Mike M found a “smoother” graph of Sweden daily death data. We all speculated that some agency is collecting raw death numbers, and another is then taking the data and making a file that attributes that death to the day it actually happened. This smooths, but also has the potential for creating a smooth graph with recent days not yet updated.
I hunted for the source of the smoother data and found it folkhalsomyndigheten . I downloaded four days in a row (not necessarily at the same time.) I’ve plotted how deaths through 4/24 looked on 4/24 and on subsequent days. The plot is shown below.
It’s evident that final three or four days of data in the 4/24 rose significantly when updated on the following days. The death tally for most days in final week change and even one or two for days two weeks back, but perhaps not enough to make it impossible to eyeball what’s happening that far back.
I’ll wait for a few more downloads to feel I know how much days of data to ignore when eyeballing data from this source. For now, I’d say it does look like Sweden’s daily deaths have reached a peak and may be falling. They definitely don’t appear to be rising. But who knows, maybe the recorded death tally for days between 4/17 and 4/24 will continue to rise as the agency figures out which dates some more recent deaths occurred.
Update 4/28
Kenneth ran Sweden data through Annan’s model. He used the “fake lockdown” date as James Annan did at his blog.
I’ve asked Kenneth if this is the folkhalsomyndigheten data or the worldmeteter data and if the former, whether he trimmed off the final few days, as they tend to not be fully updated. As such, they would tend to estimate the Rt after fake lockdown a bit lower than it really ought to be because the final data points are always low. I don’t know how much difference it makes though.
Kenneth is the one would would know the answer to these. For now, this is his result.
Update
One more download day for Sverige.
Update: 5/4
I’m not sure the death’s for 4/24 will ever be fully counted. They stood at 76 over the weekend, but rose to 82 today.
Yes, you have to be careful of any recent death count data as it will accumulate extra deaths over time as they are reported late. FL’s death count graph updates this way and can be confusing to interpret.
Tom,
That’s why I wanted to find the source. I figure comparing a over the course of the a week will let us have a better idea how to interpret data from this site.
If everyone is going to proclaim they know what’s going on on Sweden and point to the graphs, I at least want to know how to interpret those graphs. Death’s are probably declining. But… we’ll see.
Lucia,
Very interesting, and will be even more interesting 3 or 4 days from now. The Swedish ambassador to the USA has said publicly the government thinks the rate of deaths in Sweden is already falling. I expect the death rate will fall pretty slowly, like in most other places, and the Swedes will end up with >6,000 deaths (on a population of 10 million).
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So far, they don’t seem t be suffering too much: https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/1210662488/960×0.jpg?fit=scale
Masters of the Universe move again
https://summit.news/2020/04/27/now-twitter-censors-bio-tech-conmpanys-uv-light-treatment-research-after-trump-touted-it/
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Many more test positive without symptoms than become sick
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https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/04/20/marion-prison-inmates-coronavirus.html
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“ Throughout our mass testing process, we have found many individuals who are testing positive for COVID who are asymptomatic,†JoEllen Smith, correction department spokeswoman, told the Columbus Dispatch.â€
“.. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction reports Ohio’s prison system has recorded 2,426 positive results among inmates, which is 21 percent of the total confirmed cases in Ohio…
. . No deaths have been yet reported among the inmates.â€
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Please remind me again how wrong I am to oppose lockdowns due to the panic of the mobs hyping how dangerous this virus is. We have destroyed the US economy for NOTHING except pure, unadulterated panic.
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Sweden is on the same general path as the US without lockdowns and the death rate to this virus still does not look to surpass our historical death rate due to the flu.
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https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/coronavirus-vs-other-flu_n.jpg?w=606&ssl=1
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https://wattsupwiththat.com/daily-coronavirus-covid-19-data-graph-page/#001
I think it is becoming pretty clear that deaths in Sweden are falling.
They averaged 97 per day from April 7-15. Since last Friday, deaths on 4/16 to 4/19 have only gone up by a couple on each day and all four days are in the 70’s.
Prior to that, it looks like changes are just error checking, April 13 has actually gone down from 91 to 90.
April 20-22 were clearly incomplete, having gone from 42, 40, 31 to 48, 51, 47; so it seems unlikely that any of those will make it as high as 60, let alone 70.
April 23-25 are surely incomplete, but they are at 30, 21, 23. Lower than the three previous days were three days ago, but the weekend might have something to do with that.
Mike M,
Comparing day to day, they updating process may not be even. Or…. more hours lapsed between my downloads. 🙂
The daily deaths are probably going down. Definitely not going up. But owing to some unevenness in updating, I figure I can wait a couple of days to say. It’s not like my call makes any difference.
Lucia,
“It’s not like my call makes any difference.”
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Officially no, but any reasoned analysis which shows the Swedish model is “successful” at avoiding catastrophe is ammunition to stop the juggernaut of madness and fear which is blocking almost every rational policy in the States.
There has been and will continue to be a lot of posturing in the press regarding Sweden’s decision as to the wisdom of their plan. Anything regarding the number of deaths is grossly premature. I will reserve judgment until the second wave hits, that’s when we should see a difference in the Swedish model vs the LockErDown! model. I suspect Sweden’s final tally will be on par with most of the developed world.
On another note, I owe an apology to the Blackboard irregulars. I posted a comment (I should avoid late night rants) a few weeks that was targeted at Thomas Fuller and his sanctimonious virtue signaling, but I was trying to be polite and not name any names. I did not express myself well and many readers assumed I was challenging their clarity and rigor. That was not the case and I apologize for my own lack of clarity and rigor. Mea culpa!
Earle wrote: “I will reserve judgment until the second wave hits, that’s when we should see a difference in the Swedish model vs the LockErDown!”
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I think that’s a good point, Earle.
Earle,
“I will reserve judgment until the second wave hits, that’s when we should see a difference in the Swedish model vs the LockErDown! model”
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What second wave? Why would there be a second wave? Not rhetorical questions.
Well… I might get to add a second vertical line to Illinois showing “end of lock down”.
Judge Grants Restraining Order to Block Extended Stay-at-Home Order
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/judge-grants-restraining-order-to-block-extended-stay-at-home-order-reports/2262560/?fbclid=IwAR2sF0Ka4F9kFlyx4Ns–1coCmTlX1GFAlKzdAXiFN3lCyqWb19wTufiF5A
Kinda nervous actually…..
@SteveF
The second wave in the US that comes from some portions going back to work and school. There will inevitable be new infections resulting in some deaths that were delayed due to the initial lockdown.
If you are implying that there should be no second wave in Sweden, I agree. They are building their herd immunity in one go.
SteveF,
Because we haven’t come close to reaching herd immunity.
See, for example, here. This was linked a while back but seems to have been forgotten.
Social distancing will have to continue until either an effective vaccine is available for most of the population or there is an effective treatment for the disease.
Then there is the possibility that a significant fraction of the amelioration of the pandemic in the US is due to the change in seasons. Influenza traditionally trails off in April.
DeWitt,
There could be a second wave if there were a sudden change in behaviors which significantly increased the rate of transmission. I just don’t see there is any actual evidence at all that will happen.
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What I think will happen is that people will be cautious about visiting places (like crowded restaurants) where transmission risk is high, and that if there is any obvious increase in rate of transmission, they will pull back. I think it is instructive to remember that a big state (Florida) did not close retail stores, so I suspect opening retail will not make that much difference. Restaurants are a different story, and I suspect they will be the last to return to normal.
SteveF,
There could be a big change in Illinois if the courts through out our stay at home. But I agree lots of people will continue to stay at home. Many businesses do fine with their people working from home. Some don’t.
We’ll see.
Lucia,
FWIW, my considered opinion is that Pritzker is an idiot, or very, very close to one. He could have avoided the court order if he had been willing to compromise…. he is not. The court order is the result. Proving yet again that “progressives” do not compromise… ever.
Illinois’ pension problems are the direct result of allowing government employee unions to engage in politics. The end result will be a government that is an arm of the unions, not the rest of the citizens. A key factor is the idiotic amendment to the state constitution that forbids reducing pension benefits for any reason. That amendment could, in theory, be changed, but not with the current state legislature and governor. Federal law needs to be changed to allow states to declare bankruptcy. Because the pandemic didn’t actually cause the long term mismanagement that led to the problem, a bailout should not even be considered. But, of course, it will be.
By the way, evidence in support of a seasonal effect on transmission rate is the link I posted elsewhere (Do Lockdowns Save Many Lives) where the authors found no evidence of correlation between when a state lockdown was ordered relative to the date when deaths reached 1/million and the death rate.
SteveF, I also think a second wave is inevitable. At least half the country is really really anxious to get their lives back and protective measures such as masks will gradually lapse. In the West, compliance even with something as easy as not smoking is perhaps only 75-80%. Similarly with life saving medical advice or even taking medications, compliance is not very good. Particularly among the young (who are prone to risk taking), compliance is liable to be marginal. Police are already in Washington state announcing they will not enforce the stay at home order and will only act in the case of large gatherings. That’s because its impossible to enforce anyway. What is happening is that nonsense and stupid decisions such as closing public trails are being openly defied. Generally, even those who really want to be good peasants and comply will find the intellectual discipline begins to fade as time goes on. Those who are emotionally panicked will comply for a while but even they are not going to approach this from a fully rational point of view. And finally, as the truth of how mild this disease for most people, motivation will vanish.
But to me, its still not clear from the data whether even draconian measures do get Rt < 1, largely because we have so little high quality data and the huge age dependence. I haven't seen a lot of real science either that things like distancing work even though intuitively one would think they have an effect. Data indicates (Wall Street Journal) its more a function of population density and other local factors. We still don't know if R0 is 2.5 or 5.9. If its 5.9, a second wave will happen.
What is becoming clear is that lockdowns don't seem to work vs. milder restrictions or doing virtually nothing as some US states have done. Those that locked down early had in some cases a much worse epidemic than those that didn't do much. Whereas the west coast seems to have largely been spared. But it could have been much worse is the evidence free response. How often have we heard that with regard to every government action from those who love government?
What is also certain is that the crisis skeptics are being proven correct. As always in our broken public discourse, there will be no gratitude, no acknowledgement of error. The yellow journalists and the left (but I repeat myself) have in my book acted with brazen disregard for the truth and endangered the health and well being of millions. History will judge our panicked response harshly.
DeWitt
When I read that WSJ article, all I could think was if you look at a stupid correlation that no one would expect to be true whether lock downs work or not, then you won’t find a correlation.
