Again, it appears that Trump was right (case fatality rate)
Trump’s got good “hunches.”
Apparently, this was one of them:
…[B]ack in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent [case] fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the [case] fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent.
President Trump was skeptical of both those numbers, particularly the WHO’s estimate: “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”
Several studies have suggested that Trump was right…
According to the CDC’s current best estimate, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is .4 percent. And that’s just amongst symptomatic cases, which, the CDC estimates, is 65 percent of all cases. This means the CDC estimates that the [current] fatality rate for all infections across all age groups, symptomatic as well as asymptomatic, is approximately .26 percent.
Predicting that the rate would fall wasn’t rocket science, either. It was quite obvious to anyone studying the science carefully. And I seem to recall that many scientists (including Fauci, if memory serves) were agreeing that the number would almost certainly go down over time. Early case fatality figures are nearly always higher, because serious cases are usually the only ones that come to attention at the outset of an outbreak. Then, as time goes on, the milder and even the asymptomatic cases get uncovered, and the case fatality rate goes down. I wrote about the phenomenon several times as early as March (see this, for example).
But a lot of people – and by “people” I’m definitely including members of the MSM – don’t seem to get this very basic concept. Some of that mental denseness is feigned, I believe, because if the MSM wants to emphasize a certain figure on a certain day to hurt Trump, they will do so, and not cue the public about the tactic.
I also think that some people really do have a lot of trouble with math, and their eyes glaze over when they hear statistics. Propagandists exploit that fact.
And then there’s the CDC. At the moment, the agency seems to be conflating two different statistics:
We’ve learned that the CDC is making, at best, a debilitating mistake: combining test results that diagnose current coronavirus infections with test results that measure whether someone has ever had the virus. The upshot is that the government’s disease-fighting agency is overstating the country’s ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19. The agency confirmed to The Atlantic on Wednesday that it is mixing the results of viral and antibody tests, even though the two tests reveal different information and are used for different reasons.
Actually, the author may be making an error in that paragraph, too. The upshot isn’t necessarily that the government “is overstating the country’s ability to test people who are sick with COVID-19.” Are there sick people all over the country clamoring for a COVID test who can’t get one? There certainly used to be, but I haven’t heard that recently. It may even be that the number of people being tested for active COVID right now is very close to the number requiring such testing (I leave out those who might want a test every time they sneeze).
But what on earth is going on with the CDC in this particular case? The article doesn’t really answer the question of why the two types of testing results have been mixed, but the implication is that the government wants to make it seem like we’ve done a lot more testing than we have. I suppose that’s possible, but I actually just think it’s part of the general incompetence that seems to be in ample supply these days.
I also think the entire thing is an emphasis on the wrong numbers. The important issue with testing is whether the people who need tests (not just want tests, but need them) are getting them. But far more important in each state is the hospitalization rate and the death rate per capita. The antibody numbers are very important, too, because they will tell us how far along we are towards immunity as a population. The absolute numbers of confirmed active COVID cases and the number of active case tests performed in a state are less important, although the MSM loves to talk about those numbers.
The CDC’s incompetence and inflexible bureaucracy have been exposed repeatedly in this mess.
Agreed, the only numbers that matter at this point are hospitalizations and deaths per capita, keeping in mind that the death figure is probably inflated by about 25% (thanks again to the CDC).
I don’t think the media doesn’t get it, they absolutely know when they push misleading points.
If Trump had come out back in February pushing the story that Democrats everywhere commonly do, that this virus is nearly 100% fatal, you can bet that they would be (correctly) making common sense arguments, taking into account all the mild cases of the virus that people recovered from that were not reported.
In fact, they DID make these reasonable arguments and said that the virus in the grand scheme of things wasn’t a big deal and shouldn’t warrant a significant response, back when Trump initially proposed his travel ban from China. It was only after taking Trump’s “hoax” comment out of context that they realized that it would be even more helpful politically to dramatically overreact to the seriousness of the virus.
the 0.26 number is pretty much what i said it would turn out to be way way way back… go take a look on your own site… the trajectory i was looking at for cases had the wrong slope for higher… their formula for all this is not using a trajectory basis, but requires data you dont have at the start… i explained early on its like a rocket and acceleration, if the slope is not high enough that rocket aint leaving orbit, and the slope was not high enough by a wide margin!!!
in fact… no one tried to put in many values and see what kind of slope they had, they just assumed a rate and a slope was a slope was a slope, angle be damned…
i was trying (from the data i was downloading and plotting) to try to find a fit without needing the missing value… guess what measures better when you dont know and when that number is weeks away from starting to come in for a NEW disorder there is no prior numbers for?
