Our benefactor writes:
Fixed the three-day averages of deaths, due to the sharp observations of a reader. We might be in for a long tail after the flattening, with the number of deaths significantly higher, an increase of 4,920, of which more than 3,000 came from NY. I double- and triple-checked these numbers. This is not good news. (Ian — New York Added in the deaths from people taken out of their houses, so that jump is due to counting previously uncounted deaths. The huge jump in deaths and three-day averages today is in part an artifact of these deaths being added in one lump, rather than being backfitted.)
The biggest percent increases in cases have come from:
South Dakota (18 percent), Arkansas, Florida, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and D.C.The comparisons to the NY Times ultimately revealed that my three-day averages were inaccurate. The NY Times’ daily increases are aligned with Johns Hopkins data.
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S Brennan
Awful news, effing awful. The mortality rate has now doubled that of the Spanish flu. Those are numbers outside of anybodies expectation. And the contagious nature, what the hell, those numbers should be coming down, not staying at 5-6%. Awful.
Joan
@S Brennan, I’d thought the mortality rate of the Spanish flu was around 10%? Just skimmed the Wikipedia article but I couldn’t find it. Maybe I was confusing it with something else.
S Brennan
2-2.5%
“Generally speaking, the fatality rate for the Spanish flu is calculated at about 2%. Although it is something of a moving target as more deaths …”
hteepeepee://dubdubdub.biospace.com/article/compare-1918-spanish-influenza-pandemic-versus-covid-19/
“The average mortality rates for the two pandemics seem to be similar: 2.5% during the 1918 Spanish Flu and between 1.5% and 3% from early …”
hteepeepee://dubdubdub.statnews.com/2020/03/23/white-scarf-door-lifesaving-lesson-1918-pandemic/
Guest
They tested everyone on that aircraft carrier in Guam and found 60% of positives were asymptomatic.
Iceland is testing lots of people, not just the sick, and they are finding about half are asymptomatic.
So if 4%,give or take, of people who get sick die, that means case fatality is more like 2%. And mortality is lower still because not everyone is going to catch it.
I’m in no rush to catch anything, but it seems almost inevitable most of us will in the next year or two. I know a couple people who’ve already had very mild cases. I sort of envy them having it over with. My intended strategy is to avoid getting exposed to a big viral load (like in a hospital, on a bus, close quarters with sick person, or whatever) and hope for the best if or when the time comes.
Zachary Smith
I know everybody is reading the same headlines as I do, but a few need to be given extra attention.
Dr. Oz: What’s a million and a half dead kids?
I’m not clear whether the “trade-off” involved two to 3% dead among the schoolkids, or whether that was an acceptable sacrifice of all US citizens. Only after the character was blasted on the social media did he issue an “apology”. While it was fresh out of his mouth, the remark was perfectly fine to both him and the dreadful Hannity.
https://digbysblog.net/2020/04/dr-oz-whats-a-million-and-a-half-dead-kids/
~~~~~~~
In the rush to suck up to Doctor Trump, the FDA threw away the rule book. A manufacturer whose plants were never inspected, and which had FAILED Pakistani inspections, was suddenly good to go making a coronavirus drug.
On the positive side, this will give the folks who defend everything their beloved Orange POTUS says or does yet another excuse for the failure of the Miracle Cure. It was the fault of the damned Indians/Pakistanis, and Doctor Trump retains his halo.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-bayer-chloroquine/exclusive-fda-may-have-dropped-standards-too-far-in-hunt-for-chloroquine-to-fight-coronavirus-sources-idUSKBN21Y2LO
Guest
Those school kids are not the two or three percent that would die from reopening schools. School Kids are disease vectors, as anyone who has ever lived with them knows. They bring it home and grandparents, or even parents croak (I know a lot of men who only had kids in late 40s or even 50s). Opening schools means the virus spreads thru the community a lot faster.
I wish people would stop taking their brats grocery shopping where they let them run wild and touch everything. Last week a saw a little brat rubbing his ass on some wrapped refrigerated meats. That’s the nice thing about stores that limit the number of people inside. Much fewer rug rats. Germs or no germs, I can’t stand kids these days and their indulgent parents.
Should be interesting to see how Sweden compares to other countries a year from now. Will it burn thru the population and die out more quickly, or will they just be more screwed in general.
Zachary Smith
Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken the World?
This is really a little gem of an article. China and its leadership are entirely to blame for the Coronavirus deaths in the West. You’ll also learn China has the “greatest program of ethnic cleansing in the world today”, Freedom in China is badly eroded, China is engaged in a military buildup, it threatens its neighbors, and sells crappy Chinese products on the world market. Really bad place, and the leader is a bad guy who ought to be put on trial for Crimes Against Humanity.
