What we’ve learned from COVID-19 so far
Aside from a crash course in Epidemiology 101 and terms like “flatten the curve”?
Top Ten Surprising Consequences of Covid-19 Hysteria:
1: Democrat governors rediscover federalism.
2: Wanna-be totalitarians can’t help but unmask themselves.
3: Trump gets a daily platform to smack the media around (watched by millions).
4: The CDC is exposed as just another dysfunctional gov. agency.
5: FDA, same as above.
6: WHO, same as FDA, CDC.
7: The US media is in China’s pocket.
8: “Models” completely useless except to frighten citizens.
9: We now know Nancy Pelosi has a $24,000.00 fridge.And the 10th most surprising consequence of the Covid-19 hysteria? Donald Trump was right about China the whole time, and everybody who didn’t know it before knows it now.
Not all are surprising, in my estimation. In fact, I’m not sure any of them are.
And actually, about #9, we’ve learned that Nancy’s got two fridges, each of which I’m told probably cost somewhere between 15K and 20K. But we already knew she was extraordinarily rich. So if we thought about her fridges at all, we should have assumed they’d be multiple, huge, and top-of-the-line.
I think there’s an eleventh thing we’ve learned, also not really a surprise. But it’s been informative to see it revealed so quickly:
The coronavirus now has put the European Union and its comfort zone face-to-face with all its weaknesses, decadence and cowardice…
When Italy called for solidarity from its European neighbors, they declined…
Because of the coronavirus, Europe’s Schengen Area of passport-free travel inside the EU — one of the two pillars of EU dogma (the other being the euro) — was suspended in a hurry and internal borders closed without coordinated action. During the the first two weeks of March, nine countries closed their borders; followed by the partial closure of Germany’s borders. The EU then announced the closure of its external borders for 30 days.
“Do you not understand the emergency we are going through?”, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel during one of the EU’s latest summits…
A report by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that Germany, which accounts for more than a quarter of the eurozone’s economic output, benefited most from the EU’s single market, earning an extra 86 billion euros a year because of it. It is likely this financial bonus that now helps Germany in contending with the epidemic. Germany had 25,000 ventilators; France had only 5,000, and Italy was forced by a lack of ventilators to make agonizing decisions about whom to treat. “Wouldn’t European solidarity mean Germany deliver [sic] at least some of the new ventilators to countries that currently need them most?”, asked Die Zeit’s journalist Jochen Bittner.
Among the European states, however, even faster than empathy and solidarity, spread bitterness and resentment.
You might say that, considering the controversy about the effectiveness of ventilators in treating COVID patients having trouble breathing, the shortage of ventilators in Italy may not have been as detrimental as initially thought. But some patients do seem to need them and be helped by them; the problem is figuring out which ones. At any rate, when Italy was being refused those ventilators, they were thought to be absolutely vital to the survival of the more critical patients.
I have often wondered how anyone could think the EU could overcome the nationalism of its various countries, after centuries of separateness. There are reasons for nation-states, and there is separate history as well as separate culture and economic strength. I don’t think most people much like being dictated to by a distant group of bureaucrats, and the more distant, the less they like it.
In other news the May 2020 oil futures are trading at negative price. About -$12 right now. All oil storage facilities are full!
Make that -$40. Can’t give it away!!
Has anyone seen any reports on the changes in gasoline consumption over the last month or so?? There was a meme a couple of weeks ago that was that we’re no longer checking on miles per gallon – now it was weeks per gallon. I have no idea what the normal consumption of gas has been on a weekly basis prior to this period of craziness, but I’d bet that the use now is a tenth of what it was before this whole thing got started.
If the usage of gasoline has been drastically cut, it only seems reasonable to expect that the market for oil would be equally cut. Get people back on the road, and consumption will increase to prior normal again.
We should have learned about #8 with the climate science models, especially Mann’s “hockey stick.” And I’d amend #1 to say “Democrat governors rediscover federalism, but still want federal dollars and to blame Trump for every bad outcome.” But a good list.
It would be nice if the Feds were filling up our Strategic Petroleum Reserves while it’s cheap to do so.
After all, the EXPERTS have been telling us serfs for decades that ‘peak oil’ is just around the corner.
Expanding on 4, 5, and 8, I think that Trump got snookered ny Fauci and Birx when they presented him with graphs showing a huge death toll from the Wuhan virus without other members of the medical agencies analyzing the projections. Some one needed to point out that there were similar claims made in the past that wildly exaggerated death tolls by the same people making the plots on his desk. Fauci was apparently involved in the HIV scare in the 80s where again, everyone was going to die of AIDs. In the end, only wildly promiscuous homosexuals and hemophiliacs were in danger.
“ how anyone could think the EU could overcome the nationalism of its various countries”? As soon as there are two groups with distinct languages countries split apart. The most recent examples in Europe are Yugoslavia that broke into Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia through civil war and Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. To believe anything else is to deny human nature.
Paul
Maybe fifteen years ago, a couple of docs from the CDC said they[d lied about the thret to strights. If they[d told the truth, they thought, nobody would want to spend money on research about a disease which threatened gay and junkies.
Micahel Fumento wrote about the hoax and was hammered.
“I think that Trump got snookered ny Fauci and Birx when they presented him with graphs showing a huge death toll from the Wuhan virus without other members of the medical agencies analyzing the projections.”
I think you’ve hit the crux of the problem. Now Trump is painted into a corner that is very hard to get out, and the Dems know it and are pressing their advantage. Meanwhile Sweden and the US are following the exact same deaths/population curve while they had no restrictions and we are leading the global economic collapse. Oil going below zero is frightening.
physicsguy: Oil going below zero is frightening.
Please let me clarify. Only the May 2020 oil contract is negative. June 2020 is fine. The reason May contract went negative is because the contract stipulates that the oil be delivered in Cushing, Oklahoma and all the storage space there is full. So if you were to take delivery of May 2020 oil, which is delivered this month, you can’t store it anywhere.
