In short: there isn’t one.
Michigan Governor Lady Whitmer extended her power grab on Tuesday, until September 4th. The Michigan legislature is run by the GOP, which, like all Republicans, are either open progressives or sniveling cowards, afeared about being called bad names. They could stop her, and have made noises like they want to, but won’t. We had a word for these fellows we used in the military, unprintable here.
Here’s the true state of the crisis in Michigan, from the Google itself.
This is attributed coronadoom deaths, which are almost certain to be larger than actual coronadoom deaths. But even using these exaggerated numbers, there is no crisis. None. And hasn’t been for a very long time indeed.
Facts don’t matter, though. Gretchen has her feelings to go on. And they tell her, and you, to be sacred. So you will be.
It appears our effeminate leaders—everywhere—are going to use zero positive tests for N days (insert $N \to \infty$ math pun here) as the metric for loosening their grip. Deaths, the best metric, has long been forgotten. We accomplish nothing when we live in fear.
Incidentally, don’t trust me on any of this. Search yourself for “LOCATION coronavirus deaths”, and Google will oblige.
Leaders are relying on “new” “cases”, by which they mean positive tests (tests can be positive even for people without the disease). People have been so frightened into stupidity, that they hear “new case” and they think death. When for the majority infected the illness is mild and even unnoticeable.
“Cases” is the metric most useful to frighten, which is why they love it.
New Zealand is run by another lady. She closed down the country this week. Again. Here’s the state of crisis in New Zealand.
That’s right. Those are zeroes.
In a matriarchy, a mask is an item of clothing a citizen puts on when the governor fears getting a cold.
A reader asked me about Hungary, which he said was getting hell because they weren’t panicking, and the propagandists insist on panicking. Here the state of the crisis in Hungary.
There is no crisis in Hungary.
The Godmother is as effeminate as Whitmer and whatshername under Down Under. Here is the state of the crisis in New York.
That spike came from what accountants call creative bookkeeping, but which we call cheating.
“You’re cherry picking, Briggs! I heard Arkansas is really getting whacked. The gloom of death lies over the state like a Clinton speech.”
Oh? Here is the state of the crisis in Arkansas.
Attributed deaths are about 10 a day. Ten. Is that as many car crashes as they get? How many are actual caused-by coronadoom deaths? Less than or equal to 10. This is not a crisis.
France earlier this week, we saw, made it a jailable crime to not wear a mask. Here the state of the crisis in France.
There are likely more daily deaths by eating bad cheese than this. There is no coronadoom crisis.
Again, our leaders appear to have convinced themselves that the only acceptable number is zero, or less than zero, deaths. Swine flu is still with us and still kills. If we locked down in 2009 and demanded a vaccine or zero deaths for that, we’d still be locked down today. And forever. Viruses don’t go away.
People are always freaking out about Sweden. Here is the state of the crisis in Sweden.
There is no crisis in Sweden.
Boris Johnson made masks a thing in England. Here is the state of the crisis in the UK.
Johnson ate too much jello in his hospital stay. Not only that, this: “More people [in the UK] have died of the FLU than coronavirus for seven weeks in a row“. There is no crisis in the UK.
How about those wily orientals in Japan? They never locked down. Here is the state of the crisis in Japan.
Must be all that sushi. There is no crisis in Japan.
How about the land of the former free in the Great White North? They locked down the borders with the US, still, and if it wasn’t for Tim Hortons opening up outlets in the States there could have been war by now. Here is the state of the crisis in Canada.
There is no crisis in Canada. Except for their PM.
Look wherever you like. At best—I’m speaking from the perspective of our dear leaders—you can find a few places that have slight upticks, as you always find at the end of pandemics.
Mostly you find what we saw above. Not everywhere has zero attributed deaths, but most places have fallen far, far below any justification for governments making it illegal to breath free, or to open shops, or play sports, or anything.
This information is available to all our dear leaders. Why haven’t they used it?
