Octopus Overlords

RunningMn9 wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:19 pm
From other data we've seen here in the thread, O appears to be about 25% "less severe" than D. So if we randomly select a hospitalization rate of D as 2%, than we would expect the hospitalization rate of O to be around 1.5%?

Let's accept this for the moment, which references a study that concluded that O is 4.2 times as transmissible as D.

Let's say 1M people get delta, and 2% of them get hospitalized. That's 20k people into hospitals. Now imagine 4.2M people get omicron. That's 63k people into hospitals. With that kind of transmission, I would think that the omicron would have to be something like 75% less chance of hospitalization, right?

BREAKING: U.S. reports 400,000 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record, with some states yet to report

NEW: 7-day average of daily coronavirus cases in the U.S. reaches 300,000, the highest since the pandemic began

Florida reports 46,923 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record, amid a rise in hospitalizations

Isgrimnur wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 9:56 pm I'm just wondering if we hit 1M by July or by April.

BREAKING: U.S. reports 484,377 new coronavirus cases, setting world record

I like how they anchored the y axis really close to the line to make people feel like 2000 deaths per day is low.

LordMortis wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:49 amThe stock market is the 2nd best ever, so it's all good.

malchior wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:58 am more wealth is just being extracted and sent to very few people. And they don't care about your COVID.

LordMortis wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:12 am

malchior wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:58 am more wealth is just being extracted and sent to very few people. And they don't care about your COVID.

There was an interesting thunk by Rick Santoli(?). The market is in no small part being fueled by stock buy backs rather than companies taking down debt, growing, profit sharing, or paying dividends. These buy backs are then not decreasing dilution but rather are being held as option incentives to the highest level executives, which give credence to your thunk.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:34 pm 28K new cases in NJ today and not a peep from our governor. He's allegedly coming back from Costa Rica today so maybe later this evening? I'm sure he's busy.

Meanwhile, there are like ~7 major municipalities that have passed indoor masking requirements because state leadership is useless. Still seems like they're going to be full-steam ahead on school resuming next week too, which is insane.

malchior wrote:I mean it doesn't even need that level of thought. The vast majority of stocks are owned by the top 10%. The top 1% own 38% alone. Corporate profit margin on US GDP is something north of 30% now. Those Corporate profits even if not used for buybacks, for example just retained profits for reinvestment or capital purchases, would be stores of wealth. Beyond buy backs we have PE buying/consolidating entire industries, driving efficiencies, and laying off staff to raise that profit margin even further. Then those profits are constantly being extracted and captured by that tiny sliver of the population. They've set up a nice little wealth inequality engine, amirite?! And I think it is impossible to argue they don't have outsized if not overwhelming influence over every policy decision in this country. And again they don't care about your (royal you) COVID concerns.

El Guapo wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:37 pm Are schools going remote in Europe / Canada / elsewhere?

The current omicron surge represents one of the greatest public health challenges not only of the pandemic but also of our lifetime. To deal with the surge over the next six to eight weeks, policymakers need to plan for the impact of what could be 1 million cases a day of new infections in the United States.

Such planning involves being realistic about the effectiveness of vaccination at this point; taking immediate steps to improve public health messaging, data collection and the availability of drug therapies; and doing whatever is possible to ameliorate the potentially devastating consequences for our health-care system.

...

Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, we must brace for the possible catastrophic impact of the omicron surge on the U.S. health system. The weakest link is not the number of hospital beds but the availability of highly trained workers. Approximately 9.8 million doctors, nurses and high-level medical technicians are employed throughout the country. It is possible that 10 or even 20 percent of health-care workers could be infected by omicron in the next eight weeks, as has been reported in South Africa.