Hello!
The CDC is as political and as incompetent as the WHO.
New Mexico highway signs inform me that testing is available and I would be curious to know, but the official website says no. I am asymptomatic and not homeless nor in a nursing home, so go fish.
I had an odd cold in February — mild cough, no sore throat (I always get a sore throat), and serious body aches such that I used up a few painkillers from my jealously hoarded stash leftover from various dental procedures and surgeries in order to sleep. It took more than three weeks for my sinuses to clear and the less said about that, the better.
So count me among the many who wonder if they haven’t already had Covid.
Pro Tip: Always tell the docs you are allergic to NSAIDS (I am), if you want the Real Painkillers.
What I found fascinating today is the left/lib reaction again on FB to the CDC 0.26% new rate. No more than a few days ago the same people were still yelling about trusting Fauci, and listening to the CDC. Now, overnight the CDC is not to be trusted, and/or has been compromised by Trump.
I no longer get upset or angry at their statements. I now find it so fascinating that they are so predictable. Just start from the basic foundation of irrational Trump hatred and go from there.
huxley:
It sounds as though the test you’d like to get because you’d like to know if you had COVID a while ago is an antibody test. In a lot of states those are not available to anyone who’s curious, although there are actually some states where they are.
When I said I believe everyone who has symptoms of COVID and needs a test can usually get one these days, I was speaking of active case testing, not antibody testing.
Cicero:
I know that about the CDC. This just seems like a very odd and very basic error to make, and I don’t see why they would make it for political reasons. If it’s really due to incompetence, they’re even more incompetent than I previously thought, and that’s saying something.
neo: I know that I wanted an antibody test. I’m not sure what New Mexico is offering, but I can’t have it.
The most obvious thing facing all of us is we’ve been impacted by government reaction to this for 6 – 8 weeks, depending on where you live, and those of us who pay some attention to the news have been watching frightening scenes from China, Italy and other places for nearly half a year.
We just aren’t personally seeing people drop lifeless in the streets, nor do we see dead bodies piled at the entrances to our villages. The CDC can report what it wants. A political leader can say what he or she wants. But the vast majority of us are not seeing mass suffering and death so most all of us have simply stopped paying attention. Numbers and “advice” no longer matter.
It’s like living among a bunch of Millerites in the mid-1800s. William Miller lost a lot of followers when his first prediction didn’t pan out. He lost most all the rest after the second date also failed to bring the world to an end.
We all know who we know. If this was impacting 33%, 25%, 5% of our relatives, friends and co-workers we’d continue to shelter in place no matter what our TVs or the Internet told us to do. And the folks I know who are medically compromised, or elderly are continuing to be cautious, but anyone paying attention to the actual world outside their door is ready to take their chances, or not, based on their firsthand experiences.
And thank God we are still a Federalist system and states can take various approaches to this. It is almost certain a centralized government would be acting like NY, NJ, IL, CA or MI and insisting we need to keep going through the next wave. It’s getting harder to convince folks when they hear and see accounts of open states not seeing rising death rates.
physicsguy.
You bring up a question I’ve had. Do the dems change what they believe, or do they change what they hope the rest must believe…or be bad people?
I know people who are so sincere and, apparently, emotionally vested in the opposite of what they said last month…or last week…that I think the first must be true.
Hard to grok.
physicsguy.
You bring up a question I’ve had. Do the dems change what they believe, or do they change what they hope the rest must believe…or be bad people?
I know people who are so sincere and, apparently, emotionally vested in the opposite of what they said last month…or last week…that I think the first must be true.
Hard to grok.
When I said I believe everyone who has symptoms of COVID and needs a test can usually get one these days, I was speaking of active case testing, not antibody testing.
neo: I wasn’t responding to you with my comment.
Richard, I think it’s the first also. However, there’s nothing wrong with changing what one believes to be true. I think we all do it and hope that most of the time we do it because there are facts that come to light.
