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 July 11, 2020 the claimed, as suspect as that claim is, death toll is 136,498 .
The media isn’t really reporting on deaths, anymore. Perhaps the “Death Toll” should be “Cases.”
I decided to look up the hospital stats, since there has been about two weeks of reporting along the lines of “hospitalizations are increasing, and if they continue we may run out of beds.” This seemed suspicious to me based solely on the reporting suggesting that we were just about to run out for a full two weeks straight.
I went to the IHME site, not because I trust their models, but because they had past CDC data there in an easy to digest format. But now almost all the data is IHME projections, even for things long in the past. The only thing listed as “observed” are death counts, but they CAN’T be because they have decimal parts. (For example, it lists 8.2 people having died on June 3. Might be a rolling average, though they don’t specify over what time period).
Even though reality has been scrubbed from the site, even their projections still get nowhere near the number of beds, even in “hotspots” like Texas (and even if you look at the worst case predictions for months in the future.)
Going to the actual CDC website shows that their numbers show a maximum of about 75% hospital bed use across any state. I’m not sure what to compare this to since hospital beds are used in any time, but the lowest is listed at about 50% which seems like a reasonable lower bound for normality. But even these numbers are not real and only statistically estimated with some ridiculous confidence intervals. For example South Dakota has an interval estimating anywhere from 44 to 2004 beds used, while Washington has an estimate from about 5000 to about 11000 and New York has an estimate from about 25000 to 45000. So who knows how accurate any of this is.
But even with the official stats I can’t find any indication that hospitals are about to be overrun. Even the IHME models only suggest that the “hotspots” might only be overrun in October or so, and that would of course be without any mitigation.
I’m afraid the public health officialdom simply ruined their credibility. They’ve done it in ways which suggest the whole discipline is filled with people of dubious skill. In our house, we’re just improvising trying to use common sense drawn from whatever the latest word is about transmissability.
Note, we know now that the death toll in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania was made far worse by the practice of discharging patients to nursing homes. Well, Gov. Cuomo in New York has a ‘72% approval rating’ over his ‘handling’ of the crisis. People have simply stopped giving any serious thought to what they’re seeing and hearing. I have no idea how we got to this state.
Either that, or polls are now completely fraudulent.
As Rush Limbaugh pointed out early last week, the present media strategy appears to be to beat the “spike in cases” drum loud and long enough to get the credulous to equate “cases” with “deaths.” Hence, mouthpieces like Fauci now utter absurdities such as “a low death rate is nothing to celebrate”, while simultaneously stoking fear that all of those “new cases” will soon become deaths. And we know that the definition of a “case” is pretty well useless, as most states, including Texas, began counting “probable” and “presumed” cases in late May, along with those actually verified by testing. The issue of many false positives is another thread, perhaps. My cynical guess is that the actual number of cases of people sick with Covid 19 is about half the number being reported, at most. But whatever the truth may be, it seems clear that we will not be spared the constant propaganda and “wear your mask” browbeating until the number of “cases” falls sharply again. Even our formerly staunch Gov. Abbott has caved to the mob, preaching the Gospel of the Face Diaper, and refuses to fight back as Gov. DeSantis of Florida is doing, God bless him.
In other news, the CDC discovered additional China virus symptoms, including but not limited to: acne, dandruff, diabetes, gun shot wounds, halitosis, pregnancy, psoriasis, stage four cancer, sun burn, third degree burns, etc.
The China virus pandemic immediately disappears in November – if China Joe wins.
Some time in early 2021, the CDC will produce stats (you know how valid they are) on numbers of deaths in 2020 – it generally hits below 3,000,000 in the US. Will it be 200,000 higher than the past five-years averages? Then, will 2021 through 2023 deaths be 200,000 lower than 2020?
Clarissa Explains It All: “I asked my doctor, ‘When will the China Virus crisis end?” He answered, ‘How do I know? I’m not a politician.'”
That explains it all, indeed.
FYI. If Clarissa would look it up, a review of July 2019 hospital bed occupancy, would show it about equivalent to July 2020?
Sadly, Mich Gov Gretchmer also sent Covid positive (but stable, mind you) to the nursing homes. I believe that is still the practice. The TCF field hospital, Detroit Metro area, which could have easily housed them, was torn down weeks ago. Beaumont Wayne Hospital was closed for several weeks–they were supposed to be a reserve hospital for Covid patients, but they never came. Nursing home patients could gave gone there. But no.
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Add my beautiful state of Michigan to the list of states (NY, PA, NJ) horrifically abused by its so called leaders.