The weekend data is in for the ‘rona. I’m going to concentrate more on the state data as it’s showing some interesting features.
Nationally, cases continue a slow decline. Most notable is the trend in serious cases which continue down, but now show a 10 day rolling average of -178/day; ie a negative “velocity”. Serious cases now at 0.07% of active cases.
State level data is showing the omicron can be fatal, but can vary greatly depending on the state. Keep in mind deaths are a lagging indicator by about two weeks from cases.
NC: cases at 66% of peak. Like other states deaths are still plateaued at around 40 compared to delta peak of 72, and alpha peak of 298. NH: like NC, cases at 66% of peak. Unlike some other states NH is moving in right direction for deaths, down to avg of 4/day compared to peak of 12; delta peak was also 12, and alpha peak was 7. CT: cases now at 39% of peak. CT is struggling with deaths despite the large decrease in cases. Last week had a single day record deaths which exceeded any day in the last two years. 14 day average death for CT is 36 compared to 12 for delta and 40 for alpha. I have no explanation for this for CT. GA: cases now at 41% of peak. Like other states is showing a peak of deaths for rolling average of 46 compared to delta peak of 117 and alpha of 127. FL: cases at 59% of peak. Deaths are moving in the right direction for FL; peak was two weeks ago at 129 compared to delta at 423 and alpha at 211. Most interesting for FL is the current death rate/day which is 24 and compare that to CT at 36. FL has 6.3x the population of CT. Last, CO: cases now at 62% of peak; but like other states deaths are still plateaued at around 36.
Looks like “MAD” Magazine may not have shut down after all….or like the “New York Sun” has been resurrected….
(Either that, or April 1 has arrived—even before Groundhog’s Day…. Come to think of it, maybe that film was really a documentary…and every day is actually Groundhog’s Day).
Heeere’s Turley:
“New York Times Sues To Get Hunter Biden Information”— https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-york-times-sues-get-hunter-biden-information
Some juicy key grafs:
‘…While the [NYT] request was sent in December 2021, the Biden Administration told the Times that the soonest that it could possibly turn over the information is April 15, 2023. That is after the mid-term elections….
‘…When the New York Times Ken Vogel wrote about Hunter Biden’s dealings as a potential “significant liability,” Biden officials viciously attacked him while others suggested that he was a pawn of Russian or Trump disinformation.
‘Of course, the allegations proved to be true and the infamous laptop is now considered authentic.
‘One of the most outspoken aides denying the entire story was Kate Bedingfield, who is now the director of White House Communications. ‘She denounced the story as an “egregious act of journalistic malpractice.”
‘Andrew Bates, who is now deputy director, tweeted “SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel ) is a COWARD.”…’
Don’t think “Biden” will give up, though.
The backlash of “the faithful” will be formidable…and instructive.
On the music video: I immediately thought of one song I play on the guitar, Lyin’ Eyes by the Eagles. At least the way I play it, in the chorus the second line starts with a G chord,”I thought by now you’d realize” where on “realize” go to a C then an A, followed by “there ain’t no way to..” and on the “ain’t” switch to an Am just like the fellow describes such switches mid stream.
physicsguy,
I wouldn’t make too strong a connection to death from Omicron just based on the numbers because of course these reported deaths are usually days to weeks to even months old and from some of what I read Delta was still the dominant variant in serious cases through early January.
Plus the CDC bouncing around saying Omicron was 75% one day then 23% the next doesn’t lend too much confidence to their analysis and of course we still have the ‘from’ and ‘with’ issue that apparently will never be fixed.
I was talking to someone that had COVID a few weeks back and it was a moderate case not anywhere near life threatening and I kept saying ‘sick is sick’ why does it matter if it has scary name when a few short years ago nobody cared what exactly they had.
And of course old sick people die every day and always have and in winter respiratory illness is a leading cause of death.
Griffin, all valid points you make. The trouble is that the politicians are using the same data that I’m reporting, without the caveats you rightly list. I’m quite sure the actual deaths are much lower. Even with all the “data fudging” going on, I suspect this time next week, the deaths to start dropping. CT, in any case, is a real mystery. WTH are they doing in the hospitals there?
