Despite widespread claims to the contrary, Covid STILL going away

Last week I posted this essay.

The numbers don't lie, Covid-19 is going away, despite the protests, despite states letting people return to work and lessening restrictions.

Despite the Media Hysteric Manufacturers parsing words about how the "rate of new cases" is increasing. Because let's face it, if the rate of testing increases, and it has, then of course the rate of new cases increases.

Needless to say, it was met with some hostility.

"I'm sorry, but this essay is simply misleading."

"It's more than misleading, it's reckless and could kill people."

And, of course, the people who don't understand the math and try to covidsplain it to me.

"Death lags cases by three weeks to a month or more...you're analyzing the data incorrectly."

and finally, flat out science denial.

The CDC is worthless.

Well, good news: The despite the constant barrage of fear mongering, the death rate is STILL going down:

And, as we would expect to see, a week later, the death totals continue to go down across the board.

This is not rocket science people. This is good news.
EDIT: Because people who can't be bothered to click on a link, need a link (wtf?) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

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For the past week, here are the Covid-19 death numbers from *only* the state of Florida:

covidFlorida.jpeg

Your chart shows 71 deaths for an entire week in the entire US(?!?). Florida in that same week shows 330 or so deaths from Covid-19.

So, yeah, don't believe your charts . . . excuse me now while I add in the next 49 states . . .

Edit to add:

According to Wikipedia, which collects numbers from each state's health departments, the total number of Covid-19 deaths in the week from June 27 to July 4 in the United States was: 3,425.

That's more than the number of deaths your last chart has for the week ending June 13. Does that mean Covid-19 cases are actually . . . maybe . . . rising?!?

Final Edit to Add Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States

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@apenultimate that's because you dont understand the cdc charts. The numbers for the cdc will keep coming in and they WILL reflect the deaths in Florida and ghat will continue to be less and less than prior weeks.
IF it starts rising again, that will be reflected too.
But we are well past the point where we would have seen a surge from the George Floyd protests.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

that the protests did not add additional numbers to COVID. The ones I watched saw most people wearing masks.

The numbers are going up from people returning to bars, restaurants and work where people don’t social distance or wear masks.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Roy Blakeley's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain The data in your charts are incomplete and are based on death certificates. According to the CDC the delay between death and reporting of death certificates to the CDC is 1 to 8 weeks. The time from infection to death would average about 4 weeks. The time between infection and reporting death to the CDC would be 5 to 12 weeks. In other words this chart is still incorporating data from people infected in April. The data for last week will be complete in September and those people would have been infected in early June.

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@Roy Blakeley complete, yes. You're saying nothing new and you're still missing the data.
It's trending down.

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wasn't replying to you in my second reply.

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@Battle of Blair Mountain @Battle of Blair Mountain

that death rates didn't matter . . . Actually, never once have I said that. In fact, my posts have highlighted that death rates do, indeed, matter a ton, and I'm trying to point that out to YOU!

Edit to add: Oh, just saw your response about your response not meant for me! No worries!

And, I'm not sure which goalposts, I've moved. I've been harping on a single consistent point, actually. Your charts are severely lagging from a time perspective.

Actual death count from state sources the week leading up to July 4th: 3,425

Actual death count on CDC website for exact same time period: 71

Now, yes, I am well aware that this number will increase week by week. But even after a month of updates, the CDC site is still adding not quite 300 more deaths to the week ending June 13 in the past week, which is now at 3,228. That total still does not reach the July 4 week's 3,425.

Looking at the June 6 statistics on your CDC charts, they went up only by a bit over 100 cases in the last week. So, we can estimate June 13 will see approximately the same increase one week from now, to about 3,328 let's say. That's still not 3,425 for the actual July 4 week count.

Looking at the week ending May 30 on your CDC charts, they went up only 44 cases in the past week (since the CDC is still compiling data more than a month out). So, we can estimate those June 13 numbers will go up around 44 two weeks from now, which will bring the total for that week to around 3,372. That's still below 3,425 for the actual July 4 week count.

Of course, those are all averages, and we will in a few weeks see what those final June 13 death count numbers are. But, they may very well be *less* than the July 4 death count. Which would mean Covid-19 is not really going away yet . . .

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@apenultimate to someone else as a response to you. Probably my fault, but I'm blaming the phone Smile

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@apenultimate If only I'd been taking photographs of the website from day one you'd see the entire picture. Those numbers, as they go up, keep trending downward. They are slowly climbing as more data comes in, but week by week, they never catch up nor surpass. It's a clear downward trend.

At the low numbers we are seeing now, if it should trend upward, it will probably be immediately apparent.

So far, it continues downward.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@apenultimate

According to your numbers, total deaths per 100 infections fell from 3.1 to 1.8 in FL - a drop of some 40% in just that two week period.

So even by your own numbers, the death rate from COVID appears to be receding precipitously, which would suggest the author has a point.

Of course you may counter that the increase in infections is due to more testing, and I might agree.

But that only means that the original death rate estimates were widely skewed to the grim, when in actuality the death rate has been much lower the whole time and with better test data we are now realizing that the bug is not nearly as lethal as we were originally led to believe.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger

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Pricknick's picture

list the site/sites you copied those charts from.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick Ots the cdc site. As posted in the original thread last week. Which I linked to.

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@Pricknick https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

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Pricknick's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain
That wasn't so hard was it?
Please, in the future, always list your resources.
It's the right thing to do and saves a ton of independent research to find what one is talking about.
On the side, the CDC is suspected to be a government funded tool.
Grain of salt and all.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

vtcc73's picture

First, let's begin with the good news. I agree with half of your concluding sentences.

This is not rocket science people. This is good news.

A hint of where I see the bad news coming from depends on guessing which sentence I agree with. Yeah, you said nothing about rockets or science is something that is evident.

Why would I regret posting? I'm not usually in the habit of trying to change the minds of people who have a conclusion that they fervently believe enough to repeatedly try to convince others it is gospel. (Gospel is probably a bad choice of words for obvious reasons but go with it for now.) You're using an arithmetic comparison of a metric that epidemiologists consider to have no use or validity - death rate and number of deaths - when analyzing pandemics and statisticians would choke on the absurdity of the math (and data apparently from other comments). The conclusions are set in your mind and nothing will dislodge them. Trying to explain, which others will almost certainly attempt, isn't going to make a difference and will annoy the crap out of everyone.

Seriously, BoBM, this is the equivalent of remaking a terrible movie with nothing more than adding a five second B roll clip about something completely off topic. The remake is still crap.

Edit: I forgot to add something originally posted by NatGeo that showed up in our local expat daily. The last section has a possible explanation for the "dead rate lag" recently suggested.

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"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

Centaurea's picture

@vtcc73
It saved me the trouble.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

My numbers have a bigger you-know-what than your numbers do!

This is what the end of civilization looks like. Everybody agrees that "science" should govern our decisions, but we can't agree about what "science" says.

This is the result of thirty years of politics as litigation. Just as there are plaintiff facts and defendant facts, since the GOP started fucking with Slick Willie, we have Red facts and Blue facts with lots of money behind both flavors of reality. Blowjobs and lying about them. Weapons of mass destruction. Dan Rather, Shrub and typewriter fonts. Katrina and The Busses. Obama and his birth certificate. No, the real one. Benghazi. Those damn emails. Russia hacking the election. Ukrainegate. Super Tuesday, 2020.

