If you remember the 1980s, you might recall the early years of the AIDS epidemic. While it was clear fairly early on that the disease particularly targeted gay men and IV drug users (leading to the overnight extinction of what had been a fairly thriving “bathhouse” scene in Minneapolis), government health authorities kept hammering on the line that “anyone could catch it” and “nobody was immune”.
Which was, literally, epidemiologically the truth. Cases of children and suburban housewives coming down with AIDS got wide play in the media, to prove the point.
But eventually the world figured out AIDS was a blood-borne pathogen, spread by behaviors that transferred contaminated blood between people; sharing needles, inadvertent exposure to infected peoples’ blood, and various intimate practices that had a tendency to tear skin.
And so people learned. ER staff masked and goggled and gloved up. Condoms became mainstream. Cities gave out free needles – aggravating to law-and-order types, but it did help slash the infection rate.
Unsaid but unmistakeable? While anyone could get it, the odds moved greatly, almost completely, in one’s favor with a few minor behavioral and prophylactic practices.
So I was in North Dakota over the weekend, taking care of some family business.Here’s a county by county breakdown of the Covid situation in North Dakota as of this past Friday.as of this past Thursday.
Big Left tells us, in a tone usually reserved for devotional prayers and aspirational mantras, that Red America is going to get it. Covid is going to ravage the square states, they say, like a revival preacher winding stems on the Old Testament lesson. “We’re all in this together”, after all.
So let’s take a look at North Dakota’s numbers:
Of the states 74 total Covid deaths as of last Thursday, 62 of them were in Cass County – which is Fargo. Four more were in Grand Forks County.
And, significantly, the counties containing North Dakota’s four Indian reservations – which, conventional wisdom here in the Twin Cities tells us, are the most vulnerable populations in the entire state outside of nursing homes – account for a grand total of six cases, and no deaths.
It’s not lack of testing, in this reddest of states; as of last week, North Dakota has the third highest test per million rate in the country, triple that in Minnesota.
Maybe it’s time to just cut the crap and admit that Covid – and most diseases that spread via aerosol transmission – are particularly transmissible by people breathing the same air, jammed into close quarters for extended times?
Nursing homes, of course – but also bars and restaurants, mass transit, open-plan offices, and other artifacts of high-density urban life?
That’d scotch the attractiveness of any “high density” social investments (the ones that aren’t already plummeting in the wake of this month’s rioting), of course…
…which would jeopardize the gravy train for a lot of transit consultants, urban nonprofiteers, insect farmers, public union employees and other big-state hangers-on.
Fargo, Bismark, Jamestown, Grand Forks – it’s almost as if counties with more people have more cases.
If only someone would figure out the per-capita rate.
Wait…buttseks doesn’t spread bat flu? Whooo hooo! Open the bath houses!
Each morning I check a few mainstream websites — NPR, NBC, AP, even Drudge — and I learn that covid-19 is raging, with hotspots popping out everywhere, especially in “red” states.
Then I check the actual CDC data on covid-19 deaths in the US.
They have been consistently declining for the last two months, at the same time that lockdown orders were officially lifted or simply ignored.
I do remember the 80s and AIDS, because that’s when I finished my residency and started practice. It went like this: the gay plague! No, anyone can get it. Then, hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients can get it. Oh, how the heck did that happen? Because gay men contaminated the blood supply. Oh. Quick, let’s pass a privacy law called HIPPA so nobody can tell who did.
Oh. Quick, let’s pass a privacy law called HIPPA so nobody can tell who did.
That make me laugh out loud.
“White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Monday there is no second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, even though there are some flare-ups in states such as Florida, and it is unlikely there will be widespread shutdowns across the country.”
https://news.yahoo.com/no-second-wave-coronavirus-u-132640527.html
Kudlow is absolutely correct. To start our second wave, we would have realistically done a good enough job on the first wave to consider it having “ebbed”. So no, we’re just seeing the first wave get even stronger. This is what happens when you have zero leadership, and zero desire to actually resolve the problem. States left without any federal guidance, fighting for PPE with the administration, when the administration wasn’t outright stealing them in transit, and generally using “help” as a reward for the governors that think Trump’s rear end tastes like honey.
