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Home » AGW and COVID and plague: observations on models and interventions

AGW and COVID and plague: observations on models and interventions

The New Neo Posted on by

Modeling can analyze data about complex systems and make predictions. But the predictive value of modeling is hampered by the fact that models are only as good as the assumptions and statistics behind them.

Models have become ubiquitous in government planning and policy-setting. But that carries built-in dangers connected with the inherent problems with models and the predictions based on them, particularly if the policies recommended are far-sweeping and damaging in themselves.

The more catastrophic the prediction, the more likely a government or a populace is to become afraid, and to justify large-scale interventions that can negatively impact liberty, the economy, and quality of life in general. And all for what? To avert a catastrophe that never would have happened in the first place? A lot of people – even those who are generally science-oriented – have come to distrust the models and consider them deeply flawed or even deceptive, an excuse for government to clamp its hand ever more tightly around us.

If a government doesn’t follow the modelers’ suggestions about AGW, for example, and yet the catastrophe doesn’t appear when predicted, the forecasts are often just pushed into the future. If a government does follow the modeler’s suggestions and nothing catastrophic happens, those who advocated the draconian interventions can claim, “See, if you hadn’t listened to us it would have been absolutely terrible, just as we predicted. Now you must always listen to us, because we are correct.”

And yet there’s only one earth. We cannot do a controlled experiment because there is no second planet to act as a control. And although we can try our best to crunch the numbers, how can we know for certain whether the intervention made things better or not, or was necessary at all?

Pandemics are similar in that modeling and predictions are involved. But with pandemics we have more opportunity for checking our work. We can compare different countries and different interventions during the same pandemic, although that can take not just years but a century or more; for example, they’re still trying to decide whether certain cities in the US had interventions in 1918 that made an ultimate difference in their rate of death. After all, it’s not as though all cities in a certain country, or all countries on earth, are the same in terms of a host of factors that might make them more or less susceptible to a particular illness. Researchers have ways of adjusting for those differences. But the methods to do so are far from perfect. And yet we really need to know.

But that’s mostly ex post facto, and enormously consequential decisions must be made in real time. Choosing a model and deciding whether to intervene and how to intervene is very hard. Following advice that features a worst case scenario, just in case, can lead to enormous interventions that hurt a city or country (or world) and may have been unnecessary.

In the olden days, science didn’t have models and people were at the mercy of epidemics that ravaged their countries and sometimes much of the world. But even then, in their desperation they tried to figure out what to do:

Hippocrates and Galen are colossal figures in the history of medicine [offered guidance for plague], rendered in Latin as ‘Cito, Longe, Tarde,’ which translates as ‘Leave quickly, go far away and come back slowly.’…

When the Black Death spread through Italy in late 1347, some ports began turning away ships suspected of coming from infected areas. During March the following year, authorities in Venice became the first to formalise such protective actions against plague, closing the city’s waters to suspect vessels, and subjecting travellers and legitimate ships to 30 days’ isolation. This period was extended to 40 days some years later – hence the term quarantine. Further regulations established remote cemeteries for plague victims who in turn were collected, transported and buried in accordance with defined rules. But these measures were too little, too late. Plague took hold and Venetians died in their tens of thousands…

Other Italian cities tried similar measures. Further inland, in May 1348 the northern city of Pistoia introduced wide-ranging laws affecting many aspects of daily life. Restrictions on imports and exports, travel, market trading and funerals were all brought in, but again to no effect. At least 70% of the population died. But by contrast, another northern city, Milan, avoided a major outbreak. Whether this was due to control measures taken by city authorities, including sealing up three houses (with the occupants inside) after plague was discovered there, is debatable. The Milanese authorities could certainly be firm. From 1350 they decreed that all future plague victims and those nursing them would be isolated in a designated pesthouse built outside the city walls.

I’m grateful for modern science. But unfortunately, we may not be as good as we think we are – and certainly not as good as we would like to be – at predicting the effect of the major interventions we employ in our attempts to control the forces of nature.

Comments

AGW and COVID and plague: observations on models and interventions — 114 Comments

  1. “I’m grateful for modern science. But unfortunately, we may not be as good as we think we are – and certainly not as good as we would like to be – at predicting the effect of the major interventions we employ in our attempts to control the forces of nature.”

    This is true of lots of things, not just the coronavirus. Where the future is based on “models,” the old axiom “garbage in, garbage out” ought always to be kept in mind. For example, “global cooling” had to be changed to “global warming” and then to “climate change,” because the results on the ground kept changing.

  3. Is there anybody with access to the highest levels of government who are saying ‘stop for a minute’ and think about these things. It really doesn’t seem like it and that may be the worst part. The president may have become the ultimate deep stater as he seems to be totally buying into the government science story while thinking the government can bail out the entire economy. He may be wrong about both I fear.

  4. Two thoughts on models and interventions. First one is to remember the old joke about the man sitting in a park, snapping his fingers about every two seconds. Another fellow walks by, sees him snapping his fingers and asks, “Why are you doing that, sir?” The snapper replies, “Keeps away the tigers.” Second man says, “Why there are no tigers here.” Snapper says, “See, it works!” Second one is from my court reporter/attorney days. Expert witnesses are sometimes the bug in the soup in both of those trades. A judge I once worked for told me, ” An Expert? Remember that ‘x’ is the unknown factor and a spurt is a drip under pressure.”

    Point? There is no way to tell if what we have done and are doing prevented some certain or even approximate number of deaths. In my opinion, best guess will be via comparing the “excess deaths” numbers. Have to remember also besides the inherent uncertainties of how we measure these things, that nearly all the numbers in these exercises are either estimates or guesses and that those are produced by folks with their own agendas to promote, narrative to support and axe to grind; none of which may motivate them to be honest. And none of them may have our – the general public’s – best interests at heart.

  5. Neo and I were thinking along the same lines. The experts are predicting 442 deaths in Nebraska. I think it will be fewer than 50. We are naturally distanced in the Cornhusker State. Other factors too.

    A silver lining here is that when the Covid19 models prove to be wrong, the populace will wake up to the fact that the CAGW models are way, way worse.

    http://21stcenturywisdom.wordpress.com/

  6. Trump is fighting enemies on all sides, trying to “help” him make a mistake that can be used to destroy him. I am terrified at how many people there are that are willing to destroy our economy in order to “correct” an election they oppose! They are in a situation where they must create a failure, because if he succeeds, he will in turn destroy them for their treachery, as he must!

    Can any of the smart people here recall another time like this in history?

  7. Point? There is no way to tell if what we have done and are doing prevented some certain or even approximate number of deaths.

    In economics there is something called the “Lucas Critique,” which makes the point that if you observe a bunch of historical data that reflect standard policy responses, there is usually no way to use that to analyze alternative policies, because the outcomes are intertwined with the policies. Here we might be able to learn something if different countries or states happen to employ very different measures in response to the pandemic, but they are all pretty much lining up in lockstep.

  8. We surely cannot control that which we do not understand.
    And common sense, including medical common sense, is seriously lacking at this time. We have a 79 year-old bureaucrat, Fauci, nominally an MD but actually the overseer of dispensation of billions of federal grant dollars per year, who is not Board-certified in anything, trained in no specialty, who has been an NIH employee ‘flying a desk’ since 1968, who is not, repeat not, an epidemiologist, telling Trump and the nation what to do and not do merely by virtue of his title as head of NIAID.

    Fauci does not give a flip about the catastrophic rate of ruin of the economy if he recognizes that at all. The US is a 77%GDP service economy, and most services have been slammed shut by edict. Small business, the backbone of America still, is being sacrificed to the Fauci idol.

    Where are the data? Its been going on for weeks now. I’ll tell you: only 50% of federally-supplied corona tests are reporting results though required to do so. So where are those data?
    Hydroxyquinolone is not available (in my state) except for-inpatient use. Tell you something? If you have lupus you’re flat out of med. The US has had >300,000 Wuhan cases now by test. How many of those are seriously ill? Where are the data?

    Stop it about the ventilator shortages and the other stuff that is useless except to generate fear. What happened to FDR’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”? Oh, that was the Greatest Generation and we ain’t it.

    Where are the data?
    They should be on Drudge and the MSM all the time.