But for the left/lib it’s amazing to see how passionate they are when changing their belief literally overnight. Not, “Hmm, I may be wrong in this and what I thought a few days ago I may have to rethink.” More like, “This is right!!! GD it!, and then 24 hours later for the exact opposite view; “This is right!! GD it!” with no seemingly cognizance that 24 hours earlier they held the opposite view with complete passion. Raw, red hot, hatred is the only explanation I can come up with.
Check with Quest for antibody tests – here in FL the test costs $119 and they tell you your insurance may not pay. The testing results are odd – again here in FL the Governor had nursing home staffed tested every other day by the National Guard (later about every 4-5 days). But these are additive, that is the same 10 people tested 2 days apart are 20 tests after the second day, 30 after the fourth day, etc. However the total of 26 million in FL is the base.
Physics guy – I really expect some of my more liberal friends to have whiplash from the spinning of their opinions. It is considered impolite to remark on someone’s opinions from last week.
physicsguy,
I wonder how much is just a social media phenomenon. On twitter and facebook it seems like everybody has to have a ‘team’ and the appropriate ‘hot take’ for that day and it’s all so immediate it doesn’t even matter what you said yesterday let alone a month,year ago etc.
I strongly believe that social media and the ‘now’ of it explains a lot about why the lockdowns came to be so quickly. I’ve said it before but this is the biggest example of what a destructive force social media is to society and the world. Just think of all the questionable and out right false things that have been reported on twitter in just the last three months and many of them have taken hold despite there total falsity.
Now, now, now, that’s all that matter.
And then add a heaping helping of deranged Trump hatred and here we are.
I strongly believe that social media and the ‘now’ of it explains a lot about why the lockdowns came to be so quickly.
Griffin: I wonder too how much all the dystopian, apocalyptic books and films have fed into the lockdowns. For instance, the zombie genre and the Hunger Game movies have been huge for the past ten years or so.
We were primed for the lockdowns.
Then of course there has been the long-standing drumbeat since the 1960s of nuclear or ecological doom.
Soylent Green is made out of people!
physicsguy:
My attempt to explain the left’s facile ability to change arguments on a dime and to “forget” their earlier positions can be found in this post.
In my social media “friends”, the virtual signalers are out in force. One acquaintance brags about how she hasn’t filled her gas tank since February, has only been in a grocery twice (but has deliveries frequently), washed her front door down every day (in case a delivery person touched it), changes towels every day, washes counters, doorknobs, switches, faucet handles with antibacterial potions. She and others list how you are a selfish snob if you refuse to wear masks, stay away from everybody, and all the rest. It is all couched in words to imply that you are next of kin to murderers if you don’t buy it all in the extreme completely.
I think there is a genuine yearning for the apocalypse and Covid has filled that need to a point. I’m reminded of a poem from those halcyon days when we worried about the Bomb:
___________________________________________
Why We Should Drop the Bombs
It would be so exciting,
It would be so powerful
It would punish us for our sins.
Things wouldn’t be so boring any more
We would get back to basics.
We would remember who we love,
It would be so loud,
It would be so hot.
The mushroom clouds would rise up
We could start over.
We wouldn’t have to be afraid
of it anymore.
We wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore
We would finally have done it
Better than Raskolnikov.
It would release our anger in the ultimate
tantrum and then we could rest.
–Alia Johnson
___________________________________________
BTW, we should still be worried about nuclear war.
In many I think this entire episode the last three months is the coming together of a few trends that have been growing the last 20 years or so.
1)the deterioration of our education system (HS and college).
2)an increasingly affluent safety obsessed society.
3)hyper partisanship.
I was talking with a younger relative a couple weeks ago who is in her late twenties and a college graduate with a couple of kids and a husband and they are big Trump supporters but she has been supportive of the lockdowns. Safety is her big thing. I was telling her about Abraham Lincoln and how by the time he became president he had already lost one young son and while he was president and fighting a civil war he lost another young son and if he had lived a couple more years he would have lost a third son but that was life in that time and a person just had to go on living knowing that there are no guarantees. She had never heard that before and she went to a pricy private college. Another example is February 14, 1884. On that day a wealthy 25 year old New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt lost his young wife two days after she gave birth and his beloved mother on the same day. This event devastated him and he never spoke of it again but he overcame it because that was life and there were no guarantees.
Now on the other hand too many people seem to think that nobody dies. When you mention to someone that something like 7,000 people die everyday in the US they seem to have no concept of what that means.
We have become so risk averse that for many young people locking themselves in their apartment is preferable to running a miniscule risk of death. Safety uber alles.