Bonus 1
Wait till Chinese-made vaccines are mandatory. https://t.co/aLPb7297tL
— Ezra Levant ?? (@ezralevant) August 10, 2020
Bonus 2 Hold the entries, folks. We have a winner!
Dumbest Coronadoom Mandate goes to…Wisconsis!
Wisconsin state agency tells employees to wear masks during Zoom calls, even if home alone
Department of Natural Resources Secretary Preston Cole outdistanced all competitors in the race to be the biggest flat-headed curdled cheese-brained response. Let’s all give him a big hand.
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A few my own random observations on the state of the “crisis”:
1.) No one seems to be talking – or maybe its so obvious no one cares – about the obvious red state / blue state divide during the college football debate what has been raging this week. All the states involved, and almost all of these are big state schools ultimately controlled by the government, voted very cleanly along red/blue party lines to either cancel the season or play as scheduled. All of the “momentum” to cancel was started by a group of blue states (Big 10), who then tried to convince the other conferences that they needed to cancel too.
Very clearly to anyone with half a brain, playing football isn’t much of a risk to the players or anyone in the program under the age of 65 or so. Spectators who are at risk can stay away as can any elderly or infirm employees of the universities, of which there can’t be that many in the first place, so canceling just doesn’t make much logical sense based on the facts.
It’s almost as if the blue states just don’t want to admit that the “crisis” has ended and therefore – just like local governments refusing to open schools – are doing their best to perpetuate the illusion that covid is still a thing and therefore don’t want to let anything happen than might disrupt that image.
Gee, I wonder what might be happening towards the end of football season that might be influenced by people seeing their lives returning back to normal during the preceding 8-10 weeks? I have no idea.
1A.) Pro-football-panickers really like to say, “Kids are coming back to campus and it’s only a matter of time until there is an outbreak on a team.” But what they really don’t like hearing is a response of “And then what?” They’ve internalized the concept that “infection=death” therefore we must do everything possible to prevent new infections, which is decidedly IMpossible at this point. They don’t want to admit that there is a “then what” after players on a team catch it.
2.) As predicted, the local authorities here in Houston have now pivoted once again on their metrics on ending the state of emergency. In a matter of weeks we’ve gone from “Deaths” to “Hospitalizations” to “Cases!” to “Positivity”. Deaths have peaked, hospitals are emptying out, cases have peaked, so now they are saying – as Briggs mentions above – that no one anywhere can test positive ever or we’ll never ever lift our “code red”. And the really insidious thing about “positivity” is that no one in the media – no one in a position to publicly ask questions – is asking about the parameters of what “positivity” means. These evil politicians will be able to monkey with both the numerator and denominator as much as they want to keep this thing perpetuated and healthy people under their thumb.
Is it still true that you can’t fool all the people all of the time?
The big crisis in this is the lack of Tim Hortons in Texas. Only sort of a joke.
Michael: Nope. Apparently you can. Or maybe those not fooled are too lazy to speak up…..
Infection=death? That wasn’t even true for tetnus (though our parents lead to believe it was near instantaneous locking of the jaw if we didn’t get the shot), ebola (the WHO says average of 50% fatal), AIDS/HIV is often now a chronic disease, not a death sentence (HUGE impact on health care costs, of course). Only rabies and prion diseases are fatal at near 100%. Of course, you have to have a brain to know this and be smart enough to check, so people remain terrified idiots and they deserve to be.
Forget Covid Canada. I read Canadians are waiting for border opening so they can INTERFERE in a US election. Fifty days of protests. Why is no one saying Joe is kissing Trudeau’s back side and in the pocket of the Canadians?? It’s okay for Canada to screw with our elections???? Is there some kind of guide on which countries can mess with elections or must we guess?
If I were in Wisconsin and participating in a Zoom conference, there would be an 11×14 picture of my dog in front the screen and if the company and their idiot employees don’t like it, they know what they can do with it. If people go along with this, THEY DESERVE TO WEAR THE DAMN MASKS FOREVER and lose all their freedoms. For God’s sake (and I mean that literally) how stupid can human beings become before God just wipes us all out or declares a 1000 years of hell on earth as what we deserve???? We are soooooo pathetic. Human extinction—it cannot come soon enough.