  9. OMG!
    Johns Hopkins totals 1.1 million Wuhan virus cases globally today.
    And 64,000 deaths for a rate of 5.8%. It is surely a much lower death rate because the divisor is unknown, plus it’s inflated by Italian deaths, given an elderly population and a very poor socialist health care system.
    My guess is it’s actually closer to 1% globally.
    OMG!
    The planet holds 7.7 billion people.

  10. Some interesting news about the coronavirus model developed at Imperial College London, the projections of which (initially 500K+ dead, later reduced with different assumptions about social distancing) have received wide publicity and have influenced UK government policy…

    Several researchers have apparently asked to see Imperial’s calculations, but Prof. Neil Ferguson, the man leading the team, has said that the computer code is 13 years old and thousands of lines of it “undocumented,” making it hard for anyone to work with, let alone take it apart to identify potential errors. He has promised that it will be published in a week or so….

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-lessons-from-the-asteroid-that-didnt-hit-earth-11585780465?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

  11. Even people on the White House Task Force have been saying that flattening the curve through social distancing does not affect the ultimate numbers of victims, it only delays their illnesses so that hospitals might have the capacity to care for them at a later time. They are saying therefor that the area under the two curves is necessarily the same.

    I don’t think this holds logically and it surely does not reflect the curves pictured at the Johns Hopkins data center showing the experience of many other countries. If we delay the illnesses we might have: 1. the chance that we have discovered better meds or therapy by the time the right half of the curve is generated. 2. The chance that people will have moved or relocated away from hot spots. 3. The chance that the people affected later have different characteristics of their immune system from those affected during the first exposure. 4. The chance that the virus has mutated or gathered an epigenetic methylation. 5. The chance that there will be a population with a little herd immunity in the right side of the graph owing to subclinical and asymptomatic infections which have dragged on for a long time. 6. The chance that a new seasonal weather pattern will affect the survivability of the virus.

  12. I saw a guy, Jason Grumet, president of The Bipartisan Policy Center, who talked about how terrible it is that 8 states have not yet issued stay-at-home orders. Because some massive outbreak certainly is just around the corner for them. Mr. Grumet was also an Obama energy policy advisor.

    The states are: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota,
    South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming.

    Here is a map of the U.S. with positive cases listed on a per capita basis.

    See the trend. Four of these states rate at a 1 level and four states rate at a 2 level on a scale of 1 — 6. (That’s a dynamic chart, so it could change over time.)

    I’ll go out on a limb and anticipate that Mr. Jason Grumet will keep demanding a complete shutdown of the U.S. economy right up until election day.

  13. Several researchers have apparently asked to see Imperial’s calculations, but Prof. Neil Ferguson, the man leading the team, has said that the computer code is 13 years old and thousands of lines of it “undocumented,”

    I’ve seen the contention that Neil Ferguson also once projected there would be over 100,000 deaths worldwide from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)73948-9/fulltext

    Creutzfeld-Jakob disease supposedly claims about 400-odd people worldwide every year. The variant form is quite rare. Four people are known to have died of it in the United States since 1996.

    Some of his calls don’t pan out.

  14. Johns Hopkins totals 1.1 million Wuhan virus cases globally today.
    And 64,000 deaths for a rate of 5.8%. It is surely a much lower death rate because the divisor is unknown, plus it’s inflated by Italian deaths, given an elderly population and a very poor socialist health care system.

    That’s the case fatality rate. Italian officials have admitted to many mistakes in this, such as failing to separate respiratory patients and care staff from others. It’s doubtful the health care system is ‘very poor’ (or that the term ‘socialist’ means diddly / squat). Life expectancy at age 65 is about two years lower than the European median and 4.3 years lower than the American figure, so there’s room for improvement. It’s pretty similar to the American figure from the 1970s.

  16. I firmly expect government leaders, at all levels, to tell us that snapping their fingers kept the tigers away, and that ruining the economy saved lives. And there will be no way to disprove either assertion.
    =
    Back when the Navy was trying to educate me, a very bright young Professor (who had worked for McNamara at what time) as a teaching tool presented a model intended to prove some point about bombing effectiveness. He had the misfortune of speaking to a bunch of guys who had actually done the deed. His students ignored all of the bells and whistles and went after his assumptions tooth and nail. Wasn’t a pretty sight.

    My faith in Trump is beginning to wane. He keeps talking about how great his economy used to be, and how it is imperative that we get back to work. But, doesn’t pull the trigger. I am surprised that Ivanka, Kushner, Jr, or some other smart person that he listens to, if there are any, hasn’t had a serious discussion with him about isolating the hot spots to the extent feasible and getting the rest of the country going. I fear that Fauci and Dr Birx set their feet on a path based on that original garbage from Ferguson that was based on ridiculous assumptions for starters. They can’t back off. They have become media darlings and have Trump in a vice between themselves and the howling jackals of the Democrat party. Bean counters with tunnel vision have got control of the country.

  17. Oldflyer:

    We still have a system in which states and sometimes cities respond to different degrees. Aren’t a lot of the edicts on a state-by-state basis?

    That said, I don’t think for a moment that Trump is unaware of the economic repercussions. He’s said many times that this can’t go on forever or even all that much longer. I think the end of April may indeed be the limit, with large gatherings still banned, masks very common, hand washing still almost constant, and higher-risk people told to stay home. Some municipalities or states may continue more stringent rules for a while, though.

    That’s my prediction. Make of it what you will.

  18. neo,

    And he will be hammered for it by the media. All deaths after will be all on Trump. All these experts will be on CNN non stop going on about how the president is putting money over human lives. It will be fun. I actually think the key turning point for him was when he backed off the Easter target. Whether it was right or not it was a sign of submission to the experts and from that point on he has been driven by them. Hopefully he’s snapping out of it now and seeing a bigger picture.

  19. What I would like to see happen is that the supply chain back ups on protective equipment clear. If we can segregate the old and the late middle aged with issues, the rest of the country might return to work, albeit with only sparse seating in gathering places.

  21. Cornhead, my favorite was Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (who’s all over twitter and as a “Harvard man” of course cannot be wrong) ragging on Wyoming for being the worst state at social distancing (by some metric…forgot what). Of course if the good doctor had ever actually been to Wyoming he’d know they’re naturally distant.

  22. One not-as-dark spot. It appears (tentatively) that Italy and Spain may have reached a plateau. +

  23. My faith in Trump is beginning to wane. He keeps talking about how great his economy used to be, and how it is imperative that we get back to work. But, doesn’t pull the trigger.

    Because daily fatalities are still rising, that’s why.

  24. The “ Precautionary Principle” is at play in the proposed reactions AGW models. Embracing this principle seems to inherently involve a kind of tunnel vision which focuses on a worst case scenario while ignoring potential side effect of actions taken to avoid the supposed catastrophe.

  25. Bryan Lovely,

    I want to believe. But I worry he has gone so far into the fear/panic zone that he’s going to have a hard time pivoting to the cautious re-open stance. Fauci will be out there doing his thing every day and the media will be goading him at these tedious marathon press conferences to attack Trump and if Fauci is pulled the media will freak.

    To me it feels like Trump has joined in with the expert mafia and it’s really hard to get out of that alive.

  26. Griffin:

    Oh, and so at that moment Trump’s entire personality and approach to life changed utterly? Don’t think so.

    It’s a balancing act. He’s well aware of that.

    He’s also well aware that “And he will be hammered for it by the media.” And that is a valid statement for all possible “its.”

  27. neo,

    No, I don’t think his personality changed but I think his instinct was to find a balance as he was mentioning how it’s not a big issue in many places but then he changed his tone completely it seems to me.

    This hitting NY so heavily is also a major factor in this because so much of the media and financial sectors are there they have greatly amplified the fear factor in there reporting. Saw an article at The Federalist by a NY writer who talked with someone in rural Indiana that had a totally different perspective on this. I get the counters to it but the one size fits all approach in so many states is hard for me to get past.

  28. A really well written post.

    That’s the norm here, but still, an exceptional analogy well defined. Thank you, Neo!

    You and your commenters are a refuse of reason in a sea of confusion.

