PLAYPEN: Covid-19 Everything Political

[chez]

We have 17 test per 100,000.  SK, the so called standard barer every liberal likes to talk about, has 11 per 100,000.  This is according to Dr. Birx. 

I did just look it up; only Italy is ahead of us.

Take a look at Worldmeter...many countries ahead of the US.

But the biggest issue is not now...but in the beginning when the US was caught with their pants down as far as testing goes...basically running blind and we see the results now.

[JoeKitchen]

Your experts need 5M tests a day in order to allow lock down to be relaxed. In April, the US did only 5M tests. You are full of it Joe.

I've seen enough people from the different media pleading for testing...yeh we are good...we have the most. Keep saying that and you might actually believe it.

Oh give me a break; you are the one that is full of it Chez. 

You are setting a bar that is far too high to obtain merely so you can continue to critique Trump when he fails to maintain it.  It  would like telling Trump he needs to be able to make it to Mars in a month and then crucify him when he doesn't. 

5M a day, you are totally out of your mind. 

You can sit on your comfy couch in retirement completely devoid of any real connection to reality and say this with out recourse.  But the fact is you are out of touch with real people, most are on this forum.  People with families to feed and shelter to provide for cant wait that long for 5M per day, not to mention it would not do us any real good since you are most contagious when you have no symptoms. 

Get real!

[JoeKitchen]

Take a look at Worldmeter...many countries ahead of the US.

But the biggest issue is not now...but in the beginning when the US was caught with their pants down as far as testing goes...basically running blind and we see the results now.

As was every other country in the world except the Asian countries that dealt with H1N1 and already had a large testing capability. 

[LesPalenik]

The two countries that imposed early bans on Chinese travellers, Italy and the US, have ended up with world's largest death tolls.

(I know, it defies common-sense, but those are the facts.)

"Early", maybe in relative terms.
In both countries especially in Italy, there were already many Chinese tourists and business people prior to the ban. In practical terms, the cat was already out of the barn and the ban came too late to be effective.

[BobShaw]

As was every other country in the world except the Asian countries that dealt with H1N1 and already had a large testing capability.

Well just looking through the countries daily reports I would say most countries have single digits deaths per day.
I only saw twelve countries with more than a hundred deaths a day.
Our Australian media tries to make a big deal of 8 new cases and one new death today.
Yet one country accounts for a third of the global deaths per day.
Go figure ?

[John Camp]

Well just looking through the countries daily reports I would say most countries have single digits deaths per day.
I only saw twelve countries with more than a hundred deaths a day.
Our Australian media tries to make a big deal of 8 new cases and one new death today.
Yet one country accounts for a third of the global deaths per day.

To be fair, it's closer to a quarter of world deaths overall (26% according to the Worldometer statistics site.) And we know for sure that other major countries are lying about their stats -- most notably, Russia, where there are reports of ambulances and cars lined up for miles trying to get into overloaded Moscow hospitals, and India -- it's really impossible to believe that a country that hasn't much shut down, and where people in poor health are virtually stacked on top of each other in huge cities, has barely 1,000 deaths. And then there's China, which is dissembling,  if not actually lying about the numbers of deaths they've had, and the spread of the disease. We'll probably never know the real numbers of deaths on this, even in the well-reported places like the EU and the US.

[chez]

To be fair, it's closer to a quarter of world deaths overall (26% according to the Worldometer statistics site.) And we know for sure that other major countries are lying about their stats -- most notably, Russia, where there are reports of ambulances and cars lined up for miles trying to get into overloaded Moscow hospitals, and India -- it's really impossible to believe that a country that hasn't much shut down, and where people in poor health are virtually stacked on top of each other in huge cities, has barely 1,000 deaths. And then there's China, which is dissembling,  if not actually lying about the numbers of deaths they've had, and the spread of the disease. We'll probably never know the real numbers of deaths on this, even in the well-reported places like the EU and the US.