A few months ago Kudlow said the virus was “contained” and that the US was “pretty close to airtight”.
The most charitable conclusion is that Kudlow knows even less about pandemics than economics. More likely is that he has made his Faustian Bargain and dutifully reads the WH script.
The only requirement to work for Trump is that you look good lying on TV.
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When Emery runs out of stand-up comics to look to for his political arguments, he gets his coronavirus news from economists.
Emery is one of those trolls that loves to throw out the same old missives, believing that if he repeats it often enough, others will believe them, too.
Apparently, he misses the points made about the spike in corona virus cases being due to everyone being locked up for a couple of months, in largely closed environments. Now that things are opening up and people are being exposed to the real world again, cases are going to spike. proving, yet again, that the Democrat shutdowns were idiotic and devoid of real evidence for doing so. According to Dr. Cyril Wecht, the leading pathologist in the country and A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, the shutdowns were politically motivated and were essentially stupid.
https://kdkaradio.radio.com/articles/dr-cyril-wecht-we-are-absolutely-destroying-our-society
But, of course,his knowledge is based on facts, from a Dr. that is still practicing his profession, not a 20 year gubmint stooge that hasn’t practiced in years like Fauci.
The US new per capita cases remain on par with Italy’s worst day — and shows signs of rising further.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/22/united-states-italy-traded-places-coronavirus-333122
This is what American exceptionalism looks like under Trump. We’re only behind Brazil in cases. Our new cases represent 20% of new global cases.
Who would have ever thought that Iceland and New Zealand would show the world the way to defeat a pandemic?
You know, EI, when we conservatives say “Progs are thuddingly illiterate at critical thought and logic”, I sometimes think it’s unfair.
Then I read your comment above, and the link you linked, and think “that’s actually charitable”.
The article is a bunch of “what ifs” from a Harvard “think tank” that hasn’t even predicted the present successfully, comparing new case rates between the US and Italy, with no context as to hospitalizations or ICU usage.
It’s designed to logroll the gullible – that’d be you – into supporting the continued shut down of the economy.
I’d say “you can do better”, but I have a harder time keeping a straight face when I write it these days.
If you’re not Eric Austin, you’re definitely horning in on his gig. You’re not quite florid enough to be “Dog Gone” writing under a sock puppet, and you’re too direct to be Steve Timmer.
The mystery continues
Compare and contrast: AIDS and Covid.
By the 1990’s, AIDS was understood to be a disease pretty much limited to promiscuous behavior among gay men. In other words, it was not a gay disease, it was a promiscuous gay disease.
In Minneapolis, there were a number of notorious places where gay men met for anonymous sex. Everyone in authority from the city administration to the police to the state health department knew about them – and did nothing because of the political pressure in the gay community who would rather see men die than give up a life-style that didn’t even represent the majority.
Until John C. Chenoweth, a prominent DFL activist, was murdered in a place widely known as “Bare-ass beach” along the Mississippi river.
That shutdown at least one site.
This daily (7-day rolling average) graph of confirmed deaths per million shows the U.S. having fewer than Sweden and the U.K., and close to what Canada is reporting now. This graph was just a handful of countries; a world-wide version I saw the other day had the U.S. about 13th or 14th in per capita COVID deaths, IIRC.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=CAN~DEU~ITA~KOR~SWE~GBR~USA
MBerg: When a president finds it necessary to revise a projected pandemic death toll seven times in two months, there’s a problem.
Unlike the expert epidemiologists, Emery?
Are you seriously this stupid?
NW –
That’s my go-to graph every morning. Deaths due to covid-19 may not be 100% accurate, but it is better than the number of positive tests & hospitalizations.
I am especially suspicious of “hospitalizations” given as a number with no other information, like age, underlying conditions, etc. Hospitals are incentivized to identify people admitted as covid-19 patients. We also do not know how many patients were admitted to the hospital for some other reason & contracted the disease as a result of being hospitalized.
Sweden: no lockdown. UK: very strict lockdown. Similar deaths per million, same general shape to the curve of deaths per million over time.
The UK’s NHS says 2/3 of people hospitalized with covid-19 were rigorously following social distancing rules.