  29. Because daily fatalities are still rising, that’s why.

    But they are rising at a slower rate, and hospitalizations are slowing even more. I don’t have a model (yet) to predict when deaths level off and decline, but a lot of people are saying it will be this month. Even sooner in NY where deaths are already basically flat.

  30. “You and your commenters are a refuse of reason in a sea of confusion”

    Surely, you mean ‘refuge’.

  31. I got tired of Instapundit and his linking factually questionable articles and corona bros in the comments a couple of weeks back but I just went there and he had a link to some quote by Birx and the commenters have apparently turned full on skeptic of her and her models. Interesting.

    I have sensed more people the last few days questioning how long this can go on like this.

  32. Bill Gates, whose recent net worth is estimated at $99.3 Billion, apparently is proposing the entire USA shuts down for ten weeks. What the hell, he’ll still be worth at least $9 Billion by then. No sweat, Bill! But the hoi polloi may come for you with axes and chains then.

  33. Neo as I said, I know Trump is aware. He talks about it most every day. And the carnage mounts. To repeat, I think he is boxed between Fauci/Brix with their reliance on statistics (which remain questionable) and “an abundance of caution”; and his enemies in the media and the other party. If he deviates from the experts one iota he will be attacked. But, he will be attacked in any case; and sooner or later he will have to modify his position. Hopefully sooner rather than too late. By the way I fully realize that states and localities are issuing their own mandates, but the Federal government is giving them cover.

    This morning the front page of the daily rag sounded dire warnings of impending catastrophe for my county. The County Health Officer then ratcheted the screws by prohibiting any gathering of people whatsoever. So much for social distancing. He also mandated facial covering whenever outside. Too bad that the experts were so late to the table with that idea. I did not know that a Public Health officer could mandate actions by the public; but, I guess he can. This county of 2.4+ million has had approximately 700 cases and 17 deaths. (The preponderance of the deaths were in an area near Palm Springs which is rife with senior and assisted living facilities.)

    Art Deco, your response need context. Where are the number of deaths increasing at a significant rate? We know that there are hot spots, and there are areas that are managing pretty well. Discrete loosening is possible.

  35. The point is not social distancing or lock-down or cover-in-place. The point is that you, if you are infected, should not give it to anyone else, and try to keep your trail of viruses so low that you don’t infect even one person. You can do anything that accomplishes this: Assume that you are infected is the sine qua non; live in South Dakota on a farm. Surf off of Santa Cruz. Take hydroxychloroquine (after a little more data). Fly a private plane. Stay at home. Die.

  36. You may be interested in reading two masterpieces in Italian literature, dealing with pestilence.
    The first is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, written (in Italian, not Latin) very few years after the great plague of 1348, where a group of ten young noble men and women escape from the pest in a safe place, and entertain themselves with the daily telling of a “novella” (short story) by each of them. So there are 100 “novelle” recounting vividly and humorously about medieval life, from a very secular point of view.
    Boccaccio is considered one of the three founders of the Italian language and literature, together with (the insuperable) Dante Alighieri and the great poet Petrarca. Amazingly, with a little help and education, any modern Italian can still read this medieval texts in the original; we do that in our schools, but you can only really appreciate them as adult.

    The other classic Italian book **worth reading** about pestilence, is
    Alessandro Manzoni’s “I Promessi Sposi” (The Betrothed), considered the most important Italian novel.
    Set in 1600 Lombardy under Spanish rule, it recounts the story of two young peasant ‘fiancés’, whose marriage is obstructed by a noble bully infatuated with the girl; it’s a deeply absorbing story with a complex plot, unforgettable scenes and characters which have become milestone of Italian culture, and it’s also a compelling Christian classic because the main theme is God’s Providence and the victory of His love right in the middle of the horrors brought by the plague.

    Written in the early XIX century by Manzoni, a true “Milanese” and also a major figure in Italian literature, it’s also a book incredibly well researched historically and accurate in its descriptions – it can really give you some good knowledge about Lombardy: the story is mainly set in Milano, and some historical characters involved are still revered nowadays.

    Two ways of living and making sense of your life in times of pandemic, something that science or models can help you with only up to a point.

  37. As of 7:26 am this morning there have been 312245 documented Covid19 cases,
    8503 deaths and 15021 recoveries. The number of recoveries is at least as important as the number of deaths. Not spoken about at all, as far as I can tell.

  38. Morning update: Yesterday there was a slight uptick in active cases for which I had to adjust the sigmoid fit slightly. That extends the flattening out to Friday, instead of Wednesday or Thursday. The really strange event yesterday was the increase in serious cases. There was a 42% increase in 1 day!! Previous increases have averaged between 10-15% per day. I don’t have any explanation for why this huge increase.

    Great discussion here on models. Thanks Neo! I’ve dealt with models all my professional life. However, they are physics models. And since physics deals with the basics of nature they are relatively simple. When one tries to extend this to more complex systems, that’s when the trouble begins. One can take the relatively complex equations of fluid dynamics and apply them to a basically closed system such as an aircraft wing and come up with very realistic results. Take those same equations and try to apply them to an open system such as the atmosphere and you get weather prediction which is very unreliable in detail more than 3-4 days out. Add in energy transport and you get the Global Circulation Models which the AGW crowd uses and you get the useless temperature predictions which for the last 15 years have been shown to have no correlation with reality. Same idea here for models which try to describe in detail epidemiology which involves human social interactions etc, and you have the equivalent of the GCMs. I also worry about the people using these computer models. I’ll just note that for the last 20 years I was teaching, an attitude I had to CONTINUALLY correct was when the premed/bio student would say, “but the computer says that, so it MUST be right!” We have a lot of people out there who have an ingrained trust of anything that shows up on their screen.

    This morning I noted two articles where people are beginning to question the Birx/Fauci dependence on these models. For example: https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2020/04/05/is-what-were-being-told-about-the-coronavirus-pandemic-wrong-n2566373 Unfortunately, I think Trump, somewhat naively, depended on these two people and is now caught between a rock and and a hard place in decision making. Unless this lockdown stops I worry greatly what is going to happen. I hope we see some change by the end of this week.

  39. Ok… i am going to be the first to say it..

    i was wondering how long before “Love in the time of Covid” would be written
    either as an article, book, or some such..
    [to those missing the point, its a play on “love in the time of cholera”

  40. Teens (euphemism) in NY practicing social distancing..

    The nearly two and a half-minute clip recorded Thursday afternoon and posted on Facebook shows nearly two dozen teens pushing, shoving and punching each other outside an apartment building on Mother Gaston Blvd. near Eastern Parkway in Brownsville.

    Some of the teens jumped up on parked cars and ran into the middle of the street, blocking vehicles trying to pass through, the video shows.

    https://www.facebook.com/100001382426595/videos/2956784387710946/

    and here is a man who is rubbing the surfaces to spread disease

    https://www.facebook.com/1758297949/videos/10207105076462806/

    [the toilet seat lickers were better at least they only did themselves in]

  42. Let me second the plug for i promesi sposi by Manzoni. It’s one of the world’s great novels, and the opening, with its deadpan recitation of government decrees that were total failures–which is why they kept making more–applies here perfectly. The English version is at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35155. Free.

  43. As another physics guy I want to compliment phyicsguy for his clear exposition of the validity of models, i.e., except in limited well defined circumstances they are pretty much useless. As John von Neumann said, “With four parameters I can model an elephant and with five I can make it’s trunk wiggle.”

    All these global models are nonsense because local situations vary greatly and affect how the virus is transmitted. Just compare NYC and LA. NYC is very densely populated with people jammed together in subways and nearly bumping into each other on sidewalks during rush hour. This is an ideal environment for transmitting the disease. The commute in LA is miles of cars each with one passenger going to work. It’s hard to infect someone else from a car with the ac on doing 60.

    I prefer to look at the total number of deaths as the correct metric for understanding what’s going on. After all that’s what we care about for our loved ones and ourself. Who cares about cases if you recover without permanent damage. As of this morning there are 8802 total deaths in the US, with 3914 in New York and 846 in New Jersey, which comes to about half of all the deaths in the country. California, which is about three times as big as NY, only has 321 deaths. This tells me that the response should be highly localized medical care and not a one size fits all shutdown that hammers the economy.

