White House Science Office Says Trump Ended COVID-19 Pandemic as US Hits Record Cases (thehill.com) 445
The White House science office listed "ending the COVID-19 pandemic" as the top accomplishment of President Trump's first term, even as the U.S. has set records for new daily infections and numerous hospitals across the country are stretched to their breaking points. From a report: According to a press release intended to highlight the administration's science accomplishments, the Trump administration said it "has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease." The rosy outlook flies in the face of reality and underscores Trump's efforts to continuously downplay the severity of the pandemic that continues to rage nearly uncontrolled across the country. As of Tuesday, more than 226,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. The seven-day average of new cases is nearly 70,000, a record number that is only expected to get worse. Hospitalizations and deaths are also climbing steadily upward. According to the COVID Tracking Project, there are more than 42,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19, up from about 30,000 just a month ago.
Roll On Next Week (Score:2)
Hoping that everybody stop going on about Donald Trump once the election is finished next week.
Re:Roll On Next Week (Score:5, Insightful)
> ...once the election is finished next week.
Oh honey... it'll be weeks until this is over. It'll take at least a week to get election results because many areas aren't allowed to count early ballots until the day of the elections and then whoever loses will challenge the results so there will be weeks of court battles.
Re:Roll On Next Week (Score:5, Insightful)
Weeks?
He's a radioactive boulder thumbing down a mountain. What makes you think he will stop once elections end?
And even when he's out and the White House is swept for bugs (electronic and otherwise) and fumigated - the issues he created will continue to linger for GENERATIONS to come.
Expect several more Timmy McVeighs and stay away from federal buildings in years to come.
Also, expect more rights given to corporations a la Citizens United, with more rights to be taken away from minorities.
Maybe incorporate yourself and your family? Add that Inc. to your name. To even the odds.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't assume Biden is going to Win. There is still a path for Trump to win, and the polling direction is showing that he entering that path. Also polling has been wrong before, every election we say we are going to have more Younger Adults than before who are going push off the polling, but they don't show up. As much I loath the idea of having Trump foul the White House for 4 more years, expect it a possibility. As it is the White Old People with Cars, free time who will go out and vote.
Re:Roll On Next Week (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh honey... it'll be weeks until this is over.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Polling for Trump is looking abysmal in a lot of battleground states. It's even looking bad in safe states.
This isn't "Hillary ahead but within the margin of error" bad, it's "Potentially losing Iowa and Texas" bad.
It turns out that people are fine with you denying reality until it hurts them personally. Then that illusion falls on its face. This article is a good example of that.
Everyone who still has a functional brain can see that the reality is that Trump made COVID-19 worse by ignoring it, downplaying it, and undermining everyone trying to address it. And most everyone is still hurting in some way because it's still running rampant. The stock market is still doing fine, so how bad this is isn't really that evident to anyone who makes their money that way.
Trump doing a rally in Wisconsin and downplaying it doesn't sit well with people who understand that hospitals in the state are nearing capacity. That's why his poll numbers in the state are shockingly low. In the midwest the cases are so high and the deaths are so many that it's no longer possible for most people to pretend it's nothing. When rural pastors and school principals and town officials start dying off, people notice. When people are unemployed for 6 months, they notice.
I've said it before here, Trump was handed his reelection ticket with COVID. If he had just been minimally competent at handling it, he'd have been reelected in a landslide. It's now looking like he might be on the downhill side of that landslide.
Re: (Score:3)
The stock market is still doing fine, so how bad this is isn't really that evident to anyone who makes their money that way.
I agree with the rest of your post, but this part isn't true. The stock market (read: the Dow Jones Industrial Average) tanked early this year. As in really, really tanked, losing nearly 40% of its value (slightly north of 29,000 to about 18,500). Fortunately for everyone, and I do mean everyone, it has largely recovered, otherwise we'd be in for another Great Depression. We still might be, except that all indications are that COVID will pass, what with the huge world-wide effort to develop effective tr
Re:Roll On Next Week (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, I saw something the other day, that showed a significant number of Trump voters, either refused to take part in polls, or outright lied to pollsters.
There's also, likely, a large number of voters out there (registered Republican or not) that are afraid of getting violently attacked or lose their homes and jobs, etc...with cancel culture out there using extreme prejudice.
There also appears that there were a number of trump supporters last time that may not have bothered voting, since the news was saying he didn't have a chance and Hillary would win.
