Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Covid–19 Page 19 of 21

April 7th US Covid Data: Some Signs of Flattening

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On April 7, 2020

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Our benefactor wrote:

You can visibly see the trendline in the bar chart starting to curve. (A doctor) and I were discussing what flattening the curve means from a data perspective. Most graphs are log graphs. Ours is a linear one. From his, a doctor’s perspective, flattening would be the number of cases showing up at the hospital every day. In that sense, nationally, we’re right there. It varies from state to state.

I did a three-day average for new (usually tested) cases, and we’ve peaked over the last two days. Hopefully, that trend continues. It’s hard to tell, because the daily numbers are much more erratic.

Seems like good news. Remember that all of this is on a delay, people walk around without symptoms, then get symptoms, then they get worse and they go to the hospital and usually that’s when they get tested unless they’re important. You can see something similar in the doubling rate for cases vs. deaths: The cases doubling rate peaks eight days before deaths–people get to the hospital, then it takes them some time to die.

If this is the peak, it’s far better than it could have been. Do remember that there’s a long tail even if it is brought down, and even if there’s good testing (like in South Korea). In the US, there may well be multiple peaks.

Still a ways to go.

In other news, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in the hospital and has been intubated. At this point his odds of survival are about 30%, and being on a ventilator sometimes does long term damage, including to brain function.

Boris, of course, deliberately shook hands with infected patients and his original plan for Covid-19 was to not bother with self-isolation. It’s safe to say that his delays will probably be responsible for perhaps a couple thousand avoidable UK deaths.

I dislike anyone suffering, so I hope he’s well-sedated. Ventilators, having had one in briefly in my 20s for surgery and afterwards, feel unbelievably bad. It’s not an exaggeration to say I have lived a life filled with massive pain and suffering, sometimes at levels that pain killers couldn’t deal with, but I think having that ventilator breathe for me may top the list.

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April 6th US Covid-19 Data

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On April 6, 2020

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There as been significant improvement in the rate of increase of both deaths and existing cases. Original predictions were a peak at April 9th (at a 0 percent rate); our benefactor notes that seems unlikely, but we’re definitely moving in the right direction.

Note that when cases drop and we are taken off isolation, what will happen is another round of infections, then another round of isolation. Some states are still not isolating and some started only recently, so there’s still road to go, and those non-isolating states constitute pools of infection. I expect a significant spike from Florida, assuming the deaths and cases are counted.

Both death and infection rates remain understated. We will only find out the actual number of deaths when population studies are done afterwards.

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April 5th Covid Data

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On April 5, 2020

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A note from our benefactor:

April 4th’s report was skipped because the data were from 2:25 pm Saturday afternoon. The drop in doubling rates reflect the additional six hours of delay.

Today’s data normalize.

 

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April 3rd US Covid-19 Data

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On April 3, 2020

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From our benefactor. There’s been a slight reduction in speed of increase of cases. The death rate continues to increase. I think we still have some serious undercounting going on, and in particular I think it’s a good idea to keep an eye on Florida.

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Why Western Elites Are So Incompetent and What the Consequences Are

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On April 2, 2020

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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

The coronavirus has been striking for the fact that Asian societies have mostly handled the crisis competently (though there’s been variation in how competent), and Western elites, with some exceptions (Germany, for example) have not. At the extreme incompetence level are the US and the UK.

Let’s chalk this up to aristocratic elites. Aristocrats, unlike nobles, are decadent, but don’t stop with that word; understand what it means.

Elites who are not aligned with the actual productive activities of society and are engaged primarily in activities which are contrary to production, are decadent. This was true in Ancien Regime France (and deliberately fostered by Louis XIV as a way of emasculating the nobility). It is true today of most Western elites; they concentrate on financial numbers, and not on actual production. Even those who are somewhat competent tend not to be truly productive: see the Waltons, who made their money as distributers–merchants.

The techies have mostly outsourced production; they don’t make things, they design them. That didn’t work out for England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it hasn’t worked well for the US, though thanks to Covid-19 and US fears surrounding China, the US may re-shore their production capacity before it is too late.

We also have a situation where Western elites are far removed from the actual creation of the systems they run. This is most true in in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK, which did not suffer the massive bombing and destruction of most of the rest of Europe (the Blitz was minor compared to the bombs dropped on Germany, for example). Of course, reconstructing bombed societies is not the same as pulling oneself out of poverty.

The best handling of the coronavirus crisis in the world was possibly Vietnam, who are run by a generation that just pulled themselves out of poverty. Other excellent handling has happened in societies which still remember times of poverty or which were conquered and set free (Japan/Germany). China’s Xi, probably the most incompetent, also managed the crisis badly, but still better than the US/UK: Once he got serious, he got really serious. Xi, while a princeling, had a hard early life and was forced to work on the communes and so on.

This is all standard three-generation stuff: The first generation builds, the second generation manages, and the third generation wastes and takes it for granted because they’ve never known anything else. Sometimes that extends to four generations or more, but that requires a system which properly inculcates its elites, plus something to force the elites into at least some of the same experiences as the peons. We do not have that kind of a system.

Nobles, as Stirling Newberry explained to me years ago, are elites who make a point of being better than the people below them: better fighters, better farmers, and so on. Aristocrats are people who play court games, which is what financialized economies supported by central banks and bought politicians are. These people aren’t even good at finance. They were actually wiped out in 2008, but used politics to restore their losses and they were/are wiped out by this crisis, but are using politics (the Fed/Congress/the presidency) to restore their losses. The Fed is doing one trillion of operations a day.