    Go to https://ncov2019.live/, find the US table, and sort on the number of deaths for details. This is much more informative than all the percentages, rates, and so on that depend on sketchy and incomplete data.

  45. Almost all executives, government or private, are going to have to make decisions about matters in which they have little or no expertise. A classic case was that of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who at the last moment got cold feet at the prospect of a two-front war. The Kaiser called in chief of staff von Moltke, and gave him his new marching orders: turn around the troops destined for the attack in the west, and redirect them to the eastern front. Barbara Tuchman writes of Moltke’s reaction.

    “Aghast at the thought of his marvelous mobilization wrenched into reverse, Moltke refused point-blank. For ten years, first as assistant to Schlieffen, then as his successor, Moltke’s job had been planning for this day, The Day, Der Tag, for which all Germany’s energies were gathered, on which the march to final mastery of Europe would begin. It weighed upon him with an oppressive, almost unbearable responsibility…Now, on the climactic night of August 1, Moltke was in no mood for any more of the Kaiser’s meddling with serious military matters, or with meddling of any kind of the fixed arrangements. To turn around the deployment of a million men from west to east at the very moment of departure would have taken a more iron nerve than Moltke disposed of. He saw a vision of the deployment crumbling apart in confusion, supplies here, soldiers there, ammunition lost in the midle, companies without officers, divisions without staffs, and those 11,000 trains, each exquisitely scheduled to click over specified tacks at specified intervals of ten minutes, tangled in a grotesque ruin of the most perfectly planned military movement in history.

    “Your majesty,” Moltke said to him now, “it cannot be done. The deployment of millions cannot be improvised…Those arrangements took a whole year of intricate labor to complete…and once settled, it cannot be altered.”

    “Your uncle would have given me a different answer,” the Kaiser said to him bitterly.”

    It was not until after the war that General von Staab–Chief of the Railway Division and the man who would have actually been responsible for the logistics of the redirection–learned about this interchange between Moltke and the Kaiser. Incensed by the implied insult to the capabilities of his bureau, he wrote a book, including pages of detailed charts and graphs, proving that it could have been done.

    So, what happened here? The Kaiser trusted his military expert, von Moltke–but the real expert in railway operations (and this was substantially a railway question)–disagreed. At the time of decision-making, von Staab’s personal opinion was never even solicited.

    More discussion of this matter here:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57755.html

  46. Another example of decision-making when the decision-maker is not a technical expert is the case of air defense strategy in pre-WWII Britain. Sir Henry Tizard wanted the emphasis placed on radar; Frederick Lindemann (close friend of Churchill) wanted equal emphasis placed on infrared detection and on the bizarre technology of parachute mines. The decision-maker was Lord Swinton, the air minister: he was by background a lawyer, with a specialty in mining law.

    I wrote about this interesting case here: Radar Wars–A Case Study in Science and Government

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/41262.html

  47. I don’t see how Trump has any choice in an election year but to err on the side of pandemic caution — even if that might run against his instincts and the advice of conservative advisers.

    The passing days may seem same as they ever were. The sun rises and the sun sets. But the world is in a peculiar free fall and things won’t go back to the way they were after the pandemic break.

  49. Huxley,

    I’m always cautious about saying things will never be the same after (name the event). Obviously in a technical sense that is true but it’s true of every day. Things were never the same after last October 21 or November 14 when you think about it.

    Many people said the same after 9/11 and there were certainly some things different but within a few months the average American city looked little different than before.

    Will things be different after this? Yes, certainly in the short term and in some ways the long term but probably not as much as we think in the fog of war.

  50. Griffin:

    Question from Captain Obvious.

    In this Wuhan virus war analogy is the virus more like the weather or physical environment (jungle, desert, North Atlantic) affecting all combatants, and the actual adversaries are the progressives (and worse) versus everyone else? Progressives (and worse) using the virus to advance their goals that predate the virus?

  51. om,

    In the long run yes the left is probably a bigger threat which is one of the reasons I’ve been harping on all our civil liberties that have been taken in such a short period of time. Once these things are enacted the first time it just gets easier and leftists are far more likely to be the one doing it.

    As much as I think Trump has fallen too much under the spell of the Fauci/Birx crowd I don’t think it likely he would do anything like this in the future when this passes. But if he loses in November all bets should be off because the climate change crowd are always claiming many millions will die because of it so if we did all this for the virus what will they do to stop the ‘Climate Emergency’?

  52. We see numerous attempts made by people of good will to try and place the Covid19 situation in some kind of comparative context with regard to the economic costs associated with social distancing. [ I am personally of the opinion that but for the insane behavioral incontinence and emotion driven unreliability of a significant minority of the population, the present rules are/would be too stringent and universal. You know, the kind of people who after enduring drought for a short while, would jump bodily into the last tub of drinking water. ]

    What I have not seen and would be interested in seeing , is just how many seemingly or ostensibly otherwise healthy middle aged people, “normal” influenza kills every flu season. The pictures of recently deceased local politicians, bus drivers, cops, and health care professionals, leaves room for speculation that in addition to obvious technical obesity they might indeed have had undisclosed ailments. But, whether the usual toll of more or less normally functioning 58 year old fat people is similar in the course of a regular flu season, is something I’ve not seen broken out. If it is comparable, it never came to my attention.

    Perhaps I just need to dig back into the news, or even previous comments left here.

  53. Neo – thanks again for hosting a wonderful, thoughtful blog

    Commenters – thanks again for doing a superb job explaining the stats for those of innumerates here

    No shopping report because we haven’t done any — except to buy our Sunday paper on Saturday at the local 7-Eleven. No face masks but everyone was keeping their distance. Instead of paying cash I used our ‘tap’ credit card.

    Stay well everyone and no fighting as we go on a scavenger hunt for the dreaded situation of “The Un-Matched Sock”.

  54. DNW,

    One of the things this entire episode has proven is that most people have no clue how many people die in this country every day. I’ve heard so many times ‘people are dying out there’ in hysterical rants and the answer is well, yes, and they did last March and the one before that etc. and a good portion of them were very old and sick or kind of old and sick.

    We have a culture now that seems to think we can take the risk of sickness down to zero. We can’t and our attempts to do it don’t work and cause all kinds of harm to other things.

  55. In today’s WH presser:

    Fauci: Coronavirus could become seasonal
    Says that the virus is unlikely to be completely eradicated from the planet this year. That means the U.S. could see the “beginning of a resurgence” during the next flu season.

    Me: Come on, Global Warming! AOC and Greta hardest hit.

  56. @ Griffin,

    So yeah, I glanced at the same CDC pdf others have undoubtedly referenced, and attempting to get some kind of potentially critical difference cohort to refer to, I see that deaths from influenza/pneumonia in the 55 to 64 year old age category has been running about 12 per 100k in that age group per annum.

    The overall flu infection rates are as we have all seen, wildly variant, and unless we had accurate data for flu infections across that cohort, I cannot see how any direct comparisons could be made. But once the mortality figures from Covid19 are sorted out by age group, one will have at least some idea of the unrefined comparative personal risk of death from contracting the virus within that raw age class. It is reported that most people have mild symptoms. Yet I am pretty sure that anyone over the age of 40 here, has probably had the flu during the last decade, has probably very much known that they had it, and yet felt little in the way of extreme life threatening distress. If it turns out that 15 per hundred thousand of the relevant population have died of Covid19 when the figures are finally in, it’s going to take one heck of a demonstrable infection rate to convince anyone that the Novel Corona Virus is no more dangerous than the flu for people in that particular age cohort.

  57. Now read this:
    https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/survival-of-the-fittest/

    Globalism is in fact a path to communist China’s takeover of the planet, becoming the eventual sole superpower.

    Trump saw this; his predecessors, Dem and GOP, were hot to trade with China, making the USA in effect a colony of the totalitarians: The Chinese produce, we consume.

    The corona virus prognosis is guarded. About 65% of the planet’s known cases of the Wuhan virus are in the USA and Western Europe. The Chicomms treat the Chinese as ants: so what if a relative few get knocked off? The people of Wuhan carried the virus to us all by air, in their thousands, and in the face of concern the Democrats screamed “Racist”.

  58. DNW:

    If you go here, you can see statistics for recent flu seasons and click on them.