There's been a decent number of democrats saying they don't support the extreme left support the current Dem party seems to be giving groups like Antifa and seeing al the violence that Dem states don't seem to be putting down, etc...they don't like Trump but they would switch votes because the Dems support things too far left for them.
And finally, it seems most conservatives vote in person on election day, it remains to be seen what the turnout for that it.
And finally, historically on mail in ballots (especially FIRST time users) they many folks disqualify themselves by not following what are often somewhat intricate instructions, of signing this or that envelope, having a witness sign, etc..
You mess up on that and your vote is thrown out....per the current laws on the books.
I'm not saying one way or another, although I will admit I would put a small amount of money down on Biden winning, but if you consider all the the possibilities I mentioned, if it is closer than the polls suggest, which I think it is...it's anyone's game.
Trump could win.
Re: (Score:3)
Remember, the Republicans tend to lose the popular vote but win the EC.
You make it sound like it's a common occurrence, but it's only happened five times in the country's history. Not sure you can call something that happens that infrequently the basis of a trend.
John Quincy Adams wasn't a Republican; that party didn't exist in 1824.
In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) lost the popular vote but neither candidate got enough electoral votes to win; Hayes won because of a back-room deal with the Democratic party to pull all Federal troops out of the former Confederate states
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Except those states have laws forcing the electors to be chosen by the election, meaning they'd need both houses of their legislature and the governor to sign off on the change in law. Which won't happen unless all 3 are republican, which isn't the case in more than 1 or 2 swing states.
Then there's the secondary problem that if they tried that it would probably lead to secession or armed revoulution and the second civil war, which nobody wants.
Re: (Score:3)
Except those states have laws forcing the electors to be chosen by the election, meaning they'd need both houses of their legislature and the governor to sign off on the change in law.
Bless your heart. You haven't been keep up with the notions of the Trump court appointees. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have just argued that since the Constitution states only that the legislature of a state sets election rule, or selects electors, that they can do so unilaterally [vox.com] without regard to courts, the governor, or any other state official or body.
It is "originalism" in its purest form, looking only at the literal text of the Constitution and without considering any other factor (like history, prior
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And if the election gets taken like that, it will be either the breakup of America into 2 countries or Civil War 2. With 3 elections stolen from the popular vote winner in 20 years, there's no way the blue states will stand for it.
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Win or lose, he's still president for two more months until inauguration day. And if you think he did some batshit crazy stuff when he was still trying to get re-elected, just imagine what he can do when he has nothing to lose.
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True enough, but if the Dems flip the Senate, those last few weeks could be pretty unpleasant for him.
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"if the Dems flip the Senate, those last few weeks could be pretty unpleasant for him."
i had thought that the new Senate wasn't seated until Inaugeration Day, but, yeah, you're right, they'll start the 117th Congress on January 3. So if the Dems get the Senate, they've got 17 days while Trump is still President.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't you have to be convicted of a crime to be pardoned first?
No.
From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Roll On Next Week (Score:5, Insightful)
If you test positive and have ZERO symptoms, or the sniffles, that's a case. It's not an infection.
Just like Trump supporters have stopped blaming everything on Obama since Trump became president or have stopped talking about Hillary who never was president?
My friend, Trump has managed to do some 30 years of damage in the USA in his short single term, and his legacy will leave a lasting stench around legal and regulatory bodies for years to come.
No ignoring it, or just talking about something is precisely NOT what we should do. Pretending a problem doesn't exist or that we haven't suffered is never the path to correcting it. You'll hear Trumps name forever. He has put himself in the history books for eternity and for all the wrong reasons.
orwellian? (Score:3)
Would this be considered "doublespeak"?
Only double? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doublespeak is so 20th century. Modern fascists have moved on.to triple and quadruplespeak:
"Covid doesn't exist, it's a media hoax."
"It's weaker than the flu."
"It's a Chinese plot."
"It disappears in the warm weather."
"We've defeated it!"
Re: (Score:2)
No. The Orwellian leaders knew they were full of shit. This is a case of Grand Delusion, part of it caused by surrounding yourself with yes-men and yes-women.
Re:orwellian? (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The Orwellian leaders knew they were full of shit. This is a case of Grand Delusion, part of it caused by surrounding yourself with yes-men and yes-women.
Man, we're so close to getting rid of this dickhead and people still don't get his one trick?
Trump lies about everything but he does it from a philosophical point of view which he has expressed from time to time in his books. Trump believes that telling the truth is a weakness because it reveals to your opponents something about what you actually think. The strong negotiator doesn't just keep their thoughts to himself, he actively puts out a smokescreen of confusing and baffling lies to distract the other parties.