Then throw in hyper partisanship and it really is impossible for us to ever come together on any major issue.
Sad stuff.
huxley,
Yes we were absolutely primed for something like this. Our obsession with conspiracy theories while at the same time fealty to government and so called experts led us right into this.
And of course I’m not saying nothing should have been done but as I sit in a county that had 4 new cases (cases that is) yesterday but restaurants and many stores are still shut down completely it is hard to not say that this wasn’t one of the biggest mistakes in modern times.
Richard Aubrey, they believe what they are told to believe..
ergo, the deer that was a horse…
maybe NOW you may get why i put that up – to answer to the reason
[it sure helps to study tons of histories as i have]
This is the story of how Zhao Gao came to power
by declaring a deer is a horse… or a fact… you know who is devoted to you or your side. the left, constantly tests this out (which is why women are now losing their sports to men who say they are women). Their followers who really follow believe what they are told to believe as a kind of loyalty…
while this is not quite the original or current meaning of the story, it IS one way to interpret it. by declaring the deer a horse, he found who would oppose him, and eliminated them.
the western version might be “how many fingers am i holding up Winston”
How do you know who is with you 100%?
How do you demonstrate your 100% in?
when the left pronounces some idiotic thing and the not left opposes it, they sort the public knowing who is in on the program (knowingly or not), and who is in opposition. the collectivist will say the deer is a horse, they are not thinking individually, the individualists will say its not a horse its a deer, they do not let others to their thinking for them.
[and yet we wonder how Germany went down this path? its of little wonder to me]
I’ve always loved history and the lack of historical understanding in our country (and probably the West in general) is massive. Apparently nothing is taught except for the stories of lesbian, Muslim, Native American women and their unique struggles against the oppressive white racist males. It’s a major reason why this country will drift further and further off course as these people become our leaders in the next several decades.
Griffin on May 23, 2020 at 7:33 pm said:
In many I think this entire episode the last three months is the coming together of a few trends that have been growing the last 20 years or so.
1)the deterioration of our education system (HS and college).
2)an increasingly affluent safety obsessed society.
3)hyper partisanship.
1)the deterioration of our education system (HS and college). [adjusted by and for feminists putting the boys out to pasture and out of college. 50 scholarships for men and women, for every 400 for women]
2)an increasingly affluent safety obsessed society. [as women sat more and more in the drivers seat, this is where they took us. No competition, no winners everyone gets a trophy, every one plays, masculinity is toxic, etc]
3)hyper partisanship [what could be more hyper partisan than women vs men – or more destructive?]
It’s a major reason why this country will drift further and further off course as these people become our leaders in the next several decades.
dont worry, when the new regime takes over either from the state or from external state and failure to defend ourselves – again thanks to the ladies (who lower standards wherever they go)… they will snap that crap right back and out… for this is only for the transition, not for the post transition
Being that I am a simpleton, I automatically discount models and the pronunciations of “experts” as political/ideological BS dogma. I’ve been there, seen that, and got the t-shirt decades ago. Fauci needs a swift kick in the ass to a public health center in Nome, AK. Let him eat seal blubber.
Our single best guess is that the mortality rate among people over 60 is about 5% among those who get a symptomatic infection. People over 50 with a high BMI are also in danger. About 22% of the population is in the coarse high risk group. We need to isolate them and allow the rest of the population to go about their business with proper protective equipment and precautions. (No stadiums open, no group singing, masks, distancing &c).
. Fauci needs a swift kick in the ass to a public health center in Nome, AK.
No, he doesn’t. You learn by doing.
artfldgr,
Yes, my 2) is definitely a feminization of our culture. I don’t think your analysis on 1)and 3) are as accurate. Not everything can be boiled down to man vs. woman comparison.
Art Deco:
Take it up with Dr. Fauci, your prescriptions for what the country need are just as valid. Who knew we had another expert in the wings. Put it under the bushel.
‘no stadiums open, no group singing, masks, distancing’
Yeah, no. How about personal responsibility and an understanding of risk and a realization that for the majority of the people this is less dangerous than the regular flu. Precautions for nursing homes and elderly care facilities, general hygiene and a reasonable amount of social distancing and then let people live their lives and have a fighting chance at preserving their livelihoods.
AD,
You assume he is capable of learning. I don’t think so. Please provide an example of learning, going back to HIV/AIDS. Guess what you can’t.