    For example, 2017-2018 was a bad flu season. In the charts, the cases are broken down by age, although I’m pretty sure a lot of this is estimates based on something-or-other. It doesn’t talk about pre-existing conditions, but it will tell you how many younger people died vs.older people. For example, death rate per 100,000 people: for ages 0-4 it was .4 (actual number was 115), for ages 5-17 it was 1 (actual number was 528), for ages 18-49 it was 2 (actual number 2803), for ages 50-64 it was 10.6 (actual number 6751), for ages over 65 it was 100 (actual number 50,903). That indicates that, had the MSM wished to feature the death of a young and healthy person from flu, they probably could do so.

    Here is one person who died from H1N1 and seemed completely healthy prior to that, as far as I know. She was 26.

    H1N1 is a form of flu, and it generally kills people younger than 65. See this. I am often amazed that this fact is not publicized more; I didn’t know it at the time.

  59. I case anyone is wondering, here’s a link to who is actually on the President’s Coronavirus Task Force.

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-presidents-coronavirus-task-force/

    It’s not just Birx and Fauci. There’s plenty of other people with scientific and public policy experience on there.

    By the way, the “If the rest of the country winds up like New York now” tracker stands at nearly 71,000 dead for the afternoon of April 5. I suspect that something like this fairly simply projection is what’s really influencing public policy right now.

    Of course, there are good reasons to think a great deal of the country won’t and frankly can’t reproduce the infection/death rates we’re seeing in New York. Of course, New York is also going to get a good bit worse than it is on the afternoon of April 5. For some perspective, this equation would need about 5,900 New York deaths to project 100,000 deaths nationwide. New York is currently standing at over 4,100 dead. The number of dead dipped on Sunday but there were still over 1,200 dead this weekend.

    Given that, New York will almost certainly blow past that 5,900 dead figure. At least 8,000 seems a certainly with 10,000 or more pretty darn likely. 10,000 New York deaths projects to around 170,000 deaths nationwide. So even if the rest of America winds up only half as bad as New York, we could end up close enough to 100,000 dead for any scientific or political argument.

    Mike

  60. The problem is the hubris of the supposed “experts”. Same problem with global warming Chicken Littles.

    It drives me nuts to see number-crunching skeptics use the same worthless data to disagree with the ‘experts’. The models are crap because the data is crap. The moment anyone uses the data as if it were gold they lose all credibility. (we see this problem also with global warming). A little humility please. From everyone. First, recognize the reality and extent of our ignorance.

    Trump is doing the only thing he can. Until he gets some seriously recognized science authority (likely needs to be plural/a body) to stand up tall and call out the models and explain exactly why they are garbage, he has no choice. He has to wait until the facts on the ground give him the necessary cover to slowly start returning to normal. Democrats will of course blast him no matter what he does. But he can and will successfully defend himself for re-election by pointing out that he listened to the experts until it was apparent they were wrong.

    Someone with gravitas is going to have to take the message of genuine cost/benefit analysis to the people. Not Trump. They need to understand why the speed limit is not 20 mph. We have to make tradeoffs. Human misery and death will result either way. The ideal person would be a senior Democrat. Maybe Bill Clinton. Frankly, I don’t think they have anyone else who isn’t crazy/stupid. And I’m not real sure about Bill.

  61. Griffin,

    One of neo’s earliest posts on this gave her personal experience and some good data of other pandemics she has lived through, as well as how the public dealt with them. People were careful, but assumed risk and kept going to work, school, synagogue, church…

    I hope this is not as bad as H1N1, or the flu of ’57 (’58?), but it seems definite the culture’s attitude has changed regarding risk. Also, it’s likely the Internet plays a role in how it is perceived.

  63. Important link from Instapundit.
    Comments, too—especially—are fascinating:
    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/05/wuhan-flu-21/

    Title of the above link: “Wuhan Flu: ‘This is a completely new disease'”

    One key graf (the whole thing is KEY):
    “…it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME….”

  64. Artfldgr:

    Indeed, several times in the last few weeks I have thought of titling a post “Love in the time of corona” or something like that, after the book title. But so far I haven’t written a post for which that title’s been apropos.

  65. @Art Deco on April 4, 2020 at 8:30 pm

    “One not-as-dark spot. It appears (tentatively) that Italy and Spain may have reached a plateau. +”

    Yes, it’s been at least three days since we are observing a betterment of the situation. Deaths are slowly but clearly decreasing, ICUs become more available (yesterday 55 units only in Lombardy) and hospitals begin to decongest; also, my sister-in-law (a pulmonologist) told me that doctors are just beginning to understand best practices, and they made, perhaps inevitably, a lot of mistakes.

    For those who read my previous, more personal, posts: my brother has overcome the worst on Tuesday night, when his oxygen saturation reached 86 and the slightest movement consumed all his breath; after that he’s dramatically improved and now his saturation is at 94, almost normal.

    I was able to talk directly with him this evening for the first time: he’s very, very happy and told me ecstatically that he was able to go up and down the stairs, while three days ago he was exhausted just for brushing his teeth.
    He was cured at home, only using an oxygen tank; his wife says she decided to keep him at home because hospitals are still too dangerous a place.

  66. Barry Meislin:

    Some flu strains kill that way, however – of ARDS in both lungs.

    The description of deaths from COVID is essentially the same as what happened to a good friend of mine several years ago, after getting some sort of cold or flu. I had another friend who almost died of H1n1 (was in coma on respirator for quite a few days) and yet survived.

    COVID is apparently a new disease, but the general mode of death does not appear to be new.

    Influenza can also cause death from septic shock, which generally involves ARDS. The death rate from septic shock (which can have many causes) is huge every single year.

  68. @Neo,
    I was looking at table 5 page 31 of the National vital statistics report Volume 68, Number 9, for the figure I got. Perhaps I misread it. I’m using a lousy tablet.

    As you have previously noted, the overall influenza infection numbers are not even certain to a multiple of 2. Though, your source does give a figure of under half a million hospitalizations, which seems to me to be a more informative number for our present purposes, ( guessing at the mortal risk of X behavior) than do infection numbers or even mere doctor visits.

    I think that when assessing the seriousness of the personal risk they are taking when engaging in a behavior, such as grocery shopping, the difference between a doctor visit as a consequence, and a trip to the hospital, are not even measured on the same scale by most people. My guess is that what people would really want to know for the purposes of measuring their personal economic choices and distancing, is the answer to the question of what their personal chance of hospitalization or dying is if they are infected; and not so much whether they are likely to be infected or not per se.

    What’s the chance of a 50 year old trtriathelete dying if infected while going into the office? Or: What’s the chance of a 60 year old female with mild COPD dying from an infection picked up at the dry cleaners? That kind of thing.

    For those who are young, the risk may be negligible. For those who are aged, the risk may be beyond the bounds of acceptability. For those in the middle, the risk needs to be clarified. So, along with many others who’ve previously said the same thing, I don’t see what comparisons with influenza have to this point added to the making of personal … or even social … calculations of acceptable price.

  69. Interesting info on the treatment front from Wikipedia:

    On April 2 Sermo, a company that performs international healthcare polling, released the results of a survey of more than 6,200 physicians from 30 countries, which analyzed COVID-19 treatment patterns up to that time. Among the doctors surveyed, the most common treatments for the virus were analgesics (56%), Azithromycin (41%), and hydroxychloroquine (33%). In the United States specifically, 23% of doctors surveyed said they treated COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. American doctors were significantly more likely to prescribe the drug only for high risk patients, while international doctors used it equally for mild and severe cases.

    This Wikipedia section is probably an editor’s war zone, an so might change hourly or faster.

  71. Rufus T. Firefly:

    I’ve written a few posts on that, but this may be the one with the most useful statistics although it’s not quite as personal as some of the others.

    Maybe I’ll even post it again, because it’s still relevant.

    I think you are right about the influence of the internet, as well as the fact that we have become very risk-averse. I believe these are also factors that have made it so different than previous pandemics in my lifetime:

    (1) The reaction of the Chinese – locking so many people down – scared people, and rightly so. If the Chinese were so scared, it was frightening.

    (2) Italy.