You make this sound like a race. Everyone is a loser here.

[John Camp]

You make this sound like a race. Everyone is a loser here.

I wasn't trying to do that -- I we reflecting on another post about the numbers. I actually think that as bad as it is here in the US, we really have no idea how bad it is.

[Alan Klein]

"Early", maybe in relative terms.
In both countries especially in Italy, there were already many Chinese tourists and business people prior to the ban. In practical terms, the cat was already out of the barn and the ban came too late to be effective.

NYC had 4-500,000 Chinese visitors in the time period in question.  It's so easy to spread disease in NYC due to the congestion .  Having lived there all my life until recently, I can confirm that.  You have the subways where people are all standing in crowded in elbow to a$$hole.  You're within inches of their faces with them breathing all over you.   Yeachh.    If you live in an apartment building, you bump into your sick neighbor in the elevators.  Crowded offices, crowded streets.  It's why 45% of the deaths for America happened in NYC.  Then New Jersey got hit as the second worse state.  That's because many people who work in NYC live in New Jersey.  They commute to the city daily.  So they took the disease back with them like rats carrying the bubonic plague on ships.  That made NJ the second hardest hit state of our 50 states.  The NY governor is talking about mid May to start opening.  I'll just keep order stuff from B&H by delivery rather than picking anything up at their store in NYC if they do re-open it.  Actually B&H ships from their warehouse here in NJ so it's real fast anyways.

[BernardLanguillier]

To be fair, it's closer to a quarter of world deaths overall (26% according to the Worldometer statistics site.) And we know for sure that other major countries are lying about their stats -- most notably, Russia, where there are reports of ambulances and cars lined up for miles trying to get into overloaded Moscow hospitals, and India -- it's really impossible to believe that a country that hasn't much shut down, and where people in poor health are virtually stacked on top of each other in huge cities, has barely 1,000 deaths. And then there's China, which is dissembling,  if not actually lying about the numbers of deaths they've had, and the spread of the disease. We'll probably never know the real numbers of deaths on this, even in the well-reported places like the EU and the US.

Hard to say, even if numbers could indeed obviously be tweaked significantly in Russia.

Another miracle is Japan, and I don't think they are lying about their numbers. It's just impossible considering the attention they are getting. Even with the recent increase Japan remains at very low absolute number, 7 times less fatalities although the population is 25 times that of Sweden and the density of people much higher. All things being equal, there are probably more than 100 times less casualities here than in Sweden. More masks in japan, but similar habits in terms of physical interactions between people (no kissing, no huging,...). The population here is also one of the most elderly worldwide.

One commonality between Russia in Japan is that they both vaccinated most of their population with the same strain of BCG vaccine.

This is not yet proven to be effective, but could play a role.

Regards,
Bernard

[Paulo Bizarro]

Well, interesting read in the NYTs. 

‘Life Has to Go On’: How Sweden Has Faced the Virus Without a Lockdown

The country was an outlier in Europe, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols. Many haven’t, but it does not seem to have hurt them.

Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned. Museums have closed and sporting events have been canceled. At the end of March, the authorities banned visits to nursing homes.
That’s roughly it. There are almost no fines, and police officers can only ask people to oblige. Pedestrians wearing masks are generally stared at as if they have just landed from Mars.

Sweden has about the same population as Portugal. The approach they took  results in a higher number of deaths. Below on top plot - average of cases from previous 7 days. On bottom plot - number of deaths. Portugal is the black line, Swedish line has the box with stats as per yesterday. Clearly, their curves are far from coming down, but their government is ok with more people dying.

[Paulo Bizarro]

We have 17 test per 100,000.  SK, the so called standard barer every liberal likes to talk about, has 11 per 100,000.  This is according to Dr. Birx. 

I did just look it up; only Italy is ahead of us.

Look again, the USA are well behind many countries:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-rate-select-countries-worldwide/

Portugal leads the pack.