One of the things Mao did was say “let one hundred flowers bloom.” in a 1956 speech, to flush out those he needed to kill. The left is fond of this tactic. It helps them know who is their enemy. Remember, the left thinks 1984 is an instruction book. Sane people know it is a warning.
Yeah, no. How about personal responsibility and an understanding of risk and a realization that for the majority of the people this is less dangerous than the regular flu.
Why not you advocate that, instead of advocating being a cussed boor. While you’re at it, look up ‘externality’.
AD,
Stay classy, pal!
Well hell Art Deco, what about Fauci’s hysteria over HIV/AIDS infecting heterosexuals? HIV/AIDS was mostly (like 90%) restricted to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users sharing needles. Care to contradict that fact. And no, intravenous drug users were too stoned out for having much sex with heterosexual females or males.
Care to try harder to defend Fauci?
Here in NYC the antibody tests are readily available, but I’ve heard they’re not that reliable. Lots of false negatives. I took one and got a negative. Maybe it’s accurate, but I did have a fever for two days in mid-March, 5 days after returning from a trip to Europe. Whatever the accuracy, there was a study a month or so ago showing that 25% of NYC residents tested positive for the antibodies. I’d bet the (true) number now is closer to 50%, and most never knew it.
Griffin:
Do not question the Art, no matter what the Art writes, or farts. Isolate anyone over 50 with a BMI above whatever because they are in “danger.” Can’t have danger! Yeah all that will work, such brilliance. 🙂
One of the things Mao did was say “let one hundred flowers bloom.” in a 1956 speech, to flush out those he needed to kill.
Presbypoet: Back in the 70s/80s there was a Cambridge (Mass) bookstore, named “One Hundred Flowers” for the Mao saying, which I occasionally browsed when I lived near Central Square in those days. It was an extreme left political store run by the Bob Avakian people (Revolutionary Communist Party — RCP). They had posters of Enver Hoxha all over the place.
Hoxha was the communist leader of Albania and his brand of Stalinism had won over a lot of Maoists and hit the sweet spot for the RCP for sectarian reasons I never fathomed.
Anyway. After I became conservative I learned about the “One Hundred Flowers” campaign, by which — as you said — Mao effectively lured a large number of dissident Chinese into the open, then cracked down and those people ended up in prison labor camps or worse.
Some claim Mao was initially sincere, but horrified by the extent of the opposition, he had no choice to crack down. Maybe. The result was the same.
(Looking up “One Hundred Flowers” bookstore tonight I discovered a San Francisco friend had contributed a cover page article to the bookstore anthology. I knew my friend was a leftist, but RCP? Brr. He retired from being a social worker and bought a nice place on the Big Island in Hawaii. Damn capitalist America!)
Back in the seventies in graduate school (poli-sci; please forgive me, I didn’t know any better then), we “studied” the Bay of Pigs fiasco, where the conclusion about why Kennedy made such a hash was that everyone advising him succumbed to GroupThink, which became a Big Deal for explaining lots of things.
(We also studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we now know that most of what we thought we knew then was not true — funny how DC never changes. The Swamp Rats just trade chairs around, and pass them on to new residents.)
Anyway, this is the way groupthink works even today, despite the fact that it is a known known in the operation of politics.
What’s the point of identifying all these problematic behaviors if people just keep doing them?? (Which is one reason I never went back to the field.)
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/21/how_fear_groupthink_drove_unnecessary_global_lockdowns_143253.html
Rufus T. Firefly on May 23, 2020 at 5:28 pm said:
And thank God we are still a Federalist system and states can take various approaches to this. It is almost certain a centralized government would be acting like NY, NJ, IL, CA or MI and insisting we need to keep going through the next wave. It’s getting harder to convince folks when they hear and see accounts of open states not seeing rising death rates.
* * *
Amen. Except I would strike the “almost” if a Democrat were president.
Groupthink requires a cohesive group, but governors are a stubborn, disparate bunch, and aren’t living in the same zip code and going to the same clubs and meetings every day.
Since every cloud has a silver lining, I’m rooting for this one.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/22/trump_is_having_a_deregulatory_moment_143267.html?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation&spotim_referrer=recirculation
I would vote for Trump just to keep the deregulation going.
You know any Democrat would not only stop it, but try to put the axed ones back in operation.
Well hell Art Deco, what about Fauci’s hysteria over HIV/AIDS infecting heterosexuals?