I really wonder what the death toll is due the the orchestrated mass hysteria. Presumably amounts to democide.
I don’t know -with al the respect that you deserve from me- why English speaking people call public “servants” ‘leaders’. They are, nowadays, at least, rulers, officers, but not leaders. In Spanish, one thing is ‘líder’ and another ‘dirigente’. They are no leaders, liders, they are sheep, puppets, and the worst class, they are spurred on by bankers and moguls, like Bill Gates, Soros, Adelson, Goldman Sachs, Singer, Pritsker, Bronffman, Bezos, Buffet, Willbur Ross [Rothschild], etc. So, regarding the excellent article you published yesterday, I agree in almost every account provided a caveat: the vaccine and the masks etcetera don’t come from fear. They are accepted for fear sakes, but people like the ones aforementioned aren’t afraid, they are pushing fear and cashing in, so to speak, from fear and nihilism, because they are nihilists too, but they know about the ruse they concocted…..
NYU professor Scott Galloway, who is sensible on a number of topics, is all in on Corona panic. Very few higher ed administrators are not pro-panic, although JR’s observation on the red-blue college football split is interesting. Also of interest is that in the Big 10 red states Iowa and Nebraska voted to play.
Carlos, I accept your correction. Rulers it is.
Whitmer is using an obscure law to back up her tyranny. The legislature voted to repeal the law and she vetoed it. The problem is, according to Michigan law, the legislature can’t override a governor’s veto. The legislature then filed a lawsuit and lost in court. The case in now being heard in a Court of Appeals.
Meanwhile, there is a petition drive to repeal the aforementioned law. I am one of the people working to collect signatures. If we get the required signatures, and the legislature backs us up by voting to repeal the law, then Whitmer can’t veto it.
Wish us luck.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Whitmer extended this “emergency” once again in order to punish those citizens who are working to rein her in. She even admitted that she extended it back in May to punish the people who were demonstrating against her lockdown. I no longer refer to this tyrant as “governor”. She is Gauleiter Whitmer.
Bravo, Briggs, bravo !!!!
Meanwhile in Minnesota the Mask Mandate explicit continues until Governor Walz’s emergency powers act expires. He extended that act yesterday (just by another 30 days…. for the second time) under the reasoning that while the disease is largely under control if his executive orders were rescinded we would all be in danger. He explicitly said that his emergency powers must continue until his orders are no longer necessary, which presumably means that they will be extended each month in perpetuity.
Republicans in the state congress are actually moving against Walz but unfortunately they do not control the house. Walz has been calling these actions “petty political moves.” Meanwhile Walz has been stumping for Ihlan Omar and his attorney general Keith Ellison has been making political hay out of the Chauvin case.
Both shootings and stabbings are at record highs in the Twin Cities (more people have been shot in 2020 than in any year of the last decade, and we still have over four months to go). Someday the governor might get around to doing something about that.
I wonder what will happen as we approach and go through the peak of the hurricane season (roughly September 9th and is the 4 weeks either side of it).
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What about places like Florida where apparently deaths are going up?
Further proof that the continuing Covid-paranoia, and face diaper and anti-social distancing tryanny is all political and nothing to do with the real threat from this virus.
If the American people don’t start fighting back, they deserve to continue living like mindless sheeple.
Pooch –
Looking at WorldoMeters for Florida, despite an odd “outlier” from Aug 11 (looks like a “makeup” from the previous week) Florida SEEMS to have turned the corner on deaths. For whatever “new cases” are worth, Florida’s are not sustaining and peaked a month ago
California deaths also seemed to have peaked according to WoM. California does have a recent spike of “new cases” equal to the new case spike of two or three weeks ago, but time will tell.