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Maybe if they gave more details than they gave in that article, I’d think it meant something. But. No.
David Young,
A second wave is possible, of course, but I think the feed-back of rising cases (and mortalities) will tend to keep any second wave from becoming large.
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It is obvious that young people, who tend to be fearless anyway (even reckless!) are more likely to ignore the state dictates. But in this case, they truly are at near zero risk, and the draconian orders benefit them personally not at all. Which is one of the many reasons I think most policies have been foolish at best. Yes, it os very important to minimize risk to the elderly and the unwell. But there is no reason that can’t be accomplished without burdening the entire population (not to mention costing a fortune). Unless a vaccine is developed, herd immunity will only arise when enough young healthy people who are not at significant risk gain immunity. Policies in place in many places remind me of trying to push a stream of water pack into a garden hose… in makes a mess, accomplishes little and wastes a lot of effort. Smarter policies would be more effective.
SteveF, You and I see eye to eye on the disastrous government response. I think the real cause goes to the hyper partisan media and the nature of the internet market forces that cause people to do anything to generate clicks. Epidemiologists also probably may have favored an overreaction because they are focused on saving lives, not finding optimal balances. I also think we live in an era when compassion has morphed into an almost irrational demand that every problem requires us to “do something and as much as possible.” It truly became a partisan war to see who could look like they were doing the most.
I also wanted to add that I don’t have a lot of confidence in my prediction either.
I have linked below the Annan Bayesian model daily deaths results for Sweden from 02/15/2020 to 04/27/2020. The results are noisy but the fitted model curve does not look that much different than other countries with a Rt=0.91. I used the same fake lock down data as Annan did: 3/17/2020.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6t5dl63awh17fh/Sweden_Daily_Deaths_Bayesian_02_15_to04_27.pdf?dl=0
SteveF (Comment #183980)
April 27th, 2020 at 3:37 pm
The second wave would require a Rt greater than 1 when the more severe restriction are lifted. Can the economy get back up and running with a Rt less than 1? Can we learn anything about this from Sweden’s experience, from individual states and locales in the US?
If we had a world government or large regional governments where one size fits all I do not believe many of these “experiments” would be available to study. Although I am somewhat doubtful that these experimental results will be accepted by governments who have taken a harden stand.
Earle, you need not apologize to me. I sometimes have a retort on the tip of my typing fingers and then have second thoughts about its contributing any good to the discussion. In my later life I tend to keep those comments to myself even if I laugh out loud. We all have these tendencies, I think, and a sermon once in while is needed.
Kenneth,
Did you use Worldmeter data? Or the smoother agency? Did you clip off the final two or three days if the latter as they are going to rise given the way the latter is compiled. (I don’t know how much it will matter, but those are at the end of the series. )
Kenneth,
If we can reduce restrictions and keep Rt below 0.9, that’s what we ought to do. I suspect that’s lots of governors plans. The problem is they aren’t going to want to go above Rt=1.0.
David Young (Comment #184003): “I also think a second wave is inevitable.”
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A second wave is certainly possible, since epidemics often come in waves for reasons that are not understood, at least, not so far as I can tell. But I not believe that a second wave is inevitable since we don’t really understand why the waves in a epidemic stop.
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If you believe all the assumptions that go into a SIR model, plus the ancillary assumptions made about lock downs, then a second wave is inevitable. But that is a lot of unproven assumptions.
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SIR models do not seem at all realistic to me. They predict just one wave of an epidemic. That wave crests when the heard immunity level is reached, then declines as that level is exceeded. With the population well beyond the minimum level for herd immunity, the number of cases drops to zero. In other words, the virus goes extinct. That is not what happens in the real world.
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David Young (Comment #184011) “Epidemiologists also probably may have favored an overreaction because they are focused on saving lives, not finding optimal balances.”
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Epidemiologists are definitely part of the problem, but not just because of their narrow focus. Experts typically have an exaggerated sense of the certainty of their own knowledge and a lack of humility as regards the limitations of their knowledge. That tends to be enhanced when it comes to policy since the experts who say “We know that …” will often have more influence than the ones who say “We think that … but on the other hand …”.
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For over a hundred years, progressives have advocated government by dispassionate experts. Experts have a tendency to like that idea, so they tend to line up with advocates of centralized control. When experts get the opportunity to direct that control, they tend to seize it and get the most out of the opportunity. That does not apply to all experts, but it does not matter. The ones who are so inclined will elbow aside the others.
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If you want to see hubris on full display, put experts in charge of policy.
In my state of residence we are down to just a few new cases per day (https://coronavirus-response-alaska-dhss.hub.arcgis.com/). Reported testing for the virus has found positive detection in just over 2% of those tested. The control measures enacted, some voluntary and some not, seem to have successfully prevented the spread of COVID-19.
Like everywhere else, we have no clue as to what the state of herd immunity is to SARS-CoV-2. Winter travel out of state is quite common and it seems reasonable to assume that there has been some early transmission of the virus. But given the low level of detection in state it may also been that most of the populace just hasn’t been exposed.
My choice of words of “second wave” wasn’t meant to be literal. A better statement of my intended meaning is the total deaths until herd immunity is reached. Sweden has chosen limited restrictions and will be reaching herd immunity much sooner than those countries that have brought all industry to a screeching halt. Time will tell whether theirs was the best decision, but like most decisions there is no way to know until after the fact.
But that won’t stop the monkeys in the zoo from throwing their feces. When faced with an oncoming truck in their lane they will argue that you should have swerved left, not right, to avoid the collision. Poo flingers gonna fling.
P.S. Could someone please remind me the code to use to quote another comment? Thank you!
Lucia, I use Worldometer for countries and Wikipedia for states. I believe DeWitt mentioned that Worldometer would soon have state daily data. Annan does a smoother for early data to avoid zeroes but not late data.
MikeM
Mathematically, for SEIR models to predict waves, you would need to include the “seeding” parameter (which I’ve omitted, and Annan has too.) You would need to have SEIR models for “regions” (e.g. New York, chicago and so on) and then link them through the seeding. You probably also need to have an interaction between “Ro” and human behavior (like lockdowns through policy or fear.)
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Eventually things would stop because all regions would have immunity based on their local Ro.
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So yes, there are things SEIR’s don’t predict.
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Having said that, and SEIR (and even the simpler SIR) would predict another wave if policy changes suddenly result in more human mixing and an increase in the Ro. Of course they don’t predict that if the population behavior doesn’t change either upward or downward.
Kenneth,
Thanks. I think worldmeter rawish or folk…. with the final few days chopped are good choices for this purpose.
Earl,
Are people social distancing? Much of Alaska is empty, but I know cities are cities. What behavior do you think you see on the ground?
Earle (#184038): “P.S. Could someone please remind me the code to use to quote another comment? Thank you!”
Precede the quotation with <blockquote>, follow it (naturally) with </blockquote>
Mike M,
“Experts typically have an exaggerated sense of the certainty of their own knowledge and a lack of humility as regards the limitations of their knowledge. ”
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Sure, but I think it is more than that. Academics in general lean heavily to the left, and don’t give a sh!t about economic growth, unemployment, and the personal suffering unemployment brings. Politics infuses everything they do. Bad politics.
Here is something interesting:
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
The graph on the upper right labelled “Percentage of all deaths due to pneumonia and influenza” shows a clear spike corresponding to the current epidemic. It is far in excess of the 2017-18 influenza epidemic.
You can expand the scale by unchecking boxes on the drop down at the top of the graph and select individual states or just New York City with the drop down on the upper left.
I was wondering if all deaths attributed to Wuhan are being lumped into the P&I category. They are not.
For New York City, the table at the bottom shows:
week 14 – 1544 pneumonia and 5336 total deaths
week 15 – 1473 pneumonia and 5889 total
I’d guess that NYC normally has about 1500 deaths a week, so those are huge numbers. The COVID tracking project shows 3949 Wuhan deaths for New York state for the first week in April and 5557 for the next week; those are mostly in New York City.
I have two tentative conclusions:
(1) Most deaths attributed to Wuhan are *not* due to pneumonia.
(2) Most deaths attributed to Wuhan are in fact excess deaths.
I am not surprised by either of those conclusions, but I am surprised by the combination.
But it is possible that I am totally misinterpreting what I am seeing.
A second wave is inevitable I think, we are designing the gradual release of restrictions to produce one. However it will not have the same duration and slope as the original one as we already have certain behaviors built in and we are hyper sensitive to the beginning of a new outbreak and won’t let it get NYC out of control this time.
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My guess is the outlook for urban real estate is down, and the suburbs are up. People are going to look at high density urban environments a little differently after this.
For the first time my local area is saying anyone can now get tested without restrictions. This is a major milestone. Likely a combination of increased testing capacity and decreasing cases.
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This has definitely been a 9/11 shock to the system type of event. Things won’t be the same after this.
How amusing. I once worked on some software for UV light machine that treated certain skin ailments. Basically a fast sunburn machine. It had to go through the usually FDA process nightmare.
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Apparent another company Aytu BioScience was already looking into using UV light in the lungs to treat ailments since 2016, just another pie in the sky thing. Well, that is until Trump entered the picture. The accounts for this company have now been banned from YouTube, Twitter, and Vimeo for incorrect thoughts.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-experimental-ultraviolet-light-treatment-for-covid-19-takes-political-heat-11588005938
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Team Science strikes again!
And it begins in California
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https://abcnews.go.com/US/small-business-owners-file-suit-gov-newsom-ca/story?id=70365949&cid=clicksource_4380645_4_three_posts_card_hed
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Politically, the governors who have shutdown their states hard have painted themselves into a corner. As the data becomes even more explicit that shutting down the economy only had a very minor effect, saying that they were “wrong†is politically very difficult. As such, they will be inclined initially to double down on their policies to show they were “rightâ€.
A New York ER department head calling for an end to the lock down:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/ive-worked-the-coronavirus-front-line-and-i-say-its-time-to-start-opening-up/
Some snippets:
“the wave has crested. At 1 p.m. April 7, the COVID-19 arrivals slowed down. It was a discrete, noticeable event.”
“The way this transpired tells me the ebb and flow had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak than it did with the lockdown.”
“our patients in this diverse, low-income community are afraid to come to the ER for non-COVID care.”
Tom Scharf,
Of course, the video didn’t become objectionable and was not removed until the MSM went crazy after Trump mentioned UV light. Proving (yet again) that the folks at YouTube etc are profoundly dishonest and at the same time utterly shameless.