This quote page won’t be valid for long but fwiw here it is. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/CL1:COM
The crazy thing was that lot of quote systems don’t support negative prices so some people were unaware that price was negative!
Milton Friedman gave the European Union 10 years noting that one can not have a common currency without a common political will. While he may have had the timeline wrong, the European nations’ various reactions to the virus and their fellow states has clarified Friedman’s insight about the lack of a political will. It’s every man (nation) for himself.
I expect that after all of this virus business starts to recede in our rear view mirrors, Italexit and Spanexit will be next.
Paul,
Re: Yugoslavia was always an artificial country. It didn’t break into Croatia, Slovenia, etc.. Those were countries that existed (if only culturally, i.e., Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, etc. rather than politically) prior to the creation of Yugoslavia.
One simple example of how tenuous that country was: Slovenia and Croatia are fundamentally western provinces (Latin alpahabet, overwhelming allied with the Western Roman Catholic Church); Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, etc. use the Cyrllic alphabet and are more closely allied with the Eastern Orthodox church.
I have long thought the EU was Germany’s victory over Western Europe without firing a shot. That also explains a lot of Merkelisms. Her CDU, the “Christian” Democratic Union, headed by She who asserts that going to a cemetery is the same as worshiping in a church!
Germany has plenty of divisions of its own. They keep their dialects and local customs. Right now they are fighting over how the opening of shops is not the same throughout the country. The Bavarians disagree about everything.
Well it appear that what the experts knew wasn’t quite correct after all, again.
https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2020/04/20/la-county-serologic-study-backs-up-santa-clara-findings-covid-infection-rates-much-higher/
BREAKING: LA County Study on Antibodies Shows Actual Wuhan Virus Infection Rate Is 28 to 55x Higher Than Reported
So it would appear that mortality rate used to justify putting 22 million out of work was a tad extreme. Learning by trusting experts and their worst case models is proving to be a very expensive means of education.
#3 is well covered by Althouse’s transcript of a press conference:
We listen to all the press briefings, and we’ve been talking about how Trump is finding a way to use them to replace the rallies he can no longer do. During this fight with Diamond, we were saying out loud, this is better than the rallies for Trump, because he’s got his opponents right there in the ring with him, and we get to see him beat them up before our eyes. And Trump haters are watching too. Presumably, they think their guy is winning and Trump is getting pummeled. What a show! And, of course, to say that is to restate Diamond’s original question: Aren’t you using this solemn occasion the wrong way?
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/04/cnns-jeremy-diamond-asks-trump-is-this.html#more
I do think most Trump-haters find ways to see Trump losing, but most who are really independent, not merely calling themselves that, are seeing that Trump’s doing pretty well. (Fake Independents?)
While #8 against models highlights the weakness of bad models and especially of bad data going into models, the truth is that everybody makes decisions today with some “model” of the future in their mind. That model is what makes them believe (a) happens with one decision-action, and (alt-a) happens with some other decision-action.
My own models of gov’t dysfunction had me fully expecting #4, #5, #6 – failures of CDC, FDA, and WHO, and especially failures of “following regulations” to be the appropriate emergency response.
I sincerely hope that the climate alarmists’ models start being trashed more regularly by scientists looking for climate models that more accurately predict the future.
I’m still wondering about global cooling starting this year for the next couple of decades based on models of sunspot activity.
On the EU #11, Paul is not quite right:
“As soon as there are two groups with distinct languages countries split apart.”
I’ve been waiting for decades for the French speaking Walloons in Belgium to separate from the Dutch speaking Flemish (in Flanders).
The freedom from Soviet domination gave rise to huge amounts of ethnic nationalism in all ex-commie Central European countries. That’s probably being reduced now in the democracies with minorities, and after many breakups. Tho it remains an issue, and often a problem.
The failure of the Germans to be generous in solidarity with the less responsible PIGS (Portugal Italy Greece Spain) is unlikely to quickly break the EU, but anti-EU sentiment will continue to grow until the Euro elites do better at supporting the normal folk, rather than just Euro elites. My mental model doesn’t see that coming soon, but also doesn’t see serious other exit parties, neither from Hungary nor Poland; nor Italy nor Spain, despite their dissatisfaction.
Trump’s apparent reliance on such a small number of people for the scientific advice may very well go down as the largest reason for his re-election loss.
I’ve said it before but the turning point in this entire disaster for Trump was when he backed off the Easter reopening goal and instead swung massively the other way based on the IHME model predicting 100,000-240,000 deaths. They got him right there and he has been trapped ever since.
I’ve not heard a single story of them calling in some of these numerous epidemiologists from Stanford, Harvard and others that have been offering different opinions. If your advisors keep pushing erroneous predictions and yet you don’t at least seek out further opinions then that shows weak leadership and sadly that is Trump right now.
All the great stuff his administration has done the last three years gone and then some. Sad.
Here’s an in-depth look at 6 more lessons we (maybe) learned.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/04/17/the-coronavirus-crisis-so-far-six-interim-lessons/
The coronavirus crisis so far: Six interim lessons
By J.E. Dyer April 17, 2020
Griffin:
You’re being remarkably premature.
“ Now Trump is painted into a corner that is very hard to get out”
It’s not so hard. Designate most of the executive departments of the federal government non-essential and send them home without pay. When the quarantine in all states has ended they can come back. Imagine the screaming.
Neo,
On what? I qualified my first paragraph with ‘may very well go down’ so that was just my opinion but a very realistic one as it’s quite possible that a sitting president will have a hard time winning re-election in the middle of an economic depression.
My last paragraph was referring to so many of the great economic gains made in the last three years and those are mostly gone sadly.
So premature maybe but I would say eminently likely.
Another thing we have learned, is that everybody has to learn the same lessons the hard way, instead of looking around for a wheel that’s already been invented, and rejected.