All my state data is from the individual state’s DoH; not from the CDC, John Hopkins, or worldometers. Any more reliable? Who knows?
Cases have almost halved in the last couple weeks. Almost like that South African doctor was correct.
physicsguy, I haven’t been in CT in years. Are residents, say, heavier than average? And “average,” in the USA, is too heavy.
I saw my internist for a routine check a couple of weeks ago. Despite my age (72), he was not at all concerned about my not having had the booster shot. I’m in good shape, and my Vitamin D level is good, and he’s just not too worried about me. He did say that in cases he has seen, besides obvious pre-existing medical problems, obesity is the strongest indicator of who will have trouble with COVID, and he said a friend, who practices at a children’s hospital, notes that obese children are the ones who get seriously ill (again, except for unusual serious conditions).
Griffin, I don’t usually do extrapolations as they often don’t pan out, but given the slope of the current trend in cases, it could reach zero in 12 days. More likely will slow down to an exponential tail.
Kate, I don’t think Ct has an excess of obesity over other states from my time there. In fact, I see more obese people here in Florida, especially women, compared to CT. Again, I have no clue why the deaths are running so high there.
physicsguy:
Is CT the only state right now where the death rate is so high? If so, that really is puzzling. Early on, with Alpha, I believe that CT (along with NY and NJ) had a high death rate, but do those other states have one now?
I don’t think CT has any special demographics that would explain it. Perhaps the CT hospitals report COVID deaths differently – more broadly? Could be a statistical artifact rather than a real difference.
Neo, it’s the one outlier of the 5 states I follow. And CT has not changed their reporting in 2 years….very consistent. In contrast, CO will not report any deaths for say, 3 days, then there’s 50 which is really the cumulative of the 3 days of “zero” deaths, ie should be 50/3.
Like you said, puzzling. I have no data on NY or NJ over the 2 years.
What’s interesting is that you can see that HK and Macau are using legacy sodium vapour street lighting and most of the Shenzhen – Guangzhou – Zhuhai megalopolis is using LED lighting – apart from the various airports and container ports (whether that’s legacy or as a result of international standards for messing less with night vision, I don’t know.. but curious.)
I check the local school district for their report of cases by school. The overall report has a drop from 860+ a few weeks ago to 107 today (.39% of student/staff population of 27,000+). The closest university also shows a great drop in cases.
I use these case reports as an indicator of what is happening in my neighborhood, especially since I can see what the closest schools are experiencing. And yes I consider that there is a % who did not report in because of no testing capabilities. The district used to have a testing site, but had to close it due to lack of testing supplies.
I really don’t care what is happening in the rest of the state since I am not interacting with those people. But, statewide, there is a dramatic drop in cases. Hospitalizations are dropping, deaths are so-so since the state likes to verify the cause and there is a delay. However, in the weekly epi report, there is a graph of deaths by date of death and that shows a drop.
Happy New Year, zaphod!
Interesting video. It sounds a lot trickier than it is. Except for the Mozart and maybe the Elton John, I’ll bet none of those composers knew they were dealing with parallel minors. They just did what sounds good.
It’s basically flatting the 3rd. As the video narrator points out, it changes the mood from glad to sad. It’s quite remarkable. Play a three note major chord (happy, bright!) then drop the second note of the chord down a half step (melancholy, sad).
physicsguy, Griffin, Liz,
The Biden administration’s leadership is finally doing what Trump never could; putting an end to the pandemic! 😉
Kung Hei Fat Choi Rufus!
4,718 years. The Chinese must be doing something right, Zaphod. But still 1,064 years behind you know who…
@Rufus:
Don’t I know it!
We must be doing something right to last 200 years!
The sine curve as theta goes to pi is more your friend than a straight line, but there is always the journey to 2 pi and you never know about all the harmonics mixed in there.
China has gone to bust to boom to bust a buncha times. Where China is in the bigger picture is not clear. Nor the US.
Too early to tell…
Neo asks “Is CT the only state right now where the death rate is so high?”