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Which is not to say the the proposed technique would actually work very well… sterilization is due to disruption of genetic material and proteins, and these materials just don’t absorb much light in the UVA wavelength range the company proposes using. Optimum sterilization is at 270-280 nm close to the optical absorption peaks for proteins, RNA, and DNA. The company doesn’t actually say the wavlength they propose using, but the further away from 315 nm, the less effective the treatment would likely be. “UV Light emitting diodes” are available for any wavelength from about 255 nm to 405 nm.
Good science based advice on the risks of transmitting the virus, as well as why there is such a wide range of illness severity:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-viral-dose.html
Found this interesting.
http://www.toptradeguru.com/?p=72407
I checked another CDC site that tracks mortality from various causes and it shows 63,231 total deaths in the week ending 4/4/2020. His data shows 61261 for the week ending 4/5/2020. Both numbers are a lot lower than the flu season peak in 2018 which looks like about 67500 per week.
When the dust settles this will be the real measure, viz., what has been the excess mortality. Unless the CDC is wrong about how complete its data is, excess mortality seems in line with a bad flu season at least through 4/5.
Don’t know if these numbers are complete even though the CDC sites are claiming 100% of the data are estimated to be in.
BTW Euromomo data looks wrong to me for England in the last couple of weeks for the 15-65 age group. Most other European countries are showing normal mortality in this age group whereas England shows a huge spike. I don’t believe it.
Lucia, the governor and the mayor of Anchorage have issued orders prohibiting large gatherings, closing some business and restricting others, and requiring self-quarantine if infected with COVID-19 or had recent interstate travel. On top of that people are for the most part wearing cloth or paper masks when in public and maintaining distance from others.
I am working from home and haven’t been out much in the last month so I’m not a good source for how widely those rules and guidelines are being honored. My two kids are in college and living at home; my son is on the spectrum and has no issues with any of the restrictions except a dislike of cloth masks. My daughter is the opposite and going stir crazy. She gets out regularly for hiking and rock climbing with friends and I hope is being good about the distancing.
Thanks Howard!
David Young (Comment #184064): “I checked another CDC site that tracks mortality from various causes”.
Do you have a link for that? I spent quite a while today trying to find such without any luck.
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David Young: “http://www.toptradeguru.com/?p=72407
His data shows 61261 for the week ending 4/5/2020.”
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Bad data from an ignorant source. His links are for the flu tacker that I linked to. They are woefully incomplete, not just for the last week or two, but for the last couple months, at least.
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David Young: “When the dust settles this will be the real measure, viz., what has been the excess mortality.”
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Indeed. From what I can find at the CDC web site, we can expect those numbers sometime in 2022.
Heads should roll at the CDC. But they won’t.
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David Young: “Don’t know if these numbers are complete even though the CDC sites are claiming 100% of the data are estimated to be in.”
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The problem is that the CDC has put an idiot in charge of that data. They use the ratio of reported deaths to expected deaths as a proxy for data completeness. And anything over 100% is simply listed as >100%, even if it is several times normal. Hover over the ‘?’ next to ‘Percent complete’.
Heads. Roll. Not.
Have a question about Germany and not Sweden. I’ve been following this discussion about R0 and Rt (sort of), and today I see this headline:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/germanys-coronavirus-infection-rate-edges-higher-after-lockdown-measures-eased/ar-BB13jmZ0?OCID=ansmsnnews11
A German epidemiologist is cautioning that after Germany relaxed restrictions, the R value spiked from 0.7 to 1.0.
But when I look at Worldometer for Germany, there is a general decline in new cases, albeit with a day or two rising last week.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/
I know this is not an easy question and probably would be a lot of work for someone to evaluate, but just off the top of one’s head, does anyone have a comment on what looks to me like an inconsistency?
John M,
“..does anyone have a comment on what looks to me like an inconsistency?”
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Sure. The data, while a bit noisy, indicate strongly that the R value is quite low, so the new case rate continues to fall. Looks to me like the epidemiologist is simply wrong; probably motivated by leftist political inclinations.
Mike M,
“The problem is that the CDC has put an idiot in charge of that data.” .
Which idiot is that?
John M,
A German colleague told me today via email that he is happy the infection rates are falling, but noted “all social activities ended here 6 weeks agoâ€. He plainly wants it to be over.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/
is what I found Mike. It looks pretty accurate for week ending 4/4/2020 because the #covid deaths looks ballpark right.
John M.,
I seriously doubt there is enough data to make that conclusion. All the press reports indicate that even though restrictions have been loosened, most Germans are still staying home. Somebody wants his 15 minutes of fame.
David Young (Comment #184075): “https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/
is what I found Mike. It looks pretty accurate for week ending 4/4/2020 because the #covid deaths looks ballpark right.”
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Thanks for the link, but it is useless since the data are not remotely up-to-date. See note 2:
“Percent of expected deaths is the number of deaths for all causes for this week in 2020 compared to the average number across the same week in 2017–2019. Previous analyses of 2015–2016 provisional data completeness have found that completeness is lower in the first few weeks following the date of death (<25%), and then increases over time such that data are generally at least 75% complete within 8 weeks of when the death occurred"
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The Wuhan virus numbers might be up-to-date due to being reported separately. But we have no info on how complete the rest of the data might be.
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What is needed is all causes of death so that they can be inspected for completeness proxies, such as cancer deaths.
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What is really needed is complete data, rather than proxies.
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The fact that CDC does not have reasonably up-to-date info on excess mortality demonstrates that it is a corrupt organization. Corrupt in the sense of no longer serving its designated purpose.
But of course, anyone who followed the Ebola nonsense from a few years ago already knew that.
John M,
When were Germany’s measured eased? As usual, the newspaper artilcle doesn’t say. (They always just want to report the “new” stuff. So, what’s new is what supposedly happened “after”, but I guess readers are supposed to just remember when the lock down happened. )
As for diagnosing: The worldmeter is a great resource for all of us. But I think we should all be aware that people at agencies might have fresher data. Or better sorted data. Or maybe they are just familiar with their reporting “issues” (like weekend effects.) So… maybe they know something we don’t know. If it’s changed we can probably tell in 2 weeks. But they might have fresher stuff.
Lucia,
I think they eased the restrictions on April 20. But the easing was only for small shops to open.
JohnM
Given the estimated time lags for changes in Ro, I don’t know how the epidemiologists estimate could be based on observations after the change. It could be based on his estimate of circulation…. but that’s got to be tenuous. We are starting to get more data in different countries for that though. It’s sort of a grand experiment.
.
Honestly, I think Ro = exactly 1 is probably fine if hospitals aren’t overloaded and it means small shops can open. The dangers happen at greater than 1.
Yes MikeM, I agree that better data more rapidly would be immensely helpful especially for policy makers.
From Wikipedia on the Swedish epidemic:
The mean age among those who died was 81 years, and a majority were 70 years or older, with few below 50 years of age. A large majority (93%) of the deaths belonged to at least one risk group, with chronic cardiovascular disease being the most prevalent (53%), followed by diabetes (26%), chronic respiratory disease (18%) and chronic renal failure (16%).[178] More than half of the deaths has been in Stockholm County.[179] As of 26 April, 2,194 people with a confirmed Covid-19 infection had died in Sweden.
That’s a much more extreme profile than in New York where average age of victims was much lower. My theory is that because African Americans have much higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and the metabolic syndrome, they drove up New York’s fatality rate. I would like to see demographics on the New York fatalities.
David Young,
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n#/views/NYS%2dCOVID19%2dTracker/NYSDOHCOVID%2d19Tracker%2dMap?%253Aembed=yes&%253Atoolbar=no
.
Higher, but not as much as some have suggested.
For those looking for data comparing all cause mortality this year v previous years IStatista carried this: https://www.statista.com/chart/21503/change-in-deaths-in-urban-areas-compared-to-recent-years
Also, anecdotal I know, my GP (Sydney Australia) says he has seeing less patients with colds and gastro and believes distancing and increased hygiene are the most likely cause although other reports are people are to scared to go to the GP for minor issues.
David Young (Comment #184085): “I would like to see demographics on the New York fatalities.”
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Deaths per 100K:
Black – 127
Hispanic – 114
White – 64
Asian – 52
So almost twice as high for non-Asian minorities. My data source:
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#download
I have not checked those numbers against StevF’s source. But as to the latter, percentages of totals can make differences seem smaller.
Yes Kenneth but there was an article in the Times of London on the same data and they interviewed experts who attributed it to more people dying from other conditions because they were scared to seek medical treatment or go to the hospital.
In bad flu months excess mortality can be quite high, as high as 30%.
I personally think something is wrong with the British statistics. Euromomo shows mortality in the age 16-64 age group. It’s been normal in most of Europe. Italy has a small spike but England has a huge spike. That seems implausible to me and almost certainly not due to covid19 even if its real. That would indicate that the Times experts were right and the FT analysis was wrong.
I think that Germany might be an important test case in attempting to find a balanced policy in dealing with the Covid pandemic. Germany had a case of Covid reported in January and before the first case was found in Italy. Germany did not start lock down mitigation until 3-23-2020. Germany has had a higher ratio of younger people infected with Covid than other nations and with most of the deaths yet coming from the aged. It has had a relatively low death rate per population and probably because it concentrated efforts on that part of the population that is more susceptible and with higher risk for death.
I have read that Germany started to ease lock down restrictions about 10 days ago. There have been comments in the media that that easing has increased the Rt above 1. I made two runs with the Annan Bayesian model for Germany daily deaths: one to April 28 and one to April 18. The results linked below show that Rt was 0.74 for the April 28 run and 0.79 for the April 18 run. The results also showed the uncertainty for Rt was reduced by 1/2 from April 18 to April 28.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o30h3jt57q0yp4c/Germany_Bayesian_04_28_vs_04_18_Rt.pdf?dl=0
A Harvard med school prof criticizing the lock downs on epidemiological grounds:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/29/delaying-herd-immunity-is-costing-lives/
“The question is not whether to aim for herd immunity as a strategy, because we will all eventually get there. The question is how to minimise casualties until we get there.”
“The current one-size-fits-all lockdown approach is leading to unnecessary deaths.”
Thanks Kenneth,
Sure makes more sense than what the media’s picking up and running with, at least based on Worldometer data.
The easing date was indeed April 20:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/493569-smaller-stores-reopening-in-germany
But it’s not like they have a New Orleans-style “Let the Good Times Roll!” attitude.