Texas peaked about two weeks ago – last week deaths seemed to have plateaued and interestingly Texas “new cases” actually seem to correlate with the death peak and plateau (just by eyeball mind you) but it doesn’t look like new cases will be sustained.
Arizona had a huge “outlier” yesterday having gone more than a week without a spike (prior to that Florida had “outlier” like spikes every four days or so with few or no reports on days in-between Florida’s “new cases” are falling way off
Georgia seems the most problematical of all the states
Louisiana is falling off on deaths and new cases
South Carolina is somewhat falling in deaths though not markedly. New cases are falling
Alabama seems to be plateauing new cases and deaths
Ohio is ….
WoM like the MSM depends on reports, and some states are difficult to parse
I don’t know if it was your enemies infiltrating your text, but the “Wisconsis” typo was apropros. Perhaps you meant to type Wisconsissies?
cdq:
Did a little digging and came across this re. ADE; references the 1977 study by Scott Halstead
who first described the ADE phenomenon in dengue fever. Subsequent vaccines for dengue fever
resulted in ADE disaster for which he raised the alarm.
Dengue vaccine fiasco leads to criminal charges for researcher in the Philippines
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/dengue-vaccine-fiasco-leads-criminal-charges-researcher-philippines
Coronavirus vaccine developers wary of errant antibodies-
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-020-00016-w
This is an excellent post, thank you again!
I don’t wish to make more work for you but perhaps someone will update the series of “COVID-19 as it relates to the worse pandemics in history” charts from the post here: https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/30013/ – The great charts there are out of date with current ro death counts which would give room to complainers at this date …
Fredo CDQ – Interesting from the first article:
Scott Halstead, a retired dengue expert formerly at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, argued that dengue vaccines could have the same (ADE) effect, and warned that Dengvaxia should not be given to children never infected with dengue. LET’S EMPHASIZE :: But a vaccine panel at the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded in 2016 that Dengvaxia was safe for children aged 9 and older.
Vaccine panel read EXPERTS and WHO (2 for 1)
In this article we have baffled experts. What was known 200 years ago has been forgotten
children raised in sub optimal filthy impoverished environments often have much higher
resistance to disease than their well scrubbed western counterparts.
The pandemic appears to have spared Africa so far. Scientists are struggling to explain why
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/pandemic-appears-have-spared-africa-so-far-scientists-are-struggling-explain-why?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=b6db6ce366-briefing-dy-20200813&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-b6db6ce366-43928301
If you look at the real numbers on the Georgia DPH site, you will see that actual daily deaths are trending down: https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report. The number that Worldometer and other sites are picking up is the deaths reported on the current day, not the deaths that actually occurred that day. And of course our ever helpful media does the same thing since the first number is higher and more scary. Plus we have no way right now of distinguishing deaths with COVID from deaths caused by COVID.
@Fredo,
Indeed. I think we are too germaphobic and culturally too afraid of death. I’m an old geezer and have seen lots of death.
@John B(),
Exactly.
My own opinion is that many autoimmune diseases have an antibody dependent enhancement effect in them. I may be wrong and just because that has not yet been shown doesn’t mean it won’t. Of course, that will not happen in every case. I’m retired and don’t follow this stuff as much as I used to; but current academic cognitive rigidity and group-think appall me, along with the logical fallacies employed by them.
Plus, nature is brutal. Nature is full of poisons, pathogens, and predators; so to be successful, you have to be adaptable. The physical universe is also, it seems, fundamentally mutable (which implies that there must be a Being that Is Being to bring that into being, accepting that something cannot come into being from nothing).
cdq:
I’m not at all opposed to vaccines that basically are trying to mimic nature, but I have grave
misgivings about the current method of delivery via intramuscular injection incorporating
a host of foreign viral material and heavy metals. I go back to the infant model where we see
that infants innately know what they need to survive in the world by putting everything at hand
in their mouths developing immunity. In the west we have been conditioned to reject this behavior
and doing so impair the infant for life with outre sterilization procedures. Paradoxically these same hygienic procedures also save lives. My objection to vaccines is the IM route and I hope to see vaccines developed for the oral gastrointestinal tract mimicking the infant’s behavior. There is knowledge
and wisdom in biology and nature that supersedes current human comprehension. God like complex
and intelligent mechanisms that account for every nook in nature.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, even tho not yet elected, have handed down a dictatorial Nation-Wide Mask Mandate; you will wear a mask for the next three months. I think it’s highly likely that additional Mask-Wearing time will be dictated.