No. Most of the country is experiencing an outbreak (2,397 deaths / day for the country as a whole, which corresponds to an annualized rate of 875,000 / year) worse than either the Delta variant outbreak this summer and fall (which reached a peak of 2,030 deaths / day) or the original Wuhan variant outbreak in the spring and summer of 2020 (which reached a peak of 2,279 deaths / day). Only the outbreak last winter was worse (3,567 deaths / day), making Omicron the second-worst of the six distinct waves to hit so far. Cherry-picking data from a few well-off states hides that fact.
Note: All daily figures above are 7-day moving averages.
To paraphrase an old saying, you may no longer be interested in coronavirus, but coronavirus remains interested in you.
Last week my younger sister got Covid, I presume Omicron. She’s not particularly healthy and she sounded miserable on the phone.
So I checked a couple of times to see if she was, you know, OK.
She shrugged it off. “I’ll be fine.” It was like a bad cold. What she really wanted to complain about … was her ex.
Oh, I almost forgot. Griffin is correct above in one respect. The number of cases / day, while blowing past the previous record by a factor of three, is headed back down as sharply as it rose (from 130,000 / day in mid December to 814,000 / day in mid January to 411,000 / day now). I suspect that has as much to do with holiday travel and festivities as anything inherent to the virus, but who knows?
mkent:
But according to physicsguy, Connecticut is having an outbreak with a daily death total worse than ever before in that state, including last winter. That’s not true of the states that you cite, apparently, if last winter was worse for them. You can see the chart for deaths per day for Connecticut here.
@huxley:
It’s tan (pi/2 + epsilon) that you want to worry about :). One minute you’re on top of the world…
The Chinese have their dynastic cycles and invasions and troubles… but they remain recognisably Chinese in appearance and culture. There’s a lot to be said for that… And if you think this is a bug and not a feature, why then, you must be an Anti-Semite 🙂
@huxley:
“She shrugged it off. “I’ll be fine.” It was like a bad cold. What she really wanted to complain about … was her ex”
I suspect a good deal of the covid hysteria is middle-aged Karens who don’t even have an ex to complain about. Gives their lives meaning.
Zaphod:
It’s fun to play with someone who can catch and throw…
Though I would interpret tan (pi/2) as Kurzweil’s singularity, not the American zenith — arguably minus epsilon before JFK’s brains became a red mist on the Zapruder film.
(Not because I have a great attachment to JFK, but America was never quite so powerful and unconflicted since then.)
Neo:
That’s because CT is only reporting deaths once a week now compared to once a day during the original outbreak. If you take the 7-day moving average, you’ll see that the peak during the current outbreak is 35 / day, while last winter it was 47 / day. During the original outbreak it was 115 / day.
That makes sense, because the original outbreak hit the northeast far worse than anywhere else. I told co-workers at the time that it didn’t make sense to shut down the whole country — it had barely hit large parts of flyover country. But the media is based in the northeast, and they were scared, so everyone had to shut down. One of the many idiocies we’ve faced in this pandemic.
@Huxley:
Not really sold on the Kurzweil Singularity business.. I think that a bunch of Silicon Valley mega wealthy guys being terrified of Death is likely to produce some trickle down benefits for folks younger than us, but Kubrick Fetus floating in space side of things, not so much perhaps.
I’m more optimistic about the future of Humanity than the future of the USA or the rest of the present West… with reservations of course. There’s no doubt about Man’s innate ability to eff things up six ways from Sunday. Maybe we’re all Barry Lyndon.
I came of age in the Eighties. To me that was the (with hindsight, coasting) Apogee. I’m nostalgic for that period. But there’s no way back except by going forwards and my clock will run out an age or three before then. FWIW, I wish Westerners could learn to take a slightly longer view both backwards and forwards… and also grasp more that the Perfect is the Enemy of the Good. Least Bad Wins. Less Bad is already half the battle for survival won.
OK, I took a look at the deaths / day chart for all 50 states plus DC, and the only states for which omicron is the worst wave are Maryland (65 vs. 64), Washington (49 vs. 42 during delta, which was worse than the other two waves), and Vermont (4 vs. 3).
The graphs for Indiana and Ohio also peaked higher for omicron than last winter’s wave, but I don’t think those peaks are real. Indiana appeared to substantially undercount during the holidays and dump their accumulated numbers the first week of the year, and I don’t know what the graph for Ohio shows. It looks completely artificial, like there’s some kind of data-smearing algorithm in place for the last 11 months or so. Maybe this peak is worse — it’s hard to tell for sure.