“The lifting of the restrictions will allow retail spaces smaller than 800 square meters, or 8,611 [square feet], to reopen their doors, along with businesses such as bookstores, car dealerships and bike shops, according to Bloomberg. More heavily-trafficked spaces like restaurants, bars and gyms will remain closed and the government is strongly recommending citizens wear face masks.”
That’s about the size of a smaller Dollar Tree store.
It appears that a comment of mine has vanished into moderation.
I guess I will just repost.
A Harvard med school prof criticizing the lock downs on epidemiological grounds:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/29/delaying-herd-immunity-is-costing-lives/
“The question is not whether to aim for herd immunity as a strategy, because we will all eventually get there. The question is how to minimise casualties until we get there.”
“The current one-size-fits-all lockdown approach is leading to unnecessary deaths.”
Sorry Mike M. I released it.
Germany’s data has cyclic spikes, I don’t know how anyone can assess that the rate has gone up yet. The data here isn’t showing that:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
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I’d agree with DeWitt, this is the predictable media / biased academic interface producing unwarranted alarm. It’s going to happen here as well. I imagine we will also be treated to a few anecdotal “I got my covid from my barber who has a Trump bumper sticker in his window” stories.
And now for something completely different. The Biden Tara / Reade story is now providing a stream of entertainment better than Netflix. After Biden surrogates started circulating talking points that a NYT investigation “exonerated” Biden (as if that would be a definitive judgment in this case), the NYT had to issue a correction to that.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-times-biden-camp-talking-points-inaccurately-describe-tara-reade-report
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Our courageous hard hitting truth telling media has yet to even ask Biden about the allegations. I guess he is locked in his basement.
A lot of the reaction to Germany has been to the rise in reported cases. That will not translate to deaths immediately, but it should be recalled that Germany has been doing a lot of testing. We should know more in week.
Tom,
It probably looks cyclic for the same reason everyone’s looks somewhat cyclic: Weekend effect.
BTW: The number of deaths on 4/24 in Sweden at Sweden’s folkhalsomyndigheten site rose again today. I’m still betting the 4/24 deaths will end up below a peak from the previous week. But… who knows? (Not me.)
Whatever the case, you can’t fully trust entries less than a week old at that site. If you don’t just blot out data less than a week old, you’ll think deaths fell off a cliff, but more plausibly they are declining slowly. Mind you: decline is good. It does suggest what Sweden is doing seems to work for Sweden.
I went back to Worldometer after hearing that Germany’s cases spiked on MSNBC and could not find the spike or even an increase in cases. Where do these people get their data?
Kenneth,
Journalists never say. . . I’m not sure politicians know when they are being interviews. They were told by their specialists who probably did say. But… well… it’s not all that easy to remember details like precisely where data came from when you are the “big picture” person!
Mike M,
Harvard Professor says: ““The question is not whether to aim for herd immunity as a strategy, because we will all eventually get there. The question is how to minimise casualties until we get there.â€
“The current one-size-fits-all lockdown approach is leading to unnecessary deaths.â€
.
What? He clearly doesn’t understand the motivations involved, to wit: 1) Lefty nutcake politicians are suddenly able to boss people about as much as they want; they do not care AT ALL about unnecessary deaths, but do like bossing people about. 2) Lefty journalists see this a a way to make Trump look bad so he is not re-elected. They also do not care about unnecessary deaths. The professor needs to get out more.
Lucia,
Looks like the reported deaths are very close to fixed/unchanging 7 days after the fact (deaths on 4/21 become reliably recorded by ~4/28).
Off-topic but humorous (maybe)
Scientists Who Didn’t Predict A Single Thing Accurately For Last Two Months Confident They Know What The Weather Is Going To Be Like In 100 Years
South Korea is another exceptional part of the grand experiment in that that nation evidently used testing and shutting its borders early to head off the usual initial exponential explosion of cases. The reports I read indicate that South Korea did not shut down their economy or schools in the major way like other nations did. I looked for an intervention date for South Korea but did not actually find one other then the testing and shutting down borders. For the Bayesian model run I made up an intervention date of 2-25-2020 that in general corresponded to the advent of the aforementioned activities. The results of this run are linked below.
The results were unique in relation to other nation runs in that the Ro was much smaller at 1.90 and the daily death curve had a more or less flattened bell shape. The time to death/recovery was also relatively short. Rt=0.71. The results had more uncertainty due to the fewer numbers of deaths giving a lower signal to noise ratio. The final plot in the report obscures the R0 and Rt values because the code attaches the location of that text to the intervention date line. I could have changed the code but you can view those values with uncertainties in the table.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/glujg2f1idqf4bk/SKorea_Daily_Deaths_02_15_to_04_28_Bayesian.pdf?dl=0
Adam Schiff’s nose is getting even longer:
I found that because I received a forwarded request for money from Eric Early who is planning to run against Schiff. But he’s a Republican so I doubt he stands a chance even if Schiff kills someone on the street.
Kenneth,
As I remember, South Korea was hit hard by SARS and then by MERS. As a result, they put in place a system so that was unlikely to happen again. One company had a test developed and approved in two weeks. Testing turnaround time is measured in hours, not days.
https://www.ft.com/content/e015e096-6532-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68
Steve,
Do you mean the Swedish data? Yes. It looks like it’s safe to interpret after a week. There can be tiny changes, but not really much. OTOH: 5 days is a bit iffy.
Kenneth
Oh… they were active in the initial period! There is no specific date of intervention because they just started intervening, getting test kits created, using them and so on fast. I need to find the nifty time table page. They started screening people entering from Wuhan on Jan 3! They caught someone entering with covid on Jan 20. They accelerated their time table for approving tests on Jan 27. The ramped up quarantine staff on Jan 30. Pharmacies were able to check patients travel histories by Jan 31. So they were tracking and tracing.
They pretty much just jumped in and started doing almost anything possible or practical right away.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19
Then, of course, around early march people who don’t like our various state reactions were saying thigns like “we should do what Korea does”. But we couldn’t do that because what Korea did was respond immediately and vigorously right out of the gate. Whatever damage our method has done, by early march “doing what Korea did” was not an option because we didn’t do it.
DeWitt,
I’m not a Trump fan, and I think he’s often been coming off like a babbling buffoon. But, there’s no reason to think the Democrats would have responded any better. They weren’t talking action back in March. The reaction to Trump’s early moves (blocking people from traveling and so on) was that he was too drastic.
Governors have the power to quarantine. So that’s not on Trump either. Sure it might be nice if his tweeting and rambling weren’t often ridiculous. But still.
Lucia,
“…and I think he’s often been coming off like a babbling buffoon.â€
.
Unless he reads from a teleprompter (and doesn’t riff off into the weeds!), he always comes off like a babbling buffoon! And worse, a self-congratulating babbling buffoon.
.
No way to tell if he is always a babbling buffoon…. as in when he is not in a news conference. I have to imagine he is not always that bad, but he never releases footage of that non-buffoon Trump. If it exists, I think he should release it.
Yes this is just another example of the disinformation Schiff spreads. Recall that for 2 years he insisted he had seen definitive proof that Trump colluded with the Russians. There was never any such proof. He also supoenaed phone records of Republicans on his committee and then selectively leaked parts to try to smear them. He is truly a Joe McCarthy like politician.
Lucia,
Yes, the Sweden death counts….. 6 or 7 days delay for accuracy.
David Young,
The voters in California get to elect immoral, dishonest scumbags like Schiff to represent them. Until Dems lose control of the House, Schiff will continue to do damage.
Yeah, SteveF, California needs more fine, upstanding Republicans like Duncan Hunter.
It’s not just that Schiff’s been elected to Congress. It’s that the congressional Democrats made him a committee chair and then put his committee in charge of the impeachment investigation! Of course some of that is the seniority system.
Then there are the so-called moderate Democrats who claim that they will vote their consciences and not be Pelosi’s lap dogs. They are either lying or are deluded. In no case should they be believed. The congressional Democrat caucus is controlled by the progressive Democrats and the caucus controls how all the Democrats in Congress vote.
Thomas Fuller,
Anecdotal much!
At least Hunter resigned. Schiff continues to double down on his lies. Also, Hunter wasn’t a committee chair. And if we’re pointing fingers, how about Alcee Hastings? He was a federal judge who was impeached (413 to 3) and removed from office by the Senate (69 to 26) for soliciting a bribe by a bipartisan vote. But now he’s a Democratic congressional representative. Just because a jury found Hastings not guilty doesn’t prove that he was, in fact, innocent of the charges.
Thomas Fuller,
Yes, it is shocking (shocking I say!) to discover that politicians of both parties have many failings. If you really want, I can point to a bunch of corrupt Democrats convicted of worse than Duncan Hunter.
.
But Schiff’s failings are worse: he tries his best to damage the fabric of government for political advantage.
.
I am reminded of an editorial I read by a former president of Brazil, Fernado Henrique Cardoso. IIRC, the title was “Farinha do mesmo saco?”, which translates to “Flour from the same bag?” The editorial was about corruption in the government of Ignacio Lula da Silva, which was widespread. In the editorial, Cardoso acknowledged corruption was always a problem in Brazil, and his government was not exempt. But he lamented that the nature of corruption under Lula was fundamentally different: illegal payoffs were made, but in such a way as to help ensure Lula’s socialist party would be permanently in power. The fabric of government was being undermined.
.
Duncan Hunter is corrupt in the common way. Schiff is, IMO far more damaging to the country. He has lied endlessly to undermine the Trump administration. He wants political gain at any cost, not, apparently, personal gain.
.
BTW, Lula did ultimately end up in prison, but for the kind of unlawful personal gain Duncan Hunter got in trouble for…. but a hundred times larger in scale than Duncan Hunter.
DeWitt,
“The congressional Democrat caucus is controlled by the progressive Democrats and the caucus controls how all the Democrats in Congress vote.”
.
Sure. The constant threats of primary challenges as a consequence of ‘wrong votes’ make that plain. Surprisingly enough, there turn out to be very few votes among Democrats, even those from relatively conservative districts, that go against the progressive caucus position…. on any subject.
Schiff and Palousi have fundamentally undermined the nature of our Republic too. They have set a precedent for using impeachment as a purely partisan tool to try to remove a President with no underlying crime. The articles did not even allege a crime. For me, that’s one of the most corrupt acts in American history. Further they did this knowing with 100% certainty that they would not remove the President. In other words their actions were purely done to affect the upcoming election. That’s in my book the very top level of corruption.