Lies drive the bus in America, but if you know which "source" to believe, you will be able to call everybody else a liar.

Parallel to that farcical war of words between the traditional party loyalists, we have "free thinkers" on this board who do not care about Red or Blue, but still have strong views about who is a Liar and who can be Trusted.

Numbers are not reliable in our culture. Neither big ones nor little ones. Somebody has to count up dead bodies and then report them to some other bureaucratic institution, which in turn collects death counts from a host of other somebodies. The numbers thus compiled for a geographic subdivision are transmitted to another, larger operation -- and so on, until they reach some "authoritative" public health organization that compiles the comprehensive numbers. At each step of the process, corruption could alter the "numbers."

This is discussed frequently on the internet. Red state governors order the numbers to be reduced while the process itself is skewed to inflate the numbers as any death that could be attributed at least partially to the virus is counted as a death caused by it.

Good luck to all who want to know The Truth. There are lots of people lying to you for lots of different reasons. Pick who you believe and call everybody else a liar -- whose stupidity or dishonesty or both is killing people.

That is the new normal.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

vtcc73's picture

@fire with fire
1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.

Thank you Charles Pierce.

I instantly knew this gem was a winner that would define America in the future. It has yet to fall short and is right up there with 1984 for prediction and as an instruction manual for wrecking the world.

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"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

@fire with fire

But, when you post numbers that belie easily found authoritative sources (like state health department data sources), then it needs to be pointed out--otherwise, the lies tend to win out.

I'm assuming BoBM's source is from a CDC website (which I don't even know for sure), and I assume it represents the entire United States because I'd doubt the total number of deaths in a single state would be 1.2 million since February 1st. (At least, I hope not . . .)

That latest July 4 week shows 71 deaths, which is shockingly below the actuality. In fact, go to his 3 charts and look at the 6/13 date starting with the first chart, then the second chart, and then the last chart. Do you notice what happens?!? It is going up by thousands! Even way back March 21st numbers are still increasing a bit . . .

But, looking at Wikipedia, which collates state health department sources, which are pretty damn authoritative, they are so much more on top of things. They show the total deaths for the week ending July 4 as 3,425! That's actually *greater* than what the BoBM's CDC charts have for deaths the week ending June 13.

So, does that mean Covid-19 is coming back and not at all disappearing? Could very well be . . .

It's not necessarily a dick-swinging, cowboy "my numbers are better than your numbers" game. It's pointing out reality to someone who posts numbers that simply do not add up. That's how scientific evaluation actually works.

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@apenultimate but they will still be down from their numbers for June 6th.

and one glorious day, they'll nearly match your sacred numbers from (wikipedia? are you fucking kidding me? Wikipedia?) okay, wikiland.

And on that glorious day, they'll STILL be down from their numbers on June 6th.

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@apenultimate I have to disagree with you there about "authoritative" governmental agencies. I have seen many, many accusations of State Governments cooking the covid books. Whether the accusations are correct, I have no idea. But, in a test of "credibility" I cannot accept the idea that GOP governors wouldn't do such a thing as manipulate the numbers to suit political goals like getting re-elected.

Whether anybody up or down the chain of information gathering, collating and publication of "data" is lying for political gain is the real question. Obviously, asserting that it is happening is the easiest way to dismiss "data" that contradicts one's own version of reality. Tricky business, post-modernism.

That is why I say this is what the end of civilization looks like. Everybody wants to be able to speak for Science. But science NEVER speaks with just one voice and the "truth" science espouses always, ALWAYS comes with the caveat of "subject to further research."

Yet this horrible summer, you can find a near infinity of voices claiming to speak for Science. This hideous experience has made me understand the Middle Ages better. Wars over "religion" that lasted for decades? What madness! Well, now that I know what a plague really looks like and now that I see how people react to uncertainty, I can see why people wanted to be sure that God was on their side.

Now, in our secular age, Science has taken the place of God -- the benevolent force that has made our "advanced" civilization possible by subjugating the planet. Science and only science can "save" us, if we just suppress the Baal Worshippers and the Republicans and the Mosaic Religions who do not accept the True God of Science, we will be saved.

In my two Comments on this thread, I was careful not to take any position on what the death rate means compared to other statistical measures. I still maintain that anybody who says it means nothing at all is full of shit, but for all I know the death rate is really far less significant than other "metrics." But nobody will convince me that Science just doesn't take fatality into account when Science delivers its diktat on how to survive this pandemic.

In response, I was informed that there are harms from illness besides death. OK. I was also informed that the number of deaths could go down while other longer term threats to life could be increasing. That sounds plausible to me, but again, I did not deny that could be the case.

What I notice is that whenever anybody questions any part of the BE AFRAID, STAY HOME and FORGET THE ECONOMY narrative, the derision piles on -- some reasonable, some preposterous, some downright mendacious -- but multiple voices shout loudly at the miscreant who won't face "reality."

When somebody supporting the BE AFRAID narrative makes a mistake, there is no dogpile.

Nobody asked the people of this country what we thought about how to deal with the virus. We are regularly invited to hiss and boo or cheer and vote for the people who are making the decisions for us. I cannot understand how anybody can give the power structure of this country any benefit of any doubt -- but I guess that is just me.

I don't know what reality is, and with respect to the Asteroid Virus nobody else knows for sure what it will do.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire The mainstream media is hyping the rising cases (having earlier been hyping the death toll). the mainstream media are controlled by the oligarchs.

Disconnect: The corporations are massaging the death total downward for their own (never quite defined) purposes.

If they were doing that. If they wanted to downplay the pandemic, then the media wouldn't be hyping the pandemic.

You people KNOW this.

THINK!

I get this is scary shit, but this website is full of people smart enough to figure this shit out.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@fire with fire

Good luck to all who want to know The Truth. There are lots of people lying to you for lots of different reasons. Pick who you believe and call everybody else a liar -- whose stupidity or dishonesty or both is killing people.

That is the new normal.

...claim it's 'dangerous' to post official government stats on a website, I know we've fallen through the looking glass.

I guess pandemics just bring out the authoritarian scold in some people.

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9 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

polkageist's picture

Publish your source and learn how to use statistics if you are serious.

I answered two of the spurious claims made in your original post on this subject but you chose not to read them and/or to just ignore them. Until you learn how to use statistics or even arithmetic, you should just be quiet.

This message you are pushing is dangerously untrue.

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-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

@polkageist Einstein's SPECIAL theory of Relativity in the seventh grade, was tested at the 99th percentile nationwide and was approached by the U.S. Navy Intelligence. At age 12.

So maybe, just MAYBE, you should be the one who is just quiet.

The facts I'm presenting speak for themselves. Perhaps you should start listening and thinking and wondering why you're being lied to.

And believe me, if the death rate goes up, I'll post that too and it will also be a fact.

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polkageist's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain
If you can't understand that deaths follow infection by a month or more and that, therefore, current deaths are of those who were infected at least a month ago, then you are missing the point that current deaths have no bearing on current infections. In other words, the people dying now were infected when the numbers were going down but the majority of people who have been mortally infected since have not died yet. So of course the current deaths are low, but they won't stay that way.