Maybe Karens are really Mammuthus Primigenius‘
How did herd immunity work out in Sweden?
Spoiler Alert: he is seriously this stupid.
Spoiler alert: how did the UK’s lockdown work out?
The issue is not whether Sweden’s lack of a lockdown suppressed covid-19, it is how it how Sweden did compared to other nation’s with strict lockdowns.
This isn’t religion. We are trying to use reason to solve a difficult problem.
Belarus makes Sweden’s lockdown look severe. In Belarus the latest deaths per million is about one tenth of the US and one fifth of the UK’s.
The UK has covid-19 deaths ~600/million, the US ~300/million, and Sweden about halfway between the US and the UK @ ~450/million.
You can’t just ignore data because it does not support your hypothesis.
The US is now conducting over 500,000 tests per day, and that might be enough to allow test-and-trace in some areas. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly.
According to Dr. Jha of Harvard’s Global Health Institute, the US might need more than 900,000 tests per day .
There were 474,592 test results reported over the last 24 hours.
There were 27,928 positive tests.
This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.
https://covidtracking.com/
For the status of contact tracing by state, check out https://testandtrace.com/
Test & trace is the latest unobtainium.
It can’t work because in order to work it has to trace SYMPTOMLESS carriers, when the testing regime has significant false negatives and false positives.
Don’t tell me how many states are ready for test & trace, tell me how many are actually doing it successfully.
With the exception of Brazil— no other developed country is doing so badly.
The takeaway here is the need for simple, consistent health messaging: wash your hands, don’t touch your face, maintain phsyical (social) distancing and wear a mask when you are in a crowd or an enclosed space. And to repeat this messaging ad nauseam so that even a three year old has it memorized.
Part of the American problem regarding Covid-19 also has to do with ingrained anti-intellectual, anti-science attitudes within the general population. No where else do find people saying they have the ‘freedom’ to not wear a mask … to be, in effect, a public health hazard.
Testing in MN is an even more useless number. Earlier this month the MN Dept of Health reported that it was counting every positive test as a new case, even if these were multiple tests of the same person. So, an infected nursing home or care center resident – where we are STILL seeing 80% of our COVID deaths – gets tested five times over the course of his care, that’s 5 “new” cases. Wow – you just can’t buy science like that! (Or, maybe you can.)
Emery Incognito on June 23, 2020 at 12:18 pm said:
With the exception of Brazil— no other developed country is doing so badly.
The UK, with a far more rigorous and universal lockdown regime than the US, has twice as many covid-19 deaths per hundred thousand as the US.
Sweden has 50% more covid deaths per hundred than the US does.
Once again, Emery, you are delusional.
If testing & tracking would work, how do you explain the 80% covid death rate of care home patients? Their movement and contacts are restricted, and they are already under medical control so they can be tested at will.
Once again, the evidence clearly points one way, and the “experts” look the other way.
“We experts have failed because we lacked this week’s unobtainium!”
Data on Wuhan Flu is still crap. Nobody can be trusted. As such, there is no valid basis for comparison since accounting methodologies are different. That’s the science. Everything else is bullshit, supposition and twisting of the information to fit meme du jour. Just about the ONLY statistic worthy of comparison is total death count. But even there, you have to account for extraordinary items.
Trump downplays the threat. He claims the uptick in cases is due to increased testing. But the data don’t back up that claim.
Imagine a Doctor who wanted to make it appear that his patients never got sick.
That’s what Trump and his followers are after.
Arizona now has twelve times the COVID rate as New York.
Also, someone owes Governor DeSantis an apology. Florida’s COVID rate is a mere five times New York’s rate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/
I strongly support test and trace, with one minor adjustment.
First we test people to find all the positives, then we trace everyone they had contact with and test them to find all the positives, then we kill all the positives.
There – no more pandemic. Problem solved. Now we can re-open without fear.
I mean, that’s the goal, isn’t it? Eliminate everyone who tests positive from society so they can’t accidentally infect others? Sure, it’s going to result in a massive depopulation of the planet, but that’s actually a good thing because fewer people mean less climate change – just ask Saint Greta. I’m helping here, what’s the problem?
Americans not welcome until we get our coronavirus under control.
