You will have already seen the headline: N.Y.C. Death Toll Soars Past 10,000 in Revised Virus Count.
The city has added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive…
The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, drove up the number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000, and appeared to increase the overall United States death count by 17 percent to more than 26,000.
This happened right after our last update. They’re trying it in Europe, too. They don’t in the NYT article give a solid justification for this maneuver, except to say this:
“What New Yorkers are interested in, and what the country is interested in, is that we have an accurate and complete count,” Dr. Barbot added. “It’s part of the healing process that we’re going to have to go through.”
When I am emperor, I will ban the use and publication of “healing process”. Skip it.
The naive model, which is of the reporting process, we’ve been using can’t, of course, see mid-stream re-definitions of the reporting process. Especially one as suspicious as this.
If they’re going to say everybody who dies does so of coronavirus, well, it will be one way to bring the reported counts in line with model projections. They can then say the models were right, and that our well designed PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! strategy was fully justified.
I’ll remind us of this re-definition when we re-do the model. Obviously the totals will now be higher. But, as I’ve said ten thousand times, we model the reporting of deaths not actual deaths.
How can we sort this out? We can’t. Just like the flu, the best we’ll be able to do is look at the count of all deaths from all causes, and see how big a spike we got this late winter/early spring compared to other years.
They can juice the coronavirus death totals, but I don’t think they’d do the same to the all-deaths counts. I mean, they can say a million more died in March than actually died, but somebody’s going to go looking for the bodies and discover they’re not there.
CDC reports the all-death totals, which I highlighted two updates ago. Problem is they’re always at least a month behind on these things. Even in the best case, we can’t get estimates of “excess deaths” until end of May. Maybe even later if people realize how politically damaging these numbers are likely to be.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but if the numbers are really bad—by which I mean excess deaths are like a bad flu year—then there might be announced “difficulties” in collecting data, and that, sadly, numbers won’t be available. I doubt this will happen. But it might.
Much more likely is that they will say, whatever the totals are, “Our lockdowns saved lives!”
They’ll never be able to explain why the lockdowns were necessary here and weren’t in other countries, like Taiwan, that did better. These other countries and strategies just won’t be mentioned.
Or, if they are, look for somebody with the audacity to say it was because the American PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! was also responsible for saving lives elsewhere, because fewer people traveled, people emulated the States, etc.
Another result of juicing the numbers is that the pols will be able to use them to prolong their control. Nobody will remember the juicing; it’s probably already forgotten even though only two days old. Or people will just accept the maneuver because the government loves us.
People are growing sick of it all, though. At last. Michiganders rose up, God bless them, and tooted their horns their hubristic Governor.
Whitmer looked out upon the mini-mob and said the “enemy is the virus, not each other”. She then said the protestors might have just made further lock downs necessary. She also scolded them for passing out food, or whatever.
You have to hand it to Whitmer. She’s in charge and she knows it. And she won’t stand for her deplorable charges misbehaving. So she’s going to send them to their rooms without desert. Or dinner. Or jobs.
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Compulsory reading for everyone now “Animal Farm” by George Orwell
Or should that have been “1984” by the same author?
Harry – Embrace the healing power of AND.
Re: Raleigh protest. If the cops were concerned about public health, they would have been wearing masks. They were not. Therefore, their sole concern was enforcing obedience to a tyrant’s orders.
April 11, 2020
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200411-sitrep-82-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=74a5d15_2
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report – 82
“WHO has developed the following definition for reporting COVID deaths: a COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g., trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery between the illness and death.”
From the linked article: “In a statement, the group said, “While everyone has a right to gather and express their opinions, today’s protest sends exactly the opposite message that nurses and healthcare professionals are trying to get across: we are begging people, please stay home. The protest was irresponsible, impeding ambulances and traffic to Sparrow Hospital, where frontline healthcare workers are risking their lives taking care of patients suffering from COVID-19. Lives are being saved because of the stay-home order. We ask everyone to protect themselves, their families and us by doing what’s best for the greater good.””
The Greater Good! (The Greater Good.)
https://thereasonablelady.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/hotfuzzgreatergood.jpg
Zardoz speaks to you. To save lives, all must now remain locked in their homes forever. Food deliveries are banned because that is a way to transfer diseases, and a cause of traffic injuries and fatalities. OBEY! Zardoz has spoken.