He's not deluded about this; he's lying on purpose.
Which is not to say that he's not a half-wit who's deluded about quite a lot of things but his tactic has got him to the White House and, to be brutally honest, there is something to it in a sort of game-theory way. Any structure based on trust and the assumption of innocence can be gamed by one bold asshole. Once everyone does it, of course, the returns fade away as society and institutions collapse. But for that one fucker who doesn't care about that, then at the start it's a winning strategy.
Re:orwellian? (Score:5, Informative)
Art of the Deal was ghostwritten and largely paraphrased because he didn't have the attention span to sit down for a proper interview. Trump's books are not a direct line to the contents of Trump's head.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that the President is supposed to be working For the people and sometimes negotiating on their behalf, not negotiating *AGAINST* them.
Hint to all Americans, the guy employing negotiation tactics against you is NOT your representative.
Re:orwellian? (Score:5, Interesting)
But the way he rants out about certain things makes me believe that HE believes much of his own crap. A good liar doesn't shine a light on their lie, they try to get people to move on to something else. But T doubles down on some lies, making them more apparent in the process, circling them with a Sharpie, figuratively and literally.
Sure. And what do you look at when he does that? The lie! That's why he puts the lie out there, to get you to look at it and not what he actually does or thinks. Circling it makes you look at it more. He thinks that's a clever tactic; he doesn't think of it as being "caught out" or anything like that. He thinks the opposite, in some ways.
I think this is what Melania Trump is talking about when she says that 'The media created picture of my husband I don't recognise'. The initial reaction to that is "well, the media doesn't write his Twitter feed" but I think the real Donald Trump really is nothing like the image that he has manufactured. From the little I have read from people I think were reliable and who had time with him "off-screen", he seems fairly screwed up but more in a Howard Hughes sort of way (sans the intellect) than the raving monster that he projects on Twitter and in speeches.
Trump is hurt more by simple facts than by engaging with his claims and lies. The tax thing has made a dent because he can't just say it's not true. People generally assume the rich are dodging tax and always have done and they've always denied it. He isn't doing anything different from generations of wealthy tax avoiders and he can't project a bluff because he has no contrast to work against; he's not the one guy doing things differently.
The Wisconsin plant is another.
Attacking Trump has to be done on the attacker's terms. As soon as you say "that's a lie" you are playing his game. The question he struggles with is "how do you explain this?". He's not good at thinking on his feet, so he shouts over you or plays to the crowd with well-worn bluster and claims. But his thinking is inflexible and he can't work against someone who just brings up stuff he's not ready for. The lies prime people to challenge him on stuff he expects to be challenged on - because he does know he's lying and expects you to get bogged down in stuff you can't really disprove in a TV slot or debate.
Flattening the curve (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Flattening the curve (Score:5, Insightful)
As a generalization rich Americans don't really care if poor Americans die. There are now effective treatments available for rich Americans so pandemic over, get back to work.
Re:Flattening the curve (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, that was just the short term goal to help avoiding as many deaths as possible.
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Haven't you heard? People are *tired* of COVID.
A leader doesn't ask people to deal with things they're tired of; he makes those things disappear. Any day now. Under a true leader problems are *always* just about to miraculously disappear; there's a perfect and painless solution perpetually just around the corner.
What does freedom mean, if it's not the freedom to choose what consequences your action will have? The American people have spoken: they're tired of dealing with this, they won't deal with this,
Re:Flattening the curve (Score:4, Informative)
The Infection Fatality Ratio is dependent upon scenario; the numbers you quote are from the scenario where people and local governments continue to adhere to safety guidelines. If they stop following those guidelines, R0 rises. As R0 rises IFR goes up with it.
People actually can get on with their life and also behave in ways that keep R0 down. But that life is going to be a little different. How different depends on how successful they are. It's just a typical delayed gratification situation. If people are disciplined soon things will start to look more normal. If they're really sloppy they may end up facing lockdowns.
Re:Flattening the curve (Score:5, Informative)
Say What? (Score:5, Funny)
Is there a new definition of "ending" that I'm not aware of?
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Well, we have several idiots right here on slashdot who have proclaimed the end of the epidemic in august and september, blabbering about the surge in new cases being all false positives because the deaths haven't followed immediately.
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It's the George W Bush definition of "winning", which seems to have less to do with actual success, and more to do with how a sitting President with a hot potato in his lap insists that it is in fact an ice cube.