What hysteria? Have you trolled through a literature review of his articles on the subject, or a catalogue of his public statements issued a generation ago?
In 1982, AIDS was a novelty. They didn’t isolate a virus until 1984 and then discovered that a vaccine was impracticable given it’s peculiar properties. They couldn’t do contact tracing because the interval in time between infection and the onset of disease was typically long (they later discovered it was a median of 11 years). They weren’t aware at the beginning of just what the source of the ailments was and then, when it was discovered to be a viral illness, they weren’t aware of how readily it spread through one pathway or another. They just knew it spread through sexual contact, dirty needles, and infected blood products. It was some years into the epidemic before they could make a secure judgment that ordinary coitus was an inefficient means of transmission.
Of course they were anxious. They had no treatments. Even today, the treatments are complicated and expensive. About 15% of the male homosexuals who shuffle off each ear die of AIDS-related ailments. It’s still a killer.
For those interested, I have created my own spreadsheet for COVID-19 in the US. It is based on the data from the COVID tracking project, but I found their data presentation to be lacking in the sorts of things people would interested in, such as moving averages, and new cases, new deaths and new testing numbers. The link is here
AesopFan,
There was a Prager U video a few years ago by a guy who owned a baked goods business (I think) and he talked about all the regulatory hoops he had to jump through like the feds saying a door has to swing one way while the state saying it had to swing the other way so they had to change it ahead of each respective visit.
Trump would be well served to highlight some of these ridiculous regulations they are removing and bring business owners to the press conference. These are the kinds of things he does very well.
Griffin – I saw a comment at CTH about some of the Blue State COVID hoops that applies:
“Everything that is forbidden is also now mandatory.”
The Left apparently is moving on from their usual “All that is not forbidden is mandatory.”
And now a round-up of news.
“I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” — Instapundit
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/while-contemplating-mandatory-mask-order-virginia-governor-caught
“Virginia Gov Northam on the Virginia Beach boardwalk; no mask, no social distancing,” one citizen tweeted. Another complained: “Liberals consistently send a message of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ ”
ADA is not technically applicable to most of these, but what’s the good of excessive regulations if you can’t use them to help yourself?
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/some-americans-reportedly-citing-disability-law-order-circumvent-mask
“In some localities, governments have gone beyond mandating masks in businesses. In Los Angeles this month, for example, the mayor mandated that every resident must wear a mask at all times while away from home. ”
Preliminary and not vetted yet, but could be a game-changer in regard to herd immunity.
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/study-suggests-majority-population-may-already-have-some-degree
“The study, written by researchers in California, New York and North Carolina and soon to be published in the journal Cell, discovered that certain types of cells in blood samples taken from donors in 2015-2018—well before COVID-19 arose—were reactive against the COVID-19 virus. In other words, those blood samples were at least partially immune from the coronavirus even though they had never been exposed to it. “
I got tested for antibodies a couple weeks ago here in a Tucson, negative, sadly. Only one lab doing it, Sonora Quest, but easy to schedule and they took Medicare.
My liberal friends are drones, willfully ignorant of anything not spouted by MSM, impervious to facts, especially any Wuhan virus good news, uncaring about the scores of millions seriously hurt by the shutdown their fears caused. And queer for masks.
I was typing up a comment on the nonsense of these reported case fatality rates, but I see I didn’t get it in before AesopFan posted page after page of cut-and-paste drivel. I guess I’ll try another thread.
Honestly, Neo, I don’t know why you let two commenters ruin your comment threads like this.
mkent – who’s the other one?
By the way, pixels are not rationed.
You can add all the drivel you want to a thread, and the internet will not run over.
Yancey – thanks for the spreadsheet.
FWIW –
Trump is roughly my age, which means he’s heard predictions of nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, global famine, global drought, global resource depletion, global AIDS, global cooling, and probably a few others that I can’t remember right now.
Why should he believe that the newest prophecy of doom is any more accurate than any of the earlier ones ?
Griffin one 1)… tell me who had the power to change the schools, drug the boys, get rid of them for college and change the scholarship structure so all men and others are competing for 50 scholarships vs 300-400 for the girls.. ALSO, include why this other force decided not to favor themselves in that process
and for number 3) understand that what i was saying is after you put the sexes at odds, all other divisions are lesser.. once its normal for the fertility potential to be at odds and drop us to below replacement, what matters any others?
