Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Not getting how you can say deaths and total cases are down?

Both are on an upward exponential trajectory.

 

So...opinions overrule links. Then my opinion that they are telling the truth should be equally accepted. The post should then read "plenty of personal opinions say this".

 

I think it would be nice to know actual numbers on last Monday and each day forward. No more of these dramatic graphs and exaggerated claims. Just give the numbers and even I am smart enough to see that 20 on Tuesday is more than 10 from Monday.

 

If it helps, I'll give you a couple links:
China’s ‘zero new coronavirus infections’: cause for optimism, or caution?
“I’m not saying [the zero number] is necessarily wrong; I’m simply saying we don’t know. What we do know is that there is now a political imperative for the statistics to be [low], and now we have statistics that serve the political imperative.”
. . .
“Some [Western critics] have been saying China and its system are ill-equipped to handle this outbreak, and now the Chinese government is trying to invert that argument and say, ‘Look at you, you are not doing it well enough,’” Gruenberg said.

The message from the Chinese government that it has succeeded in containing the virus may “politicise” the figures and is a potential driver for under-reporting around the country, according to Gruenberg.

“If history is any guide in China then there is a massive history of under-reporting for various reasons, both within the system and internationally,” he said. “I’m sceptical that this is the true number, or that anyone really knows the true number.”
--------------------------
Coronavirus China Update: Leaked Data Suggests Beijing Massively Underreported COVID-19 Cases

 

Using the The Covid Tracking Project data, here is a table of the daily numbers for the US, no graph. There are other sites that I put their data in excel but this was the most convenient at the moment. The daily and death change is the number increase from the day before.

 

now that graph is what everyone should be following. Thanks my friend! The clarity is definitely much more obvious.

 

You're welcome!

Just know that the numbers for yesterday were from earlier in the day. I hadn't updated that table yet.

 

13 foreigners, mostly Italian, were found positive here in the Maldives. All stayed at a few different resorts with staff levels at each resort 300 plus. No Maldivians have tested positive but yet on these resorts a single guest will encounter a minimum of 30 staff each day to include personal butlers. No additional cases? How can this be? According to the stats, the virus should easily spread amongst the self contained resort population but it hasnt. Seems to buck the experts theory on transmission or maybe a study on the Maldives should be conducted.

 

Yes, hopefully Facebook will continue to be the gold standard for news and information we can trust.

 

It's useless, Tilly. Any perception of tempering bad news or dire predictions is going to be met with hostility in here. You can't stop people from being scared and miserable if that's what they want to be.

 

I don't know how to answer that other than to say that more investigation would be needed. What often seems inexplicable sometimes has explanations that are not apparent until after an investigation. Or sometimes it's just random. FWIW, Covid-19 has spread to a 189 countries in 2.5 months.

 

Hope is good. Denial is bad. Denial gets people killed. Trying to temper bad news can be dangerous. It's not about being scared and miserable. I'm neither right now. It's about understanding the moment we're in and taking the necessary precautions. When you start painting a rosy picture, you make it easier for people to disregard the advice of the medical professionals and scientists.

 

or has it? There is a very real and strong reality it happened here in Maldives, that the diagnosis was made without actual tests. Having lived here for 8 years I witness flu bugs passing through like clockwork. Allergies are common parts of life here. So, it's rather bizarre that this virus has been a non factor locally.
There is a thing where the locals are a bit ignorant, even when told, about what this virus can do and how politically the opposition is using every tiny thing to create drama. I am certain most lockdowns and positive reports have more to do with perception than reality. Just a hunch.

 

I am for straight up reality and propose that those wishing to enhance their positions by fear should cease and desist. There is alot of opportunity in disasters for control of lives and interjecting unsubstantiated words of doom and they seem to attract alot of attention.
Experts love to give projections, the worst case variety, because their careers depend on the better safe than sorry model. But in this case society would simply need facts and they are much less dramatic, much less diabolical and much more positive. That is what should be out there and not the doomsday projections that only serve to provide disastrous decision making.
I get attacked when saying that I have not been wrong in predicting hurricane landfall and intensity since the beginning of 2000. People say you arent an expert and they know best. My response is they have an agenda and I dont. I look at basic models and will not lose my job if wrong..they will. In the virus thing the experts cannot under sell because they depend on being credible in their field to survive and it's better to create extreme projection versus lowball realistic ones that get picked apart by fellow "experts" and become permanent record.