What we have here is a failure to communicate – and it’s not the first one to show up in the last couple of months.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/04/18/coronavirus-enforcement-in-22-u-s-states-talking-drones-donated-by-chinese-company-long-suspected-of-espionage/
Coronavirus enforcement: In 22 U.S. states, talking drones ‘donated’ by Chinese company long suspected of espionage
By J.E. Dyer April 18, 2020
So we’ve gone from capitalists selling communists the rope to hang themselves, to governments inviting enemy spies to come help themselves.
The European Union has completely failed and it’s now a skeleton kept alive only by the financial-bureaucratic lobby, allied with the cultural and political center-left. The majority is realizing that they are a separate body from the rest of the people, protests are more and more frequent, and the elites are scared.
But they have nothing to propose. There is no shared or clear project for Europe, nothing around which a real community can be built; moreover, every country in Europe is split in two since the French revolution, with the left pushing for the deconstruction of values in favor of their ever-changing fashionable radicalism (and concomitant occupation of all institutions), and the right incapable of any far-sighted and wide proposal in a society without soul. In the middle, those who are totally blind.
Only during Pope Wojtyla’s pontificate there was an attempt to call together the healthy forces of Europe, around the great Christian and liberal (in the European sense) tradition – especially after the fall of the iron curtain and the liberation of the eastern countries.
But the commanding positions in politics, academy and the media were firmly in the hands of the progressive or establishment class; incredibly, Christianity foundational presence in Europe has always been explicitly refused in Bruxelles; many progressives lived the fall of Communism as an insult to their superior intellectual dreams, caused by the backward Pope and the crazy Yankee.
I remember a mainstream journalist commenting on Solidarno?? victory over Communism in Poland: “What a pity, such a beautiful Socialist experiment did not succeed” – in other words, for that educated man, decades of torments for those countries were still a minor nuisance, their liberation a regress, in his mind it was a sad day for “progress”. In fact, I don’t remember a single documentary telling the story of East Europe – because it would have been an acknowledgment of the left’s, but also many of the right’s, silence and wishful blindness for more than 40 years. Even the Church left the persecuted alone, until JPII arrived – the delusion that Socialism was the future and that “dialogo” (or even conversion to Communism) was the only possible path, was incredibly widespread. And now with the present Pope it seems that idiocy has come back.
We are divided not so much by our different languages: besides the parochialism, we love our continent dearly, and each country characteristic culture as well. I love France, Poland, England, Spain, Germany, Denmark, they are unique; so, when I return home I want to find Italy in its own uniqueness.
We could have built a lose community around our real cultural roots and culture, as De Gasperi and Adenauer originally proposed after WWII. But this roots were not any more those of the intelligentsia, they still dream about abstract egalitarianism and globalism; popular culture has been ruined in the aftermath of ’68, its incredible political violence, and the ensuing vacuity and now individualism without future: young people strive to extend adolescence forever, they fear family and definitive choices because they have no living vision of a task or duty, imagine if they can have a vision for the common good. This is what happens when the idea of truth is dismantled and the meaning of your history is left undefended and eventually denied.
I expect a conflict to explode, but possibly first a time of oppression has to come – perhaps similar to the one which affected half of Europe, while we in the west diverted our eyes.
One observation/criticism of Trump that has always seemed spot on to me is that his opinion on a particular topic was greatly influenced by what advisor currently had his ear. This was very true with trade and guys like Cohn/Mnuchin versus Navarro who was a super trade hawk. Seemed to happen with troop withdrawals also. But this seems to be the biggest one yet as Fauci and Birx have completely won him over and the economic advisors seem to have little influence right now.
Yes, I know other presidents have had this tendency also but he is the one we have now and I also understand that he can’t control state government shutdowns but he is the president and he can set the tone of the reaction and he has lost control of it and he deserves some of the blame for that.
A caveat to Griffin’s observation about Trump not consulting with a wider circle of scientists and epidemiologists: If you get wildly different opinions from a collection of “experts,” you still have to make a judgement call which one to go with.
“I’ve not heard a single story of them calling in some of these numerous epidemiologists from Stanford, Harvard and others that have been offering different opinions.” – Griffin
As a corollary to the caveat: the CDC is the agency which should have called them in and produced a unified consensus of the leading experts, instead of relying solely on their own first guess, as it looks like they did; maybe there was some consultation going on behind the scenes, because that was what should have been done.
The President, therefore, relied on the “official experts” from the prestigious and official national agencies — and the Left screamed bloody murder (quite literally) when he closed down air travel to China, Europe & Iran.
Once it was clear that had been the correct decision, the Left screamed bloody murder that he didn’t do it sooner (when, as he pointed out, there were not only no US deaths, but no US cases — just imagine what they would have said if he had) because the “official models” were so pessimistic.
Had he chosen earlier to go with a more conservative and, as is now apparent, probably more accurate model (which we actually didn’t have at the beginning, because the only numbers available were so skewed by China and Italy), the Left would have screamed bloody murder because he “rejected the official experts” — those would be the same experts now accused of being brainwashed captives of President Svengali.
If he said it was okay to open the country in April, because of the now more accurate projections (especially once it was seen that the east coast & NYC were such a huge outlier), the Left would have screamed bloody murder if a single person died of COVID-19 before May Day.
This is a lose-lose situation, because the Left will refuse to acknowledge ANY rational, positive outcome regardless of what Trump does.
Pushing decisions to the governors at least allows them to pick the models they want to go with, and thus spreads the blame-game around.
Of course, then you get states and municipalities inviting the Chinese to spy on them at leisure.
om on April 20, 2020 at 4:52 pm said:
Well it appear that what the experts knew wasn’t quite correct after all, again.
https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2020/04/20/la-county-serologic-study-backs-up-santa-clara-findings-covid-infection-rates-much-higher/
BREAKING: LA County Study on Antibodies Shows Actual Wuhan Virus Infection Rate Is 28 to 55x Higher Than Reported
So it would appear that mortality rate used to justify putting 22 million out of work was a tad extreme. Learning by trusting experts and their worst case models is proving to be a very expensive means of education.