[if Hitler did this the Jews would have exterminated themselves… as it is, this process is doing that to them and diluting their ways out of existence anyway… and for him the best part would be no one to direct the anger to or stop the process from continuing… by the time they realize it its WAY WAY too late to do anything but die out and be powerless… if mating pairs dont mate, that’s the end of the species that normalizes this]
I should point out that one reason this is clear is that i have a hackers world view in many ways (being a old time hacker)… and you can hack hardware, software and WETWARE… ie. hack people… most do not realize this and so cant conceptualize ideas and such things as a form of mental virus that can lead to destruction… they are akin to computers with zero security!! after all, you dont protect yourself from fairies and wee folk because they dont exist… and women dont protect themselves from being gamed by bad ideas… i would suspect that those that did would mate less than those that didnt… but ultimately, you can weaponize this process.. hackers are well aware of it… we are also aware that movements and things are a way to build internal armies that are not opposable… meaning that if you had billions and started paying people to be your army in opposition to the US they would shut you down, or you would go broke… but here, with the right mind virus, you can induce people to give up the cause of their own lives and futures, and become unpaid volunteers in your army against whatever.. and its all ok… (see rev sun yun moon and jim jones – jonestown massacre for how far a mind virus can take you… if that isnt enough then check out heavens gate)… so what if feminism discovered by other states resulted in self extermination, and you promoted it to the point that it caused it in other states… just as china influences colleges, russia influenced lots of things… they discovered this ending… so all they had to do is promote it… there is no protection from it… is there? the victims would have to wake up and realize and they get too many freebies to do that… which is why our birth rates are so low we are importing people from the third world and evne have papers on replacement immigration no one thinks twice on…
but who cares? right?
Trump’s gut instincts are better than 4-d chess players.
On every major question, Trump has been right.
Yes to shutting down travel from China Jan 31.
Yes that the Chinese virus is not terrible.
Yes, initially, that opening after Easter would have been good, and better than what he actually did, under intense “science” & political pressure.
(Yes that Obama was spying on him.)
[Artfl – if you don’t care enough to do good punctuation on long posts, don’t be surprised if most folk don’t read them all.
I usually find your long pieces much harder to read, and less rewarding in interest, than Aesop’s.
But I’m glad you’re both here. not yet sure about mkent.]
McSweeney’s started as a trendy literary journal in the nineties and has become a sort of internet publishing house. Needless to say, McS is pretty lefty, but its satires are often funny in the old-fashioned, pre-postmodernist way. Here’s a McSweeney take on the Covid reopening.
Of course the metaphor fails because the whole world is essentially Jurassic Park for the virus and if we stay cooped up in a building to be safe we will eventually starve. Nonetheless, I enjoy a competent satirical essay and I can still watch the Jurassic Park movies.
_____________________________________
SURE, THE VELOCIRAPTORS ARE STILL ON THE LOOSE, BUT THAT’S NO REASON NOT TO REOPEN JURASSIC PARK
Now, I understand why some people might be skeptical about reopening an amusement park when there are still blindingly fast, 180-pound predators roaming around. But the fact of the matter is, velociraptors are intelligent, shifty creatures that are not going to be contained any time soon, so we might as well just start getting used to them killing a few people every now and then. Some might argue that we should follow the example of other parks that have successfully dealt with velociraptor escapes. But here at Jurassic Park, we’ve never been ones to listen to the recommendations of scientists, or safety experts, or bioethicists, so why would we start now?
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/sure-the-velociraptors-are-still-on-the-loose-but-thats-no-reason-not-to-reopen-jurassic-park
Tom Grey -Thhffffdrpppppttt!! stop your bitchin… what are you a grammar nazi?
Confessions of a reformed grammar nazi
https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/nov/14/mind-your-language-grammar-nazi
Rather than sneering at their grammar and spelling mistakes, I’ve learned to give people the benefit of the doubt
People’s reactions to poor use of grammar are manifold: quiet smugness, mock derision, actual derision, outrage and on-the-spot correction (usually accompanied by derision or a cursory tut for your troubles) probably constitute the most common. But while mockery and outrage may have their place – David Cameron’s pledge to make children illegal in a recent Twitter gaffe could well have incurred both, while the state of grammar teaching in schools and an application for a writer’s job replete with errors might trigger the latter – it’s the smugness at others’ mistakes and the accompanying assumptions we make that we ought to reassess.