I am not going to try to teach such a knowledgeable genius how the numbers work. That is obviously a waste of time. Just be assured that what you are spouting is dangerous misinformation.

I'm not going to try anymore to get you to think. Good luck to all of us.

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17 users have voted.

-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

Anja Geitz's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

Einstein's SPECIAL theory of relativity at the age of 12 would know that understanding the SPECIAL theory of relativity is considerably less SPECIAL than understanding the GENERAL theory of relativity, and so capitalizing SPECIAL isn't really warranted, unless you wanted to draw attention to your boasting.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

k9disc's picture

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

Not sure where you fall into that famous quote from the internet, but I do think I know where this post and this idea fit in...

We are 6 months into a novel virus that has shut down the global economy and threatened the global food supply.

At this stage of the game what was thought of AIDS? Was HIV even identified as such? Did we know the transmission vector?

At this stage of the game, do we know any more about SARS CoV 2? 30 days ago we "found out" it is a blood disease and coagulation disorder. Is that right? How about the neuropathic and neurotropic effects? Maybe it is really a neuropathic bug with respiratory and circulatory side effects...

Who says people are "asymptomatic"? And what does "asymptomatic" actually mean?

The hubris in this comment that I am responding to is breathtaking. It is a blinding hubris that, I'm afraid cannot be assuaged.

To break the seriousness of a global pandemic with complex information coming from competing and conflicted sources down to daily rolling death tolls on the CDC's website without acknowledging any other factors 6 months into a novel disease is really something. To defend it with personal cognitive superiority and an appeal to the authority of government numbers is, well... something else.

I have tremendous issues with assessing the danger of this disease. I'm well aware of corporate media's bias and also the bias of the corporate medical establishment's needs which can somewhat safely be read as to include CDC, NIH, and a host of other medical alphabet institutions. You know, the ones making the chart, controlling information, and pushing out press releases. That said, it doesn't mean it isn't dangerous, that it must be a hoax, or that it's going away. It's suggesting that it is not as advertised or as Seen on TV. That's about all I can say, for sure, about SARS Cov 2.

I would never be so brash and cocksure as to suggest that it is death on a stick or complete meh. I also could not reliably peg it's trend. I've done a lot of reading on it. I've read white papers, watched dissertations of experts mainstream and nutty...

The fact that you are doing this from a website and death toll suggests that you probably are not as smart as you like to think you are. Please consider the idea that you and your assumptions could be wrong. Consider looking into the other, less reported symptoms of SARS CoV 2 than death.

Personally, I think this is a lab borne neurotropic tool - either escaped or let loose - that Americans, in particular, are supposed to spread around. I don't think it's a natural bug, and I know it is not a zoonotic lung disease that kills people.

The death rate strikes me as an acceptable side effect rate. I think this is not a disease or pathogen that requires a vaccine to cure, I think this thing could be a vaccine in it's own right, the vaccine to cure you of your humanity.

All the hand waving on death rate, the Baal & Malicious Gates Vaccine™, masks, it's the Flu bro, viruses don't exist, etc is distraction from the fact that this is more of a product rollout than pandemic.

As such, I don't find the side effect of death to the elderly and infirm to be the main point of the study or even a strong indicator of success.

Needless to say, I'm not impressed by the ironclad logic and method of monitoring the CDC website for the rolling reportage of death tolls as scientific and intellectual proof of SARS CoV 2's staying power or danger. I think it is a rather simplified, reductive argument based upon little data and lots of authority that holds little scientific and intellectual merit.

Of course, I'm surely not as smart as you are, so there is that.
@Battle of Blair Mountain

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

@Battle of Blair Mountain
How did you demonstrate your understanding of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in the 7th grade?

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snoopydawg's picture

You have been pointed to articles that talk about the lasting effects from coming down with this virus. There is a growing number of people who contacted it and have been left with debilitating health issues and some have not recovered yet after being tested negative for it. See just one twitter thread on this.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1279155358666305541.html

If you want to ignore the evidence that proves that you are wrong fine, but I don’t understand why you feel the need to convince us that we are believing in a falsehood. One thing that is definitely happening is the reaction by the government and some states has been piss poor and lots of people are dead because of it. Many more will die from the lack of financial support from congress. Around the world billions are at risk from starvation. I read yesterday that farmers are still dumping food because the government still hasn’t put a system in place using every resource available to them. This too is deliberate since Trump knows about it and said he’d get the national guard to help out. But state governments are not doing a damn thing about it either. What is happening is evil on an epic scale!

Also this new information came out this weekend.

239 Experts With 1 Big Claim: The Coronavirus Is Airborne

The coronavirus is finding new victims worldwide, in bars and restaurants, offices, markets and casinos, giving rise to frightening clusters of infection that increasingly confirm what many scientists have been saying for months: The virus lingers in the air indoors, infecting those nearby.

If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant. Masks may be needed indoors, even in socially distant settings. Health care workers may need N95 masks that filter out even the smallest respiratory droplets as they care for coronavirus patients.

Ventilation systems in schools, nursing homes, residences and businesses may need to minimize recirculating air and add powerful new filters. Ultraviolet lights may be needed to kill viral particles floating in tiny droplets indoors.

Even in its latest update on the coronavirus, released June 29, the WHO said airborne transmission of the virus is possible only after medical procedures that produce aerosols, or droplets smaller than 5 microns. (A micron is equal to 1 millionth of a meter.)

Proper ventilation and N95 masks are of concern only in those circumstances, according to the WHO. Instead, its infection control guidance, before and during this pandemic, has heavily promoted the importance of hand-washing as a primary prevention strategy, even though there is limited evidence for transmission of the virus from surfaces. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says surfaces are likely to play only a minor role.)

You are also ignoring the numbers of hospital ICUs that are filling up with people who have come down with it.

Don’t believe everything you read is smart, but not believing what has been proven is beyond dumb. In my opinion.

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16 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg China locked down when person-to-person infection was confirmed in late January. Of course it was airborne. As masks were in short supply, that's why Fauci lied about their effectiveness in containing the virus.

Accepting that it originated in China near Wuhan, it's been spread throughout the world by world travelers. (But we're not supposed to notice that air travel was the major factor in the migration. Even as South Korea has since 21 Jan been reporting on the number of cases identified at the port of entry.)

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snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

completely different? Did you read the article and see where they are still dismissing it?

I know why Fauci lied but how many people died because he did? No matter why he lied it doesn’t change the fact that he did. Imagine that he didn’t. As for it coming from Wuhan there was a study done showing that it started elsewhere and not in Wuhan. The city found it early in 2019 and saw that it was in feces.

While the United States, in particular, is pointing the finger at China for its handling of the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic in late December and early January 2020, recent research suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was present elsewhere in the world long before it created health issues for China.

Research by scientists led by Rosa Maria Pinto and Albert Bosch (President of the Spanish Society of Virology) at the Group on Enteric Virus at the University of Barcelona have made a rather stunning discovery while studying frozen samples of Barcelona's wastewater collected as early as March 12, 2019 as part of a project to assist in early detection of pandemic viruses.