* * *
It’s really expensive if you don’t even learn the lesson. From your link:
AesopFan,
I agree he was in a lose-lose position politically but that is the way it goes sometimes when you are the president but the choices made started us all down this road to potential ruin.
But if I were him at some point when the models I’m being fed are constantly wrong I would be calling in new or additional voices because these guys here keep getting it wrong but instead he seemed to buy their reasoning that the new models proved they were right in their original actions and that was the wrong lesson to be learned.
Just a general point here: it is manifestly unfair to criticize Trump, or anyone — including Democrats, for not making decisions months ago based on information that we are only just now acquiring.
Monday-morning quarterbacks always work with the data that the coach on the field didn’t have.
Some people get that, and some apparently don’t.
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/04/19/holy-cow-dan-crenshaw-takes-apart-bill-maher-on-trump-response-to-virus-just-leaves-him-wrecked/
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/04/20/morning-joe-makes-a-whopper-of-a-claim-about-biden-and-its-part-of-a-bigger-ploy/
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/04/20/pelosi-claim-businesses-will-be-helped-in-timely-fashion-but-clock-is-still-ticking-and-one-of-her-favorite-businesses-just-went-under/
(hint: it’s the same ice cream maker she bragged about in her freezer show-and-tell)
https://www.redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2020/04/20/jonathan-turley-notices-some-curious-contradictions-in-comments-nancy-pelosi-made-to-chris-wallace/
This is something else we learned.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/20/freedom-scares-the-bejeezus-out-of-facebook/
If your positions are correct, you can tolerate dissent.
If you have to forcibly crush the dissent, you may not be correct.
Some of these orders are NOT legal, none were imposed by legislatures, only by executives of some type or another, and suppressing dissent is patently unConstitutional.
And sometimes the dissenters are right.
https://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/04/20/judge-who-accused-hobby-lobby-of-putting-profits-over-people-is-eating-his-words/
AesopFan,
I agree. I have no real issue with how Trump handled it until the Easter backdown. Maybe it was unavoidable but he boxed himself in by pushing things back another month and now we are seeing it’s not any easier now and some of these idiots will never think it’s the right time.
His instincts were right the first time for the majority of the country.
Aesop Fan:
It would seem Dr. Ferrer is “stuck on stupid.” Or maybe it’s just me, not a PhD nor a Dr./Md. Looks like the Dunning-Kreuger effect in one with an advanced education.
We must test everyone and isolate all who are infected? physicsguy pointed out some of the limitations to that approach.
“I have long thought the EU was Germany’s victory over Western Europe without firing a shot. That also explains a lot of Merkelisms.” [Cicero @ 4:22 pm]
Perhaps moreso East Germany’s victory. Don’t forget, Merkel is from Dresden. “You can take the girl out of East Germany, but . . . . “
I feel sorry for the folks at Three Twins ice cream, but holy cow! That is legendary irony there! If this were a movie script that would be edited out as being too on the nose. The President’s most powerful political opponent is criticizing his efforts as he leads the country during an existential crisis and she goes on national TV from the kitchen of her multi-million dollar mansion and reveals a freezer full of luxury ice cream that she uses to sustain her during the crisis, and a week later that very ice cream company goes out of business due to the crisis!
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Paolo,
Like many Americans I am fascinated by and love the diversity of the countries of Europe; their cultures, languages, foods, music…
Unfortunately I think the near complete devastation of two world wars fought within such a short period destroyed the spirit of too many Europeans. The carnage of the first war was so unexpected and devastating to the young. (And the Spanish Flu wreaked havoc at the same time.) Then, blitzkrieg and the advanced nature of weaponry, along with Germany’s willingness to make the home front the actual front of the battlefield, along with the horror of the genocide of the European Jews and so many others who suffered and died in prison camps…
I know many Europeans who lived through the second world war and told me they no longer found it possible to believe in a god.
Along with the near collapse of spirit and hope there raised a natural inclination to halt future war at any cost. An obvious culprit appeared to be nationalism. German nationalism was obvious, but weren’t all European countries overly proud of their inherent traits and didn’t that tribalism almost always lead to war on the continent from Ancient Rome to WWII?
One can understand how political leaders would believe it was essential to stamp out nationalism, ethnicity, political divisions… Looking back from our perspective it appears it was a fool’s errand, but looking forward from the rubble of two world wars one can understand how it might appear the only path to survival.
om,
The test everybody standard is completely unrealistic.
First, I don’t know if there are even enough raw materials in the world to produce the amount of tests this would require.
Second, for this to work wouldn’t you have to test everybody that tests negative every day because just because I’m negative today doesn’t mean I won’t be positive tomorrow.
Nothing will ever restart if this is the goal.
Just more moving the goalposts.
Paul in Boston,
“As soon as there are two groups with distinct languages countries split apart.”
Belgium?
Griffin,
Your second point on testing is certainly true. Even if I remain negative tomorrow it doesn’t mean I’m not carrying active virus on my hand as I open the door at my workplace, or when I hand $5 to a cashier.
Anti-body testing is the way to go. I don’t think it’s economically warranted for this virus, but if a more fatal one comes along testing folks for anti-bodies so we can designate a safe workforce could be necessary.
Griffin
Moving the goal posts is like Humpty Dumpty’s dictionary or Calvin and Calvinball. Why? because they can. Consent of the governed.
There ain’t no divine right of Jay.
Rufus T. Firefly; Paolo Pagliaro; et al:
Please see this post on nationalism and the effect of the world wars on Europe.
Belgium?
Belgium has a rococo set of institutions constructed to placate different segments of the population. They’d be better off if they did split apart and there is a large secessionist segment in Flanders. Quebec is another country whose politics are distorted and disfigured by provincial particularism. They’d also benefit from a Velvet Divorce.