[snip]
chortling at a grammatically challenged friend whom you may have put on a pedestal by warrant of their intelligence is surely a sign – albeit a subtle one – of our implicit desire for others to fail, or to look daft, lest we one day have to experience the same fate and feel like we’re the only ones exposed to such dismal humiliation.
[snip]
it’s often the case that declaring oneself a “real grammar nazi” can mask a crude form of one-upmanship, one that finds its basis in unsolicited pigeonholing of others and a hidden self-righteousness such that you wouldn’t otherwise find in them.
Feel better now?
A couple of things have happened in the glorious People’s Republic of Washington.
Commissar Inslee created a four phase re-opening (couldn’t possibly have used the federal 3 phase approach, as that wouldn’t have shown the proper resistance to President Trump.
Our county of 99,000 has applied for a variance for an early transition to phase 2, but didn’t meet the criteria of .71 new cases/100,000 per day over a two week period. So instead of the maximum of 9 new cases required, we had 10 new cases.
Another criteria is additional testing. We also need to increase testing. So the county health department is encouraging everyone with any symptoms to be tested. Also all health care workers will now be regularly tested.
At the state level testing has increased and the number of confirmed cases has dropped from 8% to 6%.
In addition our county has to implement a project to test the approximately 83 people in the county how are homeless, though for that the state gave the county $388,000. Some of that money is also being used to formally create a homeless encampment in our town of 25,000. Right now the city council is wrangling over where to put the camp.
I think the state’s new motto is Blue State Resistance Forever!
Tom Grey:
Presumptuous to assume you speak for “most” people IMO.
Brian E,
Did I see you say you were in Moses Lake so do you live in Grant county because I believe they got there phase 2 variance. As I live in Pierce county we may never get to phase 2 if they don’t change the rules. We need to average something like 7 cases a day for three weeks or something and we have had several days of 4 or 5 cases but then it will be a 20 or something (in a county with around 900,000 pop. remember) and blow our average. Of course all they need is to find a few more gun shot victims to label as Covid and we will be closed forever.
What a joke.
Somewhat related and also related to the dead horse of masks and Japan:
Art Deco has often said “What about Japan?” and their low fatality rate from the China contagion. Well this article claims that Japan uses hospitals and nursing homes in a basically different way than western countries including the US. Also most of the deaths from the virus are the elderly. Here is a quote from the end of the article:
“As I have argued in this article, I think that one reason why Japan has seen few deaths from the novel coronavirus is because there have been few cluster infections at nursing homes. Cluster infections at nursing homes are very dangerous. The medical system in Japan is without doubt dependable, even compared with those overseas. Moreover, it is unlikely that the nursing care system will collapse, as some fear.
The fact that Japan has seen few coronavirus deaths should not be viewed as accidental or miraculous. It may be important to consider strategically reorganizing the fields of medical care and nursing care.”
https://jmh.usembassy.gov/20200520144135/
The article is cited in today’s Powerlineblog.com
Cuomo sending elderly patients from hospitals back to unprepared nursing homes certainly flatlined their curves.
om,
To offer a little praise to King Jay the nursing home deaths in WA have not been insane like states like MN and PA and since my mom is swept up in this at her facility I have been following it pretty closely. Still a high percentage of deaths from nursing homes but not crazy high like some states.
In fact if he had laid off draconian measures a few weeks ago and stopped the incessant moralizing I would say he did an ok job but as it just goes on and on and on it is inexcusable.
Why should he believe that the newest prophecy of doom is any more accurate than any of the earlier ones ?
What Calvin Coolidge said: “You see ten problems rolling down the road at you, nine of them will roll into the ditch before they get to you”. The trick is identifying the tenth problem. Social hypochondria has been quite pronounced in this country for 50+ years now. It was certainly present as early as 1967, when Paul Ehrlich was able to find a publisher for The Population Bomb, a flagrantly silly book.
Griffin:
Well King Jay just doesn’t know the perfect is the enemy of the good, and I have it on good authority that “It’s good to be the King.”
Here in Benton County we’ve had 59 COVID-19 (China contagion) deaths so far.
Mel Brooks that is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXT-nYHOLsUb
om,
Of course there is also the $200 million lost in unemployment fraud to a Nigerian scam but hey what’s a couple hundred mill!
Brian: So they’re punishing you for cases WHILE they demand that you increase testing?