RPI 2020 Off-season Overtime: In Memory of Turk181

[Ralph Baer]

In case I forget, the halfway point from our last game to a 7 PM start on 10/2/21 is at 8:45:30 AM on 12/16/20. We're almost there. ;-)

Just a couple of hours left. :-)

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 17 December 2020. There are 289 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[engineerhockeyfan]

Just a couple of hours left. :-)

Its all down hill from here.
Lets go red!!!

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 18 December 2020. There are 288 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 19 December 2020. There are 287 days (41 weeks) until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[Ralph Baer]

There are at least two companies on Amazon with RPI masks now
https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Shie...dp/B08LB84QJJ/
https://www.amazon.com/Lasgo-Reusabl...dp/B08CZ8N6MJ/

Neither is the company that I used.

Also a different design with a second mask.
https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Brea...dp/B08MZXM7LY/

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 20 December 2020. There are 286 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[sk8tronthepond]

I do have names, but will let process play out.

A couple of processes have been completed.

[Ralph Baer]

A couple of processes have been completed.

:-(

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 21 December 2020. There are 285 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[DrDemento]

Thanks for your response. I wondered if your earlier statement about postive tests exceeding population was a typo. It appears that you meant total tests exceeding population, which has, in fact, happened. Beyond that you raise some very good questions. Regarding how multiple positives are reported, it's my understanding that health departments draw a distinction between positive tests (can be multiple per person) and cases (only once). They can do that because, at the local level where they can perform contact tracing, data is kept per person. Once the data is reported to the CDC, it is not longer personally identifiable, so the data is reported as total positives (out of total test count) and new cases. If anyone has heard otherwise I'd like to hear it. It does appear that there is a lot of confusion on how the data is collected and the degree of uniformity.

As for cause of death, isn't it common to report immediate and co-morbidities on death certificates? You would obviously know more than I but I understood it was common when they throw out statements like "the flu causes 30K - 60K deaths per year" that is the number of cases where flu was cited as a cause on the death certificate but there are often co-morbidities there as well. Since doctors are generally not able to see the future, much less hypotheticals in the future, they can observe that that an active disease may combine with a pre-existing condition leading to death but in most cases they lack the ability to reliably forecast when that condition might have led to death on its own. As you noted a better macro measure may be to just measure mortality rates or the number of "excess deaths" during the pandemic. When the pandemic started we saw reports that claimed excess deaths were much greater than the SARS-CoV-2 death totals, but now we see reports (including the JHU report that was withdrawn but is all over the Internet) claiming the opposite, that there are relatively few or no excess deaths. I guess we'll have to wait and see once this is over and thorough, hopefully less politically charged analyses can be done.

As for hockey, I too am excited about some of our new recruits. Smith may have some tough decisions to make in the coming years as he juggles a pretty full roster that just gained another year of eligibility with a constant need for new blood.

Yes that was a typo as i was trying to put a lot of information down quickly but mind was racing faster than fingers these days. My main point is that statistics just are being thrown out there by all sorts of people and organizations without any descriptions of how the numbers are obtained and from where let alone what they might mean. For example, i wold like to know what is meant by # of cases in many of the reports? As you mention are they individual cases or simply positive results? And how many positive results are from the same individual or case. it is a bit bewildering to me but i am used to this as this has been done before and is not unique to COVID counts. In my career I have seen countless death certificates and written more than I care to remember. Cause of death is often (but not always) somewhat subjective. Especially nowadays when everything has to have an ICD-10 code along with the written diagnosis and they have to correspond down to the very last digit of the code. Coding has become a specialty by itself and one look at the descriptions can have your head spinning. Medical office have to do this in order to receive payment from Medicare and or insurers and obviously want to both code correctly, but at the same time use the code that provides the most remuneration. Is there some exaggeration when coding? how wide spread is inaccurate coding done in order to receive more payment? Not sure but when chasing the almighty dollar you can bet that not everything is as it seems (skim milk often masquerades as cream!). i wish it not true but these reported statistics are being used to set policy and make decisions. i am just incredibly suspicious of how close to reality this all is.

[DrDemento]

FWIW, The NY Times website shows that Hamilton County, NY has had a total of 68 cases of Covid-19 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...es.html#county. They don't mention how many tests there have been, but it seems to me unlikely that they have counted people twice. There has been exactly one death there https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...es.html#county.

To attempt to get on topic, they show RPI with a total of 34 cases https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...s-tracker.html. (Click on New York or better start typing Rensselaer in the search box.) The small color graph on the right shows it increasing recently. For DrD's benefit, there have been 10 at Albany Med.

RB: I have seen those numbers for Hamilton county with great interest along with other totals quoted. The one death reported was from back in May-June and in a very elderly individual. Not sure how the diagnosis was made, whether simply by serology for antibodies or swab for active disease. Interesting that the county has reported doing over 5000 tests to arrive at their total of about 68-70 cases since the total population including myself and Jenny was 4611 at last count. Hamilton is the least populated of the NY counties and the population is spread over such a large area that it might be the least dense county east of the Mississippi (certainly in the running for the title). Truly wonder how many of the reported cases are in distinct individuals and not total positives included retested positives. It will be of great interest to see the effect on these numbers now that the much awaited (but not by me) vaccines are available. And with the announcement from Great Britain of a new and rapidly spreading strain or mutation of COVID, are we seeing the end of the beginning? Or the beginning of the end? (quote from THEM! a wonderful sci fi classic from the 1950's about giant ant mutations from the first atomic bomb testing)

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 22 December 2020. There are 284 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 2 October 2021 for the start of next season.

[engineerhockeyfan]

RB: I have seen those numbers for Hamilton county with great interest along with other totals quoted. The one death reported was from back in May-June and in a very elderly individual. Not sure how the diagnosis was made, whether simply by serology for antibodies or swab for active disease. Interesting that the county has reported doing over 5000 tests to arrive at their total of about 68-70 cases since the total population including myself and Jenny was 4611 at last count. Hamilton is the least populated of the NY counties and the population is spread over such a large area that it might be the least dense county east of the Mississippi (certainly in the running for the title). Truly wonder how many of the reported cases are in distinct individuals and not total positives included retested positives. It will be of great interest to see the effect on these numbers now that the much awaited (but not by me) vaccines are available. And with the announcement from Great Britain of a new and rapidly spreading strain or mutation of COVID, are we seeing the end of the beginning? Or the beginning of the end? (quote from THEM! a wonderful sci fi classic from the 1950's about giant ant mutations from the first atomic bomb testing)

Doc, I want to thank you for your knowledge of how the numbers are calculated during the last nine months.
But I am more interested in How you feel about masks and social distancing?
The numbers may be distorted, but they are not a hoax.

[sezenack]

A couple of processes have been completed.

So can we get the names out? Don't know why anyone bothered posting if they weren't going to drop names. There's a massive difference between the players being say Lee, Bowman, Calvaruso and say Linden, Ashbrook, Babichuk.