Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of April 10 the death toll is 16,697 . May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
Yes, ridiculous. And many of the reported Covid-19 deaths are due to other causes. All of this shows how easily the public is cowed by orchestrated panic publicity. This must make Progressive politicians very happy and they now have a sure fire way of controlling the population.
Yes, ridiculous. And many of the reported Covid-19 deaths are due to other causes.
Please see Steve Sailer’s posts on excess deaths in parts of Italy and Spain. When the number of people shuffling off in a given two week period is 3x what it is in an ordinary year, you have a problem, and that problem is the coronavirus.
Until a vaccine is developed, people are going to have to take care and use protective equipment, and younger people living with elderly relatives are going to have to work out routines to avoid infecting them. That means the protective equipment has to be readily available, which means we need to get the supply chains moving again. We’re not going to get out of this by pretending it isn’t happening.
Now in flat out fraud zone:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/how-honest-is-the-covid-fatality-count.php?
That is falsifying a death certificate. Isn’t that against the law?
When the number of people shuffling off in a given two week period is 3x what it is in an ordinary year, you have a problem, and that problem is the coronavirus.
They have been refusing treatment to people who have any existing condition, if they have flu like symptoms.
That would tend to spike the death rate, and make it nearly impossible to figure out what the actual death risk is.
Kind of like the falsifying death certificates thing.
For the US, I am especially pissed about this kind of lying because we nearly lost a family friend from the hysteria.
The canceled his heart surgery.
After enough blow-back, they rescheduled it…but the guy has been at death’s door, and there wasn’t a single case in the county. Now there’s one, he’s in his 80s, and he’s asymptomatic and quarantined.
That friend then thought he’d caught the kung flu at the hospital, and was very happy to find out he’d actually just had a blood infection. (The expression on our faces as he happily chattered out that information were probably priceless.)
Even the New York Times is writing about how the hospitals are empty, even of stroke and heart attack victims. Unless all of those cases were needless, people are dying right now because they have been told the hospitals are full to overflowing with going-to-strike-you-down flu.
That is falsifying a death certificate. Isn’t that against the law?
Yes, although proving it might be diffult.
They have been refusing treatment to people who have any existing condition, if they have flu like symptoms.
That would tend to spike the death rate, and make it nearly impossible to figure out what the actual death risk is.
Kind of like the falsifying death certificates thing.
I’ve heard stories of that happening in over-taxed ICUs in Lombardy. I haven’t heard of that happening here.
Art-
What would it happening here have to do with your statement about Italy and Spain?
Yes, although proving it might be difficult.
That official guidance letter should make it easy to prove there, though.
Detroit is a disaster for sure, but is it any worse than any other flu season? I do not know because no one has cared until now to talk about it. Detroit was coming back economically. They have had a major set back.
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Hospitals in Ann Arbor (U of M) have decided to delay building a field hospital because, gee whiz, the curve is flatter than they had predicted.
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I totally agree with Foxfier: lots of lies out there
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DJH, I’m trying to be charitable and say they’re not lies, just misinformation because people are not being careful about data…but I hope you’re not right
The longer these lockdowns continue, the higher the death toll that they will bring. Almost certainly people have already died because of them already, though due to the subtle ways that it will kill people we’ll never get accurate death tolls for the lockdown (and most people won’t look for those statistics in the first place).
People are missing “elective” procedures, including periodic checkups and the like. The effect of this is probably minor for a short lockdown, though there’s always the possibility of a checkup catching a serious condition by chance allowing it to be prevented before it becomes a problem. But as lockdowns turn into multi-month affairs there’s almost certainly going to be serious issues that go undiagnosed, including those that lead to death. If we follow the advice of the most extreme fearmongers and close everything down for a year and a half there’s going to be quite a few of these cases.
Likewise, literally millions of people are unemployed now after a relatively short lockdown. That number is going to rise the longer this goes on. Many businesses that are just barely staying afloat, such as local restaurants, can’t keep doing this for months and will eventually need to close their doors. Before they do that, they will lay off more and more employees. This will have a downstream effect eventually. For example, universities are largely still open with online courses at the moment, but if people do not have extra money to spend on classes they will have to shrink or close as well. And even if we do open everything up tomorrow, we’ll still have lasting damage. A company that has laid off 90% of its workforce probably can’t hire them immediately, especially when their sales are down since so many people are broke.
Needless to say, having millions of people lose their income is going to cause major problems, including deaths. And that’s not without getting into other costs, such as the idea that the elderly should be completely sequestered from society and thus live an even lonelier existence than many of them already do.