Here is the news release from the University of Barcelona dated June 26, 2020:

Source

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

"Most public health organizations, including the World Health Organization, do not recognize airborne transmission except for aerosol-generating procedures performed in healthcare settings. Hand washing and social distancing are appropriate, but in our view, insufficient to provide protection from virus-carrying respiratory microdroplets released into the air by infected people,"

And still the WHO is denying what they are being told by numerous health scientists. So I am still waiting on a answer to the question "Are cloth masks and surgical masks giving people a false sense of security since the droplets are so dang small?" And is my N95 still functional after 3 months of wearing it? When I was working in the hospital it was a one use and done and a new one next time I gowned up.

This seems to be pretty clear:

He said WHO is worried about giving advice that people, especially health care workers in low-resource settings, cannot follow. The best way to protect workers from fine aerosols is the use of an N95 respirator or higher — something in scarce supply in many places.

But just for health care environments or should everyone be wearing one? And if so how often to change them out for a new one?

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5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg Generally, WHO follows and doesn't lead. We could discuss the many reasons for that institutional posture. However, do we need to look any further than this Jan/Feb to see why WHO is cautious and conservative? China brought WHO into the situation within days of recognizing the existence of a novel virus that made some people very ill and within a few more days was killing some patients. WHO was uncommonly active at that stage. Then a major funder of WHO stepped in and rubbished the claims of the infectiousness and lethality of the virus, suggested that WHO was covering up for China, and cut funding for WHO.

WHO was not unaware that China was short of PPE by mid-January when new teams of health care workers were sent to Wuhan and that China had implemented the most stringent measures to protect the health of those medical teams (iirc not one of them contracted the virus). Easy enough to suspect that keeping quiet about the effectiveness of masks was a high level conspiracy. WHO's sort of CYA current statement isn't wrong if one is a doctor or nurse, the people that come in very close contact with patients who for medical reasons cannot wear a mask. For the general public it's not nearly as helpful as it could be. We've mostly been on our own to figure it out. (WHO is also necessarily mindful of not creating panics that can and do lead to injuries and deaths. While much was unknown in the early days, panic induced injuries could have ended up exceeding the dangers of the virus.)

In early March I was gifted a N-95 mask that had been lying around, that's what I wore when in enclosed spaces such as grocery stores. Used it sparingly and rarely ventured out to such places. On walks, I used a hand held cloth mouth and nose cover only when I couldn't maintain a ten foot distance from others as we briefly passed each other. The prevalence of masks in my area increased from late March even as there were few local cases. Once masks became mandatory, 4/13/20, I would have ditched the N-95 mask and switched to the cloth or surgical masks which by then I'd acquired. Except, too many people were wearing masks with a release valve; so, I've continued to use the N-95 sparingly. The other masks are no more than a message of being socially responsible -- protecting others if I were sick, either knowingly or unknowingly -- but being cautious, social distancing remains a good practice even when everyone wears a mask.

The countries/regions that were most vulnerable and hit early in the pandemic -- Hong Kong, Taiwan, S Korea, Japan, Vietnam -- didn't wait around for advice from WHO. They used what they knew about airborne person-to-person transmission and implemented mitigation public health efforts. (Transparently in S. Korea and rather secretively in Japan.) Masks weren't an oddity in those places. And social responsibility is generally high in those places as well.

wrt to the Mar 2019 sewage in Spain. That hasn't been peer reviewed and it doesn't pass the smell test. The virus is too infectious and too many become seriously ill for it to have been migrating for nine months before it was identified in Wuhan. By late November there was more than one unidentified index case in Wuhan, but the number couldn't have been all that large. In Jan 2020, the hospitals in Wuhan were able to identify 41 patients in December. One from the first couple of days in Dec, and the remainder from mid to late December. The first case was unrelated to all the others and the seafood market. Given how quickly the virus spread from a few people in November to 41 in December, and hundreds in early January, it's not plausible that it was around in March 2019.

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5 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

doesn’t mean anything to me. Of course people die from other causes in this sh*thole country. Millions lack 'access' to health care coverage because they cannot afford it. Many others had to wait until their issues got really bad and social services got kicked in. This is because we’d rather spend money on death and destruction then keeping our people alive. Even during this election people rejected the one candidate that wanted to pass single payer and instead stay with the hideously flawed ACA that left 20 million people from getting it.

Of course then we have the pharmaceutical companies that puts profits over people’s lives by raising drug prices for those that have been on the market for a long time. You can’t ration insulin.

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14 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg I just don't see a need to have to crop it all out. But I get how you might read more into that than I intended.

Just as I'm sure someone (not you) would have screamed cherry picking if I'd left out anything at all from the page.

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2 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

Given the specific area that I am researching of this CoronaVirus — which is designing evidence-based strategies that amplify the body's ability to avoid or repel infection, or tactics to safely counter-attack the virus and subdue it — I rarely pay attention to published death rates. You are welcome to your own interpretation of the "official" numbers.

I am very aware of the narrative that the semi-private, pseudo-national, disease and medicine cartels like the NIH, CDC, WHO, and FDA are trying to nail down, while Defense, Big Pharma, and Clinical Research Gamers orbit overhead. In the past six months, I haven't read a paper — particularly from the medical journals — that did not use their data to mislead. All of them are addressing their remarks to potential vender capitalists and investors. Their numbers are not meant to inform people like us, and very few of us keep an eye on their lies (ie. wearing a mask could do us more harm than good). Even though it is our money they are spending.

I'll lay down my guard when they incorporate the look-alike vaping deaths into the US Covid-19 casualty count.

The nation is awash in fiction. You should not have been singled out.

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9 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
gulfgal98's picture

The number of cases in most states is going up. The number of cases in my home state of Florida has skyrocketed in the last three weeks. This disease does not kill right away. Often the patient suffers for a long time before succumbing to it. Broadway actor Nick Cordero who was only 41 recently died from COVID-19. He was diagnosed with it three months ago.

To say COVID-19 is going away is delusional. We have yet to peak in the United States.

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22 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98 attempt to explain how a healthy, fit 41 year old man, who received the best medical care (LA Cedars-Sinai is top drawer), died from COVID-19.

Too many are ignoring similar cases of younger people crashing and dying from this virus. Anecdotal information because public health agencies aren't supplying case information on those who die.

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14 users have voted.

@Marie

to begin treatment, during which damage occurred that may have made the hospital's task difficult to impossible is at least a plausible explanation.

Cordero fell ill on March 20, was admitted to hospital in "late March" (diagnosed w/ pneumonia) placed in the ICU on March 31 and was only finally diagnosed COVID-positive a few days later (after two previous test came back negative) and then placed on a vent, after which things went, eventually terminally, downhill.

If he was experiencing low blood oxygen levels for a week to ten days (the virus appears to somehow interfere with the blood's ability to transport oxygen), damage to tissue and capillaries could have resulted beyond the hospital's ability to treat, even if they recognized the problem.

In any case, early treatment seems to be key, and Cordero didn't get it. Also, this was pretty early on and doctors didn't have the benefit of much experience dealing with the disease.

In this Brazilian study, those who started (outpatient) treatment with HCQ and AZT within a week of becoming symptomatic were only 20% as likely (1.17% v. 5.6%) to require hospitalization as a control group. Within the treatment group, those starting early were only about half as likely to require hospitalization as those starting more than a week after initial symptoms:

https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/04/2020.04.15-journal-manuscript-final.pdf

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3 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

@Blue Republic

...of the twenty-first century, someday.