 

We will see if my daily top by 3/30 at the latest holds up. Now that we have the first real pause in a while (although 2 days isn't a long time) I think we are getting a horseshoe like shape tonight for the last 4 days with that 57 not holding looking at these early morning numbers.

Something like this if I just guess the final number later today for the last 4 days: 57,49,46, 68?

We will see soon how this plays out but I think we are very close to that point where we bounce at the top before falling after a daily top was truly reached.

Imo the TV and national expert people saying this stuff won't top for 30 to 60 days possibly are just insane or crooked and the Nate Silver types while more rational are stretching it thinking we still have another big leg up to go because the big lockdowns weren't fast enough and other states didn't get draconian enough (example FL at this time). I think Nate Silver has fell into the trap of igoring the numbers from non-crazy lockdown states and crazy stay in your house/don't go to work lock down states and is failing to see that isn't really going to change the numbers much between the 2 ways if they hold and that the strict states wont get much better results for going draconian from that point after the initial softer restrictions for both.

I will just drop this hear as we watch this unfold.

PETER HITCHENS: Is shutting down Britain – with unprecedented curbs on ancient liberties – REALLY the best answer? - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog

"...I went to him with a troubling, persistent pain in a tender place. He prescribed an antibiotic. Days passed. It did not work. The pain grew worse. He declared that in that case I needed surgery, and the specialist to whom he sent me agreed with barely a glance. I was on the conveyor belt to the operating table.

In those days I believed, as so many do, in the medical profession. I was awed by their qualifications. Yet the prospect of a rather nasty operation filled me with gloom and doubt. As I waited miserably for the anaesthetist in the huge London hospital to which I had been sent, a new doctor appeared. I braced myself for another session of being asked ‘Does this hurt?’ and replying, between clenched teeth, that yes it blinking well did. But this third man was different. He did not ask me pointlessly if it hurt. He knew it did. He was, crucially, a thinking man who did not take for granted what he was told.

He looked at my notes. He actually read them, which I don’t think anyone else ever had. He swore under his breath. He hurried from the room, only to return shortly afterwards to say I should get dressed and go home. The operation was cancelled. All I needed was a different antibiotic, which he – there and then – prescribed and which cured the problem in three days. He was furious, and managed to convey tactfully that the original prescription had been incompetent and wrong.

And so here I am, asking bluntly – is the closedown of the country the right answer to the coronavirus? I’ll be accused of undermining the NHS and threatening public health and all kinds of other conformist rubbish. But I ask you to join me, because if we have this wrong we have a great deal to lose.".......

 

ITALY:
The National Health Institute (ISS) said the average age of coronavirus victims was 78.5, and the average age of those infected 63.

Kind of puts the minute by minute Italian death toll into perspective. 78.5 average age. One can only imagine the physical ailments existing for those nearly 80. Also note that nearly all of the deaths are in the northern region of Italy..
Demographics matter.

 

Thanks for the link. That is a helpful site. However, I would caution using some of the data such as hospitalization. If you scroll down the states, many show N/A for hospitalizations so it seems they only know certain states info for that stat. Similar to the worldometer website, the number of “serious, mild and recovered” data seems very difficult to obtain as those numbers rarely get reported in news articles or state releases.

 

I think its close to the same here even though the media parrots the younger cases they can find. Older people with medical issues - maybe upper 70s average but not 100% sure on the avg. age.

As far as Italy goes I want to see the explanation down the road besides some already mentioned but they supposedly had a crazy flu season before due to lacking a proper ICU setup with enough of those beds and I think the lockdown may have led to some of this increase ironically if that is true many lived at a grandparents home and they locked in there instead of switching to their parents home who weren't very old.

 

Great points and might I add a nicely done logical look at the background as to the factors besides just the virus for the deaths.