It’s not hard to make Trump look bad, but it takes special talent to make yourself look equally corrupt at the same time, ha ha. In a certain way Trump has done us all a favor by exposing the grimy underbelly of the political process in a way that cannot be unseen.
.
I was already there, so nothing I have seen in the last 4 years is particularly shocking. I have little patience for the fake referendums on character or good intentions our betters are always suggesting. If the “better way” was so obvious then we would already be going down that path in agreement. There is disagreement because we have limited resources and competing priorities. “My side should be in charge because I’m so full of love” makes me … ummmm … barf.
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I imagine there are plenty of pretty good people who enter politics but sparingly few who can leave the DC grinder without becoming cynical to the process.
Tom Scharf,
“I imagine there are plenty of pretty good people who enter politics…”
.
Count me skeptical. My mother once said (when I was in my early teens) “Plenty of politicians go to Washington who are not rich, but very few leave Washington who are not rich.” I am sure there are people elected to local office, especially local office with little compensation, who are motivated by a desire to do good, but I think those who seek higher political office are mostly motivated by money and power. I don’t see a lot of people in Washington who are in danger of being named saints.
It’s unanimous, and why you don’t want to be the first governor to reopen. It’s not so much that this opinion is expressed, it’s that it is the only allowable opinion in the media.
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Georgia Went First. And It Screwed Up.
Here’s what other states can learn from our inept reopening.
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Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice
The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.
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Atlanta Isn’t Ready to Reopen—And Neither Is Georgia
As the mayor of Atlanta, I’m unable to endorse the governor’s decision to reopen businesses before health experts say it’s safe to do so.
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As Georgia Reopens, Virus Study Shows Black Residents May Bear Brunt
A C.D.C. report released Wednesday suggests that the African-American community in the state is especially vulnerable to infection.
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Politics drive Georgia’s reopening gamble as coronavirus cases rise
The health risks of an early reopening could be even more risky than an economic one, economists say
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Georgia’s daily coronavirus deaths will nearly double by August with relaxed social distancing, model suggests
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As Governors Urge Businesses To Reopen, Workers May Be Pushed Off Unemployment (Very strange headline NPR ?!?!)
And on a more humerus note:
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As Biden struggles, Hillary waits for the call
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call
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I said last year that Hillary has a path to the nomination. She still does.
I agree Ed, that’s quite hill-arious. The Democrat party has really painted itself into a corner. It does cast doubt on how connected to reality they are.
Latest data on Antarctica / Greenland ice loss. Satellite altimeters.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/climate/antarctica-ice-climate-change.html
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14 mm sea level rise from 2003 to 2019. This is about what the past studies have shown. 1 mm per year combined. For those of you counting at home, that’s 1000 years to get to 1M.
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Now back to you regular programming, NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/30/848398472/antarctica-and-greenland-are-losing-thousands-of-gigatons-of-ice-thats-a-lot
“Combined, melting ice from both places has caused about half an inch of sea level rise, around a third of what’s been seen over the 16-year period”
.
… wait for it …
.
“With oceans predicted to rise as much as 8 feet by the end of the century, governments around the world are looking for detailed projections of how fast that will happen.”
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Let’s see, 80 years, 16 years is 0.5 inches, x 5 = 2.5 inches. 8 feet is 96 inches, only a factor of 38X left unexplained here. Yes, nothing new to see here, just move along.
Unless Biden bows out for “health reasons” he is going to be the nominee. I think the odds are at least 10:1 he is on the ballot in November. I am certain he is in cognitive decline, as his frequent confusion and word-salad comments show. Some people in cognitive decline are aware of what is happening and accept that reality. Ol’ Uncle Joe does not, as his angry interactions with voters when they ask difficult questions shows. These things do not tend to get better with time.
Tom Scharf,
“With oceans predicted to rise as much as 8 feet by the end of the century, governments around the world are looking for detailed projections of how fast that will happen.”
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You gotta love the MSM types. They know almost nothing of science or how the physical world works, know nothing about data analysis, and yet are absolutely certain sea level doom is coming based on the proclamations of a bunch of climate ‘scientists’ with a green agenda. The MSM is worthy only of contempt. It won’t be 8 feet of sea level rise. It won’t be 4 feet. It is likely it won’t be even 2 feet, and most likely less than 16 inches.
Looks like Biden and the media are going to have to address the Reade situation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/business/media/tara-reade-joe-biden-media.html
.
“Typically, in a situation like this, media outlets would be competing intensely for the first major on-camera interview, yet the only network calling Reade is Fox News,†said Ryan Grim, the Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, who has championed Ms. Reade’s story. “That the media isn’t more concerned about the image ignoring this story creates, and the fodder it gives to cynical actors like Donald Trump Jr., gleefully parading the media’s hypocrisy, suggests a potentially destructive lack of self-awareness.â€
.
Unintended consequences anybody? I can feel Kavanaugh smirking all the way from FL. The handling of these accusations are just blatantly transparently political, and they aren’t even trying to hide it, and they don’t care.
.
“I emailed Ronan Farrow like four times to the point of stalking and I didn’t hear backâ€
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UPDATE: Joe Biden To Address Tara Reade Sexual Assault Allegation On ‘Morning Joe’
” Joe Biden To Address Tara Reade Sexual Assault Allegation On ‘Morning Joe’”
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He will get all the questions ahead of time and be reading the answers his staff wrote from a teleprompter…. in his basement.
Yeah. I loved Alyssa Milano’s take on Biden and Reade and the double standard. here for those with the gastrointestinal fortitude.
Some things are black and white:
(uhm, Republicans are clearly wrong, clearly guilty apparently, the tossing of Weinstein’s name in there notwithstanding)
but when it comes to denouncing Biden
Heh.
mark bofill,
Told consistently to whom? What I remember is that they couldn’t find anyone credible to whom she told her story, much less specifically named Kavanaugh at the time. A polygraph test decades later is meaningless. She may believe she isn’t lying, but that has zero probative value given the plasticity of memory. The Tara Reade case is the exact opposite. But then selecting what you want to believe based on what you already believe is a common human trait.
DeWitt, yeah. That’s true.
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I particularly enjoyed the whining about being put in an impossible situation and being faced with an impossible choice, as if *not* supporting Biden is just that imponderable an undertaking. I thought the bit about blaming men (specifically men) for putting her in that position was especially choice.
Having integrity and adhering to principle is so hard! What’s a girl to do?
Cuomo pushes granny off the cliff:
Yet Cuomo is portrayed as a hero.
SteveF (Comment #184163): “Unless Biden bows out for “health reasons†he is going to be the nominee.”
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I agree. If the party “leaders” really wanted to throw Sleepy Joe under the bus, Tara Reade has provided the perfect excuse. But instead of taking it, they are doubling down.
Throwing granny off a cliff indeed. Some hospitals sent along supplies with discharged but still positive elderly patients. PPE and body bags.
Mike M,
The problems with throwing Biden under the bus are that they really don’t have a plausible alternative, and all the Bernie’s bros would flip out and either not vote at all or vote third party. If the DNC selected a nutcase lefty other than Bernie, they could get the Bernie Bros, but lose the general anyway as people in the center (including most independents) ran away from al the open boarders/sanctuary city/80% marginal rates/wealth confiscation etc lunacies. Biden is a scenile old man, but the DNC’s only real option.
“.. World Health Organization (W.H.O) official Dr. Mike Ryan, emergencies program executive director, praised Sweden as a “model†for other nations to follow…â€
.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/04/30/world-health-organization-hails-no-lockdown-sweden-model-other-nations/
Steve F
.
He will get all the questions ahead of time and be reading the answers his staff wrote from a teleprompter…. in his basement.
–
What could go wrong?
–
Not rhetorical.
angech,
Nothing, unless they get the questions out of order.
Tara Reade is a dedicated Bernie supporter. A 27 years after-the-fact claim of sexual assault right after Ol’ Uncle Joe eliminated Bernie raises more than a few eyebrows among people of all political persuasions, as it should. There is plenty of reason to doubt Reade’s story, and it will be impossible for Biden to prove the accusation false.
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Christine Blasey Ford is a dedicated progressive and advocate for unrestricted abortions. The 30 year old claim of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh (when both were minors!), only after he was nominated to be on the SC, should have raised more than a few eyebrows among people of all political persuasions. But Democrats simply refused to even consider the possibility that Ford might have the motive to make false accusations against Kavanaugh. They even gave credibility to nutcakes claiming Kavanaugh was a serial gang rapist, even though there was no evidence those accusations were true. (BS like “Consistent pattern of behavior” was bandied about by the usual suspects.)
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Due process for my side, but not for yours. The accused Biden is a Saint, the accused Kavanaugh is in cahoots with the devil. The hypocrisy is so think at this point that you could spread it on an English Muffin and feed it to progressives…. but they wouldn’t even gag on it.
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I note one thing more: both dubious accusations were made by rather extreme ‘progressives’. I don’t find that at all surprising. For the left, like all with totalitarian tendencies, the ends always justifies the means.
Ummm… Pizzagate, anyone?
#IBelieveJoe, #NeverDemocrats, #MenNeverLie, ha ha.
Steve wrote : A 27 years after-the-fact claim of sexual assault right after Ol’ Uncle Joe eliminated Bernie raises more than a few eyebrows among people of all political persuasions, as it should.
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Yes, bringing up a 27 yo claim is clearly designed to hurt Biden, however, the claim was originally made when it happened, 27 years ago. There is evidence the claim was made 27 years ago, from a phone call to Larry King by the mother, and witness statements. A copy of the claim should be present in certain records which are sealed. Biden refused in an interview to allow a search for her name in those records.
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Compared to the Ford incident, there’s a mountain of evidence that an incident took place, but, of far more interest is the extreme hypocrisy it highlights from the self-proclaimed moral champions aka victim blaming, rape apologists.
Thomas Fuller,
You are ducking the issue of hypocrisy on an industrial scale. I think neither accuser is very credible. What do you think?
DaveJR,
There is ample evidence of Joe Biden being ‘handsey’ with lots of women, and contemporary claims by Tara Reade confirm that much. As far as I am aware, nobody who she spoke to 27 years ago corroborates being told about an actual physical assault. If you know of any contemporary witness who confirms she told them of a sexual assault, then please provide a link. I don’t think one exists.
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If she thought Biden guilty of sexual assault, why wait 27 years? Why not when Biden was picked for VP? Not rhetorical. Nor credible.