Just looking at the graphs for the first five states on the chart (California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois) — they look almost like five different pandemics. Some states get hit hard with a wave that seems to miss other states completely and then the other way around. There’s some PhDs in that data if anyone can tease out what it all actually means.
Zaphod:
I’m not persuaded of Kurzweil’s Singularity in the semi-immediate future either.
Nonetheless, tan goes to infinity — not just a Good Time Peak for a few decades or so.
I can see an argument for the 80s as American peak. But I’m old enough to remember the glory days of the 60s when there was nothing and no one near American power after WW2 and the sea to shining sea triumph of American culture.
@Huxley:
Spinning the Speculative Silly Model Dreidel, Tan() can certainly take you places. There was this Doctor Faustus fellow, you know. You pays your money and you takes your chance.
Can’t argue about the 60s. I would have liked to have been there.
80% of the way through Liu’s third book now. Don’t want it to end. But turns out another Chinese guy wrote a fourth in the series. Will have to see.
This may be off-off-topic, but hey it’s an open thread!
I ran across this while trucking around the Canadian news.
“We see the threats and dangers which arise out of the expansionist policies of Communist China,” explained Mantas Adom?nas, Lithuania’s Deputy Foreign Minister, during an interview in Vilnius.
“We wanted to curtail this … and support democracy in Taiwan.”
And so the name “Taiwan” ended up being featured prominently in the signs, lettering and the official title of the trade office when it opened in November.
At the same time, Lithuania also pulled out of a group known as “17 +1,” established by China in 2012 to help open up Eastern Europe to Chinese businesses.
Lithuanian officials told CBC News they expected reprisals, but the scale of China’s wrath caught them off guard.
Within days, Lithuania pulled its diplomats out of Beijing after China downgraded its embassy. Virtually all of the country’s exports to China — from lumber to beer to high-tech lasers — were cut off, up to $400 million US (over 500 million Cdn) of business in total.
…
Unique, and perhaps even unprecedented, was the mechanism by which Chinese officials were able to throttle Lithuania’s trade.
They simply removed the country’s name from China’s customs register.
“We have been erased,” said Adomnas. “Anyone who tried to declare cargo coming from Lithuania would simply not find this country on the database.”
The impact on Lithuanian businesses, many of which had laboured for years to open up markets in China, was immediate and devastating.
And China extended its vindictive reprisal to other countries that exported products using Lithuanian parts.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Adomnas, the Lithuanian deputy minister, acknowledges many exporters in Germany and France were initially upset at Lithuania for dragging the whole trading block into its dispute, but in the weeks since, he says the EU has gone to bat for his country.
Last week, the EU filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization accusing China of “coercive” action against Lithuania.
“If Lithuanian companies are dropped and global supply chains are restructured, that means China acquires this … nuclear option in economic coercion,” Adomnas told CBC News.
“(China) could use it successfully against any country whatsoever.”
We’ve seen that movie before.
In the meantime, Lithuanian businesses have been inundated with praise — and money — from Taiwan. Taiwan’s government has said it will set up a $200 million euro fund to help Lithuanian businesses grow and gain access to Taiwanese markets.
And thanks to viral social media coverage of the story in Taiwan, their consumers have also been introduced to a wide range of Lithuanian products.
…
Marius Horba?auskas with Volfas Engelman brewery in Kaunas says he’s been told that many people in Taiwan now have a special name for his beer.
“It’s very touching,” he said. “They call it ‘freedom beer.’ “
His brewery lost two million litres in annual sales when China turned off the taps, but he says sales to Taiwan are slowly starting to make up for it.
“We have nothing to lose any more in China — we lost everything so we can only gain in Taiwan,” Horba?auskas told CBC News on a visit to the brewery.
Taiwan’s state liquor corporation also bought up 20,000 bottles of Lithuanian rum when China refused to accept the shipments.
Taiwan’s representatives have visited his brewery and Horba?auskas says they’ve offered to help him get his products onto store shelves back home.
He wouldn’t say if he thought taking on China was a good call by the government, but he said he believes it illustrates Lithuania’s character.
