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 16 the death toll is 28,554 . May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
Enough about China.
I’m playing at statistics, again.
If today’s unemployment data comes in as approximate to ‘estimates,’ about 22,000,000 Americans will have filed for unemployment insurance benefits in the past four weeks. That’s 758 lost livelihoods for each person [they say] was killed by the Wuhan flu.
I’m not being heartless, or anything. Powerful forces [with nefarious motives?] seem intent on exaggerating the perceived impacts of the Wuhan flu.
@T.Shaw: “ Powerful forces [with nefarious motives?] seem intent on exaggerating the perceived impacts of the Wuhan flu.”
Indeed. And to help prove your point, as we learn today, Dear Leader Cuomo issues an edict purporting to require everyone in the state to wear face coverings outside of their homes, and informs us of the advent of a “new normal.”
God protect us from these petty tyrants. Any irony here in the fact that virtually all of the overreacting via Draconian government diktats is coming from the party that has consistently trashed President Trump as being “authoritarian?”
. Here’s another quote from an article by Larry O’Connor in Townhall:
. I examined data from NYC Department of Health (and it’s a lot harder to get to than that for Pennsylvania) and yesterday’s data listed “confirmed deaths 6849” and “probable deaths 4059”.
I’ve been tracking data daily from the big world map (the one with red circles) and there’s a spike of 2500 today in deaths. Is this a conscious effort to negate the flattening of the curve.
SOMETIMES NUMBERS LIE!
In future I’ll be subtracting NYC deaths from US to get a faithful picture.
LIES, LIES, LIES from the left in power…just as the Chinese Communists lie.
Is it legal to require people to wear masks? Is Cuomo going to provide them for the poor?
I’m afraid public health officials have behaved in ways that have cost them credibility. The lying about masks was one. Now it’s the fiddling with the numbers. Also, presentation of data is done in ways that makes it challenging to track what’s going on. By way of example, the Maryland Department of Health publishes daily snapshots, but for some bizarre reason, no time series. One can see the number hospitalized in the last 24 hours and the hospital census, but no data on in flow and out flow.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/us-data/
In Virginia it used to be illegal to wear a mask in a vehicle. My how times have changed.