Nikki Haley has an online petition to Congress about China if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
stopcommunistchina.com
Kavanaugh and Biden both reek of politically timed personal destruction jobs. The accusers are motivated by fame, vengeance, political issues, who knows what else, but they are motivated beyond an accusation they waited 30 years to get out. It is Kavanaugh’s and Biden’s political position of power that propels these things to happen.
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Investigate the accusations and let the people vote. What is of course missing this time around is the hysterical moralizing, which is just fine with me. There is no doubt that this highlights a difference between the parties. I’m sure there are some people howling on the right beyond the hypocrisy issue, but it is pretty tame. I don’t think this will make any difference in the election at all.
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What it will likely do is kill off any MeToo progress that was made. It will be back to the old standards, the ones with due process. Activists need to be careful who they pick as martyrs, and need to be consistent in treatment. Tying your cause to a political party is very risky.
I’m suggesting there is plenty of evidence an incident took place. Reade claims it was sexual. By comparison, no-one even remotely corroborated Ford’s accusations, not even the people she claimed were there, but that was more than enough evidence against him. Reade claims it was reported but access has been denied to the records that could confirm the actual allegations. Biden can grant access, but won’t. It’s no secret that serious charges against powerful people can land you in a whole heap of trouble, so I don’t think keeping her complaints behind closed doors is such a stretch.
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It’s not the political expediency that I really care for, though, it’s the response from the usual suspects who simply cannot bear such an accusation to go unanswered. The sudden lack of exhaustive reporting and deep digging into every aspect they can find. “Rules for thee but not for me” on full display.
Tom Scharf,
“ I don’t think this will make any difference in the election at all.â€
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I agree, at least to the extent that people who were going to vote for the democrat (independent of who that was) will vote for the Democrat. Same thing on the Republican side. Where there may be a difference is among a handful of thoughtful people who appreciate the nauseating hypocrisy Democrats are now displaying. Biden deserves a presumption of innocence. I give him that, without reservation. So did Kavanaugh. Biden gets that presumption of innocence by acclimation by the lefty MSM, along with lots of ‘hosannas’ and ‘praise the Lord to deliver us from Trump’. Kavanaugh never got a bit of support from the MSM, and never will. The obviously different treatments of these two men may well make a difference in November. I certainly hope it does.
DaveJR,
I think Biden should never be President. He was always pretty stupid and corrupt, but now obviously senile as well. If he chooses a wacko lefty as his vice president, then that woman will likely take over during his first term and do terrible damage.
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But there are no (zero, none, not one) contemporary confirmations of a sexual assault. What there is is an angry Bernie supporter who is trying to get Bernie elected president. That will never happen, for a multitude of reasons, but I never suggested Tara Reade was rational, I suggested she is motivated mainly to damage Biden.
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Old, stupid, corrupt, and senile, Biden still deserves the presumption of innocence that Dems give to none but their own.
“Biden” and “sexual assault” are being used a lot in the same sentence recently. It will stop Biden from grandstanding about Trump’s mistreatment of women. The MSM turned over every rock trying to convict Kavanaugh, and now it will be interesting to see if they attack Reade’s character. I’m guessing they just can’t resist a character assassination here because the political cause is too important.
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In other news, Biden actually admitted it happened: “It never, never happened.”. Obvious Freudian slip, ha ha.
Tom Scharf,
“ and now it will be interesting to see if they attack Reade’s character.â€
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It already started days ago. She is already portrayed as disconnected from reality.; that will only grow exponentially. The only question in my mind is if she will be angry enough after they accuse her of being insane to move her support for Bernie to support for Trump.
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I can almost see her glaring at Biden from the audience during debates, a la Bill’s many accusers in 2016. The humor value would be very high.
I wish Biden supporters would quit playing games and just admit that they don’t care if the allegations are true or not. Trump supporters in general have crossed this bridge already.
It isn’t going to happen. It doesn’t much matter.
Shrug.
Wow Fuller. You’ve refuted us all and established a rock solid case with just three words. That’s amazing. You must be some sort of genius.
And one of those words was ‘Ummm’, no less.
Aren’t these two stories eerily similar? I think they are.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-governor-orders-release-high-level-sex-offenders
https://babylonbee.com/news/california-releases-thousands-of-felons-to-make-room-for-skateboarders
mark bofill,
It is a bit like Truth in labeling rules: everyone knew Trump was a disreputable womanizer, and fast and loose with the truth; that was already baked into the equation in Nov. 2016. With Biden, there is still downside risk: no sensible person thinks he is a saint, but that is still his portrayal on the MSM, which will likely have to ‘evolve’ as more details emerge. The dishonesty in the MSM is extreme.
mark bofill,
“I wish Biden supporters would quit playing games and just admit that they don’t care if the allegations are true or not. Trump supporters in general have crossed this bridge already.â€
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You may wish for it, but the left never admits they are motivated to gain political power, and pretty much nothing else. It is closely related to the ‘means are always justified by the ends’ analysis you always find among dedicated zealots. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to change; it never will. The left never stops, never compromises, and never gives up. That is why I think they are pure, unadulterated evil.
Steve,
I basically agree with you. You’ve got me thinking though; what makes the part of the Left I consider to be evil evil? Never stopping or giving up doesn’t seem like it ought to be a key ingredient, but maybe I’m not looking at it the right way.
But I realize I don’t actually know what I think about it except in the vaguest terms. I’ll think about it [some more].
mark bofill,
“what makes the part of the Left I consider to be evil evil? Never stopping or giving up doesn’t seem like it ought to be a key ingredient, but maybe I’m not looking at it the right way.”
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For me, the ‘pure evil’ part is the the arrogance, the certainty, that only their POV can possibly be correct. It is like the secular equivalent of the extremely religious of most any persuasion… like those who think tearing fingernails off young women who wear nail polish is perfectly justified. It leads to an absolute refusal to compromise in any substantive way on policy (so evident in the Obama years).
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But for me the worst part is the arrogant refusal to ‘play by the rules’: there is a Constitution, and a set of laws. The left works steadfastly to undermine the legitimacy of the plain words of those documents, because they do not think those documents are in any way legitimate, and so, not worthy of trying to amend or change by any normal political process.
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For me, it is the combination of arrogance, dishonesty, and lack of respect for both the Constitution and existing laws that makes the left profoundly evil.
mark bofill (Comment #184223): “You’ve got me thinking though; what makes the part of the Left I consider to be evil evil? Never stopping or giving up doesn’t seem like it ought to be a key ingredient, but maybe I’m not looking at it the right way.”
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What SteveF said. The big thing for me is that they think there should be no limit to their power. That always ends up being evil.
Kimberly Strassel has a column in today’s WSJ on the FBI and the Flynn affair. It looks to me like Peter Strzok, at least, should face criminal charges.
DeWitt,
The question is if any of those obvious criminals will ever face charges. My guess: no chance. Any trial in Washington DC is an automatic acquittal for anyone trying to get rid of Trump by any means, legal or not.
worldometers.info has its first state level page for the US. It’s for Pennsylvania.
SteveF,
Change of venue? Strzok, Page, McCabe and Comey should face what Flynn had to face. Just because a jury is likely to acquit doesn’t mean that a trial wouldn’t be worth it.
DeWitt,
I don’t see how the venue could be changed. Move the trial to South Dakota and they probably all do time. But I just don’t see how that happens. I have too often seen ‘process is the punishment’ legal actions. I don’t like them. Better I think to just let history judge those involved as the malicious criminals they are. FWIW, if I ever encountered these people I would tell them I think they are criminals who got away with it. I believe it would be good if lots of other people did that too. Unless they publicly admitted error and apologized. Hell will freeze over long before that.
SteveF,
I don’t think it’s necessarily a slam dunk for the defense. It would be an uphill battle, but not completely hopeless. A conviction might be seen as a way to get back at ‘the man’. Without a trial, who says history will even mention them. History is written by the victors, and people like us are losing.
DeWitt,
Prrhaps indicting the worst of them (Comey?) and naming the others as unindicted co-conspiritors would be useful. It might even be possible to get a change in venue for Comey, since he is so well known in Washington. But realistically, I just don’t see how you prosecute these criminals in Washington. OJ got away with double murder because of the right venue; these trials would be no different.
SteveF,
Have you looked at the data for Brazil lately. They’re moving up the chart with a bullet. Only the US and Russia had more new cases today. It’s fall there, although that probably doesn’t make all that much difference.
SteveF,
OJ was acquitted mainly because the prosecution was incompetent, not the trial venue. It didn’t help that the trial judge was an idiot. My daughter was in graduate school at the time and watched most of the trial. She said she would have voted to acquit because, among other things, the prosecution dragged the trial out for months with a sequestered jury (January 24-October 3, 1995, or January 11 when the jury was sequestered) with things like completely unnecessary, extended explanations of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The prosecution could have made their case in a few weeks and stood a much better chance of a conviction. But the prosecutors wanted to grandstand, probably in hope of eventually running for political office.
Of course, it was LA where the first trial of the Menendez brothers ended in a hung jury.
DeWitt,
Brazil remains well below the States on a per million population basis. But the rate is growing, especially in the most populated regions. My guess is Brazil will end up with about half a million cases, but who knows.
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Yes the OJ prosecution was foolish, but the physical evidence was overwhelming. I don’t think any prosecutor could have gotten a conviction…. at best a hung jury or two.
SteveF,
Brazil is much earlier in the process than the US. The high percentage of serious cases and the low number of tests means there are a whole lot more infected than the numbers show, ignoring the ‘asymptomatic’ cases.
Your memory is somewhat different than mine. The physical evidence presented at the trial was not exactly as overwhelming as you think. Remember the infamous glove? You also had to believe that questionable cops like Mark Fuhrman didn’t plant some of that evidence. There was no murder weapon found and they never did find the shoes that Simpson was supposed to be wearing that made a key footprint. I could go on, but there’s not much point.
Lying to the FBI should no longer be a crime, they are abusing it. Who knows how many times it has been used for coercion without it ever being charged officially. It has become counter-productive. One is better served not speaking to the FBI at all because of this. Misremembering or poor phrasing can land you in jail.
DeWitt,
Brazil is a little earlier than the USA, not a lot. Brazil recorded death #50 on March 24. The USA recorded death #75 (the USA has 50% more population than Brazil) on March 16. So about a week different. Infections in Brazil are concentrated in a few large metropolitan areas, and not much outside those areas. The differences between densely and not densely populated regions look even more extreme than in the States. The biggest difference is New York City, which has far more cases and deaths than any other metropolitan area in either country.