[LesPalenik]

We have 17 test per 100,000.  SK, the so called standard barer every liberal likes to talk about, has 11 per 100,000.  This is according to Dr. Birx. 

I did just look it up; only Italy is ahead of us.

The other SK is Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people with only 22 deaths in the whole country what translates to 4 deaths per million or .4 per 100,000.
Compared with 186 deaths per million in USA, 519 in Spain and 458 in Italy.

Slovakia, a landlocked country of 5.5 million, closed its schools, shops and borders earlier than any other country after Italy. Meanwhile, politicians and TV anchors embraced face masks even before the government made them mandatory.
The measures bore fruit: Six weeks after the first reported infection, Slovakia has just 18 fatalities and is bottom of the European list of deaths per capita, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University as of April 26.
(EDIT: 22 fatalities by April 29).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/european-nation-with-least-virus-deaths-proves-speed-is-key

[William Walker]

Mainstream Media Downplayed the Coronavirus Just as Much as Donald Trump

Just read some of the headlines given. 

From Vox, What went wrong with the media’s coronavirus coverage?

For instance: While President Trump has been correctly pilloried for describing the coronavirus as less dangerous than the flu, that message was commonplace in mainstream media outlets throughout February. And journalists — including my colleagues at Vox — were dutifully repeating exhortations from public health officials not to wear masks for much of 2020.

There are plenty more articles.  The media greatly downplayed this even up to the beginning of March. 

Coronavirus revisionism: When the media pretends their narrative is 'reality'

Hypocritical Media Downplays Wuhan Virus For Weeks, Then Critiques Fox News For Shifting ‘Rhetoric’

Mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vox, have criticized Fox News for allegedly promulgating lies about the severity of the widespread Wuhan virus. But their critiques land with a thud, as these same outlets also played a role in in downplaying the crisis.

9th January 2020: The Guardian: “China's Sars-like illness worries health experts”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/chinas-sars-like-illness-worries-health-experts

A quick search shows that the New York Times had about ~50+ articles on the Coronavirus in February...there were ~18 in January. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-preparation-united-states.html?searchResultPosition=62

"Global media coverage on coronavirus began to rise after January 20, when Chinese government officially confirmed the local outbreak to the world.
Based on the data in the chart, the world had been well notified about the global epidemic from the mass media and social media before the WHO’s declaration on March 12, which seems to be lagging behind the global epidemic as well as many people’s expectations." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2020.1756380

WHO warnings.
https://youtu.be/ks6FS2H4A2k

Joe Biden op-ed USA Today 27th January 2020.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/27/coronavirus-donald-trump-made-us-less-prepared-joe-biden-column/4581710002/
https://youtu.be/V_XcxsJSEvo

News Anchor: “So how likely are they saying we are likely to see more cases”
Reporter: “Very likely Kate, the CDC says tonight ‘this situation is evolving rapidly’ - they do expect to see more cases in the coming days”. -NBC 29th January 2020
https://youtu.be/oZR25h0XAFc

Finally - and I've asked you this before - to whom was Mick Mulvaney referring when he made this comment around 26-29 February? Whoever he was referring to (who) was paying it "so much attention to it today" means that "so much attention" was taking place prior to that date.
“This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence; it’s not the same as the Ebola crisis,” Mulvaney declared.
“The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president,” Mulvaney said. “That’s what this is all about.”- Mick Mulvaney CPAC 26-29th February.

And, finally, your own beloved FOX News on the 30th of January said, "However, we are still in the early stages of understanding this disease, and if the claims of China’s health leadership about disease transmission during the incubation period are accurate, then we might see a larger number of cases." - Dr Peter Hotez. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/a-tale-of-3-nations-peter-hotez

[JoeKitchen]

Well just looking through the countries daily reports I would say most countries have single digits deaths per day.
I only saw twelve countries with more than a hundred deaths a day.
Our Australian media tries to make a big deal of 8 new cases and one new death today.
Yet one country accounts for a third of the global deaths per day.
Go figure ?

