(09-16-2020, 07:17 PM)old spanish trail Wrote: Caputo is unfortunately a bit nuts. But, the final blow is former Stanford Med School guy, and maybe still Hoover Institute guy, who has taken on major advisory roll with Trump, apparently replacing Fauci and Birx. Rachel Maddow put all the threads together and, really, we are being led by a bunch of nuts. You may not like Maddow and I understand. But, here she puts stuff together. On again at 9pm for those of you on left coast.
Watched most of it. Maddow did a good job of explaining the pre-Atlas vs post-Atlas change in state guidance that was leaked. They went from Nebraska being a "yellow" risk at like 24th in country but still being asked to implement a mask mandate, to being a "red" risk at 14th in country but now told not to require masks. She was right to point out that we don't know how long immunity lasts or the rate at which infected people develop immunity. She was also right to point out we don't know the % needed for herd immunity.
However I don't agree with her calculations on eventual deaths for herd immunity. She conflates the infection and case fatality rates in her calcs. You can assume 65% of population need to be infected and immune for herd immunity, but the projected deaths under such a scenario need better numbers for the current # infected. You can't take the current positive tests because that's probably a big undercount, especially with our crappy testing and how some areas won't test asymptomatic. The seroprevalence studies tried to get at this, and it seems like a rule of thumb is take our positive cases and do a 10x (5-20x) for real infections. Factor in not everybody will get immune even if infected or it might wear off. Then factor in improved treatments over time. Finally you add some factor for how shielded the truly vulnerable will be, assuming the infection spread will happen in more socially active people. In the case of a large and vocal anti-mask group, not sure if shielding the vulnerable really even factors in.
But given the above, her estimates seem too high because she's assuming the case fatality rate = infection fatality rate, which isn't true. It's going to be a bad body count to get herd immunity, but probably not her projections of 6 million dead. It'll be bad enough just the same. Atlas shouldn't be even close to a COVID-19 taskforce let alone on one.