And that’s just two small facets of the problem.
Now am I saying that we should never do lockdowns for health reasons, because it might cause someone to die? Of course not. That would be as absurd as saying that we need a complete lockdown until no one dies from any infectious disease, even the flu. But our besserwissers are acting as though there is absolutely no cost to the lockdowns other than maybe some “incoveniences.” (The “inconvenience” of losing your job when you live paycheck to paycheck and barely could buy enough food to last a week. The “inconvenience” of having your checkup cancelled when you are at a high risk for cancer and stroke, but currently show no symptoms).
We should take responsible measures in proportion to the threat of the disease. But that’s not the mindset anyone in charge has now. The mindset is that no death from the disease is acceptable, regardless of how serious it is, and that prevention carries no cost. With that mindset there’s no incentive to ever let up unless the public simply won’t bear it anymore.
After all, I’ve heard many doctors say that even if the Coronavirus isn’t as serious as we think, these measures are still doing good because they are also preventing flu deaths. So what reason do we have to ever stop, even if the Coronavirus is somehow eradicated, since we would still have the flu to deal with in the future?
To add something less ranty and more in line with the numbers:
A couple of days ago I compared the IHME projections to the reality in MN. In the last two days they redid their numbers, leading to a lower projection (though not one that agrees with reality: they dropped from 385 to 355 beds needed on April 8, when in reality 170 beds were needed).
The new projections for today:
Actual beds used: 145 (10 more in the last two days)
IHME Prediction: 390
Confidence Interval: 117-948
So at least they’ve gotten to the point where reality is in their low-end projections, even if their main projection is still very inaccurate.
They predict at the peak 634 beds will be needed, with a confidence interval of 129-2039. 5000 beds are said to be available, so even in the worst case there is no threat of hospitals being overrun. And of course, in reality if their projections are as accurate as they have been in the past we’ll probably see 200-250 around the peak, meaning that if every single Coronavirus patient had to be in the ICU we could do it.
I’m sure that the government will ascribe the low numbers to the lockdown, and certainly it is plausible that the order lowered the total number of cases. But the recent IHME numbers have consistently been too high, even after they factored in the effects of the order. Furthermore, neighboring Iowa has encouraged citizens to stay apart but has done almost nothing official to enforce this (they only closed down their schools this week). Yet, despite the more dire predictions the IHME has for them, they have had very similar numbers to non-Twin Cities Minnesota.
AD, the majority of those people had co-morbidities. Look for some of their deaths to be missing in the upcoming months; a different kind of curve flattening. Of course, if you look at a graph of deaths in Italy it has been steepening for some time. The Italian problem was compounded by not enough young people to develop herd immunity. Factor in the crappy Italian heath system and the country was a tinder box.
Ken, Here’s another reason;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people_in_Italy
“The community of Chinese people in Italy has grown rapidly in the past ten years. Official statistics indicate there are at least 320,794 Chinese citizens in Italy, although these figures do not account for former Chinese citizens who have acquired Italian nationality or Italian-born people of Chinese descent.[1]”
or
https://www.rebellionresearch.com/blog/northern-italy-wuhan-partners-for-better-or-worse
“Northern Italy has a very prosperous fashion and apparel industry. Many of the most famous brands around the world from Gucci to Prada originated in the region. As China has offered cheaper manufacturing for their apparel factories, more and more Italian fashion houses have outsourced work to China, and specifically to Wuhan.
Italy created direct flights from Wuhan and allowed over 100,000 citizens from China to move to Italy and work in their factories. In addition, as the Chinese became increasingly wealthy over the last two decades, more and more Chinese citizens moved to northern Italy to reside and many Chinese purchased Italian firms.”
AD, the majority of those people had co-morbidities. Look for some of their deaths to be missing in the upcoming months; a different kind of curve flattening. Of course, if you look at a graph of deaths in Italy it has been steepening for some time. The Italian problem was compounded by not enough young people to develop herd immunity. Factor in the crappy Italian heath system and the country was a tinder box.
Italy’s population is aged. However, 70% are under 60 and 55% are under 50. There are enough for herd immunity (the deficit of which does not explain Italian death rates, because there hasn’t been herd immunity anywhere).
No clue if Italian health care is ‘crappy’ or not. The epidemic is occurring in the most affluent section of the country, btw. They did err in not taking proper precautions to prevent the hospitals from being a major vector.
Again, if you have x deaths over a two week period in year n and 6x deaths in year n+1, it’s reasonable to assume you have an agent operating in n+1 that wasn’t present in year n.