Interestingly enough, the most vigorous separatist movement today is in Catalonia, which has no language barrier. Catalan is commonly spoken. Castillan Spanish is universally spoken therein. The other Catalanophone regions have scant separatist sentiment. The 2d most vigorous separatist movement is in Scotland, which also has no language barrier. What’s grossly amusing about both is what humbug the separatist sentiment is. They’re all enthusiastic about getting out from under London and Madrid respectively in order to subject themselves more thoroughly to Brussels.
Griffin:
Uncommon Knowledge interview with Stanford PhD who was the lead in the Santa Clara CA antibody testing study that was the first to show the high rates of infection (asymptomatic) and consequently much lower fatality rate 0.0015 (a bit worse than a bad flu year).
Anyway cited by Powerlineblog.com
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/an-update-from-dr-b.php
The video of the Uncommmon Knowledge interview is
https://youtu.be/k7v2F3usNVA
Got to run before the sun goes down.
Rufus T. Firefly on April 20, 2020 at 7:08 pm said:
I feel sorry for the folks at Three Twins ice cream, but holy cow! That is legendary irony there! If this were a movie script that would be edited out as being too on the nose.
* * *
I have believed since the election of Obama that there is an absolute bedrock foundation to the proverb “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
The Pelosi Ice Cream schtick might make its way into a political farce, but no movie mogul of any period would buy the Donald Trump Story.
That conniving rogues in the law-enforcement agencies & one party would combine to destroy a threatening candidate – sure.
That he would win the election and keep bashing them down – much too unbelievable.
“Uncommon Knowledge interview with Stanford PhD who was the lead in the Santa Clara CA antibody testing study that was the first to show the high rates of infection (asymptomatic) and consequently much lower fatality rate 0.0015 (a bit worse than a bad flu year).”
Bloomberg coronavirus tracker has 42,303 deaths as of Monday evening. With first death reported on March 1, that’s just over 42,000 dead in a bit more than seven weeks. A bad flu season generally lasts 20-24 weeks.
Now granted, take New York and New Jersey out of the equation and this does look more like a bad flu in the rest of America…but that’s WITH the most severe mitigation efforts anyone alive has ever seen. And if the U.S. death rate resembled France’s or the U.K.’s, we’d be looking at 80,000 to 100,000 dead right now.
Mike
My take away is that it depends. The course of the pandemic in rural areas is very different from its course in cities, and cities also vary a great deal from each other. Timing also matters, I hypothesize that the virus was widespread in New York City before they knew what was going on. And how to explain the low rates in California? Utah is doing serology testing now, I an very curious to see the results.
The statistics are dominated by cities, so I suppose we are really comparing cities rather than countries. Apart from the inevitable political noise that will follow on the winding down and end of this pandemic, there is much useful analysis to be done. Lets hope it gets done.
Paolo, I agree that historically the common basis for European civilization after the fall of Rome was the Church. I would go further and postulate that the profound inquiry into the nature of the world that led to exploration and science also had its basis in Christianity, and indeed that Socialism itself is a dim reflection of Christianity, even though far cruder in its understanding of the human condition.
MBunge:
You mean a bad regular seasonal flu season.
A bad flu season can be much worse than this. A bad flu season happened in 1918-1919. The equivalent of about 2 million dead in today’s US population.
Another bad flu season happened in 1957-1958. The equivalent of about 220,000 dead in today’s US population.
Those were bad flu years.
Also, in 2009-2010, with H1N1 flu, the number of deaths was not especially high but the pattern was, with 80% or more of the deaths occurring in people under 65. So in some ways it was a very bad flu year.
Here are two reports on the effectiveness, or actually the lack thereof, of the shut downs, and the interesting thing is the great difference made by an additional week of data.
https://medium.com/@yinonweiss/lets-visualize-state-by-state-shutdown-effectiveness-on-covid-19-e13a5cdb50ad
https://medium.com/@yinonweiss/coronavirus-shutdown-effectiveness-visualized-part-2-1a6e7b97649d
This is an excellent essay by Roger Kimball (according to PowerLine, the actual linked article doesn’t have a byline that I can see).
He rings all the changes on the medical, economic, and cultural-political bells.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2020/5/the-culture-of-corona
This was very interesting — “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves,…” — but what use can we make of it, if true?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-16/your-risk-of-getting-sick-from-covid-19-may-lie-in-your-genes
I would be suspicious of any conclusions based on NY’s data, since we strongly suspect they are padding the rolls with deaths not unambiguously due to COVID-19, since they didn’t test all the patients, or even all the deceased.
PS: Obesity here is defined as a minimum 80 to 100 pounds over the “ideal” weight of the subject.
A reminder that, though many (most?) locales have had a low direct impact from the virus itself (as opposed to the shut downs), NYC really is having a tough time, even if it isn’t as bad as the worst predictions at the beginning of the panic.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-a-new-york-hospital-at-capacity-an-er-vice-head-shares-how-his-team-copes/
“Dr. Eitan Dickman says Maimonides Medical Center in densely-populated Borough Park has doubled its number of beds as medical staff deal with the emotional toll of COVID-19”
By CATHRYN J. PRINCE Today, 4:25 am
If the whole country was just like, Boise Idaho, it would be completely different. But it isn’t and can’t be. What a boring hobby horse to be forced to ride.
Here is another thing we have not learned anew, so much as had confirmed.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/why-does-an-epidemic-bring-out-the-worst-in-liberals.php
My biggest problem with this post is that John continues to use the word “liberals” to designate the progressive-socialists that infest the Republic.