A propos Fredo and cdquarles: I remember reading something a few years back about how many doctors think we are compromising immunity to many things by overuse of anti-bacterial soaps, hand sanitizers, antibiotics, etc. One doctor quoted said she encourages her children to pick up food and eat it if they drop it on the floor! Such advice would trigger fainting spells in many of today’s fearful, over-coddling parents.
Healthdata.org projections show California is doomed. Doomed!
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/california
Dan: It’s already of highly questionable legality for mayors and governors to issue such mandates under claims of emergency powers. The authority of a President or VP (never mind mere candidates) to do so is absolutely nil. They can shove their face diapers where they belong. People better wake up soon.
Witchmer got told that she didn’t get the VP nod and immediately pulled a “go home and kick the dog” on all us here in Michigan.
Every. Single. Time. that malignant, moronic woman has kicked Michigan residents it clearly ties to a temper tantrum on her part.
Protest her tyranny, get kicked, and on and on and on…
Thanks to the morons in Lansing for letting pot legalization go on a major election ballot we got Witchmer. Legislators with something like a clue put that stuff on NON major elections.
And her voters are the most pathetic pot addled bunch possible.Take a long in the tooth, barely presentable on a good day, demon-addled woman, stuff her in a sweater three sizes too small and slap red lipstick on her.
Voila! Victory!
But yeah, it’s all over.
Communists are making their big move.
Seriously.
@Fredo,
While I disagree with you a bit about heavy metals (they’re ubiquitous) and our bodies have ways to deal with them (though saturable), I do agree that vaccines should be more nasal sprays and/or oral whenever possible. We went to subcutaneous/intramuscular with preservatives, in part, because of the natural degradation that made getting consistent dosages right more difficult.
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cdq:
You’re a braver man than I, re. heavy metals. but turning infants into pin cushions
seems like a bad idea. With autism, asthma, and autoimmune disorders spiking
the way they have over the last forty years something is very wrong. I won’t be surprised
if it can all be traced back to the vaccine hubris of our intendant mad scientists. Where
is the precautionary principal when you need it? Less is more often than not more.
Key concept is that chemistry is mass action. No mass, no action. Other things can interfere with or enhance action. Dose and route make the medicine or the poison. Material bodies are chemical in nature and operate via oxidation-reduction processes of several kinds.
Iron, copper, zinc, & more are all ‘heavy’ metals. Below a certain amount that is variable depending on the individual, is harmful. There is an amount that is optimal, which again, varies depending on the individual. There is an amount that excessive and also harmful, which varies depending on the individual. In other words, hormesis is a thing.
Some of it? Yes, though all of it? I doubt that. While causation is correlation, correlation is not causation; until such is demonstrated.
Fredo: Part of the reason we have so many vaccinations is daycare and schools. In the “old days” when both parents weren’t working and the government raising the kids, childhood diseases were expected and even deliberately passed to much of the neighborhood. The idea was to “get it over with”. However, daycare and schools complicated that, since daycares and schools don’t want sick kids, so mommy or daddy has to take off work. Parents are as much to blame as the pharmaceutical companies, maybe even more.
The precautionary principle is a catch22 that can be used to argue from both sides equally well. It’s a political tool, having nothing to do with science. In fact, if there is science available, the PP should not be employed. The science is used.
As for autism and autoimmune disorders, those are basically “definition only diseases” which can have the definition broadened at will and it is broadened very, very often. Autoimmune is pretty much a supposition. Autism is a definition, a suite of behaviors. No biological support for either. It’s merely assumed.