Tom Scharf,
“One is better served not speaking to the FBI at all because of this.”
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I believe this has been pointed out dozens of times on this blog, and who knows how many times by defense attorneys: never talk to the FBI or any other representative of the Federal or State government without the advice of an attorney. They can (and do) mislead, misrepresent, and straight out lie to get you to make “false statements”. Don’t talk to them, ever. Ask Michael Flynn.
Tom Scharf (Comment #184241): “Lying to the FBI should no longer be a crime, they are abusing it.”
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It should be sharply curtailed. They should have to show that the lie was knowing, not just an error. And they should have to show material harm to an investigation.
That would make it very hard to actually prosecute. But there is probably some value in keeping the principle that it is against the law to lie to the police.
Mike M,
I have no doubt that the laws will remain in force. That doesn’t mean they should. I have no problem with laws against perjury; when you are sworn in before a judge, you have been fairly put on notice that you are required to be truthful. When someone knocks on your door and lies to you (“I’m investigating a fire in your neighborhoodâ€, when they are in fact investigating you for car theft), you are not fairly put on notice that you are required to tell the truth or allowed to refuse to answer any question about anything. If any representative of the government is allowed to question you under “implicit oath†at any time, then they should be required to inform you, clearly, explicitly, and before asking any questions, that you are under oath, any false statement will subject you to charges of perjury, you have a right to have your attorney present, and have the right to refuse to answer any questions. The current laws are designed to allow perjury traps, exactly as was sprung on Flynn. The only sensible course is: Never talk to a government representative of any kind without advice of a lawyer.
SteveF (Comment #184252): “If any representative of the government is allowed to question you under “implicit oath†at any time, then they should be required to inform you, clearly, explicitly, and before asking any questions, that you are under oath, any false statement will subject you to charges of perjury, you have a right to have your attorney present, and have the right to refuse to answer any questions.”
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Excellent point. Lacking such warning, there should be no penalty for lying to the authorities.
Interesting factoid: The average daily number of deaths in florida is ~550 (last available data prior to 2020). The Covid 19 death rate is ~45 per day in Florida, so 8% above the background rate. It might be interesting to poll FL residents and ask them how much they think Covid19 has increased the rate of death.
Worldometer data for Italy now shows an almost complete evolution of the pandemic. Death rates have fallen from their peak by about 67%, and continue to fall. Antibody prevalence in Italy is high based on a few surveys; it will be interesting to see what more extensive testing shows: How much of the dropping transmission rate was due to rising immunity and how much to behavioral changes. A reasonable projection is that about 1 person in 1,400 will ultimately die from Covid 19, which is about 7% of Italy’s normal annual death rate.
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It will also be very interesting after the pandemic is over worldwide to compare total death rates for different countries. Looking at Sweden, it appears they will end up with very close to the same 1in 1,400 rate of death as Italy, as will Spain and the UK. Are we beginning to see a pattern here? Dono.
With some sort of federal relief to state governments inevitable, has anyone brought up the topic of “moral hazard”? It seems to me that states/localities with more severe restrictions incur greater losses of tax revenue (both from businesses and individuals who lose income); if federal aid “makes them whole” then it would seem to remove incentive to tread as lightly as possible. Lockdowns (or not) have a trade-off between (immediate) public health and economics, this may seem to eliminate the local economic downside of lockdowns etc. and thereby provide an incentive to over-react.
SteveF
By high… 20%? 50%, 90%. Real Q.
Lucia,
Widespread antibody testing has been under way for some days in Lombardy province (highest death rate in Italy), but no results yet announced. Earlier reports of high antibody prevalence in Italy were simple mis-reporting: the reporters confused the % known asymptomatic cases from nose swabs with sero-positive individuals.
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Other places (like New York, California, Germany, US prisons, etc.) have reported relatively high seropositive rates, but as far as I know, none have been reported yet for Italy or Spain.
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One very bizarre thing about antibodies: when asked about whether seropositive individuals are likely to be immune, WHO officials flat refuse to say that is likely. If that is the case, then why the hell are we trying to develop vaccines? It is the kind of obtuse response we have come to expect from the WHO, an organization that seems motivated more by politics than science. As far as I am aware, there has never been a single reported case of a person who cleared the virus and was seropositive being re-infected. If seropositivity does not infer immunity, then we are all doomed to spend the rest of our lives infected with covid 19. Even the suggestion that is possible is nuts.
This was my theory that testing would lead to more cases. However, the number of cases has not gone up as much as I expected. It could be that it took so long to start massive testing, that people who had it were testing negative already.
Nate Silver points out that the US results for COVID are in line with many other countries. So any failures in the US response are probably not unique. People haven’t been this mad at Nate since he published Roger Pielke, Jr.
SteveF,
Why they can’t say that very little is proven with Covid. However, for most diseases, the body making antibodies results in immunity, or near immunity. But as we don’t know, Covid could be a rare exception to this general rule. In any case, the period of time for which someone who is recovered is immune varies.
I mean… seriously. People recover because they body is able to clear the virus which happens mostly because it makes antibodies!
“WHO says no evidence of immunity” was making the rounds last week, using the same standard the same headline could have read “WHO says no evidence of lack of immunity”. It really was just saying there is no scientific consensus and validated evidence either way yet. This was misleading, and journalists should have known better.
MikeN,
Yes, it has been clear for some time that Europe, et. al. and the US were on similar trajectories and numbers per capita. NYC is an outlier. There are probably many motivations to state the US is the worst, reason number one is for political advantage. I found the same bizarre behavior in comment threads stating that the antibody testing showed high rates of infection, thus the mortality rate likely being much lower. This very much upset people, particularly those professing high devotion to scientism.
I have updated the Bayesian model for Illinois Covid Deaths to May 1, 2020 and the results indicate IL going in the wrong direction for Rt. The mean for Rt now stands at 1.13. I used the posteriors from the previous update as priors for this run. The uncertainties are shrinking. The results are linked below.
I started out using the Annan model as a black box, but as I have become familiar with the code and the terminology I want to code alternate models. For example, the original paper I found describing the SEIR model has only 4 boxes and not the six that Annan and House before him used. I would also like to determine why the model parameters of Rt , Ro and time to recovery/ death appear to be influenced by the data but not the latent and infection parameters. There are also more complex models for handling differing age profiles and added variables. I would also like to see what a frequentist approach in using this model would yield.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4kcr6zxohr7p6pl/IL_Covid_Bayesian_02_19_to_05_01.pdf?dl=0
Tom Scharf, Lucia,
I think the reasonable answer from the WHO (or anyone else with two licks of sense) is that of course we expect there will be immunity from having had the virus and raised antibodies against it. That is why we are developing vaccines. The refusal to say that immunity is extremely likely, even if yet unproven in a clinical research program, is symptomatic of what is wrong with the WHO, not to mention all the nutcake lefties insisting the lockdowns should essentially never end. It’s rubbish.
Kenneth,
What do you make of the U of Washington model that says the Illinois pandemic is essentially over, and that deaths will fall to zero within a week or two? (not a joke, real question, just look at their projection for Illinois)
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I get the impression that some of these modelers make assumptions about what specific ‘social controls’ should do and are endlessly shocked when that doesn’t turn out to be true.
SteveF do you have a link to that model’s results and predictions. Two weeks ago the IL daily deaths looked good with an Rt around 0.65, then a week ago it was 0.93 and now is 1.13. Is the U of Washington model basing their prediction on new cases? What were the dates of the evidence used by the U of Washington model?
SteveF,
Well… it would be nice if Illinois deaths go to zero in a week or two. But they don’t look like they are falling right now.
One thing about some concrete predictions is the time scale is short. 🙂
Kenbeth, Lucia,
Here is the link: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/illinois
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The graphs show clearly that the rate falls to zero by May 15. It won’t of course. I just wonder how that model can be so horribly wrong…… Florida was going to have 5 times what has actually happened. I smell political bias toward the ‘severe lockdown’ states, and against all others. Their Sweden projections were laughably wrong. just wonder what Kenneth thinks.
HaroldW (Comment #184259)
May 2nd, 2020 at 9:27 am
The states are going to play the game to extract as much funding from the Feds as possible. The Federal government has ripped open the purse strings with the idea that no amount of debt is too much and that in the end the Federal Reserve can lend money at low to no interest that comes out of thin air – and again with no consequences. Is there a moral hazard when everybody believes in magic? Real question.
Will low wage earners come back to work when that extra $600 pays them better to stay home. Or is there some magic that will lead them back to work? Real question.
Steve, thanks for the link. That model uses essentially the same data I used in the Annan SEIR model. The Annan model has a very different projection and thus this will be of interest to me to see what the coming 2 weeks yield. From the graph in the link I would suspect that the projection is based on the model predicting a peak and then “knowing” what the down side shape of the curve should look like.
Kenneth,
I have been peeking at that model off and on for 5 or 6 weeks. It has been spectacularly wrong almost everywhere, at first wildly pessimistic, now unrealistically optimistic. Their projections for the whole of the USA look to me now way low, though still higher than reality in states which remain well below their original projections (like Florida).
Hi Lucia,
A comment went to moderation… no swear words, links, or other problems I can see. Maybe I mistyped my email address.
SteveF,
I now only look at the COVID-19 site for comic relief. They have always shown the decay in deaths to be as fast as the rise and the deaths falling to zero by a fixed date. That leads to the projection of precipitous drops in the death rate and an underestimate of projected total deaths once the peak has passed. That model is in the dross that the Annans refer to in their paper.
Look at Italy today, for example. They have the last data point in the deaths/day graph as April 28 with 382 deaths. On April 29, the projection is 82 (9-330), actual 323. It gets worse the next two days.
Picking a single number of deaths isn’t, IMO, a very good way to compare starting dates. The shape of the curves are too different. Another way of looking at it is to compare the number of serious cases/million. The last time I looked, it was about 40/million for Brazil and about 50/million for the US, which are both high compared to most other countries. My conclusion is that there are a whole lot more missing cases and likely a whole lot of uncounted deaths in Brazil.
WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-kills-people-an-average-of-a-decade-before-their-time-11588424401?mod=hp_lead_pos4
SteveF (Comment #184271): “What do you make of the U of Washington model that says the Illinois pandemic is essentially over, and that deaths will fall to zero within a week or two?”