This is the latest rightwingnuttery linked at the “Pat Lang” site. Remember how Russiagate was invented by Hillary and devoted fans to explain her 2016 loss? The counterpart has dedicated tRump Sniffers attempting to remove all blame from Doctor (Stable Genius) Trump and his endless Coronavirus screwups. In each case Blame Somebody Else. And Trump is much loved at the Lang site.
I don’t know who (if anybody) released the Covid 19 virus. Hell’s Bells, it could have been China. But it could also have been the US or half a dozen other Countries or Corporations. It might have been an entirely natural event. But evidence-free accusations are the way things are done anymore, and the Trump Lovers want China to take its turn in the barrel.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/did-xi-jinping-deliberately-sicken-the-world/
BTW, the author shows himself to be a dishonest hack with his first claim about China having the “greatest program of ethnic cleansing in the world today”. It’s something which makes me wonder if he isn’t another Apartheid state propaganda peddler.
anon
Because our leaders cannot think for themselves, the Midwestern governors are coordinating their reopening like it’s a f-ing sales event: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/16/politics/midwest-governors-reopening-pact/index.html
Given that Ohio’s governor is an idiot who wants to begin reopening on May 1st, I suspect that this will lead to a lot of deaths and another shutdown by the end of summer. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/live-blog/2020-04-16-coronavirus-news-n1184966/ncrd1185656#liveBlogHeader
Stirling S Newberry
The other shoe dropped:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/world/coronavirus-news.html
Unfortunately. it is a squid.
Stormcrow
@Zachary Smith
Most likely, nobody “released” it.
This question came as close to being settled as any such question can, fairly early on.
The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
Note the phrase “computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal”.
That means a bioweapons guy isn’t even going to go there, unless he wants a poor solution.
He’s either Chinese, Israeli, or American, depending on the particular conspiracy theory you’re considering. In any event, he’s got the best tech available. And since this is 2019 we’re talking about rather than 1969, he’s using tools that predict receptor binding effectiveness.
If his virus can’t bind to a receptor on a human target cell, it’s worthless because it cannot effect entry of its RNA into a human target cell. Which means it can’t infect a human, period.
So he’s going to go for a genome his tools predict may hand him an effective weapon.
A bit later on, the authors hammer the “engineered virus” conjecture again, more overtly.
If this does not suffice for you, then it doesn’t.
But past this, all you have to work with is a trackless wilderness of conjecture, narrative, politics, and paranoia.
I’ll content myself with the science.
Its track record is a hell of a lot better then that of conspiracy theory.
S Brennan
Some good news; The University of Chicago study using Remdesevir with 125 critically sick patients yielded very good results, two deaths in 125 very sick people, a mortality rate of 1.3% in group where death rates are well above 30%.
Now I know, since Remdesevir was also touted as showing promise by Trump, we will have to listen to a chorus of “never trumpers” explain that the study wasn’t valid because it didn’t have a blind. And that is so, apparently, it’s very hard to get a group of 100 people to sign-up for a study in which 1/3 must die to the sound of polite applause by the “trump-is-satan” crowd.
And while on the subject, did Trump purposely unleash this disease upon the world? No, no Trump-haters he did not. Was Trump mislead by his advisors on how serious Convid-19 was, yes, clearly he was, Tucker Carlson denounced Trump on the air and personally went to the White House to break through the bubble of advisors, who were purposely misinforming Trump. Was Trump truly unaware of the gravity of the situation, yes, yes he was and I offer as proof Trump’s visit to India at the very end of February 2020, clearly, he was unaware of the severity of the disease at that time. Think FDR/Pearl-Harbor; Truman/Korea; JFK/Bay-of-Pigs; LBJ/Viet Nam; Carter/Iran; Bush/911-Iraq; Obama/Libya-Syria.
Furthermore, the Chinese government helped in misinforming Trump’s view as they gave the impression that everything was under control by allowing international air traffic to continue for months after they had restricted China’s internal traffic. Had China’s behavior been as exemplary as it’s paid minions tout, Convid-19 would be a “Chinese problem” but, China chose to allow it to spread throughout the world. Why? Why would a government so widely lauded by the western elite do such a thing? Oh, who cares, let’s blame Trump 24/7/365 !
StewartM
Zachary Smith:
Trying to weaponize a virus like CoVID-19 is the height of stupidity (which is the strongest argument for it having been done, I’d have to admit, if people like Trump are involved). Reasons include:
1) Too much overlap in the human genome between populations. There are no “races”, only differences in the means of populations. It’s probably impossible to create such a virus, the best you could get is to make something which would kill slightly more Europeans vs Africans vs Asians, or vice versa.
2) And even if you succeeded there, your designed virus won’t stay the way you designed it. It *will* mutate in the wild, and by doing so may do in fact the opposite of you intended. Your super-duper virus designed to kill Europeans and spare Chinese (by a slight margin) may mutate into the opposite.
Only an idiot would attempt this (which I admit, again, is the only possible argument for it being attempted, looking at the leadership of some countries now).