“you’ll eat a peck of dirty before you die, just don’t eat it all at once”.
A distraction and a red herring.
The claim that children used to go to chicken pox parties, for example or mumps in particular, is making the [oint about natural population immunity. We can do better than that now.
The numbers of young men contracting mumps and damaging their chances of having children is now increased due to the silly MMR myth.
Most diseases are more benign in children and most often for the same reason.
It’s all in the immune response.
“autoimmune’
is not a conspiratorial word,
Nor I “autism”.
It’s what people do with the information that is toxic.
The term “syndrome” is used where a condition is not understood in it’s elements but which involve a collection of symptoms and signs in a clinically recognisable pattern. It’s the beginning of increases in knowledge.
Not a grand conspiracy!
The WHO have also taken DDT off the banned list but nobody talks about that.
After millions of children died from malaria.
At four, my favourite Uncle was married and one of my memories is hanging round his neck and the smell o this after shave. Competition for the bride.
Next day I fell sick with mumps! My grandmother said, don’t say a word!
He had two children, so no harm done.
Next generation is going to be pro vaccines for MMR since their experience growing up without immunity. Thanks to their mothers who thought they were doing the right thing.
@Fredo — PO vaccines are unlikely to have effect; the proteins will be broken down by digestion before they can affect anything. Buccal, intranasal spray, and sublingual would be better routes than swallowing.
The NY Times did this analysis, how could we interpret the numbers?
“Tracking the Real Coronavirus Death Toll in the United States”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html
Some people are more equal than others
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1932366,00.html
@Arkanabar,
That’s not necessarily so. I took the oral polio vaccine nearly 60 years ago. It worked. That said, digestion of peptides (protein fragments) in an oral vaccine is/was an issue.
Yup – 60 years ago – give or take – have a vague memory of it – I remember not objecting to the taste at all – digestion of peptides (protein fragments) … above my paygrade
Back to ATE, could that have made the second wave of the Spanish Flu deadlier?
But, if so, would that belie the theory that the seemingly unaffected old people had encountered the bug when they were much younger?
ADE – antibody-dependent enhancement
(ATE) antibody-“transport” enhancement???
@John B()
Possibly it did, but we’ll never know that with certainty. What I do remember is that the 1918 Flu prompted development of chicken egg based vaccines later.
What antibody binding to surface transport proteins do is induce the said cell to ingest them.
Are you one of those people who couldn’t believe that the death toll could exceed 100,000 back in March and now is trying to use all kinds of metrics to justify that you were not wrong? Are you now trying to tell people that the pandemic couldn’t get worse if we don’t take any actions? Well, I hope that you are just taking the opportunity to rant for whatever reasons and are wearing a mask when necessary. Temporary inconvenience and sacrifice is nothing that a manly man cannot endure. Right?!
JR Ewing started by stating
“All of the “momentum” to cancel was started by a group of blue states (Big 10), who then tried to convince the other conferences that they needed to cancel too.”
This is kind of annoying bcs the members of the Big 10 are
https://bigten.org/confstandings.aspx/2019-20/fb?path=football
Indiana University
Purdue University
University of Nebraska
University of Iowa
Ohio State University
So 5 members in 4 states with Republican governors and legislatures
University of Maryland
Republican governor and Democratic legislature
University of Michigan
Michigan State University
University of Wisconsin
Pennsylvania State University
4 members and 3 states with Democratic governors and Republican legislatures
University of Minnesota
It’s interesting, the Republicans control the state senate
Northwestern
University of Illinois
Rutgers
3 members in 2 states with Democratic governors and legislatures
On othe lessons learned when looking at many long detailed arguments is that they often just collapse when you look at the assumptions.
@ JR: The canceling of college football given that European football/soccer continued after their own lockdown AND leagues across Europe have decided to continue with the 2020-2021 season as well. I think *college sports is suffering from the sheep mentality that they flexed with its support of BLM (i.e. SEC threatening Mississippi to change its state’s flag). They want to remain WoKe so they decide to cancel the season.
