[StevePerkins]

> USA is currently at ~8M infections/recovered

CONFIRMED cases. The total number of cases is probably 5-10x that.

I live in the Deep South, and honestly I suspect that our curves have fallen simply due to a "limited" herd immunity effect (i.e. the groups of people most likely to catch COVID have already done so in large enough numbers). I certainly haven't observed any significant change in behaviors since the July peak, yet the numbers are falling like a rock regardless.

[arrrg]

Deaths are probably more instructive – just to get a ballpark number. If only because deaths are less likely to overlook too many people.

If the IFR is around 1% we would expect around 1,000,000 deaths if one third of Americans have to be infected for herd immunity. So that would suggest the US is 20 percent of the way there.

Given the haphazard way of calculating these numbers I would, however, put huge error bars around some (something like ±15 percentage points at least).

[sfblah]

I agree strongly with this type of analysis. The data we're seeing is strongly skewed by all kinds of biases. Looking at deaths at least removes one big piece of bias.

I too suspect areas are achieving some limited herd immunity. I don't think the behavioral changes adopted in the US have done much. Mostly, I just think less social people aren't getting it. More social people are.

[nradov]

Our best estimate of IFR is closer to 0.6%.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

[cmrdporcupine]

I have a hunch that in reality the south has had flattening curves because the super hot summer weather is over and people are no longer spending most of their days in air conditioned buildings and are spending more time outside.

And the opposite is now happening in the north (again). People come inside as the weather gets colder, and respiratory infections in general get far worse.

[matthewdgreen]

> I certainly haven't observed any significant change in behaviors since the July peak, yet the numbers are falling like a rock regardless.

Picking FL as an example: deaths are down only about 50% since the peak in August (7-day averaged), and the numbers are surprisingly "sticky" (in the sense that they're not going down all that quickly.) For the record, FL lost 139 people yesterday; that's nearly the capacity of a 737.

[orangecat]

For the record, FL lost 139 people yesterday

139 deaths were reported; those deaths actually occurred over the last several months. Which means we won't know how many actually died yesterday for a while, but it's likely well below 139. Jennifer Cabrera posts regular updates with dates of deaths, e.g. https://twitter.com/jhaskinscabrera/status/13139124858340884...

[matthewdgreen]

You make this out like I've picked on some rare outlier day, but the state has had multiple days in the past two weeks with even bigger death numbers. The 7-day average is a pretty substantial 85. If your point is that the drop since August has been more substantial, then I would need to know that the older, higher numbers were not also subject to the same delays.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/peter.james.walker#!/vizh...

[orangecat]

You make this out like I've picked on some rare outlier day

Sorry, I didn't mean to convey that impression. Florida has been regularly reporting daily death counts that include deaths from several months ago.

I would need to know that the older, higher numbers were not also subject to the same delays.

They were, in the other direction. If you look at the date-of-death chart in the thread I linked, you'll see that for a few weeks there were consistently over 200 actual deaths per day, while the reported 7-day average in your chart never reached 200. The delay means that the reported count will be lower than the actual count when deaths are rising, and higher than the actual count when deaths are falling.

And of course we can't be sure which of those categories we're in at any particular point in time; if deaths do start to increase again, it may not be noticeable in the reported numbers for several days. But based on the hospitalization trend I believe it's probable that the current reported numbers overstate the actual deaths.

[HarryHirsch]

We know that coronaplague spreads through superspreading events, person-to-person transmission is wildly variable, most people don't infect anyone, but some give it to a dozen.

You'd like to know if people are wearing masks at church or if family get-togethers are now outdoors.

[StevePerkins]

I think the common perception on HN, Reddit, etc is that COVID spread in the U.S. is primary a matter of conservative people flouting its seriousness. I understand the satisfying appeal of that picture.

However, I'm looking at my local health department's ZIP-code-by-ZIP-code infection map of the metro area. And it seems almost entirely correlated with poverty, not privilege. Infection spread seems mostly due to "essential" workers continuing to work. That's a problematic thing to point out, because I don't think we can or will solve for that. But it's plain as day.

[matthewdgreen]

I think the reason that HN, Reddit et al. have this impression is that state policies in conservative states are explicitly less restrictive than those in less conservative states. Florida just removed all stadium event attendance limits, for example. Within any given state there are all kinds of political beliefs and economic situations that may be more or less correlated with spread, but state governance is a very big variable.

[umanwizard]

Is there any evidence that level of restriction correlates with severity of outbreaks, though?

[matthewdgreen]

I mean, this seems to be the basic understanding of every single epidemiologist and public health expert, and also correlates with everything we know about the physical mechanism of how COVID spreads.

[ars]

To me it seems like a covid infection is inevitable. You can delay it, but if you look at the state-by-state figures: states that successfully delayed for a while eventually got hit, states that got hit did not get additional infections.

I get the idea of flatten the curve but states that already got hit hard don't really have any reason to impose additional restrictions they wouldn't do anything.

[ars]

And yet New York and California, both states with primarily liberal policies, have more cases than anyone else.

It's pretty obvious to people watching that the impression was created by liberal media that just wants to bash conservatives.

A cursory check of the numbers shows that it has no basis in reality.

[aidenn0]

California is roughly the median state in terms of total per capita cases at this point.

Top 5 states:

Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, North Dakota, Alabama

[username90]

California under reports deaths quite a lot though, they are much worse at reporting deaths than average for USA.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru...

[mcguire]

Anecdotally, out here in the rural wilds of Alabama, most people seem to be wearing masks. I recently went into downtown Huntsville and no one was. Poverty and essential workers may be a significant component, but given the behavior of the young and affluent here, I don't think that is all of it.

[HarryHirsch]

Yes, you'd say that the Red areas are on aggregate older, poorer and less likely to work from home.

That said, at my regional college in the Deep South, case numbers have dropped noticeably since the beginning of term - instead of 30 cases every day we have now ten, and there have been remarkably few outbreaks at frathouses, all that despite no organized testing.

[sarchertech]

Conservative people are much more likely to live in rural areas. Liberals in more urban areas. Viruses spread much more effectively in higher population densities.

So you'd really need to look at per capita infection rates and control for density, not absolute numbers.

For some anecdata, in my moderate county we have a mask mandate. The surrounding less populated and much more conservative areas don't. Since the mask mandate was put in place more than half of the cases in my county's hospitals have been from the surrounding counties. Despite that fact that they have an order of magnitude fewer people, and despite that fact that we have far more people living in poverty in absolute terms than they do.