Good comments to the above:
SolonGT • 4 hours ago • edited
WHY DOES AN EPIDEMIC BRING OUT THE WORST IN LIBERALS?
fill in the blank
WHY DOES ________ BRING OUT THE WORST IN LIBERALS?
a few
Supreme Court nominations
Voter ID
Election voting and counting
Abortion
Quotas
Sexual harassment
Free speech
Spying on GOP Prez candidates and using the full power of the Fed gov to destroy GOP Presidents/Impeachment
the list is endless of things that bring out the worst in liberals because maybe they are the worst – in all things they try to maximize their power and always have situational ethics
—-
Ira M. Siegel SolonGT • 3 hours ago
Until I saw Solon’s comment, I was going to make this a separate comment:
WHY DOES AN EPIDEMIC BRING OUT THE WORST IN [TODAY’S] LIBERALS?
WHAT DOESN’T?
—-
JJS_FLA • 4 hours ago • edited
Flashback: Leftist “Professor” Ward Churchill — charter member of the fake Indian tribe along with Woke Woman Warren — gloated on 9-11 over the destruction of the Twin Towers, naming those Americans murdered to be “Little Eichmanns”.deserving of death.
—-
ThomasA JJS_FLA • 3 hours ago
Michael Moore said something similar. Paraphrasing “He couldn’t understand why the 9/11 high jackers hit New York, because very few conservatives live there.”
Mr Bunge
The Uncommon Knowledge interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Univ.
is a free download available here:
https://www.podbean.com/site/EpisodeDownload/PBD98DF5P5G8U
“The Fight against COVID-19: An Update” It was recorded on April 17, 2020.
Aesop Fan:
Why aren’t the Antifa youts out in their masks protesting the lock downs and government restrictions on personal freedom? Hard to be an effective mob when everyone has to be 2 meters apart? Have the mayors of say, Portland, Seattle, Berkeley told them to chill? Or just that the institutions of higher learning are shut down for now?
Wisdom from the masses continued (note: the tweet attributed to Pres. Trump is from Don jr).
A Random Walk •
I’m not letting the crazed Dems/msm off so easy with the,”all the models were wrong”, meme. What I know is that according to the liberty destroying mathematical models and their two CDC fan boys is that Trump saved 2.2M lives by his quick and decisive actions.
Own it libs.
—-
the Shadow Knows
The scary thought is what if this isn’t their worst? What if it’s their best?
—–
David Preston
Reading the comments at our beach online newspaper about a protest in our own city has shown me they would put us in camps if they could. They really don’t understand the wind they are sowing, because they think we are evil and less than human. Untermenschen….
—–
Charles Williams
What brings out anything good in them? I realize the title is rhetorical, but it got me looking for an example. To no avail.
If she did much thinking, which she apparently doesn’t, she’d realize that most losses are Democrats. Doesn’t make me happy, it’s heartbreaking seeing the count every day.
—
Christopher
She isn’t the only one who has been doing this. Rick Wilson and that Jennifer Rubin at the Post said the exact same thing. Wilson was crowing about all the Trump supporters who would be going to funerals and Rubin said Republican deaths from the virus would make democrat election gains that much easier. How clueless can they be? More than half of the deaths in the entire country are in the NYC Metro area. Trump voters? I don’t think so.
—
Jim Bob 1028
As of 4/14/2020:
Total cases/million population
Obamacare states 2817
Opt-out states 897
Total deaths/million population
Obamacare states 161
Opt-out states 28
Using % HRC vote as proxy for TDS comorbidity, the correlation between TDS and death from COVID-19 is significant at the 99% confidence level.
There’s nothing to celebrate here, but the ‘progressive” left is not analyzing the data.
Just a digression, sparked by this comment.
There is a very low level of understanding among Democrats of the jihadis’ reasoning (it is rational to them). They were not striking back at Bush and his Republican supporters; they were striking The President of the United States.
The fact that Democrats derided GWB as Not My President was totally irrelevant.
Viruses are like that, too.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/why-does-an-epidemic-bring-out-the-worst-in-liberals.php
As with “1984” and “Animal Farm,” the Left thinks that “The Hunger Games” is a manual, not a warning prophecy.
They never figured out “The Handmaid’s Tale” either.
This on-line learning stuff is great, but it keeps me up too late.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/observations-on-the-great-hunkering-10.php
Morning update: All the metrics took an increase yesterday. The increases were not enough to totally throw off the fits, but the coincidence is maybe telling. At least the serious cases count only increased by 3%; larger than the previous few days, but not enough to throw off the plateau trend. The 3 states I track (CT, NH, NC) all showed significant increases in cases, with CT leading the way at 10%. I have a suspicion that the new CDC guidelines for classification which went into effect 2 days ago are affecting the counts. Those guidelines are much more lenient in counting suspected cases. Sigh…..got to keep those numbers climbing. Got to keep the public scared.
As of 8pm last night, anyone outside their home in CT must wear a mask of any type over their mouth and nose. Of course most of those homemade cloth masks are not effective in stopping particles of 100nm size. But, hey, dictators gotta dictate.
AesopFan,
“The facts of life are conservative.” – Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results.”
The world does not work the way most Liberals believe it does. Some, like our host, neo, see the incongruity and re-examine everything, including their own beliefs. Others just keep doubling down.
Eventually that will lead to crazier and crazier thoughts and behavior as one continues to try to make what he or she observes fit a flawed paradigm.
physicsguy,
Thank you for the update. I appreciate your take on things. About two weeks ago I stopped looking at the data points. It just seems like there are too many variables (density of population, mutations of the virus, date and type of government lockdown) along with questions about the consistency and reliability of reporting of the variables being tracked; cases, hospital admissions, deaths and recoveries.
physicsguy, thanks for soldiering on. It’s very difficult to get a clear picture when they keep changing the data and the assumptions generating the numbers. Basically, we don’t have a national outbreak. We have a collection of regional outbreaks, and there is no one-size-fits-all way to deal with the infection.
It’s just silly to require you and your wife to wear masks while taking your daily walk on the green, as long as you are close to each other and not to other people.