Mission Accomplished! (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that corona virus is over is just a lie. I can't even say it is wrong because they clearly know what is going on. Bush tried the same thing with a photo op on an aircraft carrier and this reminds me of that.
I wish we would have real leadership to deal with this problem. Hopefully we get that after the election because we certainly don't have it now.
The press release (Score:2)
Here is a copy
https://www.politico.com/f/?id... [politico.com]
Highlights include
"Ending the Covid Pandemic"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Parse this
"Highlights Include:
ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease."
Re: (Score:3)
"Working towards ending" would have cleared all of this up as nobody would be able to interpret that as being over.
No, in that case, rather than mocking the title, we'd mock all the rest of the text. "From the outset", "decisive actions", "engage scientists and health professionals": all laughably wrong.
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THE PRESS RELEASE DIDN'T SAY THEY ENDED THE PANDEMIC! Go read the text yourself! Seriously, when are you guys going to realize that the media is FLAT OUT LYING TO YOU NOW? They are panicking.
It literally says "Highlights Include: Ending the Covid Pandemic"
What the hell is wrong with you?
Ended as to make it preexisting condition (Score:2)
Ended as to make it preexisting condition / after the ruling any thing coved by the old rules will not even count as on going.
More like a cult every day (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump did this because it will play well with his voting base. That is all that matters. Facts don't matter. Policy doesn't matter.
COVID-19 to the Trump cult is pretty much like Kool-aid to the Jim Jones cult. It is the solidifying substance of loyalty to the cult. They all believe that if they don't survive it is simply God's will showing them they were insufficiently loyal.
Re:More like a cult every day (Score:5, Informative)
The Press lied here. not that you care. Read the Press Release for yourself, and find "ended covid" anywhere in it (I'll take anything even approximating it). Go on, I'll wait.
Facts Don't Matter .. Only Headlines Matter!
Not that you'll actually read the Press Release, because that is effort you'd rather not waste in your rage against the ORANGE MAN!
It's...literally on the first page of the press release:
ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.
Pretty much none of that is true.
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Do you seriously not understand that everything they said was a lie?
From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions
Provably false.
engage scientists
They sidelined scientists at the CDC in favor of PR people from the campaign.
health professionals in academia, industry, and government
They constantly attack and denigrate people like Dr. Fauci, and instead get their advice from the MyPillow inventor and Dr. Scott Atlas (a radiologist)
to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.
Trump: "So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing..And t
Re:More like a cult every day (Score:5, Informative)
An accomplishment was "ending the COVID-19" pandemic. Perhaps you're not a native English speaker, but when it's worded that way, it means it has ended, not that it's going to end in the future.
If I say "an activity I did yesterday was cooking a meal", you could reword that to "I cooked a meal yesterday",
Likewise, "An accomplishment [by Trump] of the past four years includes ending the COVID-19" pandemic" can be reworded as "Trump ended the COVID-19" pandemic in the past four years"
Just the latest version of... (Score:3)
Honestly impressed (Score:5, Funny)
You know, it takes a certain kind of person to declare victory in a race when you're dead last and two wheels have just fallen off the car and your pit crew has gotten shitface drunk. I mean, it’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for him.
You know what they say, "Fortuna audaces iuvat."
I wish I had that kind of confidence. I would have totally screwed that hooker with uncertain gender and prison tattoos I met 3:30am on September 23, 1992 in front of O'Banions. I might have taken a very different path in life.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, they already conceded defeat two days ago, might as well claim victory today.
Bush did too (Score:2)
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The only part of your post that is true is that he stood on a big military ship.
The USS Abraham Lincoln (an aircraft carrier) asked for a big banner because their aircrews had completed their mission - a 10 month deployment. Bush didn't have enough media savvy to see what was coming, so he didn't ask them to find a different place for him to give his speech from.
His speech [youtube.com] wasn't about how they had won, but about how much more work there was left to do. Over the last 17.5 years, approximately no one heard
But wait, there's more! (Score:5, Insightful)
Further, the failure-in-law said:
"The most dangerous people around the President are over-confident idiots" and that Trump had replaced them with "more thoughtful people who kind of know their place."
In other words, not only did the con artist eschew any medical advice from people who know what they're doing, he then put in place an entire cabal of Yes Men to repeat his lies ad infinitum.
If more reported daily cases than ever before and a climbing death toll are their definition of taking back the country, it's a searing indictment of how much a failure both are. Then again, considering neither of them have any businesses which are profitable, and the con artist has bankrupted 16 businesses, this should not be surprising in the least.
