[Rich]

Now why would someone use Sundays figures?

Because they were writing on Monday before Monday's figures were released.

Could they have an agenda perhaps that requires the use of a day when figures are lowest. Why not use Fridays for example or better yet the 7 day rolling average?

I made a decision early on that I wasn't going to waste my programming energies on the Xi virus. If the seven day figures are not provided out the box I'm not going to compute them. The underlying 7 day figures support the same narrative or narratives, if somewhat less dramatically.

[Doug64]

I have no idea how you think you can think you know this. It is not even possible to have evidence for this. You are assuming (without evidence at all) that the hospitals would not have been overwhelmed without the lockdown. This seems implausible since there were hospitals overwhelmed even with the lockdown. Significantly increasing infection rates would increase hospitalization, not decrease it.

Sure, some areas would have needed lockdowns anyway, such as New Jersey and New York. Others, where the death rates were very low, such as Wyoming, could probably have carried on just fine.

Please provide scientific evidence that the epidemiology models used for the Trump virus were incorrect.

This from the poster that consistently refuses to provide links backing up the claims you make? And you seem to have forgotten how a few months ago the number of predicted deaths kept being revised downward.

[BeesKnee5]

I made a decision early on that I wasn't going to waste my programming energies on the Xi virus. If the seven day figures are not provided out the box I'm not going to compute them. The underlying 7 day figures support the same narrative or narratives, if somewhat less dramatically.

They are available out of the box, no need for a calculator.

A single days figure means very little, especially one on a weekend when most of the admin is left until a week day.

The 7 day average tells us deaths previously peaked two to three weeks after cases peaked in first two weeks of April. Making some political point about deaths not rising when the case numbers have doubled in a little over two weeks looks a bit premature to me, although I hope you are right and the spike in cases isnt followed by a spike in deaths.

[Doug64]

The 7 day average tells us deaths previously peaked two to three weeks after cases peaked in first two weeks of April. Making some political point about deaths not rising when the case numbers have doubled in a little over two weeks looks a bit premature to me, although I hope you are right and the spike in cases isnt followed by a spike in deaths.

That question is why I decided to add the columns for new deaths and the change in the death rate to my charts.

[Drlee]

That question is why I decided to add the columns for new deaths and the change in the death rate to my charts.

No its not. The reason you did it is to cast around looking for some obscure justification for inaction and wrong actions that have created, under republican leadership, a catastrophe of near Biblical proportions.

Rich is just cheating. Watch and wait drones. You will see the real numbers soon enough.

[Doug64]

Right, I forgot Drlee’s other schtick to go with the emulation of Trump, the mind-reading act.

[Pants-of-dog]

Sure, some areas would have needed lockdowns anyway, such as New Jersey and New York. Others, where the death rates were very low, such as Wyoming, could probably have carried on just fine.

Again, you do not know that.

You are basing your argument on the unprovable assumption that the Trump virus would not have made things worse than the lockdown.

This from the poster that consistently refuses to provide links backing up the claims you make? And you seem to have forgotten how a few months ago the number of predicted deaths kept being revised downward.

So you are probably wrong about that too. If you are not willing to support the arguments you make, please go get a blog instead of taking up space here.

The models were probably as “wrong” as any other models: they failed to capture every single possible factor (because models are always limited) or had some incorrect assumptions (becuase we are still learning about the Trump virus) but does that make them “wrong”?

[Doug64]

You are basing your argument on the unprovable assumption that the Trump virus would not have made things worse than the lockdown.

As unprovable as the assertion that if only we’d had Clinton in the White House listening to the same experts, everything would have been just fine?

The models were probably as “wrong” as any other models: they failed to capture every single possible factor (because models are always limited) or had some incorrect assumptions (becuase we are still learning about the Trump virus) but does that make them “wrong”?

Right, the models provided false predictions because they were based on incomplete data and false assumptions, but that didn’t make them wrong.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Doug64

We have no idea since you are talking solely about your opinion and are not providing evidence.

[Drlee]

@Doug64 Right, I forgot Drlee’s other schtick to go with the emulation of Trump, the mind-reading act.

You are laboring under the assumption that anyone is buying this diversion. It does not even make sense.

Your problem with that is that the facts are on my side. Facts are inconvenient things to a Trump supporter. You are coming to understand that.

Another week has passed and Trump has decided that the best thing to do is to run an advertising campaign telling Americans that we just have to "live with it".