In the commuter belt around New York, 450 deaths a day from all causes would be about normal. We are currently looking at about 900 deaths a day among coronavirus sufferers in that part of the world. This is not an imaginary problem.
AD, I don’t know if it matters, but everyone in Italy smokes. Other people have commented on the inter-generational housing and the community culture.
AD, I don’t know if it matters, but everyone in Italy smokes.
The last time I checked, the prevalence of smoking among those over 15 was as follows:
France: 27%
Italy: 21%
United States: 14%.
It’s a factor, I’ll wager a modest one.
The longer these lockdowns continue, the higher the death toll that they will bring. Almost certainly people have already died because of them already, though due to the subtle ways that it will kill people we’ll never get accurate death tolls for the lockdown (and most people won’t look for those statistics in the first place).
On the 6th:
I have heard this sentiment from fellow doctors across the United States and in many other countries. We are all asking: Where are all the patients with heart attacks and stroke? They are missing from our hospitals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html
On the 7th:
The FDNY says it responded to 2,192 cases of deaths at home between March 20th and April 5th, or about 130 a day, an almost 400 percent increase from the same time period last year. (In 2019, there were just 453 cardiac arrest calls where a patient died, according to the FDNY.)
That number has been steadily increasing since March 30th, with 241 New Yorkers dying at home Sunday — more than the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths that occurred citywide that day.
https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths
The Gothamist, of course, decides that the increase is from people dying of the kung flu at home, and the city agreed to start reporting the deaths as COVID-19 if there were signs of influenza at the home.
AD-
In the commuter belt around New York, 450 deaths a day from all causes would be about normal. We are currently looking at about 900 deaths a day among coronavirus sufferers in that part of the world. This is not an imaginary problem.
Where is that from?
I’ve been trying to find sources for deaths that bother to give what definition of New York they’re using, but keep hitting dead ends.
For example, I found a document from the New York City health department that gives deaths for prior years in the counties the city is on, but they don’t have anything for LAST year, much less current. (that averages 140-165 a day)
Well, if you die of a heart attack because the corona virus made you too afraid to go to the hospital, I guess you’re a vivid 19 casualty.
You’re really a casualty of media driven hysteria, but the cdc doesn’t track those.
Instapundit link and FOX reports, For What It’s Worth, to a San Diego MD giving the following current information on US daily deaths by cause. Wuhan Flu -:1,970; Heart disease – 1,774; Cancer -1,641. An interesting exercise would be to compare last weeks’ heart/cancer deaths to this week’s.
Of course, they didn’t give abortion deaths which are the highest numbers of deaths.
Ernst-
I just came back to post that, as it turns out, people ARE going untreated in the US.
NYC has set a policy that their emergency guys respond to a cardiac arrest, and the person can’t be revived on site, they are not to be taken to the hospital.
Just “coincidentally,” the at-home death rate shot through the roof.
Which the Gothamist, in the exact same article and before sharing this information, attributed to folks dying of the kung flu.
https://foxfier.wordpress.com/2020/04/10/staggering-surge-of-nyers-dying-in-their-homes-suggests-city-is-undercounting-coronavirus-fatalities-gothamist/
Whatever it takes to get the bad orange man I guess. What was it Golda Mier said? Something about Democrats hating Trump more than they love their own constituents?
Here is another article from Medium. I am forced to wonder what is really going on.
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https://medium.com/@jbgeach/eight-reasons-to-end-the-lockdowns-now-fed3a7036301
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I have had three “non essential” medical appointments postponed–one was to discuss my hypertension, the other two to discuss skin cancer (which I had back in 2018) and the removal of a current pre-cancerous lesion .
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One Instagram poster of a skin cancer awareness account noted his Mohs Surgey was postponed due to Covid19, and then he lost his job and now insurance due to his business closing.
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It frosts me these Experts (and the MSM) can mismanage the data so badly and not be fired in disgrace.
Powerful Forces Are Exaggerating The Perceived Impact Of The Wuhan Flu.
My RN daughter-in-law’s hospital is 95% COVID 19 patients. The only two departments not shut to all are neonatal ICU and labor and delivery.
Ergo, no other malady is being treated.
In addition, if this [destroying the economy and locking-up everyone] continues much longer, murders and suicides will outnumber Kung Flu morbidity twenty-to-one. This country suffers a massive deficiency in moral courage.
Already, it requires all the moral courage I can muster not to ‘do’ The Warden.
does a print to PDF of the Medium article, given how quickly they tend to vanish if they don’t urge suicide
Good heavens.