    (3) The daily count, which so many people follow online. I don’t think we’ve ever had that for a pandemic before. So, paradoxically, the fact that we’re tracking this one far from perfectly but far better than any one that preceded it is causing more angst than before and not less. If we tracked the flu that way, people would never leave their homes.

    (4)Twitter and the left and the urge to criticize the US and get Trump.

    (5) The fear is not just of the death count, it’s the fear of overloaded hospitals, and we’ve seen that with our own eyes in Italy.

    (6) The rise of trust in computer modeling by scientists (a trust which may be another casualty of this pandemic).

    (7) One of the first events that got our attention was not only the Chinese government’s frantic attempt to silence whistleblowers (which also drove panic because it implied that the disease was taking absolutely huge tolls that were being covered up), but the death of the young Chinese doctor who was one of those early whistleblowers. I think that terrified a lot of people. He was the face of the disease: hero, then victim and marytr. And very young, which made it clear that this did not only kill the elderly.

  72. neo,

    #3 is something not mentioned enough as a cause for the reaction. I get alerts on my phone every day right after 2 pm telling how many cases today in my county (FYI 668 with 8 deaths total) which is an entirely new thing.

    Earlier somewhere here I mentioned that this has proven that people have no idea how many people die in this country everyday so they have no context for these numbers we are inundated with.

  73. Griffin:

    Agreed.

    And I would add that, if put in context, the numbers of deaths (and the crowding of hospitals) would still be very worrisome and even frightening, but not as frightening as they are if there is no context at all. What’s more, offering them out of context in order to stoke fear is (I believe) purposeful. One purpose is to drive ratings; that’s the media of course. The second purpose (the news media as well as the Trump opposition, because they couple it with “Trump didn’t act and that’s why this is happening”) is to hurt Trump. The third purpose (and I believe this is mostly the health authorities but also the government) is to get us to comply with the rules involving social distancing and the like. The more frightened we are the more we will comply.

    The propaganda aspects for the left and the MSM are much like the body counts in Iraq. In fact, compared to previous, wars, the toll was relatively small. But every death is tragic, and every wound that leads to chronic physical or mental problems is tragic. But how much the public reacts, and how the public sees it, depends on the “narrative” surrounding it.

  74. Earlier somewhere here I mentioned that this has proven that people have no idea how many people die in this country everyday so they have no context for these numbers we are inundated with.

    That applies to the fake news peddlers publishing stories about bodies in the streets in Guayaquil. In a typical two week period, a city that size will hold 750 funerals. An additional 180 funerals is regrettable, but it’s not going to cause undertakers to dump corpses in the gutter.

    That having been said, it’s a reasonable inference that about 2/3 of the deaths recorded in recent days in the 20 counties around Manhattan actually are related to this epidemic.

  75. Art Deco,

    Yeah NYC is the exception to many things. But an announcement that there were 30 new cases and 1 death or something in a county like mine with over 400,000 is weak.

  76. stan: “The ideal person would be a senior Democrat.”

    I agree with you that some Democrat should come forward and explain to Democrat voters the importance of restarting the economic engine. Someone with the gravitas that can withstand the slings and arrows of the leftist-media. Someone who can forge an alliance with Trump to go forward united.

    I think that Bill and Hillary are damaged goods, and the days of Joe Lieberman holding any sway are over. Biden could do it if he could pull himself together. Cuomo could do it if he wasn’t such a daily Debbie Downer. Unfortunately I see no other Democrat who could do it.

    You know who could do it? Arnold Schwarzenegger. Granted he’s not technically a Democrat but he’s close to one. Plus he’s got the benefit of being a box office star. I think that Arnold’s personality and Trump’s would go perfect together. I can just hear the great PSA’s now!

  77. I am not sure if the link to this video has been posted already. Dr John P.A. Ioannidis is Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Data Science, Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences

    Prof. John Ioannidis: We’re likely overreacting to COVID and dooming ourselves to a horrible future

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3xEOcJ3YUw

  78. That having been said, it’s a reasonable inference that about 2/3 of the deaths recorded in recent days in the 20 counties around Manhattan actually are related to this epidemic.

    I did this calculation for NYC, using the typical death rate, which would be about 1,000 deaths/week. Taking the highest recent 7-day stretch gives about 1500 deaths from coronavirus. So not quite 2/3, but close. However, that assumes none of these people would have died anyway (though many are old and sick to begin with), not to mention all the reduced crime and possibly flu cases from the social distancing. So probably more like 1/2, which is still a lot. At the same time, there are no real funerals, so that probably makes it easier to “process” more deaths.

  79. stan; Brian Morgan:

    The Democrats – senior, junior, and in-between – are almost 100% unable and unwilling to do anything of the sort.

    The only one I can think of is Newsom of California, who’s not all that senior but has said some decent things in the last few weeks.

  80. “this has proven that people have no idea how many people die in this country everyday“

    The CDC website says flu/pneumonia killed 4,517 people in New York for all of 2017. COVID-19 has already killed 4,159 people in New York. So, double the death toll seems practically assured with triple or even more possible despite health authorities taking the most aggressive action most of us has ever seen.

    Mike

  81. M Bunge:

    Why are you comparing only to flu/pneumonia deaths? I assume you’re getting your figures from this chart for NY. In addition to that pneumonia death number, we also have 44,092 from heart disease, 34,956 from cancer, 7258 from chronic lower respiratory disease, 4176 from diabetes, 2699 from hypertension, and also many deaths from other diseases. I listed the ones I listed separately because they describe conditions very common with COVID. If someone dies of pneumonia as the final endpoint of cancer, for example, it’s my impression that a doctor will have a choice of what to put on the certificate – pneumonia or cancer.

    In 2017 in New York, a total of 155,191 people died.

  82. neo,

    Yes, when my dad died he started out with a brain tumor and then he eventually died of pneumonia but his death certificate said lung cancer as cause of death which puzzled us. I asked the doctor why and he said that type of cancerous brain tumor usually starts in the lungs so even though they found no tumor in the lungs they presumed it was there and listed cause of death as cancer of the lung.

    Goes to show how cause of death listings can really be strange sometimes.

  83. Thank you Rufus.

    Yes, it’s really wonderful. I knew he is strong, but since he’s asthmatic I was worried; suprisingly for me, my nephew told me that in this case it’s an advantage, because his body is trained to resist low level of oxygen.

    Fortunately for me, my brother improved just the day after I knew he was ill, so I was spared the anxiety his family endured for some days. However, yesterday was the first time I was able to talk directly with him.

  84. Wonderful news, Paolo! I also have an asthmatic brother; this makes me worry about him a little bit less (he is not ill, fortunately).

  85. It’s a beautiful bright sunny spring morning here in Connecticut:

    Active cases for the US right along the sigmoid curve. Flattening still on track for Friday to Saturday time frame. And in some very good news, for the first time since I’ve been keeping track, the number of new active cases actually decreased from the day before. For the past 10 days the number of new active cases was a very consistent up tick of 28,000; yesterday it dropped to 21,000. Let’s hope that continues. Serious cases, in a bipolar move, went from a 40% increase the day before to a 6% increase yesterday. Serious cases still well-fit with a 3rd order polynomial. I seem to be zeroing in on the percentage of serious cases which result in death which is close to 17%, and then that gives a predicted total deaths of 9500 compared to the actual of 9600 yesterday. And as the next door neighbor to NYC, Connecticut, for the second day showed a definite move away from exponential growth.

    Editorial comment: found this morning at libertynation: “A new study from the renowned Imperial College in the U.K. has dramatically revised upward the possible number of Europeans infected with the COVID-19 Coronavirus. It estimates that on March 30, 2020, 15% of Spaniards and 9.8% of Italians were infected. If correct, the actual death rate may be as low as 0.15% – or 25 times smaller than the initial reports. In the U.S., too, the real number of stealth-infected people is almost certainly much higher because the immune system of those who are asymptomatically infected kills the virus in days – and such people will test negative.”

    And from Kurt Schlichter: “There’s a fuse on America’s patience, especially with the aspiring nanny-staters, and when it burns to the end look out. ”

    It’s time to start ending this lockdown especially in states that the risk is so low. How about putting Wyoming, Dakotas, Nebraska, etc back to work, and see how it goes?