The crimes against humanity committed by the CDC, FDA, NIH, and WHO — for the sake of private corporate financial extortion — must be prosecuted without mercy.

Our civilization has sunk so low that the only US leader who behaved morally and pushed back against the heinous drug cartels is the despicable Donald Trump. I envy those who do not know what this is about.

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7 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Blue Republic

Cordero fell ill on March 20, was admitted to hospital in "late March" (diagnosed w/ pneumonia) placed in the ICU on March 31 and was only finally diagnosed COVID-positive a few days later (after two previous test came back negative)

PCR tests are generally reliable and produce few false negatives.

Ten or fewer days from illness onset to hospitalization for COVID-19 is fairly typical and most of them don't die, including the elderly.

There must be one or more other X factors involved in this case that led to the horrible outcome.

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2 users have voted.

There are two objections to the OP above.

First, death rates from Florida are cited as contradicting the assertion that overall deaths from the virus have been steadily declining. We are advised that further information is forthcoming. I will wait for that with interest.

Second, the death rate is dismissed as anything of significance. In support, we are informed that:

You're using an arithmetic comparison of a metric that epidemiologists consider to have no use or validity - death rate and number of deaths - when analyzing pandemics and statisticians would choke on the absurdity of the math (and data apparently from other comments).

Thanks for telling us all what "epidemiologists" believe. OK, I'll take your word for what "epidemiologists" believe. But based on that, by itself, my response would be that "epidemiologists" are a bunch of dumb fuckers -- but I am sure it all makes sense some way that looking at how many people have died from a disease is useless and without any validity whatsoever. It has to, or you would not toss it off so confidently.

So, please do this ignorant soul a favor and explain to me why epidemiologists think such a counter intuitive thought, unanimously. It would seem to me that looking at how may people are dying would be the starting point for figuring out what any health threat is. But I am just a regular nobody, without the advanced training and life experience of Epidemiologists. Are you one?

And, finally, do you agree or disagree with the OP's assertion that the weekly tally of deaths attributed by the relevant authorities has been shrinking on a national basis? I sure can't vouch for it.

My snark is in response to certitude about the unknown. It is worse than lying in my opinion.

My opinion is an extremely militant I DON'T KNOW when it comes to The Asteroid Virus. Four months into this Intentional Depression, I still don't know what I "believe." But when you self qualify as a spokesperson for all the epidemiologists of the world, you nudge me in the opposite direction.

Regarding the OP, on its original appearance I posted the thought that a declining death rate does not mean, necessarily, that the virus is "going away." My radical position remains that nobody knows what is next because nothing like this has ever happened before. When you add the possibility of "mutation" to the mix of variables, tainted data and bureaucratic incompetence, the future is about as uncertain as anything ever can be.

Yet we get from you this polite little admonition to the OP:
.

The conclusions are set in your mind and nothing will dislodge them.

.
We get a two-fer here. Not only do you have the low-down on what epidemiologists unanimously believe about the death rate from contagious disease, you are also a psychiatric diagnostician. The other guy is just projecting from his locked down mind.

Seriously, although I am honestly ready to believe what you declined to explain, I am interested in understanding why you think the death rate is not significant. I sure don't know what it means, if it is actually happening. But snark plus a claim to have an argument that is too something or other for you to bother with sharing with the readers here -- amounts to snark.

I enjoy snark on the internet most of the time. Not now when the ass REALLY is falling out of everything.

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6 users have voted.

I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

vtcc73's picture

@fire with fire Yes, epidemiologists from several sources say that deaths and death rates serve little or no purpose for deciding how to slow/stop the infection. I've seen that assertion with no opposition from any source. That doesn't mean there is none. It is instead used as a sensational scary number but has nothing to do with how to slow/stop it from spreading. Focusing on death rate says zero about how infectious it is. Death rate is but one consideration in determining how dangerous it is.

Additionally, two good friends are internists, on is an ID (Infectious Disease) with over 50 years in the field, another is educated in public health but has little experience in the field. That's far more expertise than I have in any of this pandemic mess. Each has said specifically that death rate was one factor how important a massive reaction was required and will be an interesting historical fact someday. It has no bearing on how to limit or stop infections but only that it is very important to take extraordinary precautions.

Your ability to read is obviously affected by a personal view with a claim I said anything about unanimous agreement. Fuck me sideways! Getting unanimous agreement on what day it is wouldn't be easy. Snark away. I play well in that pool too but this is way off the mark.

The charts are not the issue. The OP trots them out when there are glaring errors and do not suggest anything about the virus going away - his claim. It is one metric and one of dubious value when determining whether infections are declining which they are surely not except in some areas but not the US of A. You'd have to really be dim to think it does and dimmer to claim it does.

A rehash of garbage that purports to bring new revelations or supports a claim that the virus is "going away" when it clearly isn't is nonsense. In the comments he/she have excuses why the data in the charts he/she posted are flawed. Any objective way of reading this or the previous essay points to someone with a fixed idea looking to prove it with cherry picked, and flawed, that doesn't show what it is supposed to show. The virus isn't going away and any claim to the contrary is fear mongering. I can't figure out if BoBM just wants to stir shit or just can't give it up.

My personal views really don't matter. For the record I'm quite comfortable with the massive uncertainty that exists about this virus. That's normal. The numbers that so many different sources puke up are seriously flawed, incomplete, and are probably the only numbers we know aren't correct. Basing any conclusion on the limited data presented is a fool's errand. Seeing single source death rate taken as fact despite indicated flaws but reported infection rates with the same flaws as questionable is laughable. The difference shown by the OP is that one seems to support his claims while the other does not. That's my primary problem with these essays. They work backwards from two conclusions, the virus is going away and the media, big medicine/pharma, and the medical community is all about fear mongering, to seemingly confirmatory data that shows no such thing.

Your claim that nothing like this has ever happened before so we don't know what comes next is so wrong on top of it all.

I really don't care if you have a problem with my point of view. No attempt to turn it back on me will work. Now, please, be my guest and have the last word.

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9 users have voted.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

enhydra lutris's picture

@fire with fire

If there were a disease or parasite that left one blinded, or somewhat crazy, or partially paralyzed but almost never killed, would you conclude that it wan't really a "health threat" at all, since it didn't kill? Isn't "health" at least arguably more than "somehow still alive = healthy"?

be well and have a good one.

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23 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pricknick's picture

@enhydra lutris
Diminished lung funtion?
A challence for the immunity system?
How do we really count the downfalls of contracting regardless if it kills or not?
Very nice outside the box thinking.
Salute.

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16 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Pricknick

blindness one wasn't all that rare even in relatively recent times, also elephantiasis. I probably enhanced my awareness going to high school with polio survivors with seriously twisted frames.

be well and have a good one.

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14 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

janis b's picture

@enhydra lutris

I think it is a most valid one, and can be applied to many circumstances, including humanity’s mental health.

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10 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@janis b

mental health.

be well and have a good one.

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Anja Geitz's picture

But it’s the tobacco companies that are saying that so you decide.

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14 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

CS in AZ's picture

@Anja Geitz

so there’s no need to even worry about it.

