where the next hotspots are for the Coronavirus?#
- Stanford Medicine would like people to take a national survey. It is anonymous in aggregate so they can predict areas that will be most impacted based on how you are feeling. This data can help redirect medical resources and give public guidance.#
- Think about it. Most of us, if exposed, may develop a mild case and stay home to recover. We may not be able to be tested because we are not sick enough. There aren't enough tests available either. That data point is considered "under the radar" and is not reported in the daily numbers we hear on the news.#
- But if we knew how people felt, self-reporting symptoms, we could get a jump on it.#
- Given the 9-10 day delay between onset of symptoms and hospitalization, and the 20% hospitalization rate of patients, this type of survey tool can help fight the Coronavirus.#
- Please consider taking this survey to help end this pandemic quickly. You can opt out at any time.#
- Yesterday, I asked a somewhat nuanced question, basically why does the virus travel in waves across the United States? Why is it not distributed uniformly across the country? #
- A retired bioresearcher sent via email a non-mathematical explanation that makes sense to me. Note he talks about places where Asians are in the US, it's a bit delicate, but since the virus originated in China, and I'm trying to understand why it's not everywhere, it is factually relevant.#
- Here's the story:#
- My degree is not in mathematics but after forty years in bioresearch I hope I know how to think logically. #
- People do move freely about the US, but it isn’t random movement. There are also nuances in genetic, endemic disease, age distribution demographics, health care infrastructure.#
- Travelers congregate at airports, on cruise ships, and mingle at tourist destinations. There have been numerous maps published that show how spread of the virus aligns with popular travel routes and political alignments. Winter holiday travel turned out to be a particularly bad idea last year.#
- Our index case was already symptomatic when he left Wuhan and came home to Seattle in mid-January. New York didn’t see their first case until March (via Iran). Both are coastal cities with seaports, major airports, universities, and diverse populations, but NYC is half the size of Seattle and has about nine times as many people. New Yorkers literally can’t get away from each other.#
- Chinese Americans are not homogeneously distributed across the US, and they tend to live, work, and travel in aggregates. NYC and Seattle demographics show about the same proportions of Asians, but NYC’s are jammed more tightly together and an airborne contagion would hit more people, more quickly there. #
- California's significant Asian population is clustered in Santa Clara County, by far the hardest hit by the virus. The state has been under shelter-in-place orders since mid-March. #
- Philadelphia has a tiny Asian population and they’re all in one district. Philly also has a very large and well-equipped hospital in Center City; they’re prepared.#
- Drilling down into the data in my area, West Virginia was late to the party imo because the folks who choose to live there like their solitude in the woods, and they don’t travel much. This held back the spread in the western parts of adjacent states (Maryland and Pennsylvania) where the first cases weren’t seen intil mid-March. None of these areas have significant Asian populations.The two Maryland counties with large Asian populations recorded their first cases a month earlier.#
- The wave thing is - once the virus is in the door, one way or another it’s gonna find you - it’ll getcha getcha getcha - unless it can’t, of course."#
- If you have additional info re this piece, please post here. #