*As a Big Ten alum, and as a regional historical “geek”, it’s amusing that those in charge decided to expand the conference membership eastward to states that aren’t remotely in the midwest region. The move to include Maryland and Rutgers was mainly due to financial gains. Now, ironically, the Big Ten will have an immense revenue loss from its biggest revenue builder. Heck, even liberal MLS decided to continue with its season. Ditto for relatively politically neutral NBA and the more conservative MLB.
@ Eli: From my understanding, state governors and how state legislature is made up don’t have major influence, if any, on whether or not an amateur sports conference has the green light to continue playing. Decision lies within the commissioner – and whomever who have such privileges to decide on the matter – of the conferences, big and small.
GRA, some of the European professional leagues suspended for about three months in March. The French league never resumed nor did the Scottish league and some others. That has led to considerable screaming as the bottom teams are demoted into lower ranks and the winners of the lower leagues are promoted and the suspension happened before the season was done. Many of the lower leagues never did restart.
The top leagues that restarted bubbled the players (tho not the way the NHL and the NBA have, that has been done for the Champions and Europa Leagues knock out games which are going on now)
Commissioners of college leagues are figure heads, the power resides with the university athletics directors. As to governors there are a lot of them that have really pressed on reopening not only just for sports, and yes they have a big influence
https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/08/11/florida-gov-ron-desantis-fall-football-college-high-school/
So in short assumptions
Yes – cherry picking. Arizona (where I am) is not shown. And yet, we have had far more COVID19 deaths in the last few months than at any previous time in the epidemic. And, contrary to assertion, our COVID19 deaths are quite accurately attributed, other than early deaths that were almost certainly not attributed to COVID19 when they should have been. At its peak, our PCR positive cases per million was the highest in the world.
Our huge second peak came early (in July) and has declined dramatically since. The trends in positive tests, hospitalization for COVID19, ICU usage for COVID19, and deaths all show a strong and appropriate lagged correlation with each other in the expected order, strongly suggesting that our inadequate testing is not giving us a false picture of the trends, even as it probably significantly under-samples the total number infected.
But also, focusing on deaths ignores the very real cost of COVID19 illness. For each death, there are 3 or 4 people who become seriously ill enough to require hospitalization, and they often remain in hospital for many weeks. A month ago, those hospitalizations came close to exceeding our remaining hospital capacity, which had already been augmented by importing 500 ICU nurses. Still, our death toll in the thousands, so far, is not something that I think should be shrugged off. That’s a lot of premature deaths in a state with only 7,000,000 people. Our case fatality rate is at 2%, a pretty high risk if one gets sick with this bug (not to be confused with an unknown but lower infection fatality rate).
At our recent peak, the odds of being exposed to a contagious individual were quite high. Mask wear, prudent voluntary actions by citizens, and closures of high risk of spread businesses appear to have lowered that peak rapidly.
There is an excellent website for tracking various COVID19 values – nice graphs of parameter vs time, optionally normalized by population, and with the ability to add other states our countries to the graphs.
I’ll put the link here (I don’t know if it will be clickable): http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
I also entered it as the website for this comment, although I am not affiliated with it.
John
Thank you
Yes, I pointed out eight trouble spots (states) in my comment above (I inadvertently left out North Carolina at the time but North Carolina seems to have serious “reporting” issues – difficult to parse)
Three days later, every state except California seem to have peaked (California MIGHT have peaked but the “new cases” spike last week has to be allayed.
As a whole, the US is past the second wave peak
But yes, I for one am not against the mask, but the outcry is about the criminalization regarding masks and the potential criminalization regarding potential vaccinations
In 2018, there were 21,000,000 medical visits for the flu (estimated), so four times the “cases”? 810,000 hospitalizations (estimated) and 61,000 deaths and that with what the CDC termed a fairly effective vaccine.
Briggs and Veronica
I guess I should’ve looked for “incidents” at “Tim Horton’s”
Love your simple, hardhitting charts!
What is your data source, sir?