Annual Report to the Nation: Cancer death rates continue to decline

Thursday, March 12, 2020

The annual report is a collaborative effort among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the National Cancer Institute (NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health); the American Cancer Society (ACS); and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

This year’s report showed that overall cancer death rates decreased 1.5% on average per year from 2001 to 2017, decreasing more rapidly among men (by 1.8% per year) than among women (1.4% per year). The report found that overall cancer death rates decreased in every racial and ethnic group during 2013–2017.

That’s it folks. Rocket surgery... brain science... bah!

Death rate decline = disease is magically going away. End of story.

Please don’t read the details about how this overall decline is lead by a significant decline in lung cancer deaths, which is driven by decreases in smoking along with improved treatments. All that is just lies from the Mass Hysterical Media. Obvious.

The death rate is going down; therefore, cancer is going away!

This is fantastic news! It is time to celebrate and light up those cigs that everyone needlessly gave up.

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19 users have voted.

about the number of patients with long term effects, then we can analyze that data and see if it also shows Covid on the decline or not.

What we have are the death figures. The other effects of covid can only be inferred to also be going down based on the only metric we have that correlates in any sense to the number of actual people infected. But I'm not making that inference without that data which you can't provide.

Just like it's irrelevant how many "cases" have increased. We don't know for a fact how many people HAD Covid prior because we weren't testing enough. So we can't definitively say there are more cases now than there were before. We CAN say, however, that the death toll is going down on a weekly basis and that is a strong indicator that the number of cases out there is actually decreasing, even as the number we are finally detecting are increasing.

And we can also infer that the number of people effected by long term issues are also decreasing.

The minute that number starts to climb again, you can bet I'll be reporting that too.

But protests and loosening restrictions haven't had an effect so far, despite mainstream media shouting otherwise.

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2 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

I’ll shoot you a message. USA Today has one where they call themselves the walking dead. Not really but in that vein. People have been fighting it for over 100 days and they are still not getting better. Debilitating issues that run the gambit. I just know that I don’t want to take any risks in getting it.

I’m totally ticked off by how congress has handled it. If you’re interested Joe posted an article on how this type of time was handled in 1932 that is very interesting. Or you can find it on consortium news. Just like now congress let them fend for themselves. With cops doing what cops do.

And we can also infer that the number of people effected by long term issues are also decreasing.

I’m not sure that we can unless you have something that backs it up? I’m really at a loss for how you decided that it’s going away when the numbers say otherwise? I’m sorry but I don’t trust the cdc or anything that the government tells us. Fauci lied to us from the git go on masks.

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

edg's picture

1. Look at the percentage of expected deaths column. It's 7 percent for the week ending 7/4. Which means 93% of Covid-19 deaths have not been added yet.

2. You neglected to read the CDC's disclaimer:

*Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction and cause of death.

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14 users have voted.

@edg making the erroneous assumption that I didn't read the cdc's statement.
Or why they falsely assume I'm only looking at the most recent week or weeks.

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2 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

COVID-19 death rate declines for 10th consecutive weak, CDC says

“Now that the disease is spreading in younger populations, we expect the death rate to be lower because those folks don’t die as much and become as ill,” Dr. Stephen Threlkeld said.“

Good news for us older folks! The young people who are partying on the beaches and coming back home to give us the virus are not going to die at the rate we all are. Glad this essay cleared that up for us.

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20 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

gulfgal98's picture

@Anja Geitz The rate of infections is exploding in my home county and the median age of those infected has been going down. The single largest age group that has tested positive in my own home county is the 15-24 year age group. That age group now accounts for 44% of all cases in my county with the median age of all cases in the county being 25. A month ago, the median age was in the low 40's.

As someone who is in the high risk group due to my age, I am not comforted by the fact that the number of new cases has exploded in the last three weeks. While most young people will only be mildly affected themselves, they can easily spread this disease to us more vulnerable people who have done as much as we can to avoid becoming infected or spreading the infection by wearing a mask.

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12 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

Tests for COVID only show positive during the period of infection, so if you had it and got over it, you won't show up in the statistics.

What makes tallying the spread even more difficult are all the asymptomatic people who may have contracted the virus, developed antibodies, and never knew they had the bug in the first place. Heck, there may be millions of people people walking around scared to death of getting something that's already come and gone through their system.

Without a reliable antibody test we have no way of knowing just how contagious/widespread the virus really is, and we wont get that unless the states start funding those tests to the same extent they are funding the infection tests.

Why they refuse to do so I'll leave for you to ponder.

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9 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

enhydra lutris's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

Why they refuse to do so I'll leave for you to ponder.

I have no idea, nor any real data for all states or most states, but I know that CA is still oly infection testing a minuscule percentage of the population, a test that can tell whether or not one might be contagious, while the antibody test, alone can't provide such information. It could be that they are still primarily concerned with stopping it because they aren't aware that it is simply vanishing whether we do anything to prevent or cure it or not.

This is just a wild hypothesis, but is in line with e-mails from my health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, which covers something over 80% of the insureds in the 9.66 million regional populace here. (regional = "greater SF Bay Area" + Santa Cruz county)

be well and have a good one

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@enhydra lutris

It could be that they are still primarily concerned with stopping it because they aren't aware that it is simply vanishing whether we do anything to prevent or cure it or not.

Makes sense.

My wild hypothesis is that it's vanishing because it's already infected many times the official numbers and is running out of susceptible, symptomatic victims.

Hope we're both right.

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4 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

enhydra lutris's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

our testing regimen was so negligible for the early months leaving us conpletely in the dark as to early infection rates per capita. I'm a prime target, 75, immune challenged, some cardio-pulmonary issues, etc., so I'm keeping my head down until I'm certain that it's gone.

It would definitely be nice it we were both right

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10 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@enhydra lutris

from.

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pricknick's picture

@enhydra lutris
You missed by a year.
Age doesn't matter. State of mind does.
May you keep your well warped individuality.

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5 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Lily O Lady's picture

No mask? Mask? How does your outlook inform you behavior?

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13 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Lily O Lady's picture

@Lily O Lady

my questions, Battle of Blair Mountain. Perhaps my intellect doesn’t qualify me for a response. Still, I am curious as to how your day-to-day life reflects your opinions regarding Covid19.

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5 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady @Lily O Lady @Lily O Lady as a young person who endured (in order from least to most miserable) chicken pox, measles, mumps, the Hong Kong Flu and an unidentified illness that put me in quarantine, doctors in full "space suits" and nurses discussing my eminent death. I lost half my body weight in one week.

If I die of a virus, that's life. I will die of something, someday. Today I will not let fear rule me.

Do I wear a mask? Certainly, in public, though it's probably meaningless, because I am socially responsible.

But social responsibility extends to those of us who are creating the conditions for the enslavement of future generations by participating in a quarantine over a virus that mostly targets us, not them.

Social responsibility also means fighting and/or dying to keep our kids free.
Even if that means dying to a virus that the kleptocracy is using to enslave us economically.

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0 users have voted.

@Battle of Blair Mountain any of those diseases? 2nd generation anti-vaxxer?

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5 users have voted.

It is a twitter thread (9 tweets total I think) on the lower death rate and discusses the issues along with something called Simpson's paradox. I would also add a note as a scientist married to a physician who has a sub-specialty in ID; the overwhelming majority of folks in both fields know more than most of us about their fields AND, they are trying to help under very unfortunate circumstances. Something as simple as this seems to be the expected outcome of combining data inappropriately.
Here, read the tweets and see what you think:

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9 users have voted.

