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Medicine United States

Coronavirus Cases Now Reported In All 50 States 270

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The coronavirus has now been identified in all 50 U.S. states, and more than 100 deaths in the country have been linked to the illness. Those known deaths, all from the past three weeks, come as the number of diagnoses has surged into the thousands as the virus has spread and as testing has expanded significantly. On Tuesday evening, West Virginia became the 50th state to report its first case.

As of Tuesday evening, at least 5,587 people across every state, plus Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories, have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a New York Times database, and at least 101 patients with the virus have died. Several hundred new cases are now being identified each day, including about 700 on both Saturday and Sunday and nearly 900 on Monday. The pace of diagnosis is expected to quicken as the virus spreads and testing becomes more widely available. More state and private labs have started running tests for the coronavirus in recent days, increasing the capacity to identify new patients after weeks of delays and test kit shortages.
For comparison, a total of 70 cases were reported in the U.S. at the start of the month.

"Since then, new cases have poured in, including more than 200 announced on Monday in New York State alone," the report adds. "More than 2,200 cases have been announced nationwide since Friday morning, and the virus is now spreading in parts of the country where it had not been identified as recently as a week ago."
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Coronavirus Cases Now Reported In All 50 States

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  • Everything is progressing as expected then.

    • Useful advice? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @01:19AM (#59843250)

      One of the odd ironies here is that were taking some extreme measures now because we'll be able to stop it if we all chip in.

      But at the moment the actual risk is absurdly low. Averaged over the US there's about 20 infections per 1 million people. Now the real number is at least 10x larger but probably not 100x larger. So it's still absurdly low.

      Thus the risk--- right now-- to any one person is very small. And even if you meet or share a doorknob with 1000 people in the next week, and one of them has it, you are not assuredly catching it from that meeting.

      So were really doing this lock down thing now to save ourselves from something much worse later. And it's obviously a drastic response in terms of national effort.

      Thus there is a tendency to think "drastic" === Immediate danger. And that's exactly the opposite of true. There's more chance of getting killed by a car or a homocide.

      So don't panic man but also do the self-quarantine thing if you possibly can. We all need to do this. And most of all explain this, you tech nerd, to the people who are panicing.

      • Re:Useful advice? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:49AM (#59843392)

        In Italy (you know, the current center of disease) there's a 500 per million infection rate. Still absurdly low, no?

        We're not talking the bubonic plague here. The reason why this is such a big deal is to keep the infection rate low enough that the medical system can handle the cases, because if life continued as normal, infection rates would reach about 1% (that's 10,000 per million). Still no real reason that life as we know it would cease (like with the aforementioned plague where infection rates were around 50-80% in the areas where it hit), but that would overload our hospitals and then you're guaranteed to deal with a panic on top of the infections.

        • Re:Useful advice? (Score:5, Informative)

          by makomk ( 752139 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @06:27AM (#59843708) Journal

          No, in Italy there's a 500 per million rate of confirmed cases, which is not the same thing at all. The number of infections is higher because despite the impression you might get from the press, Italy can't test everyone (and the test doesn't detect every infection anyway). They cases are also concentrated heavily in specific regions, helping to overwhelm the medical system.

      • by rastos1 ( 601318 )
        repeating [slashdot.org]
      • by kubajz ( 964091 )
        In Italy, the average number of people killed in a car accident is 10/day. Coronavirus deaths is currently 350/day.
        • Coronavirus deaths is currently 350/day.
          Unlikely, total death are 2503 today, that is about 10/day over the last 20 days, of course with increasing amount of infections the current rate is higher than in the beginning, but 35 sounds not plausible (yet).

      • One of the odd ironies here is that were taking some extreme measures now because we'll be able to stop it if we all chip in.

        No, you won't.

        The cat is out of the bag. The horse has bolted.

        Think: All this came from one single person. That's all it takes, one person with this virus can (re)infect the entire world.

        • Think: All this came from one single person. That's all it takes, one person with this virus can (re)infect the entire world.

          Has that been confirmed? I've read that it's possible that people might not develop immunity, but what is the number of actual confirmed cases of reinfection? How many people have been confirmed as completely recovered and then contracted it again?

          The reason people don't develop immunity to the common cold is that the common cold is not one single virus, it's a large family of related viruses. My understanding is that sars-cov-2, the virus that causes covid19, is a single virus. Is there reason to believe t

          • by jbengt ( 874751 )

            My understanding is that sars-cov-2, the virus that causes covid19, is a single virus. Is there reason to believe that there are a large number of different viruses that all will cause covid19?

            I read a while back that this corona virus accumulates about 1 mutation per couple of transmissions, on average. In the future a different strain might spread every year or so, like the flu, in which case we'd never gain permanent full immunity from the new strains. Whether those strains would still have the same

      • by Sique ( 173459 )
        We have here a case where the individual risk is low, but the collective risk is high. In absolute numbers, there will be a huge death toll, if we take Italy as example (more than 2000 dead so far). And while a normal flu season in Italy causes about 5000 people to die, the numbers of newly discovered corona infections is still on the rise in Italy, thus in the end, the numbers might be far higher. And in the U.S., yesterday more doubled the number of known Covid-19 cases to about 3500 proven infections.

