It is gradually dawning on me that living under coronavirus is a lot like living in the Soviet Union, circa 1955. I can't get butter or margerine. I can't get toilet paper or paper towels. I can't get most cleaning supplies. I had trouble getting treats for my cat (but finally found them). Soon I may not be able to get meat or fresh veggies.

And unlike in the USSR in the old days, I can't even trudge around town with a cloth bag looking for what I need because (a) they won't let me in stores with a cloth bag and (b) it's dangerous shopping in person.

Welcome to America 2020. I wonder if they have any of the stuff I can't get in Caracas.

Yes, they didn't do the statistical analysis properly and have provided enough information to make it that obvious.

Their raw result is 50 out of 3330 tests positive (1.5%). However, they find that 2/401 of known-negative samples (combining their very limited testing and the manufacturer's) are false positives. While this point estimate is 0.5 percent, the 90-percent confidence interval on the false positive rate (using Jeffrey's interval, using Clopper-Pearson would produce a wider range due to its overcoverage) is 0.1 percent to 1.6 percent. In other words, their result is consistent with all tests being false positives yet their confidence intervals don't touch 0, so something is clearly off in their statistical reasoning. This is before considering their potentially-biased sample and questionable demogrpahic reweighting of the data. Oh and two of the authors had previously suggested everything was overblown.

I'm far from the only one to point this out. Look at https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.e...us-prevalence/ for example. edit: I suppose not everybody reads that blog. The author of the post is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Gelman

Anyway, I suppose it's possible that the IFR in NYC is 10 times higher than in California. But I doubt it.

I don't think we'll know the true picture until it's over and we can do these analyses in restrospect. For one thing, I suspect there'll be a lot of revisions about who died of the virus and who died of other things.

And I have never argued coronavirus is not a serious thing, much worse than the flu or the other things its been compared with.

By the way, comparing New York to CA, they apparently ARE different strains of the virus. I heard it said today--I think it was by Dr. Gottlieb--that there are now 4 known strains of the virus and the Chinese strain prevalent in CA is different from the European strain prevalent in NY. So they could have different IFRs and other differences (but I agree, probably nothing like 10 times though as a Californian, I can hope so).

I think you're right. But a lot of what I am seeing is that people think the only way to reopen things is to be 100% safe. I keep seeing that "social distancing is working" while 50k people are dead. Now, I am smart enough(barely) to understand that the 50k could be higher if we did nothing or less than we did anyways. However, from the articles and by what people are saying on social media it seems like people don't want to even go outside until there is either a vaccine or the amount of deaths go to zero. I mean, there was a heated debate on if a DRIVE-IN movie theater is safe to open. These are the incredibly stupid conversations Americans are having. This leads me to believe the first three things you pointed out aren't the only metric.

I also keep seeing stories of young people terrified to leave their house. The Washington Post article from yesterday gave me a good view on what a lot of people are going through. For example, a Georgia girl visited a guy in Virginia that she met on Bumble. It was supposed to only be a "one-time hookup" but shes been there for over a month now and only leaves his room to cook and use the bathroom, carefully listening to the dudes roommates coughing. Another story features a 29 year old terrified to even walk outside. He met some girl online and they had 8 "virtual dates" and have thought about meeting up in person. But the girl stated "she wants to meet him, but doesn't want to die", even during a "socially distanced walk together.

20 something folks in this country are scared to death to go outside, leave a room, or think a social distance walk with someone will kill them. There has been a MASSIVE misinformation campaign out there that has filtered through to all the idiots.

I saw a girl the other day post a graphic showing some states(I forgot) death count by week and it said "for all you open people, I'll leave this right here." It literally showed that the deaths per week were going down. When I mentioned this to the girl she said "but the deaths keep on racking up!" Ummm, well they aren't going to go down lady.

Edit: I just read a story from CNN that has this line: "...a number of states have begun to loosen stay-at-home restrictions--even as the novel coronavirus continues to infect and kill people." The obvious conclusion one *should reach by that line is that we shouldn't loosen restrictions until there is no more infections and death. It didn't say "as the deaths rate per week continues to climb" or "as the week over week number of cases continues to increase by 80%" or something. It simply left it at NO OPEN FOR YOU UNTIL NO DEATH OR CASES.