Thursday, April 16, 2020: Washington Post, top of page one:
“…self-isolation at home may be a cause and not a solution”
Oops!
Remember all that smart-sounding blather from all those genius doctors about “Stay at home!” and “Flatten the curve!”?
Well, never mind!
Limbaugh had a piece yesterday on “flatten the curve”, which means “more hospital beds”, NOT FEWER DEATHS. I noticed this the first time I saw the graphs. The curve is flatter, but has THE SAME NUMBER OF DEATHS. Same number. So instead of being over in May, it’s still going in August. I think they planned that all along.
“When I am emperor, I will ban the use and publication of “healing process”. Skip it.” The “new normal” will get one flogged and staked out in the sun by an ant hill. I heard that so many times in cancer treatment I vowed to scream at any IDIOT who used the stupid, meaningless, sunshine-and-baby-bunnies BS term. Tattoo “I’m an idiot” on your head and then keep your mouth shut. Saves time.
“Nobody will remember the juicing; it’s probably already forgotten even though only two days old.” Honestly, juicing has been going on for decades. Political manipulation of numbers probably dates back to the first cavemen who formulated 2+2 and then inflated it to get more dead animal portions for themselves. The only cure is to EDUCATE people what suckers they are for believing any of it. Maybe a tatoo for that kind of stupid, too? Foreheads are going to be full, but the tatoo guys will be rolling in cash.
Nobody will remember the juicing; it’s probably already forgotten even though only two days old.
A similar “adjustment” was made in the 70s-80s time frame where deaths were listed as smoking related by medical examiners if the deceased had ever smoked thus pumping the numbers. How many remember that?
Harry G, Brave New World is far more relevant. The World Controllers are doing it for your own good.
Excellent data from Oregon professor:
“OHSU’s data
Portland’s largest single employer is Oregon Health Sciences University with over 17,000 employees. US News & World Report voted OHSU the best hospital in Oregon, they treated over 300,000 patients last year, and currently have 562 staffed hospital beds. OHSU also has taken the rare step of publicizing all of their COVID-19 data for anyone to see, which makes it easy to determine how many Oregonians are currently hospitalized at OHSU for COVID-19. And that number, as of tonight April 4, 2020 is…wait for it…SIX.”
https://www.professorhinkley.com/blog/why-is-oregon-still-on-lock-down
Sheri: Yes, from the beginning “flatten the curve” was meant to make the curve spread out — not so the same number of people would die over a longer period, but so the same number of people who became acutely sick would do so over a longer period and hospitals would have beds and equipment enough to treat them all, and thus we could save more of the same number of ill people (and not endanger other people who couldnt’ get in the hospitals). This was made very clear, or at least I thought so.
Somehow, people have gotten it in their heads that staying home will stop the disease. This is a very contagious disease (although not by actual plague standards), and we have ZERO immunity. That means almost everyone gets it until there’s herd immunity, after which there will continue to be outbreaks. That’s how diseases work when they become endemic (otherwise, they kill everyone and can’t replicate). The only way around this is an effective treatment and/or a vaccine (or it mutates and becomes less deadly). That’s IT.
I am not in charge of anything, and I don’t know what I would have done if I had been. I do know that an epidemic is a gigantic force, and it is insane to think that human beings can keep one from having any effects at all. I do know that in a very large country like ours, with a great deal of travel within and back and forth form other countries, it seems reasonable to have expected the disease to be breaking out all over the place and not just in one or two areas, but I would never have guessed it could be as widespread as it is. And I do know that because of free travel, what people do in Utah affects what people to in NYC, and vice versa. But it’s also naive to expect that a disease will peak at the exact same time everywhere among 350 million people living in a variety of different climates, population densities, living arrangements, etc. So I don’t know what we should do, but I do know that it’s impossible to do one thing that will work everywhere, identically, and forever — based on incomplete information, and outright lies, no less. Yet that’s what people seem to think we should be able to do.
Harry G.: I fear that Animal Farm is still taught, but the wrong lessons are learned. Viva La Revolution.