We also learned (for the millionth time) that liberals are consumed by hatred.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/why-does-an-epidemic-bring-out-the-worst-in-liberals.php
physicsguy —
I’ve been tracking the cases/deaths number in Washington State and calculating the moving doubling rate. My numbers start on March 1 when there were 30 cases and 8 deaths. Using the 7-day rate (calculate rate from Dnow vs. Dweekago), we see this:
March 8:
Cases doubling every 2.3 days
Deaths doubling every 3.6 days
April 20:
Cases doubling every 35.4 days
Deaths doubling every 20.7 days
Does that make it safe to say that nearly everyone who’s going to get infected under current conditions has been infected already?
Trend to watch for. Protestors to open up state economies will be met with counter protestors dressed in scrubs and wearing surgical masks. Happened in Denver over the weekend.
Counter protestors thus gain instant credibility and photo-truthiness with the media; they look like health care providers so they must be credible. Petty powerful gear to have (available from most any workplace uniform source) if you are shaping a narrative. So will protestors (economy openers) have don the gear of truthiness too?
We also learned (for the millionth time) that liberals are consumed by hatred.
Waal, the term ‘liberal’ in 1955 (in North America) referred to an adherent to an inchoate set of social-democratic nostrums. Now it means an adherent to a cultural system based on defamation of others and contrived harassment of them. The ‘others’ in this case would be evangelicals, the non-exotic (largely white) working class, the common-and-garden (white) bourgeoisie, and the professional-managerial bourgeois who are employed in targeted industries or adherents of targeted subcultures. (See Brett Kavanaugh, Nicholas Sandmann). What gets them out of bed in the morning is that they despise you and seek to injure you. What is to be done?
Bryan, that does look encouraging. We need a lot more samples like the Santa Clara and LA studies in other places to really say what the actual infection rate is. Have you seen any uptick that might be due to the new CDC guidelines? I also worry that all of the people who have been never leaving their homes are going to be infected later rather than sooner. All the stay at home order does is stretch this out further in time in my view.
I’ve been basing all my empirical analysis on Farr’s Law which for over 100 years has shown all these epidemics follow the same pattern. Each state seems to be really different. CT has not even come close to peak. And what’s up with California with a ridiculously low fatality rate given their population, including the homeless?
physicsguy — On 4/15 the 7-day doubling rate dropped (i.e. sped up) from 17.3 to 16.3. I’m using the 7-day rate as a means of smoothing out the choppy single-day data, but the 3-day rate shows a drop on that same day, so maybe that was the guideline change in action.
And of course people hiding in their homes will start to get infected later. They have to. As I’ve posted elsewhere (and maybe here, I forget), without a vaccine that might never come along, the only way to get past this is:
1. People in low-risk age groups come out of their homes and GET INFECTED.
2. Enough of them get infected and get over it to give herd immunity to those in higher-risk age/medical groups.
3. Some small fraction of the low-risk people get very sick, and unfortunately some very small fraction die. That is sad and horrible for their loved ones, but was baked into this from the beginning.
4. We calibrate opening up to hospital capacity so as to give medical workers a breather after the current surge and restock but then run at say 90% for however long it takes.
5. We offer financial support for high-risk people who can’t work from home, maybe with a doctor’s note to prevent grifting.
6. Once new infections drop way off, we advise high-risk people that it’s probably safe to come out, but financial support ratchets down at that point.
Antibody testing will of course be crucial. Anybody know where we’re at on that front?
And what’s up with California with a ridiculously low fatality rate given their population, including the homeless?
Sunlight is reported to be extremely effective at killing the virus, and the homeless spend most of their time outside.
California has far less mass transit for people to be infecting each other in subway cars, trains, and buses.
My pet theory is that Chinese tourists/immigrants to CA spread low viral loads all over the place and never infected a Covid Mary asymptomatic superspreader with a high accumulated viral load, but in NYC they or their Italian counterparts did, and then density + mass transit did the rest. Also note that density may not be the key, since Manhattan isn’t nearly as bad as the outer boroughs and surrounding counties that commute for longer hours on subways and trains than Manhattanites.
Bryan, thanks for your thoughts. I would also just add that April here in the Northeast has been cloudy, cold, and rainy with an occasional one day of sun every 4-5 days….perfect virus weather.
“only wildly promiscuous homosexuals and hemophiliacs were in danger”–and one 10-year-old boy of my acquaintance, who received a lot of blood tranfusions in the (successful) treatment of his pediatric leukemia, before they figured out that the blood supply was contaminated.
“Eventually that will lead to crazier and crazier thoughts and behavior as one continues to try to make what he or she observes fit a flawed paradigm.” – Rufus
It’s epicycles, all the way down to the turtles.
King Jay will not be amused, but county Sheriffs in Franklin County WA (Pasco is the largest town, Tri-Cities area Eastern WA) will not enforce the King’s edict.
“Franklin commissioners defy state order. Businesses can reopen, they say”
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/
Another county in Eastern WA – Kittitas is also reported to going the reopen route.
Will Benton County also reopen?
What is King Jay to do, call out the National Guard? Of course he will first blame the Orange Man Bad.
Griffin and J.J.:
King Jay will not be pleased but Fanklin County (Pasco WA is the largest town) will reopen and the County Sheriffs will not enforce the royal edict.
“Franklin commissioners defy state order. Businesses can reopen, they say”
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/
What will King Jay do, call out the National Guard, after railing about the Orange Man Bad?
Kittitas County is rumored to also be going the reopen route without asking the King’s leave. Will my county (Benton County) continue to follow the King or not?
“Trend to watch for. Protestors to open up state economies will be met with counter protestors dressed in scrubs and wearing surgical masks.” – om
It’s an improvement over Antifa, I suppose.
I do think the protesters might have been wise to adopt the masks and distancing (for one thing, the crowds would have looked bigger), although an in-car protest I read about last night had the police out writing down license plates so they could be prosecuted (the police in the picture I saw were NOT wearing masks).
However, it will be interesting to see if the infection rate among the protesters goes up or not (although I don’t know how that might be discovered, other than anecdotally).
All the caveats aside, they are doing politics the old-fashioned American way, and I support the principle.