Surely, you aren't suggesting we stop air travel?

Yes, very much yes indeed.

We will soon have a hard time getting meat.

But if we start having a shortage of beer/wine, I will openly revolt

We're not seeing shortages in anything, really. Are people really having difficulty finding basic goods?

I think we once couldn't get disinfectant wipes. That's it.

Went to the supermarket yesterday. Still no toilet paper on the shelves in south bay Safeway(which doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t stored in the back for customer request).

I haven't had trouble finding anything since the initial ~2 weeks in mid-March when people went crazy on toilet paper and paper towels.

Meat is still well-supplied in the grocery stores I've been to. For the past year my parents have been using a new delivery service from a group that locally sources meat from across Southern Ontario. In normal times, they would do a delivery every Monday. Now they're mostly doing bulk orders of 3+ months worth of product for people to load up their deep freezers. The guy said they would normally expect to do about 300 of these type of deliveries a month, and in April they're booked for 750...

I'm hoping this is actually a positive side effect of the whole ordeal. That people who have the means to can revert to more local supply chains.

With that particular market, I think you may be right. However, with 99% of other products people buy(nonfood), it will become less and less local.

Why can’t you go in stores with a cloth bag?

And you’ll be able to get meat and veggies if you shop at the right places. It’s the Smithfield/Tyson factory crap that has supply chain issues, not your local farmers’ market.

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif of the Kansas City Chiefs (also a doctor - the first-ever NFL player to become one) has responded to Quebec Premier François Legault's all-hands-on-deck plea and is working in a long-term care facility - which have been hit extremely hard by COVID-19 here. He didn't want the news to get out - but of course it did.

(Beijing) Olympic figure skating medallist Joannie Rochette is also a (very) freshly-minted doctor and has also jumped into the fray by working in a long-term care residence.

I'm extremely skeptical that we can return to something that even remotely resembles full contact interaction without a way to rapidly test people, at scale. The absence of reliable ways to quickly identify and isolate outbreaks is the only reason that we've had to shut down at all. If we always knew who was infected, and who those people were in contact with, then there would never have been a reason to drastically alter our behavior.

Yes. I’m trying not to shop myself and using Instacart but twice now the “shopper” couldn’t find multiple items on my lists including a pound of margerine (he brought me half a pound of a brand I would never buy in normal times). Even the convenience stores are out.

Finally I went myself to the store, all masked and gloved. No TP or paper towels or “wipes” or really any cleaning products on the shelves.

I don’t think we’ve seen the meat and produce shortages yet. According to the WSJ that’ll be in about 2 weeks. They are “euthanizing” hogs in Iowa and chickens in Maryland/Delaware because the processing plants are closed. Farmers are letting veggies rot in the fields—yesterday I saw a really depressing photo of dead strawberry plants—because nobody to pick or process them or haul them to grocery stores.

They are now banning reusable bags because they are getm carriers it’s been discovered. In San Francisco they now charge $0.10 per bag for plastic ones to encourage reusable ones except now the reusable ones are banned. No choice I guess but pay the $010.

Even the local farmers market depends on commercial contract meat processors, albeit small, local ones, and immigrant farm labor to pick crops. The processors are closing one by one and the farm labor is vanishing. Besides, where I live the farmers markets closed for lack of business—everybody’s holed up at home.

Shouldn't have much of an effect here in CA, since most of our produce and meats are grown locally.

http://www.seecalifornia.com/farms/c...awberries.html

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...VpSEo5V2RzSiJ9

*Clover Stornetta is a local dairy whose products are carried in most upscale and "heath-oriented" markets.

Doesn't matter how locally they are grown if there's insufficient labor to pick them or process them or transport them. See above about Clover Stornetta which, if you live in the Bay Area, I'm sure you know.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/0...ge-agriculture

Haven't seen a shortage of food yet. Initially eggs were being sold out quickly, but the demand has died down. Certain more boutique brands of flour are hard to find, but standard issue flour is easy to procure. As far as I can tell, this is more due to higher demand, not shortage in supply.

And yes, I am very familiar with Clover, Straus, Cowgirl, et al. These are Bay Area staples.