” I don’t think they’d do the same to the all-deaths counts. I mean, they can say a million more died in March than actually died, but somebody’s going to go looking for the bodies and discover they’re not there.”
I think it is all-but certain that all-death counts Will go up A Lot, at least in the UK, because of the response to the virus, not the virus…
People are missing out on life-sustaining drugs due to acute shortages and supply interruptions, people delay seeing a doctor for fear of infection, people can’t get to see a doctor, doctors don’t do much productive work due to spending *most* of their time donning and doffing protective equipment, patients can’t get admitted to hospital, they are afraid to go to hospital, stroke clotbusting is too late, cancer treatment is being delayed and suspended, newly diagnosed cancers are not being staged, routine disease surveillance and treatment has been suspended, All ‘non-emergency’ operations are cancelled…
In sum, there are innumerable reeasons to expect an increased total death rate when the entire health service is focused almost solely on a single disease and resources are almost-stopped for the commonest causes of pain, disability and death.
Thank you for your many insights. I have long felt the death counts were and would be “padded .” There are too many incentives to do so, inclusive of more federal “aid,” hysteria, control,…voting in the Presidential elections (M. Obama pushing printing paper ballots at home; Pelosi wanting ballots mailed to every “voter.”).
There was a 108 yr old English woman who died from the virus and was eulogized as a great, even tragic, loss. She was 108! Before Covid-19, her passing would have been noted by comments such as “what an incredibly long life.”
Obituaries here in Massachusetts include Covid-19 at every opportunity. People in their 80’s & 90’s with pre-existing conditions, living in pre-crowded, pre-filthy, pre-short staffed, pre-financially strapped, pre-…. nursing homes are mourned and added to the count. In the past, most died from flu, pneumonia, “complications from any number of coronaviruses,”…but now they are victims of Covid-19. Many politicians need more deaths to prove their predictions true. Some want more deaths to win elections. But that is considered “conspiracy” speech.
When WHO praised President Trump for his leadership in March, national media ignored.
When WHO asked that “physical” not “social” distancing be used as the term to describe gatherings, the media ignored. Social distancing has a fear factor. (Plus it has a negative history: 1800s was the birth of the term to describe races, cultures, religions,…staying within their “own.” Not too PC?)
Now the national media has come to the defense of WHO when the President is questionning its loyalties, veracity, funding and wants to hold monies back. (Same thing happened with “public” television but he lost that battle.)
My elderly mother has asthma, COPD, CHF, and, as she says “more letters of the alphabet.” She is adamant that, if she passes during this panic, her grave should read: “My number was up!” – no mention of Covid-19. Five years ago, she had an “unknown virus” for a year. Surgeries were cancelled and she was sent home with five meds. No quarantine, no family cautions, no face masks, no…, just common sense, e.g , wash hands!
p.s. I want my obit to read “7.8 billion minus 1.”
As Michigan goes so goes the nation lets all meet at the Town Hall and put an
end to this idiocy. The Trade war&Trump economy vanish in a matter of
months amazing….and to think all I had to do was sit in my car and blow
the horn. Revenge is sweet none of these governors will be reelected but
they will undoubtedly be rewarded for the pain and austerity they have so
willingly inflicted. If people don’t wake up and put an end to this madness it
will be made a perpetual way of life by these psychopaths. Vow to never allow this to happen again no matter what.
The entire system needs to be retooled and all these industry insiders
removed. I have no doubt that they are capable of releasing something
that would make this look like kids stuff and this is what we need to
prepare for. The bio-weapons labs need oversight and constraints and
should not be a playground for power hungry miscreants with a disease
in one hand and a vaccine in the other. This truly is the devil’s dance
whose accompanist is as always fear and ignorance. The good news they
can’t kill us all.
This is not an unusual practice for pandemics. From the H1N1 timeline:
“May 4
CDC shifted from reporting confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 to reporting both confirmed and probable cases of 2009 H1N1.”
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-pandemic-timeline.html
That was less than a month into it.
It would be good for them to separate out the presumed or probable from the confirmed in the reporting though.
What needs to be stomped on is this notion that since this is a (relatively, since we do not really know) new virus, that *no one* has immunity. False. There is a lot more variation within and among humans than is believed.