E.U. May Bar American Travelers as It Reopens Borders, Citing Failures on Virus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/world/europe/coronavirus-EU-American-travel-ban.html
Trump’s decision to limit Chinese travel was a positive move responding to the COVID crisis. Ignoring EU travel — not so much.
Now months later, with a far worse crisis on his hands, the EU is planning same to him. He’s not going to like it.
So, all the riots and statue destruction and autonomous enclaves must be polling pretty badly… so, back to the pandemic!
You keep saying covid “rate,” Emery.
I have no idea what that means. The only useful metric at this time is deaths due to covid-19 per 100,000.
Say, does anyone remember “fifteen days to flatten the curve”?
What epidemiologist has said that New Zealand, Japan, etc., should wall themselves off from the world forever?
Someone should ask Fauci how that SARS vaccine is coming along.
As testing is increased, we are testing people we would never have tested even a month ago. This necessarily means that you are going to find more positives that have little or no negative health consequences.
It is a very good thing if testing is increasing exponentially while deaths are increasing linearly.
The EU is using the highly questionable “positive test results per capita” number rather than the more reliable “deaths per capita.”
It’s not our fault that the EU bureaucrats are displaying their usual ineptitude. They believe the Chinese numbers, fer God’s sake.
No one associated with the government response to covid-19 has any common sense.
jdm: I can’t speak to polling. But Floyd is no more representative of blacks than Chauvin is of police officers. I believe the frequency of black encounters with law enforcement has far more to do with black crime rates than with racially biased policing. I also know that young black men have far more to fear from their peers than from the cops. I would also add — that rioters are opportunists, not revolutionaries.
As of June 22, here are the COVID deaths per 100k of certain states mentioned here:
New York in first place with 160 deaths/100k
Minnesota and Georgia tied for 16th at 25/100k
Florida 27th with 15/100k, with Wisconsin a couples spots lower at 13/100k
South Dakota and Oklahoma are at 9/100k
(source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/)
As for infection rate, Florida’s percentage of positive tests is at .06, up about half a percentage point from a month ago. New York’s percentage of positive tests is at 11%. Florida’s mortality rate is at .03% overall since the beginning of the pandemic. New York’s mortality is .06% over the same period.
(Source: The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project: https://covidtracking.com/data#state-ny)
While my links are awaiting moderation, I will summarize the numbers.
COVID deaths per 100k: New York is the highest (as of yesterday) at 160. Florida. Minnesota and Georgia are 16h highest at 25/100k. Wisconsin is at 13/100k.
As for infection rate, Florida’s percentage of positive tests is at .06, up about half a percentage point from a month ago. New York’s percentage of positive tests is at 11%.
Florida’s mortality rate is at .03% overall since the beginning of the pandemic. New York’s mortality is .06% over the same period.
E. Dimwit Esq: But Floyd is no more representative of blacks than Chauvin is of police officers
Also E. Dimwit Esq: I also know that young black men have far more to fear from their peers than from the cops.
Negroes fear other Negroes for the same reason cops are wary of them: they, *as a group*, are likely to be armed and if armed, they will shoot their way out of any problem.
If I had an idiot of your caliber for legal representation, I’d just open a vein and get it over with.
I estimate that no fewer than 30% of Negro males are habitual criminals. And 75% of those are willing to use lethal means to get what they want.
The statistics bear me out.
^^. The Babylon Bee created a handy guide to determining what is systemic racism and what is just a good old-fashioned traditional value.
Infographic: How To Tell If Something Is Racist
https://babylonbee.com/news/infographic-is-something-racist
I had a good chuckle at the chart.
And then I had another one at you.
So, thanks. 🙂
Night Writer, something really weird is happening with the deaths/100k, and it bugs me because none of the media people who talk to the governors or the CDC people are asking the right questions. Why does South Dakota, with no lock down, have so many fewer deaths than NYC?
It’s easy to say that NYC has a denser population than SD, but where is the science? Are New Yorkers, with their lockdown, still spending more time in the company of others than South Dakotans? In just about every demographic term imaginable, Minnesota & Wisconsin are two peas in a pod. Yet Minnesota has a death per hundred thousand rate twice that of Wisconsin 25 vs 13).
it seems obvious that the extent of a legal lockdown is a second or third order contributor to lack of covid deaths. Perhaps a severe lockdown acts to increase covid deaths to some extent.