    My wife and I are going to take a 2 mile walk with our dogs on the town green, and so will a lot of people in this rural town.

  86. Griffen –> I’m always cautious about saying things will never be the same after (name the event).

    I’m not..
    I remember the blackout in nyc… not the more recent one, but the one way back.

    Before that day, you could go out in the evening, stroll down the market streets and window shop, look in the toy store window… look at clothing…

    After that day, all those ugly black gates became necessary on every store front because insurance required them. no more window shopping ever any more

  87. It’s time to start ending this lockdown especially in states that the risk is so low. How about putting Wyoming, Dakotas, Nebraska, etc back to work, and see how it goes?

    Can we please clear the supply chain back-ups before we do that, so that people out and about have the necessary protective equipment? Can we retain social distancing for the time being? And once we’ve done that can we end quarantine in stages, by starting with (1) those under 50 w/o out immune system deficits or respiratory deficits and (2) those under 60 w/o those deficits and with a BMI under 30? Supposedly, Israel emphasized isolating the old. In Italy, people over 60 have accounted for 95% of the deceased.

  88. MBunge –> The CDC website says flu/pneumonia killed 4,517 people in New York for all of 2017.

    I noticed you cherry picked a low year vs 2018 a high year… tryin to instill panic in your own little world.

    Around 74% of all deaths in the United States occur as a result of 10 causes.

    The age-adjusted death rate, which accounts for the aging population, is 731.9 deaths per 100,000 people in the U.S.

    Note that most of the covid deaths have many of the comorbidities below!!

    Deaths in 2017:
    Heart disease: 647,457
    Cancer: 599,108
    Unintentional injuries: 169,936
    Chronic lower respiratory disease: 160,201
    Stroke and cerebrovascular diseases: 146,383
    Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
    Diabetes: 83,564
    Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
    Kidney disease: 50,633
    Suicide: 47,173
    [Most by a long way are men (so we really dont care, we only care that women fake trying it more), and of those men 80% are white males who supposedly have it all]

    the grand total: 2,081,531 in 2017

    The covid deaths probably are many of the above, so the actual total might not change all that much!!!!!!!

  89. “Why are you comparing only to flu/pneumonia deaths?“

    Uh…because it’s comparing similar causes of death? What is actually the point of comparing something like COVID-19 to generic conditions like cancer or “heart disease” which not only include multiple different ailments with multiple different causes but which can literally take YEARS to kill people.

    You sound like an aircraft maker trying to deflect attention from a design flaw that caused its planes to crash by saying “Hey! Way more people die from drunk driving every year! Have some perspective!”

    Mike

  90. I talked yesterday to my neighbor, a dialysis nurse at the UNC hospital. They have COVID-19 cases in the kidney unit, and there are other manifestations of the virus which are not pneumonia. So comparing death rates for co-mobidities is likely valid.

  91. “I noticed you cherry picked a low year vs 2018 a high year“

    Dude, I just used the first figure that came up in the search-search. Stop thinking everything is a conspiracy. And what is this obsession with comorbidity? People can and do live with conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease FOR YEARS. And there’s absolutely no way to get any reliable number on COVID-19 and comorbidity in the first place until long after this pandemic is over. You are just throwing crap against the wall to see if it sticks:

    People on the Right seem to be reflexively lumping this is with climate change. Well, in climate change terms the seas have already risen enough to start flooding New York. Yammering on about how Iowa and Wyoming are going to stay dry is not really dealing with the problem.

    Mike

  92. Mike:

    Why did you pick 2017 for your flu deaths in NYC instead of other years, as pointed out by Artfldgr? Do your strawmen only eat hand picked cherries?

    BTW when a cancer becomes “acute” you may only have days left; some cancers go from asymptomatic to acute, or consider the asymptomatic but terminal strokes or heart diseases.

    Something is going to get all of us, sorry to break it to you,

  93. Here’s an interesting—and infuriating—news item (including pictures of mountains of medical supplies collected from sources in Australia, and stockpiled ready for shipment to China), pointing out that during the time that the Chinese Coronavirus was just starting to spread—and, that, despite what they were experiencing, and what the Chinese government had to have known about the lethality and highly infectious nature of the Chinese Coronavirus—and while China, and its allies at WHO and elsewhere were minimizing its seriousness, and downplaying its ability to spread person-to-person–the Chinese government was actually importing vast quantities of protective gear, medical equipment, and supplies to fight the virus—in fact, billions of masks, gowns, and other medical equipment—from other countries around the world.

    In just one example cited below, through Australian based Chinese companies, so as to—I’d imagine–hide the fact of and the magnitude of their orders.

    According to the article linked below, even individual employees of these Chinese companies in Australia—were tasked, instead of their regular duties–with placing individual orders for bulk quantities of these masks, gowns, gloves other protective gear, for hand sanitizer, and thermometers.

    Now that the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic has hit Australia—Australian authorities find that they have a shortage of the very masks, gowns, and other protective gear that were shipped off to China, and particularly to Wuhan.

    See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8178365/China-imported-2billion-masks-peak-coronavirus-crisis.html

  94. Mike Bunge:

    Well we do “know” that the Wuhan virus is linked to climate change. 🙂

    But don’t worry to much about that yet since there has been such a drastic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions we certainly have given NYC at least 5 to 10 feet of freeboard from the oncomming waves of doom. See, there is always a brighter side of life. 😉

  95. Mbunge –> What is actually the point of comparing something like COVID-19 to generic conditions like cancer or “heart disease”

    Mbunge –> Have some perspective!”

    you answered it… know many aircraft designers, eh? you certainly go to the extreme in making your non points..

    the point, is the perspective on deaths per year… we (and you) get all up for a few thousand, when 100,000 is not uncommon, and we dont pay attention to it…

    note that the death counts are over 100,000 per year.. a million in 10..
    but we havent halted the economy and forced people to change behaviors to save their lives, have we? we didnt do that for the flu either… in fact, this is the first time governments in history have coordinated a decimation of business as a way to save the village (a reference to destroying the village to save it).

    the operation was a success, but the patient died…

  99. Mbunge –> Dude, I just used the first figure that came up in the search-search. Stop thinking everything is a conspiracy.

    so what you did was bad research… and since i did better research and had the numbers from various years (from the same site) you decide to throw disparagement at me in the form of conspiracy… your a wack job… total off the wall nutter… your putting words in other peoples mouths they never said, and then arguing they said it… delusional…

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    on another note… lets have Mbunge call the Justice a conspiracy guy too – since he is of the same mind and uses similar if not the same examples…

    Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathon Sumption believes that the public’s ‘irrational horror of death’ has lead to unnecessarily ‘costly’ measures surrounding coronavirus.

    Writing in The Sunday Times Lord Sumption, 71, a former judge turned author and medieval historian, stated that the strict governmental measures will bring ‘even greater misfortunes of a different kind’.

    He wrote: ‘We have acquired an irrational horror of death. Today death is the great obscenity, inevitable but somehow unnatural. In the midst of life, our ancestors lived with death, an everpresent fact that they understood and accommodated.’

    Lord Sumption went on to list a number of historic epidemics such as Bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera, typhoid, meningitis and Spanish flu, reminding people that such outbreaks with higher mortality rates were met with less ‘hysteria’.

    Adding: ‘Fear is dangerous. It is the enemy of reason. It suppresses balance and judgment. And it is infectious. (…) Is the coronavirus the latest and most damaging example?’

    He stated that earlier generations would struggle to understand the current hysteria over Covid-19, due to it having ‘milder symptoms’ than previous outbreaks.

    The former judge believes it is the public’s ‘risk-adverse’ attitude which has lead us to not accept ‘the wheel of fortune’.

    and (hopefully Mbunge will write the lord justice himself and fix the poor soul)

    Making the comparison to cars, which he calls ‘the most lethal weapons ever devised’, as they kill and injure thousands every year, he states that society has accepted that fact as a ‘Faustian bargin’ in order to drive in comfort – suggesting we may have to take the same approach to coronavirus.

    Meanwhile Professor Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, warned that certain cancers which were until now thought survivable are to become ‘inoperable’ due to delays in the current crisis.

    He told The Sunday Times: ‘We know that if you operate in most early stage cancers, there is a high chance of a cure.