“It might seem funny to you, but Lithuania was a very big country in the Middle Ages — and we still think like we are big. In fact, we’re not, but helping each other, especially someone who is weaker, is something in our blood.”
Three cheers for the little countries that show the rest of the world what it means to walk the freedom talk.
I went to bed while this was still going on.
mkent said: “That’s because CT is only reporting deaths once a week now compared to once a day during the original outbreak.”
That is not true at all. CT reports on a daily basis. However last year, like many other states, they stopped reporting on weekends which is why I now update on Tuesdays. But, otherwise you can look at their daily updates late Monday through Saturday (for the Friday data). Scroll down this page to the daily table:
Thanks for that information about Lithuania. Very interesting.
Rufus T Firefly:
Xi say to Lithuania –
“All of you bases belongs to us!”
And Xi say to us –
“South China Sea belong to me!”
Z say –
“My people!”
mkent,
It’s called winter. Cases and deaths from respiratory illnesses are always higher in winter. In the Before Times this was treated as an obvious thing hence the term ‘flu season’.
Panicking about cases in the NE quadrant of the SW corner of some state is just silly because all the data is pretty much useless for anything other than searching for a trendline and even that is sketchy.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
The weekend data is in for the ‘rona. I’m going to concentrate more on the state data as it’s showing some interesting features.
Nationally, cases continue a slow decline. Most notable is the trend in serious cases which continue down, but now show a 10 day rolling average of -178/day; ie a negative “velocity”. Serious cases now at 0.07% of active cases.
State level data is showing the omicron can be fatal, but can vary greatly depending on the state. Keep in mind deaths are a lagging indicator by about two weeks from cases.
NC: cases at 66% of peak. Like other states deaths are still plateaued at around 40 compared to delta peak of 72, and alpha peak of 298. NH: like NC, cases at 66% of peak. Unlike some other states NH is moving in right direction for deaths, down to avg of 4/day compared to peak of 12; delta peak was also 12, and alpha peak was 7. CT: cases now at 39% of peak. CT is struggling with deaths despite the large decrease in cases. Last week had a single day record deaths which exceeded any day in the last two years. 14 day average death for CT is 36 compared to 12 for delta and 40 for alpha. I have no explanation for this for CT. GA: cases now at 41% of peak. Like other states is showing a peak of deaths for rolling average of 46 compared to delta peak of 117 and alpha of 127. FL: cases at 59% of peak. Deaths are moving in the right direction for FL; peak was two weeks ago at 129 compared to delta at 423 and alpha at 211. Most interesting for FL is the current death rate/day which is 24 and compare that to CT at 36. FL has 6.3x the population of CT. Last, CO: cases now at 62% of peak; but like other states deaths are still plateaued at around 36.
Looks like “MAD” Magazine may not have shut down after all….or like the “New York Sun” has been resurrected….
(Either that, or April 1 has arrived—even before Groundhog’s Day…. Come to think of it, maybe that film was really a documentary…and every day is actually Groundhog’s Day).
Heeere’s Turley:
“New York Times Sues To Get Hunter Biden Information”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-york-times-sues-get-hunter-biden-information
Some juicy key grafs:
‘…While the [NYT] request was sent in December 2021, the Biden Administration told the Times that the soonest that it could possibly turn over the information is April 15, 2023. That is after the mid-term elections….
‘…When the New York Times Ken Vogel wrote about Hunter Biden’s dealings as a potential “significant liability,” Biden officials viciously attacked him while others suggested that he was a pawn of Russian or Trump disinformation.
‘Of course, the allegations proved to be true and the infamous laptop is now considered authentic.
‘One of the most outspoken aides denying the entire story was Kate Bedingfield, who is now the director of White House Communications. ‘She denounced the story as an “egregious act of journalistic malpractice.”
‘Andrew Bates, who is now deputy director, tweeted “SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel ) is a COWARD.”…’
Manchin and Sinema: dragon slayers…
‘Manchin Confirms ‘Build Back Better’ Bill Is “Dead”‘—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/stocks-slide-after-manchin-confirms-build-back-better-bill-dead
Don’t think “Biden” will give up, though.
The backlash of “the faithful” will be formidable…and instructive.