Losing that many health-care workers from a system already severely strained by staff shortages would be an enormous challenge. Even with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowing shorter isolation and quarantine periods to help mitigate risk, covid-related absences won’t be addressed by providing hospitals with a thousand more Defense Department health-care workers. Omicron has already caused wide-scale disruptions across the airline industry, in sports leagues and among essential workers. State and local officials must put in place crisis-management plans to account for a 20 percent reduction in the health-care workforces.

noxiousdog wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:39 pm

malchior wrote:I mean it doesn't even need that level of thought. The vast majority of stocks are owned by the top 10%. The top 1% own 38% alone. Corporate profit margin on US GDP is something north of 30% now. Those Corporate profits even if not used for buybacks, for example just retained profits for reinvestment or capital purchases, would be stores of wealth. Beyond buy backs we have PE buying/consolidating entire industries, driving efficiencies, and laying off staff to raise that profit margin even further. Then those profits are constantly being extracted and captured by that tiny sliver of the population. They've set up a nice little wealth inequality engine, amirite?! And I think it is impossible to argue they don't have outsized if not overwhelming influence over every policy decision in this country. And again they don't care about your (royal you) COVID concerns.

While your general point is correct, your numbers ignore stocks owned in pension funds or any other kind of joint ownership.

Estimates vary, of course, but estimates are as high as 40% of public stock is in pensions/IRAs/etc. And while certainly, the richer you are, the more likely you have a 401(k)/IRA, it's not as concentrated as you're listing and there are plenty of teachers/firefighter/etc pensions involved. I'd bet 401(k) participation on this board is far greater than the top 10% (158,002k/person/year [not household]) participation.

El Guapo wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:17 pm So basically if they can't make it through without cases or remote learning, then no one can (at least not without major consequences).

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:21 pm

El Guapo wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:17 pm So basically if they can't make it through without cases or remote learning, then no one can (at least not without major consequences).

As has been the case since this all started, schools can be made relatively safe. Lunch is the danger time but with creative planning and a will to keep students safe, it's possible to mitigate risk.

The problem isn't so much in the schools but what's going on outside of school. So I'm confident there's going to be a significant number of kids that are positive on that rapid test and now you have 20%? 30% 40%? of them at home. Plus whatever teachers are positive from winter break. At what point does it make more sense for the school to just be fully remote for ~2 weeks?

The "weak links" in the schools opening are going to be teachers, administrative staff and of course the bus drivers and cafeteria workers, not the kids. I'm convinced my own school district would keep the doors open if only 10% of the kids were able to attend at this point. But if too many teachers are sick enough that they can't teach? Trouble.

malchior wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:18 pmSure they could number in the bottom 90% that have a whopping 16% of overall equities. 84% lines up with vast majority in my estimation.

noxiousdog wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:57 pm

malchior wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:18 pmSure they could number in the bottom 90% that have a whopping 16% of overall equities. 84% lines up with vast majority in my estimation.

Your article is paywalled, but I think I can illustrate the napkin math.

Noxious Dog wrote:I just don't think your numbers can possibly include pensions etc. If retirement accounts hold say 20% (half of my original number), and CALPERS is the biggest of those, there's a bigger distribution than you think there is. Another example is the Teacher Retirement System of Texas which is the 6th largest Public pension fund. That's not the top 10%.

An analysis of this data shows that in 2019, the top 1 percent of Americans in wealth controlled about 38 percent of the value of financial accounts holding stocks. Widen the focus to include the top 10 percent, and you’ve found 84 percent of all of Wall Street portfolios’ value.

Using the broadest definition of Wall Street involvement, which includes everything from workplace 401(k)s to personal IRAs, mutual funds and pension holdings, just over half of American families have at least one financial account tied to the market, while just one in six report direct ownership of stock shares.

Again, I'm only doing a clarification quibble. Obviously wealth is concentrated, but it's spread out wider than you made it out to be at the beginning.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:04 pm I'm sure in his town they're not even talking about it. But my town? Nah, it's not a problem. Don't look at the numbers or listen to the news. It's just a cold.

In other news, when Dr. Osterholm talks, you listen:

The current omicron surge represents one of the greatest public health challenges not only of the pandemic but also of our lifetime. To deal with the surge over the next six to eight weeks, policymakers need to plan for the impact of what could be 1 million cases a day of new infections in the United States.

Such planning involves being realistic about the effectiveness of vaccination at this point; taking immediate steps to improve public health messaging, data collection and the availability of drug therapies; and doing whatever is possible to ameliorate the potentially devastating consequences for our health-care system.

...

Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, we must brace for the possible catastrophic impact of the omicron surge on the U.S. health system. The weakest link is not the number of hospital beds but the availability of highly trained workers. Approximately 9.8 million doctors, nurses and high-level medical technicians are employed throughout the country. It is possible that 10 or even 20 percent of health-care workers could be infected by omicron in the next eight weeks, as has been reported in South Africa.