    ‘If we wait too long before we operate the disease may spread beyond the primary site rendering cures less likely. Delays to surgery are of huge concern for many cancer charities.’

    and this is what i was saying early on when they wanted it to be worse for their own benefit.. (this after working in the industry near management for 15 years)

    Professor Swanton added: ‘There is a risk that trusts may have to make a choice between ventilatory support for an acutely unwell patient with Covid-19 at the expense of an elective admission for primary surgery for a potentially curable tumour requiring a short post-operative stay in intensive care.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8189015/Modern-society-afraid-death-no-one-asks-coronavirus-measures-right-says-former-judge.html

  100. Leftmedia Trump Derangement

    Media pundits are frustrated that his approval rating has risen during this national crisis.

    A clear majority of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the China Virus pandemic — 60% according to Gallup polling. That’s even better than his 49% overall approval rating, which matches the highest of his presidency. But one would think just the opposite is true given the mainstream media’s incessant negative coverage of the president’s handling of this national crisis.

    One example that typifies the MSM anti-Trump coverage was the reporting on an Arizona couple who ingested fish-tank cleaner thinking it would prevent them from getting COVID-19. Sadly, that stupid decision led to the death of the husband and put his wife in the hospital. Yet the Leftmedia saw fit to blame Trump for “misleading” people into doing demented things, all because he mentioned a malaria drug that some medical professionals believe could be helpful in combating the virus. The only explanation for this level of journalistic malpractice is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

    more at: https://patriotpost.us/articles/69511-leftmedia-trump-derangement

  101. Excellent article on govt interference that made things worse (if you think about whats being said)..

    How Would Free Market Health Care Respond To The Coronavirus?

    So why aren’t these things being done now? They are being done. But not as often as they should. The reason: government.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2020/03/23/how-would-free-market-health-care-respond-to-the-coronavirus/

    Its actually a classic example as to why socialism doesnt work.. the great thinkers dont think greatly… they are like a main frame computer or the cloud miles away from the incidence, and so, have no way to extend their view into the tiny cracks of society where the actual choices need to be made. one size fits all pantyhose society… where you fart and your ankles bulge… what happens if your not the right size? too bad… there is also the self interest… where they recommend bad things bcause before they recommend it, the stock is cheap… like nancy buying so much amazon after knowing what would happen… or politicians forcing CFL lights on us, to curry favor with china, who got paid to make them before we bought them… so our purchase price was way below what the real cost was… would you have bought them at $30 each? no fear, the $28 dollars was prepaid by taxes… (example not real numbers)… and it fit so well with the new chinese doctrine of war… putting mercury that cant be recovered or cleaned into each home… good for children! (not)… but same with covid and other things… it fits their war… take hirohito sleeping tiger quote, and never waken the tiger, but keep snipping it here and there till its death by a million tiny cuts none large enough to respond to..

    not that i brought that up years ago (i did), so is it in mind now?
    course not… because when your early with something important your not right your wrong by it not having a good example, so warnings never work… ever.. despite the fact that during some bad thing, like covid, we all fret as to wondering how we could do better… we cant… too many self served fear mongers selling snake oil to their advantage, and too little paying attention to warning signs till they loom and its too late to act or do anything about…

  105. I suppose that equivocal or ambiguous uses of the phrase, “We worry about” is only natural. People mean different things when they discuss what we should ostensibly worry about. Should you worry more about the effect of lockdown on the economy, than your own survival? So, because you do not sorry about contracting a fatal case of kidney disease from one shopping market excursion, and many more people die of kidney disease or Alzheimer’s each year than have thus far died of infection by Covi19, should you then infer that your personal rosk of death by contracting the virus in the next 6 months is less than your risk of death from coronavirus complications? Obviously not. We are not a population of fungible entities, and your risk of ” catching” kidney disease or Alzheimer’s and expiring from it in the next 60 days from a fruit buying expedition to the local Krogers, is zero, or near enough to count as such.

    Apart from epidemic flu contagions, for which we apparently have few sound overall numbers to use for well constructed comparisons of contraction, I don’t see what light deaths from chronic conditions can shed on either the evaluation of personal risk from Covid19, nor what public policy should be.

    Personally, I am in favor of a less restrictive approach, but with consequences for those who needlessly risk their health. However I don’t think that many of you would share the sentiment that maniacal spring breakers be allowed to be maniacs, but then be quarantined in their households with ribbons of red tape until the disease has run its course without outside involvement, and the family members are either proven well, or done dying.

  106. physicsguy:

    I thought the point of the restrictions was to reduce both the amplitude of the curve, as well as the time frame to get to peak.

  107. NBunge:

    You are missing the point.

    The first point is that all those figures were in answer to a comment about the American public not knowing how many people in the US die in a certain time period, in order to put COVID deaths into contest. You yourself used this quote from another commenter, “this has proven that people have no idea how many people die in this country everyday,” when you made your comment about flu/pneumonia deaths in NY, the one I was responding to.

    So in terms of that point – how many people die – the number of COVID deaths need to be compared to the number of deaths. They also could be compared (as I did as well) to the number of deaths from all diseases that involve co-morbidities with COVID and that could enter into the total COVID total because so many of the people listed as dying of COVID also have the other illnesses at the same time.

  109. Talk about being “screwed, blued, and tattooed,”*

    See the report below, about the job that our good friends the Chinese did on the Italians–China early on receiving donated protective gear from Italy, later–as the Pandemic was hitting Italy hard–saying that China would donate protective gear to Italy, then, reversing course and saying that they would sell this desperately needed protective gear to Italy—and, according to this report, it’s the same gear that Italy originally donated to China. **

    * See esp. def. #2 at https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=screwed%2C%20blued%20and%20tattooed

    ** See https://spectator.us/italy-china-ppe-sold-coronavirus/

  110. IHME has updated their projections. Utah has dropped from 520 deaths to 186. I suspect it will go lower, see the histogram at the bottom right at https://coronavirus-dashboard.utah.gov/. Note that there is also a histogram in the left bottom that looks different, but it is of positives by date reported, the one on the right shows by date tested AFAICT.

  112. “physicsguy:

    I thought the point of the restrictions was to reduce both the amplitude of the curve, as well as the time frame to get to peak.”

    Yes, that’s the hypothesis. However, the graph by Willis on WUWT shows that those restrictions don’t really seem to make a difference in the death rate normalized by population for a country. In fact, by looking at that data, I would bet EVERY country is going to end up somewhere between 0.01 and the 0.04% line. These restrictions may not change the final outcome, just when it happens. Another week or so and I think we’ll have a much clearer picture. Maybe the US will end up well below where the other countries are headed, then the restrictions will look like genius. If it ends the same, then we destroyed a portion of the economy for nothing.

    I really wish there was a way to post graphics here.

  113. Chuck — In the last four days, IHME has dropped their projection for total Washington deaths from just under 1000 to 632, with the daily rate dropping to 1/day by May 9. And the peak resource usage has moved from April 11 back to April 2 (the past).

    We’re *supposed* to come out of house arrest on May 4, but the governor just announced that all schools public and private will stay closed through the end of the school year, which might even be extended to next school year in the fall.

    Darth Inslee say “Pray I don’t alter the deal any further”, I guess.

  114. Physicsguy: In fact, by looking at that data, I would bet EVERY country is going to end up somewhere between 0.01 and the 0.04% line. These restrictions may not change the final outcome, just when it happens.

    this is pretty much what i said… humans are too gregarious and they HAVE to leave their homes to restock their pantries… so there is no real way to lock them in place long enough for them to avoid getting sick…

    also the lock in place orders is the inverse opposite of quarantining the sick!! instead of locking away people who are found sick immediately (which in simulations DOES reduce numbers), you lock away everyone, which doesn’t do all that much given this is not a police state and its not shoot on site..

    so for the most part, they did this to add economic malaise on top of the medical problem… which is adding bad on top of worse… a favorite of the left, whose whole mental attitude is to try to cause the revolution that even Lenin failed to cause. The level of misery necessary just cant be reached in a modern western state… and given the competition between competency vs image, the competency is winning out in voting numbers, not image (acting presidential) over competency (doing things presidents should do regardless of image)

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