On the music video: I immediately thought of one song I play on the guitar, Lyin’ Eyes by the Eagles. At least the way I play it, in the chorus the second line starts with a G chord,”I thought by now you’d realize” where on “realize” go to a C then an A, followed by “there ain’t no way to..” and on the “ain’t” switch to an Am just like the fellow describes such switches mid stream.
physicsguy,
I wouldn’t make too strong a connection to death from Omicron just based on the numbers because of course these reported deaths are usually days to weeks to even months old and from some of what I read Delta was still the dominant variant in serious cases through early January.
Plus the CDC bouncing around saying Omicron was 75% one day then 23% the next doesn’t lend too much confidence to their analysis and of course we still have the ‘from’ and ‘with’ issue that apparently will never be fixed.
I was talking to someone that had COVID a few weeks back and it was a moderate case not anywhere near life threatening and I kept saying ‘sick is sick’ why does it matter if it has scary name when a few short years ago nobody cared what exactly they had.
And of course old sick people die every day and always have and in winter respiratory illness is a leading cause of death.
Griffin, all valid points you make. The trouble is that the politicians are using the same data that I’m reporting, without the caveats you rightly list. I’m quite sure the actual deaths are much lower. Even with all the “data fudging” going on, I suspect this time next week, the deaths to start dropping. CT, in any case, is a real mystery. WTH are they doing in the hospitals there?
All my state data is from the individual state’s DoH; not from the CDC, John Hopkins, or worldometers. Any more reliable? Who knows?
Cases have almost halved in the last couple weeks. Almost like that South African doctor was correct.
https://twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1488579238798237704
physicsguy, I haven’t been in CT in years. Are residents, say, heavier than average? And “average,” in the USA, is too heavy.
I saw my internist for a routine check a couple of weeks ago. Despite my age (72), he was not at all concerned about my not having had the booster shot. I’m in good shape, and my Vitamin D level is good, and he’s just not too worried about me. He did say that in cases he has seen, besides obvious pre-existing medical problems, obesity is the strongest indicator of who will have trouble with COVID, and he said a friend, who practices at a children’s hospital, notes that obese children are the ones who get seriously ill (again, except for unusual serious conditions).
Griffin, I don’t usually do extrapolations as they often don’t pan out, but given the slope of the current trend in cases, it could reach zero in 12 days. More likely will slow down to an exponential tail.
Kate, I don’t think Ct has an excess of obesity over other states from my time there. In fact, I see more obese people here in Florida, especially women, compared to CT. Again, I have no clue why the deaths are running so high there.
physicsguy:
Is CT the only state right now where the death rate is so high? If so, that really is puzzling. Early on, with Alpha, I believe that CT (along with NY and NJ) had a high death rate, but do those other states have one now?
I don’t think CT has any special demographics that would explain it. Perhaps the CT hospitals report COVID deaths differently – more broadly? Could be a statistical artifact rather than a real difference.
Neo, it’s the one outlier of the 5 states I follow. And CT has not changed their reporting in 2 years….very consistent. In contrast, CO will not report any deaths for say, 3 days, then there’s 50 which is really the cumulative of the 3 days of “zero” deaths, ie should be 50/3.
Like you said, puzzling. I have no data on NY or NJ over the 2 years.
https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1487975428514062336/photo/1
I can see my house from up there 🙂
What’s interesting is that you can see that HK and Macau are using legacy sodium vapour street lighting and most of the Shenzhen – Guangzhou – Zhuhai megalopolis is using LED lighting – apart from the various airports and container ports (whether that’s legacy or as a result of international standards for messing less with night vision, I don’t know.. but curious.)
I check the local school district for their report of cases by school. The overall report has a drop from 860+ a few weeks ago to 107 today (.39% of student/staff population of 27,000+). The closest university also shows a great drop in cases.
I use these case reports as an indicator of what is happening in my neighborhood, especially since I can see what the closest schools are experiencing. And yes I consider that there is a % who did not report in because of no testing capabilities. The district used to have a testing site, but had to close it due to lack of testing supplies.
I really don’t care what is happening in the rest of the state since I am not interacting with those people. But, statewide, there is a dramatic drop in cases. Hospitalizations are dropping, deaths are so-so since the state likes to verify the cause and there is a delay. However, in the weekly epi report, there is a graph of deaths by date of death and that shows a drop.