Meanwhile, Japan's most prominent virologist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and person deliberately cited by Trump supporters as identifying that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan. Well this Nobel Laureate has set the record straight. The virus did not come from a lab but DNA testing proves it comes from a natural source. Honjo never said it and the notion that the virus was lab made has been completely debunked. Except for Trumps idiot supporters.

Another Trumpet lie knocked down.

[Doug64]

Coronavirus death rate keeps dropping even as alarm grows over summer surge

The number of Americans dying from COVID-19 has been falling for weeks, a case the White House is making as it points out that the U.S. fatality rate is well below that of Europe’s biggest countries.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Monday that the fatality rate — the ratio between confirmed deaths and confirmed cases — is well below that of France, the United Kingdom and Germany, as she defended President Trump’s comment during his Fourth of July address that 99% of novel coronavirus cases are “totally harmless.”

“The president is not downplaying the severity of the virus,” Ms. McEnany said at a press briefing. “What the president is noting is that at the height of this pandemic we were at 2,500 deaths per day. We are now at a place where on July 4 there were 254. That’s a tenfold decrease in mortality.”

She said the number of deaths from COVID-19 on Sunday was 209, which was down 23% from the previous week.

“What the president was pointing to, and I’m glad you brought it up, was a factual statement, one that is rooted in science and one that was pointing out the fact that mortality in the country is very low,” Ms. McEnany said.

Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update Friday noting that the death rates from pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 have dropped for 10 straight weeks, from 9.0% in week 25 to 5.9% in week 26 and almost reaching the point at which the outbreak would no longer be considered an epidemic.

“The percentage is currently at the epidemic threshold but will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks,” the CDC said in its July 3 update.

After daily death rates peaked at 3,000 in March and April, they fell Sunday to 251, in large part because younger people who are better able to survive COVID-19 make up a larger percentage of patients.

Alex Berenson, author of “Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns,” said the “news is significantly better on all fronts” when it comes to SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the virus.

“Despite fact that the number of positive SARS-COV-2 tests (what the media calls cases) in the Sun Belt has been rising for the last few weeks, hospitalizations and especially patients in intensive care and on ventilators are rising much more slowly,” Mr. Berenson said.

In addition, “deaths actually continue to drop to their lowest levels since the epidemic began in March.”

Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have fallen by more than a third and asked why the “Lamestream Fake News Media REFUSE to say that China Virus deaths are down 39%, and that we now have the lowest Fatality (Mortality) Rate in the World.

“They just can’t stand that we are doing so well for our Country!” the president tweeted.

Vice President Mike Pence convened a meeting of the White House coronavirus task force Monday and insisted that the federal government would ensure that “states have exactly what they need to respond to the increase” in positive test results.

July Fourth festivities could result in an uptick in deaths and serious cases in the next two weeks, given reports of celebrations and beaches where not all people engaged in social distancing or mask-wearing, but Mr. Berenson said the decline over the past month should hold up statistically.

“Deaths can lag positive cases by a couple of weeks, but they should not lag by a month or more,” he said in an email. “So the decline in deaths is evidence that either the rise in positive tests is occurring mainly among younger people at low risk, doctors are getting better at treating COVID, doctors in [New York] and the early states made unfortunate and possibly preventable mistakes, or the virus itself is becoming less dangerous.”

That message has been all but lost amid the alarm over the summer surge of COVID-19 cases and talk about a second shutdown.

Several jurisdictions in recent days have issued new restrictions and delayed reopening plans as cases in the Sun Belt soar.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez announced Monday that he would reinstate an order closing gyms, massage parlors, banquet venues and dine-in restaurant service after a record 2,418 new cases Saturday. The order takes effect Wednesday.

The mayor said he would reopen beaches Tuesday after closing them for the weekend, but he warned that “if we see crowding and people not following the public health rules, I will be forced to close the beaches again.”

Florida notched a record 11,458 cases on Saturday, although that number fell to 6,336 on Monday, with a 15% positive test rate Sunday. The state recorded 47 deaths related to COVID-19.

Infections have increased in 37 states in recent weeks as governors and mayors reopen their hard-hit economies. Some officials have cracked down on masks and social distancing rules.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, signed an executive order Monday mandating the wearing of masks for everyone 9 and older whenever they are indoors and social distancing is not possible. He warned that another shutdown could be the next step.

“If we don’t do it — and do it now — we’re going to be in a world of hurt,” Mr. Justice said.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Monday that she had testified positive.

“COVID-19 has literally hit home. I have had NO symptoms and have tested positive,” tweeted Ms. Bottoms, who reportedly is among those being considered as a running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden.