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The site says that the model was last updated on April 29. From the graph, it is clear that their model treated the low reported deaths on the weekend as “real” and the spike on Monday as an outlier. In other words, confirmation bias built into the model. But deaths have stayed at over 100 per day since rather than going down to the 30-40 per day projected.
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SteveF: “I get the impression that some of these modelers make assumptions about what specific ‘social controls’ should do and are endlessly shocked when that doesn’t turn out to be true.”
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U Wash seems to be open about the first part of that.
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For Iowa (few restrictions), they projected a peak of 23 deaths today. So far, their peak was 14 on April 30. For Minnesota (very strict), they projected a peak of 12 on April 27. Minnesota has topped that number every day since April 21, with peaks of 28 on April 26 and May 1.
Those projections were from a couple weeks ago, but I forget the exact date.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #184281) : “People dying of Covid-19 could have expected to live on average for at least another decade”.
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How do they know when those people would have died?
Oh, here it is: “based on standard life-table methods”.
That sounds like another study by educated idiots with an axe to grind.
DeWitt, I saw that article. I am skeptical. Most of the epidemiologists like Ferguson explicitly contradict them. In Italy for example, the median age of the fatalities was 81.
Ferguson says that 2/3 of those who die with covid19 would have died within the year because of their other serious conditions.
In addition, common sense would say that any infectious disease would be vastly more life threatening to those already seriously ill.
Mike M,
Yes, “would live another decade†is a declaration of policy preferences, not something based on actual studies. It would be good to remember that the elderly in long term care facilities are (almost by definition) people with other serious health issues; no surprise the death rate in those facilities is higher than similarly aged individuals living independently.
I’m pretty sure most people who are 81 do not live another decade. Healthy ones who are getting around often do. But those in assisted living or nursing homes definitely mostly don’t.
88 % of the dead in greater Montréal were in public or private long term care facilities.
https://cmm.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Bulletin_COVID_Observatoire_2mai.pdf
(In French, but easy to understand)
lucia,
Nursing homes are petri dishes for something like COVID-19. They aren’t equipped or staffed for it. See my comment about Cuomo pushing granny off a cliff by forcing nursing homes to take infected patients. The most recent Social Security actuarial table gives a life expectancy of 8 years for men and 9 years for women at age 81. But you can add a lot of years to the average for people younger than 81 who die. And half the people should live longer than the expectancy value.
But being in a nursing home does not mean your life expectancy is less than a year. They call those hospices. A lot of people are only there temporarily to recover from an injury or surgery. I speak from experience here. My wife spent several months in a nursing facility after an injury caused by an automobile accident. There were very few deaths in the facility where she was while she was there.
I read the second of DeWitt’s links to studies. The study uses dQALYs (discounted quality adjusted life years) across the entire population, first using actuarial tables (population average life expectancies at each age)….. which gives close to the headline number. of ‘10 more years’. The study goes on to admit those who are more likely to die from covid19 at all ages have other serious health conditions, and lays out how two hypothetical increases in presumed background death rate from underlying conditions would impact the calculation of dQALYs across the population. It’s mostly an arm-wave analysis. No effort is made to connect specific pre-existing conditions to rates of death, with or without covid19 infection.
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Unless someone does a real study of how serious pre-existing conditions impact life expectancy absent covid19 and impact risk of death from covid19, there is only one honest answer to the question: ‘ How many years more would covid 19 victims have lived?’ That answer is: We don’t know, and really haven’t a clue.
P-E Harvey,
“ 88 % of the dead in greater Montréal were in public or private long term care facilitiesâ€
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Which is why the effort should be focused on isolating and protecting those folks, not shutting down the whole frikin’ world.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #184288): “My wife spent several months in a nursing facility after an injury caused by an automobile accident. There were very few deaths in the facility where she was while she was there.”
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Were most of the people in that facility elderly? Was it unusual for someone to be discharged?
For the places where the Wuhan deaths are occurring, the answers would be yes and yes.
Today my wife and I are going to drive our boat to an anchorage along the inside of the Florida barrier island, then walk across the barrier island to the (mostly desolate) Atlantic beach on the outside of the island. It will be interesting to see how many people do the same. It is usually a relatively popular spot, especially among late teens and 20-somethings.
Mike M.,
Elderly, mostly. Discharge unusual, no. Deaths were unusual. The turnover was quite high, generally with people leaving every day M-F and new people coming in. It was what’s called a skilled nursing facility. There were long term care patients there, but they were a minority. But that’s exactly where patients newly discharged from a hospital but too sick or weak to go home would go for care and physical and speech therapy until they were able to go home or they reached the Medicare 100 day limit.
Needless to say, I’m very thankful she’s back home now.
Interesting … NYT:
“Teams in multiple countries are studying if common hypertension medications might worsen the disease’s severity and whether a particular tuberculosis vaccine might do the opposite.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/world/asia/coronavirus-spread-where-why.html
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The link to high blood pressure may not be what it seems, as wealthy nations medicate it at much higher rates than poor countries with far less of an outbreak. Science is having a hard time understanding things at the moment. Pretty decent article on the confounders here.
Tom Scharf,
According to this, there is no evidence yet that ACEI/ARB’s increase the risk of death from COVID-19.
And then there’s this:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v1
Just saw this. It might explain how infections can peak at much lower levels of infection. The elderly are so much more suseptible to this virus that perhaps that demographic is aleady saturated in places like New York City.
Also a cautionary tale about simpler models like Annan’s.
David Young,
How dare they suggest the pandemic is self limiting to mainly the most susceptible. They must be denounced, if not burned at the stake or publicly flogged to death. /sarc
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But seriously, public policy, over most of the world, has gotten way out of hand. There is overwhelming evidence the risk from the virus is concentrated in a relatively small fraction of the elderly population, and especially the elderly population with serious pre-existing health issues (like hypertension, obesity, heart disease, cancer, etc). Effort concentrated to protect that vulnerable fraction of the population is far more effective and less costly than closing down much of the economy.
David Young,
Thanks for that link. I have been looking at state level data and they look to me like declining new case numbers are due to herd immunity setting in with confirmed cases under 1% of population, sometimes well under. Even with a high ratio of exposed to confirmed cases, that seems hard to understand. I had been wondering if varying susceptibility might play a role.
Anyone who wants to understand why the lockdowns will end, and soon, need only consider this flag from 1775: https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/images/336xNxculpeper-flag.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Xm8KgqF3CU.jpg
Mike M,
Perhaps part of the peculiar (and unexpected) drop in cases, long before most people have been infected, is a significant (35%?, Lucia provided a link) fraction of people with pre-existing partial immunity from ‘common cold’ coronavirus illness in the past. Add to that number all the under ~20 people who seem essentially immune, or at least unlikely to transmit the virus, and herd immunity can be reached at a relatively low overall active infection rate.
This also is a possible explanation for why New York City might have reached effective herd immunity. If the infection rate in Nursing homes and hospitals is much higher than the 21% for the city as a whole, there may not be many vulnerable people left to die.
There is going to be some ‘splaining to do if lockdowns didn’t really save lives. Will Newsom, Cuomo, and comrade DeBlasio admit error? Of course not.
I haven’t seen any nationwide statistics, but in King County Washington over half of Covid19 deaths have occurred amoung residents in long term care facilities. If the average home has 100 residents and 40 employees, its pretty likely at least one of them would have been infected, perhaps asymptomatically.
SteveF (Comment #184315): “Perhaps part of the peculiar (and unexpected) drop in cases, long before most people have been infected, is a significant (35%?, Lucia provided a link) fraction of people with pre-existing partial immunity”
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But that would only lower the herd immunity threshold from, say, 60% to 40%. The more general effect in the paper David Young cited can produce a much larger effect.
In the last two weeks, 47 of 91 deaths in New Mexico have been residents of “congregate living and acute care facilitiesâ€.
The recent lists have been dominated by the Life Care Center in Farmington.
It looks like about 1/3 of those facilities in the state have been impacted.
Mike M,
I was trying to suggest that a big contributor to a large coefficient of variability in susceptibility (as the paper discusses) could be the presence of a large population with partial immunity due to earlier infection with ‘common cold’ coronavirus.
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The interesting thing about the paper is the suggestion of possible herd immunity with as little as 20% seropositive individuals….. sort of like the level in the NYC area. The surrounding areas remain well below 20% seropositive, so effective heard immunity in the city area would be limited by introduction of newly infected individuals from those other areas.
The percentage of seropositive individuals needed to achieve herd immunity is much higher in NYC than anywhere else in the country because R0 is much higher in NYC than elsewhere. R0 is not a property of the virus. It depends on the properties of the virus, but R0 is very much a property of human behavior. New Yorkers have radically different behaviors from most Americans, so they have much higher R0.
It is not population density that matters, it is the behaviors associated with population density.
Here are the current deaths by day in Sweden for April 20 to 28, as reported today:
84
62
73
80
82
59
63
62
45
Looks to me like there are can be delays longer than a week in the reporting.
SteveF,
I put an update to see how the death’s through 4/24 look today. It’s 10 days out, and the deaths jumped from 76 to 82 this morning. So it looks like we might need to always trim at least 10 days off Swedens graphs to avoid thinking the death rate is plunging when really it’s just the lag in reporting.
Mike M. (Comment #184328)
May 4th, 2020 at 7:00 am
MikeM, I agree that that the Ro (reproduction rate without intervention) is influenced by the behaviors of the people in the region from which the data is taken and also by the nature of the contagion itself. But if Ro becomes something different (Rt) because the behavior has changed without intervention then the percent required to be infected to gain herd immunity changes accordingly. I would think for New York City with its population density and the number of commuters who come in close proximity with mass transit that Ro would be significantly higher than other US regions. I am not at all confident that this turns out to be the case and which has me thinking. Do you have any sources that show that New York City has a significantly higher than normal Ro?
Lucia,
Thanks. Yes, looks like 10 days is the number; some of that may have to do with Swedes treating weekend time as sacrosanct…. delaying reporting for more time over weekends. I think the graph would be more informative about both the recent trend and short term variability if the y-axis were linear rather than log.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #184335): “Do you have any sources that show that New York City has a significantly higher than normal Ro?”
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Something like 7 times as many cases per capita in NYC compared to the rest of the country. And NYC got there a lot faster than the rest of the country.
SteveF,
I like log because the classic “epidemic” graphs look linear on the way up and linear on the way down on log log. So it lets us eyeball deviations from “classic”. But I can make linear. 🙂
Lucia,
Am I completely missing something, or do you really mean semi-log (log-linear) plots?
I mean semi log. 🙁