So our elites are fantastically incompetent even at finance. The vast majority are completely disconnected from actual production, at best they are distributors. All they are good for is playing court games, i.e., politics. They can’t manage the real economy, they don’t run it, they don’t live in it, and they aren’t subject to its rigors. They live in a Versailles, almost completely disconnected from society except in crises, when they print money to save themselves, and download costs onto the peasantry.

A society such as this cannot survive in this form. Eventually there is an existential crisis which cannot be papered over by the printing of (virtual) money. Perhaps it is a real economic collapse, perhaps it is a natural catastrophe of near-Biblical proportions, or perhaps it is simply the peasants revolting and paying a visit to Versailles.

The vast spread of guillotine memes over the past four years should alarm our elites, but mostly, they seem to feel invulnerable and are still working to preserve their position in the system rather than fix the system and the society. You can see this in how Democrats are standing up a clearly senile Biden and denying the peasantry health care, even in the face of pandemic.

An elite which refuses to manage the economy will either cause its own end, the end of its country’s prosperity and dominance, or both.

Often both.

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April 2nd US Covid-19 Update

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On April 2, 2020

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A note from our benefactor about changes to data calculations today:

The charts are slightly different this morning. Due to the inimitable comments of Stormcrow, I have changed the doubling rate to account for compounding. Previously, I was using an arithmetic doubling. This way is more accurate, but but also measurably reduces the doubling time. The exponential function is partly what makes COVID-19 dangerous. I am using the following formula: =Ln(2)/Ln(1+(percent increase), where Ln = natural Log and return the same results as Stormcrow did in his post.

Also, for those of you checking the Johns Hopkins data, it is not identical. I typically pull the data after 8:30 am every day, but remove Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, because JH does not always include them in the data sets. It’s very hard to include them intermittently.

Again, thanks to Stormcrow for making this better,
gnogknoh

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April 1st US Covid-19 Data

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On April 1, 2020

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Courtesy of our benefactor. Death rate continues to climb. The best practice death rate seems to be about 1%, this is 2.1%, but much of that may be due to under-counting cases given the lack of testing. Deaths will also be under-counts, but not as much as infections.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Terrible Impulse to Rally Around Bad Leaders in a Crisis

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On March 31, 2020

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So, Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, had his approval ratings soar 30 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is talk of him becoming the US President (presumably this means making him Biden’s VP candidate, then having Biden step aside).

He sounds good on TV.

Cuomo is attempting to cut funding for Medicaid because he refused to tax the rich, as the crisis continues. A panel Cuomo appointed has recommended 400 billion in cuts to hospitals. He repeatedly said New York City has too many hospital beds. He has let prisoners in New York jails stay in them even as he was warned they would be breeding grounds for the disease. He left going to isolation at least two weeks too long.

In other words, he’s a neoliberal who wants to cut key resources even during a crisis, and incompetent to boot.

Back after 9/11, we saw the same thing happen with Bush, Jr. Bush not only ignored warnings about Al-Qaeda’s intention to strike in the US, the actual government response on 9/11 was terrible–the US could not get armed jets into the air, only unarmed ones. It would have been a hilarious display of incompetence if it weren’t for the consequences. Canada had armedjets up before the US: I joked that, if we invaded the US, we could have destroyed the entire US Air Force on the ground (then given you universal health care).

Bush was an incompetent, stupid, and mentally challenged (listen to his speeches–he was impaired). He used the blank check given to him by the rally-round effect to take the country to war with Iraq, a disaster which has spawned disaster after disaster. The money and resources used in Iraq should have been spent on other things–on almost anything else–and the death, maiming, rape, and torture are his legacy, as well as the legacy of Americans who ran to an incompetent leader.

Something similar is happening in Britain. Boris Johnson, the PM, has had his party’s ratings soar. Boris is the fellow who originally didn’t want to do any social distancing at all, based on a herd immunity theory which amounted to “let the maximum number of people die and the hospital capacity be overwhelmed.” Personally, Boris bragged about shaking hands with infected Covid-19 patients, then going on and shaking hands with everybody else he met. Personally, a typhoid Mary. The Conservative party has spent ten years defunding the NHS, to the point where it has one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita in the developed world.

Yet Johnson and the Conservative party’s ratings have gone up.

Trump’s ratings, while they have not soared, have gone up, and Trump’s Covid-19 reponse has been beyond incompetent, sliding into delusional, Emperor-has-no-clothes territory.

This tendency to rally around even incompetent leaders makes one despair for humanity. The correct response in all cases is contempt and an attempt, if possible, at removal of the corrupt and venal people in charge. Certainly, no one should be approving of the terrible jobs they have done.

All three of these leaders have, or will, use their increased power to do horrible things. The Coronavirus bailout bill, passed by Congress and approved by Trump, is a huge bailout of the rich, with crumbs for the poor and middle class. So little, in fact, that there may be widespread hunger soon. Cuomo is pushing forward with his cuts, and I’m sure Johnson will live down to expectations.

Incompetence and ideological blindness to the good of the people are, then, encouraged by the behaviour of the masses. This, it seems, is what they want.

We either break this cycle, or over the crises and catastrophes to come (and the 21st century will be a century of tragedy), we will lose billions of people we needn’t have.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

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