Covid-19 thoughts, at least for this day in May.

Preliminaries: For friends and family, and those willing to trust. Or maybe just suspend disbelief. So, general only by accident, because this site, my only space on the web, exists behind a pen name. Such is life.

Oh, and if my boss ever stumbles across this: we'll call it community outreach, and I'll leave our job out of it.

Throat clearing done. Ok, as you'd expect, and as at least a few of you probably are doing as well, I've been hip deep in the data coming from Covid-19 for the past few months. We're all still in the 6 month to a year period where we're learning the fundamentals, but the epidemiologic progression now seems fairly well established, enough for standard analytics to be in agreement and replicable across a variety of models. The curve fitters and smarter-than-thous are out and about, so the noise for useful numerical results is going to be loud from now on, at least in the usual quarters. Cosma Shalizi provides a good place to check both sides of the analytic mind when digging through the details.

Johns Hopkins maps/dashboards have been a good daily picture; Johns Hopkins git repository are go-to for consistent, updated, well-formatted data files.

What do we see? Roughly, the early stages of endemic onset, at the global level and the big regional levels, U.S. most definitely included. A daily growth rate that has been consistent, growing slightly, and controlled now, rather than contained. An R number of just more than 1 globally, just below 1 for the U.S. in the immediate recent past, with the caveat at the U.S. level that the recent abatement for New York and neighbors is dominating that result. Other regions in the U.S. are still growing in case loads.

Our region, R is still just above 1; the governor of my state is proceeding apace with relaxation, and the results are clear: new case rates are growing, active case loads are growing, death rates are growing. This decision appears to have been based on cherry-picking, with a few days of R below 1 convincing them to go ahead with relaxation of the lockdown. And, now that the case loads have increased, our state doesn't seem interested in slowing their roll in the face of the developing warning signs.

Vaccines? I keep up with Derek Lowe for reported details on the nuts and bolts. Broadly, vaccines in trials now are those that were on the shelf. Meaning, those were the vaccines various silverbacks have been pushing for the past few years, and are pushing now because the spotlight has come shining. Actual vaccines targetted at this specific vaccine will, at best, enter trials this fall. There are exceptions, of course, but we're way early here.

Where are we headed? Regional outbreaks throughout the summer in the U.S., and likely globally. No real fall in total caseloads, and a steady state of active cases, which will make a general fall/winter breakout very much in play.

Vaccines: fastest previous de novo vaccine development was 5 years. Current vaccines in trials are showing the usual combination of "ok, we didn't kill anyone immediately" and "huh, so no real effect?" for off the shelf combinations. If we get lucky? Two years. Which would be fantastic by previous standards. Unfortunately, I have to suspect that, given the numbers of vaccines in play, and the political pressures involved, at least one of the vaccine candidates is going to hit Phase 3 trials, or be shoved to general use, with skipped steps, and the horrific consequences that go along with it. The word Thalidomide doesn't show up as often (at all) as I would expect given the pressures evident to speed things along.

The song is the same: I compare U.S. response against the 1918-1919 flu epidemic, and find a broadly similar overall response. Which can be depressing, it indicates the decades of public health improvements have regressed. However, it also pulls me back when I start to blame particular actors for a given behavior. The setup and broad populace do not appear to allow for any more sophisticated response than we're seeing.

That said: the governor of my state made decisions to phase out of lockdown in concert with the administrators of our medical center. I suspect they're the ones cherry picking the data that put rosy glasses on the thing. I won't use the language I would need; at least one of the hospital presidents admitted on camera that they pushed this because they were at less than 50% bed capacity.

Meaning, the hospital administration suits are engaging in a state-wide experiment to determine how to maximize the number of beds they can fill while minimizing the spread rate which will result. In nominal terms, they were reporting losses and putting staff on furlough. So when the governor asked their opinions, Cthulu wept with joy, for corruption spreads as desired. If you want a demonstration proof of one of the reasons I left that world, I can provide no better.

We're in some variation of the current conditions for something like 3 or 4 years, and much of that will be voluntary in the face of desparate pleas to go back to normal. Face mask use in my area is spotty already, and I suspect that confrontations over this are going to ramp up, especially as the steady death toll continues to build.

Now you know, as well, why I've kept my mouth shut. And I know the real experts have been doing similarly. Normally, pessimism and cynicism are to be avoided; for the next few years, they appear to be very much necessary. At least for the brief time needed to calculate the risks and likelihoods.