Back in the Sixties, flouting The Man’s tyrannical edicts was supposed to be virtuous.
Guess it depends on whether or not YOUR party is now The Man.
“Basically, we don’t have a national outbreak. We have a collection of regional outbreaks,” – Kate
Nice way to put it.
Some of the problem nationally, of course, is carriers from one badly affected region traveling to the less-impacted ones.
Like New Yorkers going to their second homes and stressing out the locals.
I wonder if anyone has run any numbers on the “second hand outbreak” phenomenon to see if there was an upsurge in cases due to the evacuees?
om,
King Jay just announced the most detail free non specific reopening in history. But he made sure to make clear all his pet constituencies (like homeless) are mentioned but the rest of us who knows.
Griffin:
From the Seattle Times story on the King’s plan it seems that he is basing much on a decline on the no. of confirmed cases going down and contact tracing (that won’t ramp up until mid May). It would seem to ignore the reports from CA that 50 to 85 times more people have been infected than were detected by interaction with the medical system (they had no symptoms). So when Jay’s testing is ramped up the numbers of those exposed or those with a current infection (but no symptoms) will explode. Oh NOES! King Jay will need to rethink his plan?
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/insleesplan-for-washingtons-economic-recovery-from-coronavirus-outbreak-includes-massive-testing-resources-for-mental-health/
“The governor has emphasized that his decision to lift temporary restrictions such as the stay-at-home order — which shuttered thousands of businesses and maintained a ban on large gatherings — will be driven by public-health data. One of the key indicators will be if the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to trend down over time.”
The King’s plan doesn’t seem to include serological testing as was done in CA. What a tool.
The IMHE model just updated again and dropped WA down by 10% from yesterday: 859 expected deaths down to 779. And OR down from 131 to 120.
Those are the only numbers I remember from yesterday; I’m sure the other states all dropped too.
Looks like Sweden must have dropped. I don’t remember the total expected from yesterday, but the shape of the curve is different and doesn’t go over the capacity line as much.
Why isn’t there a crash Apollo program to manufacture zillions of antibody tests?
Bryan,
Did you see the IHME recommendations for when every state can reopen?
It is truly insane. Has New York opening in mid May and a bunch of Midwest states like ND, SD not opening until June. Washington was something like May 31.
Griffin:
So I went to the IHME web site and looked at their projected USA COVID-19 daily deaths projection, but for some reason they don’t plot the line showing their predicted daily death vs actual daily death, you know so someone could see a record of their projection’s track record. Now actual deaths from the Wuhan virus, aka, COVID-19 may be hard to actually pin down with certainty but who’s really counting? Almost like ballot harvesting.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
om,
EXACTLY! Nailed it.
om, Griffin:
Yup, you have to take screenshots. On April 2, the WA projection was 978 with peak hospital bed usage around 50% of capacity. Sometime in the last couple weeks (no screenshots) the projection went down to around 650, then back up to 900ish, then 859, then 759.
As I understand it, the IMHE model isn’t really a model as such, it’s a curve-fitting exercise. So as the real data comes in, they update the match to whatever idealized logistic curve they have and read out the daily expected numbers from there.
And their projections for “opening day” are irrelevant: Americans will have decided “they can’t arrest all of us” long before that.
Also, it would appear that their “opening day” is whatever day the high end of the range for that state goes to zero plus two days. The fact that the high end is utterly fanciful, well, there you are.
Nice Dan Crenshaw – Bill Maher link from Aesop. Including:
“Your criticism appears to be based on one thing — that Trump was overly optimistic,” Crenshaw said. “That’s his style. You can criticize it, that’s fine, but it’s not connected to the actions that were actually taken.”
I really like to separate a style-critique from an action critique. Trump is very very much NOT to the style of the global elitists. Neither is “America First”, nor is Make America Great Again.
Maher points out that it’s terrible to follow a leader who says “my gut thinks the enemies are over there, let’s go”. That makes me think of a story about Napoleon: He would have his generals discuss strategy & tactics, he would listen to their arguments, often looking like he’s taking a nap. Then he would wake up and say ‘This is what we are going to do’ (in French!). [In judging military generals, many analysts claim Napoleon was the “best” general, ever]
I do not believe Trump is playing 5 dimension chess. I believe he is following his gut, accepting his 5 second blink analysis of those ‘experts’ he talks with, briefly, and, when hearing conflicting stories, chooses who to believe the most. Then decides what actions he wants, and crafts Tweets & speech words in order to get what he wants. In his life, his gut has been more right, more often, than expert analysts.
Or, in the case of Russian Hoax, when what he wanted was a quick end, his words are setting up an alternative narrative from that of the Dem media. Trump’s going to be looking better as his optimism and desire to reopen is compared with Dem pessimism, desires to keep others closed, and frequent individual/ celebrity hypocrisy in violating the rules they want imposed on others.
This is proving to be a nationwide example of “How to Lie with Statistics” and trust the experts: misapplication of models and wild ass guesses. For your health and safety of course.
Crenshaw keeps rising on my list of potential Republican presidents.
And New York City will have a spike in Wuhan virus (COVID-19) deaths because they have instituted a policy not to resuscitate cardiac cases in order to conserve health care resources for the Wuhan virus. What’s next, stopping a bleed out (exsanguination) from trauma? Cause of death – political decision COVID-19 related.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/ny-issues-do-not-resuscitate-guideline-for-cardiac-patients/
AesopFan:
And besides, how cool would it be to have a President with an eyepatch? 😀
How many times could he tweet Aargh! or Avast ye mateys! or Shiver me timbers! before they became triggered and outraged? 😉
Bryan – well, yeah, there is that!
Here’s an in-depth look at Crenshaw vs Wapo, and a video of him making his points without Maher’s, um, contributions.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2020/04/22/analysis-wapos-factcheck-of-dan-crenshaws-viral-coronavirus-videos-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-n2567287?utm_campaign=inarticle