Happy New Year, zaphod!
Interesting video. It sounds a lot trickier than it is. Except for the Mozart and maybe the Elton John, I’ll bet none of those composers knew they were dealing with parallel minors. They just did what sounds good.
It’s basically flatting the 3rd. As the video narrator points out, it changes the mood from glad to sad. It’s quite remarkable. Play a three note major chord (happy, bright!) then drop the second note of the chord down a half step (melancholy, sad).
physicsguy, Griffin, Liz,
The Biden administration’s leadership is finally doing what Trump never could; putting an end to the pandemic! 😉
Kung Hei Fat Choi Rufus!
4,718 years. The Chinese must be doing something right, Zaphod. But still 1,064 years behind you know who…
@Rufus:
Don’t I know it!
We must be doing something right to last 200 years!
–Henry Gibson playing country singer singing Bicentennial song in Robert Altman’s “Nashville”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP94wyr5KB4
_______________________________
Zaphod:
The sine curve as theta goes to pi is more your friend than a straight line, but there is always the journey to 2 pi and you never know about all the harmonics mixed in there.
China has gone to bust to boom to bust a buncha times. Where China is in the bigger picture is not clear. Nor the US.
Too early to tell…
Neo asks “Is CT the only state right now where the death rate is so high?”
No. Most of the country is experiencing an outbreak (2,397 deaths / day for the country as a whole, which corresponds to an annualized rate of 875,000 / year) worse than either the Delta variant outbreak this summer and fall (which reached a peak of 2,030 deaths / day) or the original Wuhan variant outbreak in the spring and summer of 2020 (which reached a peak of 2,279 deaths / day). Only the outbreak last winter was worse (3,567 deaths / day), making Omicron the second-worst of the six distinct waves to hit so far. Cherry-picking data from a few well-off states hides that fact.
Note: All daily figures above are 7-day moving averages.
To paraphrase an old saying, you may no longer be interested in coronavirus, but coronavirus remains interested in you.
Last week my younger sister got Covid, I presume Omicron. She’s not particularly healthy and she sounded miserable on the phone.
So I checked a couple of times to see if she was, you know, OK.
She shrugged it off. “I’ll be fine.” It was like a bad cold. What she really wanted to complain about … was her ex.
Oh, I almost forgot. Griffin is correct above in one respect. The number of cases / day, while blowing past the previous record by a factor of three, is headed back down as sharply as it rose (from 130,000 / day in mid December to 814,000 / day in mid January to 411,000 / day now). I suspect that has as much to do with holiday travel and festivities as anything inherent to the virus, but who knows?
mkent:
But according to physicsguy, Connecticut is having an outbreak with a daily death total worse than ever before in that state, including last winter. That’s not true of the states that you cite, apparently, if last winter was worse for them. You can see the chart for deaths per day for Connecticut here.
@huxley:
It’s tan (pi/2 + epsilon) that you want to worry about :). One minute you’re on top of the world…
The Chinese have their dynastic cycles and invasions and troubles… but they remain recognisably Chinese in appearance and culture. There’s a lot to be said for that… And if you think this is a bug and not a feature, why then, you must be an Anti-Semite 🙂
@huxley:
“She shrugged it off. “I’ll be fine.” It was like a bad cold. What she really wanted to complain about … was her ex”
I suspect a good deal of the covid hysteria is middle-aged Karens who don’t even have an ex to complain about. Gives their lives meaning.
Zaphod:
It’s fun to play with someone who can catch and throw…
Though I would interpret tan (pi/2) as Kurzweil’s singularity, not the American zenith — arguably minus epsilon before JFK’s brains became a red mist on the Zapruder film.
(Not because I have a great attachment to JFK, but America was never quite so powerful and unconflicted since then.)
Neo:
That’s because CT is only reporting deaths once a week now compared to once a day during the original outbreak. If you take the 7-day moving average, you’ll see that the peak during the current outbreak is 35 / day, while last winter it was 47 / day. During the original outbreak it was 115 / day.