        A

      • by RobinH ( 124750 )
        You are correct. Psychologically this is almost a worst possible case for the average human to understand. Pick any small-ish percentage... let's say 5% need hospitalization and 2% mortality. With numbers like that, most people shouldn't worry too much about it for themselves, but the reason we're doing all this is because if you take 5% of a really big number, like hundreds of millions of people, it's still a really big number when you try to put them all in a hospital for a week. I've noticed a lot of
      • by Minupla ( 62455 )

        Unless the sucker mutates like the 1918 flu did and increase its mortality rate.

      • Re:Useful advice? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @10:35AM (#59844448) Homepage Journal

        The problem with this crisis is that people no longer seem to have any middle ground in their brain between "threat of extinction" and "fake news". This is something that the US has not faced since WW2 -- a crisis that needs people to pull together and sacrifice, just a little bit, for the good of the whole country. Even in 9/11 what our country asked of most of us is to keep shopping.

        Our pulling-together muscles have atrophied. We're like a middle-aged office worker plucked from his cubicle and asked to compete in a high school track meet. In the grand scale of things it's not so much, but it's far more than we're used to doing.

    • "Everything is progressing as expected then."

      Indeed. Millennials call it the 'Boomer Remover'.

  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @10:43PM (#59843008)

    ...and the virus is now spreading in parts of the country where it had not been identified as recently as a week ago.

    It’s not there if we’re not testing for it. Taps head

  • by khchung ( 462899 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @10:53PM (#59843032) Journal

    https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

    6509 cases on 16 March, 541 cases on 8 March, and 68 cases on 28 Feb.

    Roughly growing by a factor of 10 every 8 days. This was known and was predicted in late-Feb/early-March from looking at China's numbers.

    Yeah, yeah, don't nobody believe China's numbers, and countries are now paying for it. Next week, it will be over 50,000.

    • Fear of the unknown (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @10:58PM (#59843036) Homepage Journal

      Thirty of the 109 deaths are associated with the Kirkland, WA senior center. Since we know that the virus preferentially targets older people, those initial reports may have skewed the mortality rate.

      If we consider the Kirlkand deaths to be an outlier; ie - not representative of the trend, then 79 deaths in 5587 cases is about 1.4% mortality - about half the rate initially predicted.

      Looking at the charts on this site [worldometers.info], infection rates appear to be exponential, as expected. The numbers seem to quadrouple every 6 days, which is right in the middle of earlier estimates of doubling every 4 days (quadrouple every 8 days) or quadrouple every 4 days. This puts the R value at between 2 and 4, meaning that one infected person infects between 2 and 4 others.

      Extrapolating the aforementioned charts to cover the US will take around 14 quadrouplings at 6 days each, for a total of 84 days: 75% of the population will get it in the final quadroupling, and 94% will get it in the final two quadrouplings.

      This only extrapolates the known cases. If there is a significant number of undiagnosed cases, then fewer quadrouplings will be needed to blanket the US. For example, if 100,000 people have the virus right now then it will take 10 quadrouplings at 6 days each, or 60 days.

      I list these numbers not to panic people, but to circumscribe the issue and tack down the worst case scenarios. H.P. Lovecraft pointed out that the biggest fear is fear of the unknown - and now the boundaries and expected outcomes of the virus are no longer unknown. If you need to make plans, this is what you should plan for.

      And also, to let hope out of the box: some estimates imply that the fatality rate may be much lower, and there are indications that Chloroquine - a malaria drug with abundant history of safe human use - may be an effective treatment.

      • Thirty of the 109 deaths are associated with the Kirkland, WA senior center. Since we know that the virus preferentially targets older people, those initial reports may have skewed the mortality rate.

        In other words, as soon as the virus hit Florida in force, the US take over the top spot from Italy.

        • Thirty of the 109 deaths are associated with the Kirkland, WA senior center. Since we know that the virus preferentially targets older people, those initial reports may have skewed the mortality rate.

          In other words, as soon as the virus hit Florida in force, the US take over the top spot from Italy.

          Exactly. Florida (where I live) has the largest proportion (%) of older people of any state in the nation. If we get hit hard, it won't be pretty. Yet, Trump was having a lead over Biden in yesterday's polls. Yep, the guy who was calling this a hoax as recently as March 9 (the tweet is still there.)

          And don't tell me I'm bringing politics. This disaster of a sorry excuse of an insufficient government response toward this crisis is political in origin. People will die because of it. https://twitter.com/rea [twitter.com]

      • Does anyone have any spreadsheets or so just to play with for extrapolation?

        I've built one, but doesn't match "for a total of 84 days". My static x4 numbers each 6 days zoom way past US total population before that (11 cycles in 66 days, at 100 days I've killed off everybody on Earth even using a 1.4% death rate.) and I can't figure out how to get it to decay. Also, at say 5% and above I'm still seem to be "infecting" the ones that already have it. At 50%, you can't really say that the next cycle will
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • On what day does it reach 1-billion Americans? Maybe the system has some kind of limit to its growth.
      • Maybe the system has some kind of limit to its growth.