A media which is not skeptical of government is a worthless circle jerk.
And via Insty, Whitmer’s people can’t explain the reason for keeping health clubs and gyms closed. After stressing, again and again, that her lockdown orders were based on the best science possible, Whitmer’s people could not come up with any scientific explanation for keeping gyms closed but allowing hair dressers and bars to open.
The science behind lockdown logic does not exist; it is a figment of the lockdowner’s imagination.
https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/federal-judge-blasts-whitmers-lockdown-defense
UK Pathologist John Lee has testified that 40%-60% of Britons may be immune to covid-19 because earlier non-covid coronavirus infections have trained their immune systems to effectively combat the covid-19 virus.
His testimony was given in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the UK government from stifling speech that throws doubt on the government’s covid-19 response.
MP, it puzzles me as well. I started keeping my own spreadsheet back in March so I could compare numbers over time. I can see trends, but not to the point where I’m even 80% sure what the next data point will be.
I’ve kept my own spreadsheet – using three main sources – because I didn’t trust that various entities wouldn’t play games with the numbers, or ignore the numbers. I know that some of the sources I use could be playing games, but I figured by sticking to the same ones over the course of time I’d see if there were discrepancies or oddities in their own reporting (most are aggregators). So far, they’ve stayed pretty consistent.
However, when the media proclaims someplace a “hot spot” – like they once did regarding South Dakota – I can look at the daily change in positive tests and deaths going back quite a ways for many states and the U.S. Now, if only I’d thought to keep track of Fauci’s statements on a daily basis.
Fauci’s statements are useless. He never makes any claims that can be proven wrong. For example, when he comments on mass events he says that they are “very, very dangerous.”
What the Hell does that mean? Can any eventuality prove that he was wrong when he said that it was “very, very dangerous”?
Epidemiologists are not virologists. Epidemiologists study human behavior.
Gee, it’s almost like the data were precisely calibrated to refute Woolly.
Previously, the US was only doing somewhat bad at fighting the pandemic (if you think about things like population densities and the rate of deaths). Not much worse than Canada. Now it’s doing terrible — not quite Brazil terrible, but as far as I know no other advanced country is having such a tough time getting the numbers down. This is going to be a hell of a summer.
No data “refutes” anything I have written.
I have examined only one number, and that is deaths per capita (or per hundred thousand, if you prefer).
Fauci on a covid-19 vaccine:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Congress Tuesday that he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the development of a coronavirus vaccine, saying that he believes one could be available as soon as the end of this year, or the beginning of 2021.
Nothing falsifiable, there. Whether an effective vaccine is developed (or not), Fauci cannot be shown to have predicted otherwise.
Fauci on a “second wave” of covid-19 deaths:
“It is not inevitable that you will have a so-called ‘second wave’ in the fall, or even a massive increase if you approach it in the proper way,” he added, advising people to maintain social distancing and to continue to wear masks in public.
Again, no falsifiable prediction. The Left’s “man of science” is much more bureaucrat than scientist.
The US doing Ten times worse than the EU. And, no, it’s not because the US is testing more. Number of tests per million is roughly the same in US and EU.
And Sweden, the only EU country not to lock down, accounts for one-third of the EU cases.
You need to remember that the vast majority of new positive tests in the US, 80% or so, are of people < age 65, so there risk of mortality or hospitilisation is slight. If you are over 65 years old, God help you, because the State has shown no ability to protect you or interest in doing so.
As the US comes out of lockdown, I would expect that the US graph of deaths per day will resemble Sweden's, that is, more of a roller coaster than a smooth slope, but still rending downward in the medium & long term.
You have to remember that these are not useless, avoidable deaths. They are the price paid for returning to normalcy, which will, of course, save countless lives.
And now you've had more intelligent analysis than you will get from Fauci, Birx, any state health director, or any TV talking head.
Why? I'm not a genius, but I don't care about optics or politics, just the truth, as I see it.
My parents live in Minnesota & are in their 80s. I am sixty years with a history of smoking. It's not like I am asking other to risk what I am not willing to risk.