That makes sense, because the original outbreak hit the northeast far worse than anywhere else. I told co-workers at the time that it didn’t make sense to shut down the whole country — it had barely hit large parts of flyover country. But the media is based in the northeast, and they were scared, so everyone had to shut down. One of the many idiocies we’ve faced in this pandemic.
@Huxley:
Not really sold on the Kurzweil Singularity business.. I think that a bunch of Silicon Valley mega wealthy guys being terrified of Death is likely to produce some trickle down benefits for folks younger than us, but Kubrick Fetus floating in space side of things, not so much perhaps.
I’m more optimistic about the future of Humanity than the future of the USA or the rest of the present West… with reservations of course. There’s no doubt about Man’s innate ability to eff things up six ways from Sunday. Maybe we’re all Barry Lyndon.
I came of age in the Eighties. To me that was the (with hindsight, coasting) Apogee. I’m nostalgic for that period. But there’s no way back except by going forwards and my clock will run out an age or three before then. FWIW, I wish Westerners could learn to take a slightly longer view both backwards and forwards… and also grasp more that the Perfect is the Enemy of the Good. Least Bad Wins. Less Bad is already half the battle for survival won.
OK, I took a look at the deaths / day chart for all 50 states plus DC, and the only states for which omicron is the worst wave are Maryland (65 vs. 64), Washington (49 vs. 42 during delta, which was worse than the other two waves), and Vermont (4 vs. 3).
The graphs for Indiana and Ohio also peaked higher for omicron than last winter’s wave, but I don’t think those peaks are real. Indiana appeared to substantially undercount during the holidays and dump their accumulated numbers the first week of the year, and I don’t know what the graph for Ohio shows. It looks completely artificial, like there’s some kind of data-smearing algorithm in place for the last 11 months or so. Maybe this peak is worse — it’s hard to tell for sure.
Just looking at the graphs for the first five states on the chart (California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois) — they look almost like five different pandemics. Some states get hit hard with a wave that seems to miss other states completely and then the other way around. There’s some PhDs in that data if anyone can tease out what it all actually means.
Zaphod:
I’m not persuaded of Kurzweil’s Singularity in the semi-immediate future either.
Nonetheless, tan goes to infinity — not just a Good Time Peak for a few decades or so.
I can see an argument for the 80s as American peak. But I’m old enough to remember the glory days of the 60s when there was nothing and no one near American power after WW2 and the sea to shining sea triumph of American culture.
@Huxley:
Spinning the Speculative Silly Model Dreidel, Tan() can certainly take you places. There was this Doctor Faustus fellow, you know. You pays your money and you takes your chance.
Can’t argue about the 60s. I would have liked to have been there.
80% of the way through Liu’s third book now. Don’t want it to end. But turns out another Chinese guy wrote a fourth in the series. Will have to see.
This may be off-off-topic, but hey it’s an open thread!
I ran across this while trucking around the Canadian news.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/lithuania-taiwan-china-1.6334793
And China extended its vindictive reprisal to other countries that exported products using Lithuanian parts.
But that’s not the end of the story.
We’ve seen that movie before.
Three cheers for the little countries that show the rest of the world what it means to walk the freedom talk.
I went to bed while this was still going on.
mkent said: “That’s because CT is only reporting deaths once a week now compared to once a day during the original outbreak.”
That is not true at all. CT reports on a daily basis. However last year, like many other states, they stopped reporting on weekends which is why I now update on Tuesdays. But, otherwise you can look at their daily updates late Monday through Saturday (for the Friday data). Scroll down this page to the daily table:
https://data.ct.gov/Health-and-Human-Services/COVID-19-Tests-Cases-Hospitalizations-and-Deaths-S/rf3k-f8fg
AesopFan,
Thanks for that information about Lithuania. Very interesting.
Rufus T Firefly:
Xi say to Lithuania –
“All of you bases belongs to us!”
And Xi say to us –
“South China Sea belong to me!”
Z say –
“My people!”
mkent,
It’s called winter. Cases and deaths from respiratory illnesses are always higher in winter. In the Before Times this was treated as an obvious thing hence the term ‘flu season’.
Panicking about cases in the NE quadrant of the SW corner of some state is just silly because all the data is pretty much useless for anything other than searching for a trendline and even that is sketchy.