        On present knowledge, it will stop once all smokers and males over 55 are dead.

        Until then, it relies on people minimizing their risk or catching it and spreading it, so that people who are exposed are not exposed very much.

        The risk of death is much lower if you are exposed to a low amount of virus, because your body can develop an adequate immune response before being overwhelmed - it takes time to develop. The immune system reacting too late does no

    • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      Yeah, yeah, don't nobody believe China's numbers, and countries are now paying for it. Next week, it will be over 50,000.

      China's seeing a surge in new cases from other regions of the country. My guess is that their desire to 'push' people to work regardless of health is about to bite them in the ass.

  • Yeah, not entirely (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @10:58PM (#59843040)

    Not all of them are "new cases," there are more test results. It's not a question of semantics, but rather understanding that there is going to.be a large spike of so called new cases because testing is ramping up. Not necessarily that a bunch of people suddenly caught the virus. I.e. there are many, if not a majority, of people wandering around and not knowing they're making other people sick. I can't help wonder how many caught it in the crowd at the supermarket panic this last weekend

    The only way this virus is going to be beat is to test a huge.number of people like South Korea did. Otherwise we become like "bring out your dead" Italy.

    It also may not be a bad idea to make friends with that nutty prepper and hunker with him for a few months in his bunker.

    • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @11:09PM (#59843068)
      The evidence out of Italy shows that if your hospitals get overwhelmed and no medical care is available, the fatality rate starts to soar past 10 or even 15%. Many of those cases just need a bit of oxygen, or some basic medicine, but without that it’s fatal.
      • With 20% growth, we should hit 100k cases in a month. 100k is also the number of hospital beds in our country through obviously most of them are already occupied and only a fraction are able to supply oxygen, etc.

        • With 20% growth, we should hit 100k cases in a month.

          We have been on a consistent growth rate of 32% since March 1. Redo your numbers.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:37AM (#59843366)

        The evidence out of Italy shows that if your hospitals get overwhelmed and no medical care is available, the fatality rate starts to soar past 10 or even 15%. Many of those cases just need a bit of oxygen, or some basic medicine, but without that it’s fatal.

        Please remember that is the rate among people with symptoms bad enough to require hospitalization. It is not the general fatality rate. Still, if the medical system gets overwhelmed, there will be a lot of additional deaths, that is correct. And that is the point of all the measures to slow down infection: Keep the ramp-up slower and significantly decrease the peak. That unfortunately means the problem will be with us longer as well, but fundamental humanitarian principles require that we accept that.

        • The hospitalization rate seems to be around 13-18% or so. If these people get the very best treatments, medicine, and care, the majority of these people live. With zero care the fatality rate of this group approaches 100%.
  • For comparison, a total of 70 cases were reported in the U.S. at the start of the month.

    There's a reason it's grown that quickly. Because it's really exponential growth as opposed to what most people think when they say exponential growth which is pretty much nothing more than "Faster than linear". (Which includes N^2 which is definitely not exponential and definitely slower but for some reason people confuse it with exponential.)

    • This would be an insightful comment if the dictionary didn't disagree with you.
    • Just look at the beauty of the curve on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Every time it updates it look exactly the same, just with more data points and a different scale.

      • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Just look at the beauty of the curve on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Every time it updates it look exactly the same, just with more data points and a different scale.

        I think that is called Scale Indifference IIRC, I've heard the terms used to describe geological features. I tried to find a wiki or other entry to describe it in more detail but essentially the same feature looks the same at any scale, for example the ripple feature of sand dunes looks the same at 10cm, 1 metre, 10 meters, 100 metres and so on.

        There are three curves in the graph you linked to, cases, recoveries and, deaths. Perhaps "scale indifference" is represented in those three curves?

        As for the

  • Nationally that is an infection rate of 0.00067%

    The infection rate in China is declining and peaked at 0.0058%, about 8.5x higher.

    • And that's with drastic measures.

      Keep in mind, our limited testing likely puts our actual case numbers at around 20x what we see now. And doubling every 2.5 days. It doesn't take that many more doublings to hit single and double-digit percentages of the US.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      We will see whether the rest of the world can match that. While there are a lot of things screwed up about China, getting it to decline at that point is a pretty impressive accomplishment.

    • How impatient of you. Give it time, you're only at the beginning, a virus takes time to spread.

    • Your number is going to grow...
  • by technosaurus ( 1704630 ) on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @02:41AM (#59843376)
    I wonder how many traffic and workplace related deaths have been prevented.
    What if only the vulnerable were quarantined - flatten that curve, inoculate the rest if willing, wait a few weeks and rely on herd immunity.
  • Does anyone know of a source of raw data rather than infographics and excerpts?

    I'd be very interested in getting time series data, i.e. CSV or similar format with time stamps and some sort of geotagging.

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