@Roy Blakeley complete, yes. You're saying nothing new and you're still missing the data.
It's trending down. @peachcreek
That was very interesting. Thank you.
The first respondent was a virologist who shot it down, however.
Amd then the OP starts talking about his "gut feelings".

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1 user has voted.

@Battle of Blair Mountain The first comment does not appear to me to be disagreeing with the tweet. And, I don't see any comments from a virologist near the top...What are you talking about?

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1 user has voted.
RantingRooster's picture

you got there buddy. Crazy

Gee, Navy Intelligence approaching 12 year olds? Sounds more like a pedophile praying on under aged children, than recruiting intelligence "assets or agents". I'm just saying...

I said it last week, and I'll say it again, the CDC data is worthless. It's not "denying science", (maybe denying your loose interpretation of it) but it's about recognizing the CDC's data is suspect. It's recognizing the the CDC does not receive it's data in a timely fashion to be useful for any real analysis.

Consider who controls that data... from CNN:

Redfield's early engagement with the AIDS epidemic in the US in the 1980s and 90s was controversial. As an Army major at Walter Reed Medical Institute, he designed policies for controlling the disease within the US military that involved placing infected personnel in quarantine and investigating their pasts to identify and track possible sexual partners. Soldiers were routinely discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families.

In the 1980s Redfield worked closely with W. Shepherd Smith, Jr. and his Christian organization, Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, or ASAP. The group maintained that AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.

(bold emphasis mine)

The guy who oversaw that Soldiers were routinely discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families.

The guy who ran with a group that maintained that AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.

Consider how the data is processed..."Estimated completeness of data"

Provisional data are incomplete, and the level of completeness varies by jurisdiction, week, decedent’s age, and cause of death. Until data for a calendar year are finalized, typically in December of the following year, completeness of provisional data cannot be determined.

Delays in reporting

Furthermore, all deaths with COVID-19 are manually coded. Death certificates are typically manually coded within 7 days of receipt, although the coding delay can grow if there is a large increase in the number of deaths. As a result, underestimation of the number of deaths may be greater for certain causes of death than others.

The "data" is not timely, nor accurate for any meaningful analysis. We have to wait until December of next year 2021, for the provisional data to be considered complete, by their own admission! (Hello!)

Your statement, "This virus is going away", is reckless, dangerous mis-information, and blatantly not true. There is no cure, there is no vaccine. It is not going away anytime soon. There is no "herd immunity", people are getting sick from it more than once and people who do recover, if you can call it that, many will suffer life long injuries from it.

Bless your heart and have a nice day! Drinks

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16 users have voted.

C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

snoopydawg's picture

@RantingRooster

for tying the AIDS epidemic back to COVID. Lots of people are having ptsd now because they see that the government is once again derelict in their duty to take this seriously and doing everything in its power to protect people. I admit that I am one of them. And once again Fauci is right smack dab in the middle of it. I don’t recall what he did back then and am only going on what I’ve read, but here he is in another epidemic lying to us about the efficacy of masks. It’s not just how many people have died because he said wearing masks offers no protection, but how many people are going to be left with permanent disabilities?

The CDC has been captured by those it’s supposed to be regulating so how can we have any faith in what it tells us? The drug companies are looking at making lots of money from people left with disabilities after getting COVID.

There is no herd immunity to the AIDS virus either and it’s looking like COVID has some of the same aspects of HIV where the virus keeps mutating and therefore there might not be any immunity. I’ll stop here because of the memories this is bringing up.

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12 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg herd immunity from any coronavirus.

Just like there's no herd immunity from the common cold.

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2 users have voted.

@snoopydawg about the cdc.
But you'd have people believe the cdc is soooo devious that they even considered what if some guy took weekly pictures and analyzed the data and thought "we better make sure those numbers are massaged so that one guy would see a downward trend"? Really?

I trust the meta.

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1 user has voted.

@RantingRooster @RantingRooster First I'm patronized and told to be quiet and let the intelligent folk do the thinking.
Then, when I point out I'm more intelligent than 99.98% of the human race I get attacked for being arrogant, boastful, big dick ( that's a new one) etc.
Been here, done this my whole life.
Get over yourself.

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1 user has voted.
RantingRooster's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain But it's common knowledge that human males have this tendency to, metaphorically speaking, whip out their dick to measure who is bigger. I'm smarter, no I'm smarter.

"Do you know what your sin is doctor, it's pride..." (from the movie Serenity)
[video:https://youtu.be/tWY-LYD03QM]

I am always skeptical of people who claim they are smarter than everybody else, especially when they say things that are demonstrably false.

"Social conformity" rewrites the brain at the neurological level, so EXCUSE me if I "resist" your brow beating us into "believing" the CDC has authoritative data on this virus, when clearly they have been "captured" by industry.

Yes, the media is hysterical, that is their job. Media Hysteria produces eye balls, which produces ratings, which produces ad revenues. Who owns the media? Who is getting rich, from the hysteria?

Why is Bill Gates touted by the "media" as some kind of medical expert, when the fucker has ZERO medical training? Bill Gates does not have my best interests at heart.

Gee, are you aware that Bill Gates mommy called up IBM's chairman and requested they give him a job, and they did. Do you know anything about the Gates family, and they support for Eugenics? #WhoIsBillGates

Has the CDC managed to be the only government organization that has not been infected by self interest or the people working there, not motivated by self preservation?

But hey, if we stop testing the numbers go down... right.... Keep the ships at sea and the numbers go down...

Are you going to be the 1st in line to get the new COVID19 digital passport with nano particles, that have never been tried before?

Are you going to be the first to try the COVID19 vaccines Bill and his billionaire buddies develop, that they even admit, they will have no clue if it works or not?

Hell, Wall street doesn't want to "cure" cancer, because it's not a good "business model". But developing treatments to "manage it", in the form of treatment subscriptions, is a life long revenue stream.

Then there's this kind of shit.. (from Gizmodo)

Amid nationwide PPE shortages, one Silicon Valley investor and his business partner apparently found the most ridiculously shady way to profit off medical facilities’ scramble for medical-grade face masks in the wake of the coronavirus. The two would leverage popular gig economy apps like Venmo and TaskRabbit to pay workers to repackage thousands of non-medical KN95 masks from China that would then be sold to Texas health officials, hospitals, and re-sellers, according to a Thursday ProPublica report.

From ProPublica

Inside, a man named Jaime Rivera had set up long tables where five or six other “Taskers” earning about $20 an hour were ripping Chinese masks out of plastic bags and stuffing them into new ones that were identical but for one potentially deadly difference. The old packages were labeled in all caps “MEDICAL USE PROHIBITED,” meaning not to be used by doctors and nurses who need the strongest protection from tiny particles carrying the novel coronavirus. The new bags, intended to make their way to Texas hospitals, simply omitted that warning.

snip

Texas officials have tried to block ineffective masks from making their way to hospitals with screenings and by rejecting anything labeled as non-medical, yet at the same time, the mysterious brokers sourcing millions of masks were working hard to evade those safeguards. The operation Rensko witnessed had the potential to push faulty masks into the Texas supply chain just as Gov. Greg Abbott eased lockdown restrictions and COVID-19 infections began to soar.