Mr. Trump said during his July Fourth address on the South Lawn of the White House that nearly 40 million people have been tested. “By doing so, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless, results that no other country can show because no other country has testing that we have,” he said.

The statement prompted a flurry of fact checks and stern reprimands from media outlets and columnists such as CNN’s Maeve Reston, who accused the president of “gaslighting Americans about the threat to their health.”

The World Health Organization has placed the global death rate at less than 1%, which may have been what Mr. Trump was referring to, while noting that 20% of those infected will exhibit severe symptoms.

Ms. McEnany emphasized that the president takes the outbreak “very seriously.”

“Of course, he takes it very seriously,” she said. “Of course, no one wants to see anyone in this country contract COVID, which is why the administration has fought hard to make sure that’s not the case with our historic response effort.”

While Mr. Trump has been accused of downplaying the spike to boost his reelection chances, media outlets have been charged with hyping the uptick in the caseload without offering perspective on the declining death toll.

“Continued efforts by top newspapers and large cable outlets to panic readers and views serve no one,” Mr. Berenson said.

[Rich]

The facts as I write the post are that 542,480 deaths have been attributed to the Xi virus. That's less than 1% of 1% of the world's population. In terms of world population statistics that's just noise. So in terms of deaths, so far its been negligible. That doesn't prove that no counter measures should have been taken. It doesn't even prove that the measures that were taken were an over reaction. It does prove that Liberals have got no basis for their triumphalism. in large parts of the world severe effective lock downs were never going to happen. Liberals have yet to explain the incredibly low number of deaths.

I said early that if we don't see total deaths of at least 140 million in 2020, then these Liberals have been lying though their teeth.

[BeesKnee5]

I said early that if we don't see total deaths of at least 140 million in 2020, then these Liberals have been lying though their teeth.

Why should anyone care about your measure?

If I give an example. In many countries the lockdown initially reduced death rates from flu, food poisoning, car and industrial accidents.

I'll give another. Many who died where elderly and so a proportion would've died later in 2020.

Ok, a third. At least as many as died have ended up with either the long form of covid or debilitating afflictions from the damage done by the infection.


Trying to narrow this for a political win is just nonsense.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Doug64

Provide evidence for your claim that the lockdowns were unnecessary.

Provide evidence for your claim that the models were wrong in such a way that they were useless.

——————————-

All the countries with public healthcare seem to be doing all right.

[Doug64]

@Pants-of-dog I’ll give your request the same respect you’ve given my similar requests in other threads, none whatsoever.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Doug64

Feel free to show me where I refused to support a claim.

Also, my behaviour has no impact on the veracity of your claims, Your unsupported claims are not magically true just because you think I am not polite enough for you.

[Rugoz]

Here's a useful app to show excess mortality for your country. If you select "all other years" it also plots past years, which is helpful to judge how significant the deviation due to covid is.

https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/

[Rich]

Why should anyone care about your measure?

That's a very good question, and not one I can give a full or complete answer to. It would take ages. I would just note that a lot of politics is forcing ones political opponents, or in some cases one's political allies into caring about something they didn't want to care about. My 140 million figure, 60 million + 1% could have been taken as an opening gambit to a negotiation. An attempt to take the conversation out of the "yah boo sucks" into some kind of quantitative analysis.

Trying to narrow this for a political win is just nonsense.

When most people, at least on these sorts of fora, are engaging in "Yah boo sucks", I would argue it is rational to play "yah boo sucks" as well, even if one has a "higher" or alternative goals as well. The sad thing is not that so many people engage in yah boo sucks, but that so many that do it, don't even seem to be aware they're doing it.

[BeesKnee5]

My 140 million figure, 60 million + 1% could have been taken as an opening gambit to a negotiation. An attempt to take the conversation out of the "yah boo sucks" into some kind of quantitative analysis.

Negotiating how many should die globally to meet an agenda isn't something that interests me.

Each country will be very different and a high mortality in a given country will suggest a failure of that government to protect its people and vice versa. With varying policy across countries then meaningful global quantitative analysis isn't really going to be available.

[Doug64]

Each country will be very different and a high mortality in a given country will suggest a failure of that government to protect its people and vice versa.

Which would mean that the countries and states that have most badly failed their citizens, at least for the US and Europe, are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Belgium, Louisiana, the UK, Michigan, Spain, Italy, Illinois, Maryland, Sweden, Pennsylvania, Delaware, France, Indiana, Mississippi, and Ireland. Seeing how those are the states/nations with the highest deaths per million.