And most countries have a lower population then we do, so all that makes sense.

This would be like saying the USA has more cancer deaths then Italy.  That shows there is something wrong with the USA health industry.  Ahhh no, we are 6 times larger then Italy. 

Deaths per million is the number to watch. 

[JoeKitchen]

Sweden has about the same population as Portugal. The approach they took  results in a higher number of deaths. Below on top plot - average of cases from previous 7 days. On bottom plot - number of deaths. Portugal is the black line, Swedish line has the box with stats as per yesterday. Clearly, their curves are far from coming down, but their government is ok with more people dying.

And when we open up, we will have a second wave with more people dying.  Sweden though will not, or not nearly as bad. 

[JoeKitchen]

The other SK is Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people with only 22 deaths in the whole country what translates to 4 deaths per million or .4 per 100,000.
Compared with 186 deaths per million in USA, 519 in Spain and 458 in Italy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/european-nation-with-least-virus-deaths-proves-speed-is-key

Going back to population density, their largest city is about a 1/10 the density of NYC. 

[JoeKitchen]

9th January 2020: The Guardian: “China's Sars-like illness worries health experts”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/09/chinas-sars-like-illness-worries-health-experts

A quick search shows that the New York Times had about ~50+ articles on the Coronavirus in February...there were ~18 in January. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-preparation-united-states.html?searchResultPosition=62

"Global media coverage on coronavirus began to rise after January 20, when Chinese government officially confirmed the local outbreak to the world.
Based on the data in the chart, the world had been well notified about the global epidemic from the mass media and social media before the WHO’s declaration on March 12, which seems to be lagging behind the global epidemic as well as many people’s expectations." https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2020.1756380

WHO warnings.
https://youtu.be/ks6FS2H4A2k

Joe Biden op-ed USA Today 27th January 2020.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/27/coronavirus-donald-trump-made-us-less-prepared-joe-biden-column/4581710002/
https://youtu.be/V_XcxsJSEvo

News Anchor: “So how likely are they saying we are likely to see more cases”
Reporter: “Very likely Kate, the CDC says tonight ‘this situation is evolving rapidly’ - they do expect to see more cases in the coming days”. -NBC 29th January 2020
https://youtu.be/oZR25h0XAFc

Finally - and I've asked you this before - to whom was Mick Mulvaney referring when he made this comment around 26-29 February? Whoever he was referring to (who) was paying it "so much attention to it today" means that "so much attention" was taking place prior to that date.
“This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence; it’s not the same as the Ebola crisis,” Mulvaney declared.
“The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president,” Mulvaney said. “That’s what this is all about.”- Mick Mulvaney CPAC 26-29th February.

And, finally, your own beloved FOX News on the 30th of January said, "However, we are still in the early stages of understanding this disease, and if the claims of China’s health leadership about disease transmission during the incubation period are accurate, then we might see a larger number of cases." - Dr Peter Hotez. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/a-tale-of-3-nations-peter-hotez

Congrats, you found a hand full of stories that contradict the vast majority of stories that downplayed it.  I like that one Jan. 29th story; what happened shortly after that story ran?  Trump shut down travel to/from China. 

Also, that Joe Biden article would ring better if he did not turn around and say closing down travel to China was racist, and again saying closing down travel to Europe was not necessary. 

[elliot_n]

Deaths per million is the number to watch. 

Yes, it is. Over the coming weeks you will see the US gradually climb to the top slot, closely followed by the UK.

[JoeKitchen]

Yes, it is. Over the coming weeks you will see the US gradually climb to the top slot, closely followed by the UK.

Yep, just like always, you only need to wait two more weeks, right?  And if it does not happen in two weeks, wait two more and so on.  Eventually the end of the world will get here. 

I'm getting tired of this "just two weeks" or "in the coming weeks" bull shit every one keeps on using.  LA mayor said that they would look like NYC 6 weeks ago in a month and that did not happen.