Of course there's this from TheIntercept:

But as Bright detailed in a whistleblower complaint filed last week, he didn’t think that BARDA should purchase the drug, known as EIDD-2801. A trained virologist who has decades of experience in government disaster preparedness, Bright had reason to worry that EIDD-2801 might be dangerous. The antiviral hadn’t undergone basic safety testing in humans, as is typically required of drugs that BARDA purchases. And similar drugs in the same class had caused serious reproductive problems in animals, with animals exposed in the womb born without teeth and with partially formed skulls.

You know, I could be wrong, and you might be the most intelligent person in the room. But, I will tell you this, you lack "common sense". In my uneducated opinion.

I'm just saying... Drinks

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10 users have voted.

C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

@RantingRooster @RantingRooster @RantingRooster let's not reinvent the bar you're resetting (to mix metaphors.)
You don't need the complete numbers to identify the trend in any data set.

But if you want to wait until every last vote is counted to declare a winner I'm all for it.

Meanwhile, the trend is consistent.

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1 user has voted.

Covid-19 is NOT GOING AWAY!
The are Lies, Damned Lies and STATISTICS!!!
IMO one of the problems in our country that promotes spread of the Covid-19 virus is ass hats like you who are "smarter" than the rest of us spreading dangerous BS like this post.
When you or someone you know gets this disease maybe then you will understand what you have done!

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8 users have voted.

@jbob @jbob and gave it to a bunch of my friends.

One of my friends nearly died.

But hey, here's to 'socially responsible" people hoping one day someone I care about getting this virus so I will "learn a lesson" cuz they hate my message.

Same to you buddy.

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1 user has voted.

@Battle of Blair Mountain The virus is not going away! I don't believe anything you post. Your friend coming home with the virus? Probably BS in due to my statement hurting your FeeFee's!
Here is a link to Dr. Fauci has to say on this subject.
I believe he knows how to interpret health data better than you.

Link to article with statement from Fauci showing just how full of shit yoyu are

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the United States should not fall into a "false complacency" about coronavirus death rates declining.

During a Tuesday press conference with Sen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a core member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned that citizens shouldn't feel relaxed about the coronavirus even though death rates have fallen.

“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” he said. “There's so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. Don't get yourself into a false complacency.”

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2 users have voted.

@jbob @jbob @jbob @jbob the public while not waiving rents, mortgages, debts or giving the quarantined money to pay such debts.

And then offering predatory loans.

It is not being socially responsible to see this happen and then put your own life ahead of your children instead of fighting a quarantine that has been made into a means of enslavement with all your might. Or at the least fighting for a socially responsible quarantine.

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1 user has voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

This is a contentious issue. It is also a topic where there is an amazing shortage of real data and information and a mountain of rumor and speculation. Example: Can there be herd immunity? Can people be infected multiple times? Nobody actually knows yet as of the last I saw. The actual reports made it clear that they were surrounded with uncertainty and that re-infection had to be considered to be a POSSIBILITY, but that it was not by any means a certainty. We can continue to argue for months or longer.

The US has had and will continue to have the worst data possible because of our piss poor history on the testing front, especially testing and tracing and becasue we have permitted so many actual and potential super-spreader events.

Just my opinion, of course, BUT: Meantime, let's not wander across the line into personal attacks. Remember? Keep it civil, per favor.

Gracias

be well and have a good one.

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11 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

CS in AZ's picture

@enhydra lutris

The first and most relevant of which is that Covid-19 is not “going away” — not by any stretch of the imagination, and not by any data known to mankind. This is beyond obvious.

Any honest analysis of information available from every part of the world that has dealt with this disease shows without any doubt that Covid-19 is real, it is a deadly and dangerous disease that not only kills many people but also leaves many with long-term disabilities.

In my own city (Tucson, AZ), right now, as I type this, people (real humans beings) are being airlifted or sent by ambulance to distant hospitals in other cities and even out of state. Why? Because our local hospitals do not have the capacity to take in any more patients that need the level of care required by the flood of very ill Covid patients coming in. Going away, is it? NO, it is not. If doesn’t take a genius to see that.

We in Tucson are not alone in this, of course. People have seen it coming for months and warned us, but our Trump-loving governor decided to believe the Liar in Chief and his lying minions over public health experts, let everything reopen, and so here we are. Even he has finally admitted that Covid-19 is NOT going away, it is in reality getting WORSE every day, and he has at last taken a couple of meager steps to try to mitigate it... too little, too late of course.

What people believe informs how they behave and the decisions they make. It it not simply a harmless internet argument at this point. The misinformation about this situation that is being spread by liars with a political agenda is having serious, real-world consequences.

So any goddamn fool trying to spread the bullshit that this disease is “going away” is a liar who is intentionally misleading people into a false belief that is quite dangerous.

This poster repeatedly posts these LIES that are intended to cause harm to people who are foolish enough to believe him, including anyone who might happen by C99% and read his droppings.

To me, that is insulting — to JtC, to the C99% community, to the members here, who he repeatedly calls stupid and unable to THINK, because many who frequent here do not swallow his swill. I also think publishing these lies makes C99 look very bad to anyone who may read here occasionally but doesn’t really know us. So although my first instinct is “Do not feed the troll” whenever this poster launches another load of bullshit, and I would like to see it receive stony silence rather than feeding its ego, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that push-back is necessary, as silence is often taken as agreement. And that would make us all look pathetically dumb.

The OP starts out with insults, direct and indirect, and then continues to lie, spin, and obfuscate throughout the comments, when he’s not bragging about how he is so much more intelligent than anyone else alive, everyone else should ‘be quiet’ so he can spew his bullshit without being challenged on it. Good lord.

I can easily see why people get fed up with it and speak what they feel about being trolled and lied to, and posting such obviously dishonest dreck that it is making this site look like a nut-house if we tolerate it politely.

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15 users have voted.
Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@CS in AZ

The OP starts out with insults, direct and indirect, and then continues to lie, spin, and obfuscate throughout the comments, when he’s not bragging about how he is so much more intelligent than anyone else alive, everyone else should ‘be quiet’ so he can spew his bullshit without being challenged on it. Good lord.

I can easily see why people get fed up with it and speak what they feel about being trolled and lied to, and posting such obviously dishonest dreck that it is making this site look like a nut-house if we tolerate it politely.

that fear for your own personal susceptibility to the virus may be clouding your judgement a bit?

The OP simply quoted insults made TO him by others (including you?) and then posted official government data to support his contention that the COVID threat is overblown.

For this he is pilloried mercilessly and personally by those who are clearly more concerned with feeding their own insecurities than rationally debating the numbers.

Nut house is right - but not because of the essay.

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1 user has voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger for pointing that out.

I was the one told to be quiet.

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1 user has voted.
Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

So many people using fear as an excuse to act shitty.

Hell if I'm going to sit idly by and watch this site devolve into another orange cesspit where hysterical gangs of true believers mao-mao heretical posters into silence.

Stick around. We need your voice.

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4 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Anja Geitz's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

and then posted official government data to support his contention that the COVID threat is overblown.

but for those of us who are pushing back, it is because we are hearing him make PREDICTIONS of this virus going away from data that is NOT showing that trend.

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5 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@Anja Geitz

When was that added to the TOS?

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0 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Anja Geitz's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

I might agree with you. But that’s not what I said.

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9 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

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