Losing that many health-care workers from a system already severely strained by staff shortages would be an enormous challenge. Even with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowing shorter isolation and quarantine periods to help mitigate risk, covid-related absences won’t be addressed by providing hospitals with a thousand more Defense Department health-care workers. Omicron has already caused wide-scale disruptions across the airline industry, in sports leagues and among essential workers. State and local officials must put in place crisis-management plans to account for a 20 percent reduction in the health-care workforces.

As COVID-19 hospitalizations rise 10% a day in New Jersey, the state's largest hospital system says it is a (short) matter of time until 2020's grim record is broken.

"If you look at what the (health) commissioner and governor are positing relative to their COVID models, sometime in the middle of January we’re likely to see the same level of hospitalization we were seeing back in March, April of 2020," Dr. Daniel Varga, the chief physician executive of Hackensack Meridian Health, told News 4.

HMH has 17 hospitals statewide and thousands of beds, but as more patients come in -- and more staffers get sick too -- the pressure on the system will rise.

"We’re already teeing up our process for how we will manage when we have to go to crisis standards of care, because I just think it's going to get there," Varga said.

Alefroth wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 5:32 pm DeSantis has been oddly quiet. No public appearances in two weeks.

(1) NJ @ 87%
(2) DC @ 68%
(3) PA @63%

Positivity Rate (or Percent Positive) is a useful measure of how much COVID-19 is spreading in a community. Positivity rate tells us the percent of COVID-19 tests that come back as positive out of all the tests that were taken in that time period. Positivity rate does not tell us how many people in the
community are, or have been, sick with COVID-19, case rates or case numbers are a better reflection of that. Positivity rate may change depending on the number of people tested. If the same number or an increasing number of people are tested, we are even more confident that an increase in positivity rate is concerning. We are also often asked the difference between a case and a positive test result. Each time a test is performed, it becomes part of the calculation of positivity rate for that day. However, positive cases represent individual people, and are only counted once, regardless of how many
positive tests are run.

(1) NJ @ 87%
(2) DC @ 68%
(3) PA @63%

Positivity Rate (or Percent Positive) is a useful measure of how much COVID-19 is spreading in a community. Positivity rate tells us the percent of COVID-19 tests that come back as positive out of all the tests that were taken in that time period. Positivity rate does not tell us how many people in the community are, or have been, sick with COVID-19, case rates or case numbers are a better reflection of that. Positivity rate may change depending on the number of people tested. If the same number or an increasing number of people are tested, we are even more confident that an increase in positivity rate is concerning. We are also often asked the difference between a case and a positive test result. Each time a test is performed, it becomes part of the calculation of positivity rate for that day. However, positive cases represent individual people, and are only counted once, regardless of how many positive tests are run.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 8:29 pm Always nice to see NJ as #1 in the nation...with % positive tests via Johns Hopkins or here.

(1) NJ @ 87%
(2) DC @ 68%
(3) PA @63%

Good grief.

As a reminder:

Positivity Rate (or Percent Positive) is a useful measure of how much COVID-19 is spreading in a community. Positivity rate tells us the percent of COVID-19 tests that come back as positive out of all the tests that were taken in that time period. Positivity rate does not tell us how many people in the community are, or have been, sick with COVID-19, case rates or case numbers are a better reflection of that. Positivity rate may change depending on the number of people tested. If the same number or an increasing number of people are tested, we are even more confident that an increase in positivity rate is concerning. We are also often asked the difference between a case and a positive test result. Each time a test is performed, it becomes part of the calculation of positivity rate for that day. However, positive cases represent individual people, and are only counted once, regardless of how many positive tests are run.

We are testing more people now than ever before, so yeah. Trouble.

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 9:08 pm Oh, for sure. The latest I'm seeing on social media is people being shamed and called stupid for going to get tested. "It's just a cold. Do you go and get tested when you have the sniffles?"

I don't think we're going to make it much longer. Americans....humans. Take your pick. This was a test and we failed. Hard.

EDIT: Also, the preliminary numbers for today's total new cases in America is over 600K. Can't wait to see what the final number is.