Thread by @federicolois

1/n Update on my home-town 'interesting' SARS-Cov-2 'non-situation'. If you haven't read the thread I am citing, read that one first because this is an update on that.

https://twitter.com/federicolois/status/1351213358196912128

2/n As I stated there I have been tracking the disease there because my parents and my grandparents live there. So, I have invested interest into understanding the situation.

3/n I also know the infectious disease expert in charge there too and I discussed with her the strategy back in August after they detected their first 50 cases and we did a estimation on the sizing of the hospital ICU care necessary and final death toll.

4/n Our estimation back then was that the hospital care was going to be enough AND that the deaths would be depending on the strategy they allow them to follow in the range of 120 to 180 deaths. For a 150K city, not bad.

5/n Yesterday I got a call from mom and she told me that there had been already 2 days of ZERO 'detected' cases and when they were, it was usually a few cases all typically in the same household. So obviously I called to confirm that.

6/n The interesting thing though is I obviously follow it by remote control using the state provided data. I seen the data not moving much, but then I say, what the hell... show me the last 10 days of deaths. SURPRISE!!!

7/n It's been almost a month without any death AND a month with less than 5 deaths. So where does that leave us? Well that put my home town with 156 into the 104 deaths per 100K inhabitants. And where did I hear that number before?

8/n Ouuuhhh yes, I remember a very old tweet where someone has made an estimation with absolutely NO data based only on growth dynamics comparison with H1N1 revised IFR.

https://twitter.com/federicolois/status/1222955477568540672

9/n Why did that happen? By the time this city got their first case they had like 3 months of government intervention where they weren't even able to go to walk. People was fed up, so the spread run rampant. In 3 months they got the brunt of it. By November it was almost done.

10/n But then on December the B1.1.7 variant was already gaining prevalence in Argentina. That would translate into a new smaller wave that went through late December to February and added roughly 25 more deaths. That is compatible with 10% increase in HIT with less isolation.

11/n As noted by my research associate and modeling mastermind @LDjaparidze the expected scenario for my home-town was 166 deaths. Not bad for some 'non-epidemiologists'

https://twitter.com/LDjaparidze/status/1351256633574363137

12/n All in all, if you are in Argentina and want to feel safe; you know where you can go. But most importantly, this gives a baseline of what would have happen if we haven't done stupid.