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 May 6 the death toll is 72,275 . May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
And we see the usual post weekend bump coming in yesterday, because even though this is being presented as the crisis to end all crises by both the media and politicians, accurate tallies of deaths are not being gathered on weekends by states. Why? Because, weekend!
Did they ever reduce the counts when various states/counties identified they’d mistakenly included drug over-doses and such?
Probably not Foxfier. We see now why deaths from Flu are estimates. Trying to get precise numbers of deaths in something like this is an exercise in futility in a country as vast as ours, even if, as is most definitely not the case in the current debacle, there were no political gain to be had by monkeying with the death reports.
“Because, weekend!”
I don’t get it. There’s no health risk from not collecting stats on weekends. It’s not like they stop treating people on weekends. We treat murder seriously, but I don’t think we publish murder stats on weekends. Timely daily numbers are probably the least necessary thing in combating the virus, whether you think it’s serious or not. Livestreamed fatality numbers are just another manifestation of the 24-hour news cycle.
There’s no health risk from not collecting stats on weekends.
Couldn’t disagree more Pinky. When confronting a pestilence accurate statistics as to death are very important as to date and location. Each state should have a central office opened 24-7 to do this, at least states like New York and New Jersey that have experienced quite a few deaths. These statistics should be kept so accurately that during a 24 hour time period each citizen can map out where each person has died in each state. Why is this important? Because the whole bloody nation has been shut down, to one extent or another, based on dubious theories as to how to slow the spread of the virus, and such data is important to decide on what to do going forward by both those in charge and by their purported bosses, the people.
This is treated like an emergency by the powers that be only when it comes to putting the bulk of the population on virtual house arrest. In short per the convenience of those in charge, political and otherwise. There is going to be hell to pay when this debacle is concluded.