With *any* infectious disease, there is a dose-response curve and a susceptibility curve. There is also always a fraction who are naturally immune because they lack the necessary receptor. Full stop.
Any fraction is, by definition, *greater than zero*. There is also a fraction that will have had exposure to a similar enough virus to have effective cross-reactive immunity. In other words, the true situation is the standard conditional and the true number lies somewhere between 0 and 100%, sans those end points. What we don’t know is where we are on that curve. My own guess is that we are at or just past the true first and second wave peak. I don’t know if there will be a third one this year or if this one becomes seasonal (remember, that refers to the epidemic phase only, since it is known that influenza has sporadic outbreaks throughout the year).
Re AIDS, if ever there was an infection where strict early identification, contact tracing and quarantine would have had a great effect, it is this one. The PTB in certain places ensured that wouldn’t happen for political reasons. So, yes, there is blood on these people hands, literally and figuratively.
I am starting to think that the main reason for the differences in deaths between countries is the amount of lying to inflate the numbers. This is done to justify whatever the rulers want to do. Italy, Spain and the US are lying and reporting vastly inflated numbers, while the Taiwanese or Korean autists are tracking everything more-or-less accurately and thus their numbers are much lower. Their societies are already semi-authoritarian, so they don’t need the trickery to justify more repression
I, for one, welcome our Communist overlords. What’s the problem? We’ve always been at war with Coronavirus.
Adding to my earlier comment about why we should expect increased all-cause mortality is that the LockDownSocialDistancing strategy will increase the number of deaths (assuming it does anything) by spreading out the duration of the epidemic and ensuring that a greater number of the vulnerable are exposed (because shielding elderly and sick people only reduces their risk of exposure, it does not eliminate the risk) – than would occur if the ‘normal’ strategy was being employed of reaching herd immunity as quickly as possible among children and their parents, by maintaining schools and workplaces open.
In other words the unprecedented and untested LDSD strategy would be expected to increase total deaths.
Men routinely ignore The Ten Commandments and The Gospel but race to obey Tiny Tony Fauci (PBUH).
Scientism is a heresy
This filth has displaced real art in museums the world over. Can there
be any doubt the level of pathology confronting humanity?
Marina Abramovi?: The Rothschild Foundation Lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YGa1h-FhQ80&feature=emb_logo
Stab from the past…
Why The WHO Faked A Pandemic Feb 5, 2010
https://www.forbes.com/2010/02/05/world-health-organization-swine-flu-pandemic-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento.html#4302c58a48e8
10 days ago when I saw the first big daily spike in my little spreadsheet I knew something was up.
We had a nice round curve of reported cases and a similarly shaped curve of fatalities that was 5-7 days behind and about 99% lower. Then all of a sudden on Tuesday, deaths jumped 58% with no discernible similar increase in cases the week before, and they’ve stayed higher than any previous day now for more than a week.
In fact, reported deaths have gone even higher the past couple of days while daily cases last week seemed to max out just under 35,000. And now the reported case numbers are headed down in a roller coaster fashion (much like Italy) but reported deaths look as spikey as Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
The problem is that politicians will point to these higher numbers (and a slowly creeping up “fatality rate”) as proof that this thing is dangerous. And most low-information people will believe them and panic more.
Last week I got a lot of grief from certain acquaintances for calling the increase “nefarious”. Now I’m more certain than ever that it’s being done in bad faith.
Is there any proof that closing schools during a respiratory pandemic is a terrible idea?
I’ve heard an epidemiologist from Germany state that children (grouped together) provide a first line of defense against viruses. Children are very resistant to viruses and provide foil to a viruses attempt to successfully spread out.
TIL- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw
In Holland the burocratic organization that was responsible for distributing protection to care workers was only responsible for hospital care workers. So people working care homes for the elderly got nothing. So the elderly in those homes are now dying like flies. People found out when the weekly mortality figures suddenly became twice as big.
People are dying from being dependent on short-sighted burocracies, which is not in the models created by those burocracies.
According to CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
SARS-CoV-2 accounts for 23% of all deaths in NY
SARS-CoV-2 accounts for 31% of all deaths in NYC
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Everybody dies from coronavirus
https://babylonbee.com/news/skydiving-accident-ruled-death-by-coronavirus
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