Iraqi information minister (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be heading into Iraqi information minister territory.
Loved that guy, btw.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
The bar keeps lowering: deaths, hospitalizations, infections, cases.
Seems like you didn't bother to read the summary, which talks about how hospitalizations and deaths are increasing, not just cases.
I've personally known more people who have died from suicide during the lockdowns than COVID
Good for you. My experience is the opposite - 4 dead from COVID, 0 from suicide. Of course, this issue is not decided by anecdotes but by data, which shows that COVID has almost certainly killed far more people than the number of suicides has increased [politifact.com].
The 200,000 number is the US for fatalities is very likely and overestimate, NOT an underestimate.
This is false, as shown by excess deaths statistics [ourworldindata.org].
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Insightful)
He knows it, but he will not say it because trump propagandists rely on Big Lie techniques
A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic.
Re: (Score:3)
Hitler believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic.
Hitler claimed the technique was used by Jews. We have no way to know what he actually believed.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, Hitler was in fact using the Big Lie technique by attempting to claim that the Jews were using it... convoluted, but look at these contemporaneous examples from wikipedia
Goebbels's use of the expression [wikipedia.org]
Though the following supposed quotation of Joseph Goebbels has been repeated in numerous books and articles and on thousands of web pages, none of them has cited a primary source. According to the research and reasoning of Randall Bytwerk, it is an unlikely thing for Goebbels to have said.
If you tell a l
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Insightful)
...and that is called Cherry Picking where you only present data that supports your side while ignoring the bulk of the data that goes in the opposite direction
Re: Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to residents of Bismarck, SD, or El Paso, TX (to name just two examples), where hospitals currently are swamped. Besides, hospitals in NYC were very much swamped earlier this year, they had to set up field hospitals in parks to handle the overflow. Thus, your claim that no hospitals were ever (and currently are not) swamped is false. It's worse than merely being false though, it's an outright lie.
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If you are willing to accept testimonials as evidence, then I have some HerbaLife to sell you!
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, you don't think that as the pandemic continues on, we figure out what therapies are useful and which ones don't work to keep people alive, and that might affect the mortality rate, do you?
Let's see what happens to that death rate when some hospitals start getting overwhelmed and the ability to conduct those therapies becomes rationed. Wait, you don't think that's why we went through the whole shutdown thing, do you? To prevent exactly that?
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CDC uses mortality rate as a main driver of what is and is not an epidemic. Otherwise every year colds would be an epidemic, flu an epidemic, and dozens of other illnesses that infect a large portion - but kill relatively few.
And the flu kills anywhere between 12000-61000 Americans per year. We're at over 220,000 dead this year from Covid. And we haven't even really hit flu season yet.
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CDC uses mortality rate as a main driver of what is and is not an epidemic. Otherwise every year colds would be an epidemic, flu an epidemic, and dozens of other illnesses that infect a large portion - but kill relatively few.
No they don't Lynnwood. Who told you that?
Lesson 1: Introduction to Epidemiology [cdc.gov]
Terms to know [cdc.gov]
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Yeah, no. As it turns out, these words have defined meanings:
epidemic [wikipedia.org]: An epidemic (from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time.
pandemic [wikipedia.org]: A pandemic (from Greek , pan, "all" and , demos, "people") is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people.
endemic [wikipedia.org]: In epidemiology,
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
You aren't reading the charts too well.
When cases started going up again in early June, deaths didn't start rising again until early July. Cases stayed steady from late August until early October, with a small dip in the first half of September. We would expect deaths to start increasing in mid-October (because of the dip in mid-September) and then more increases in early November. And low and behold you see deaths began rising in mid-October, with deaths increasing by 20% over 10 days from Oct 17th to Oct 27th. Look forward to even more increases in the next couple weeks.
Total death counts when compared to confirmed infections are lower now than in April because we were mostly only testing older people in April. I had one employee with a fever and loss of taste/smell in April who just stayed home for 10 days with no test because she is about 30. Today she would be tested. It is likely that actual Covid cases in March / April were ten times higher than reported [nature.com] because we didn't get even moderately good at testing until the summer.
75,000 confirmed cases per day may seem higher than we had in April, but it is likely far less than the actual infections we had at the time. Comparing today's cases to July is a more fair comparison, which is why we are likely only few weeks away from seeing over 1000 deaths per day again.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the lies are working on somebody. I can't imagine trolls are paid to post on Slashdot of all places, so this guy is just a willing propagandist. Nobody actually believes this kind of bullshit - it's just a predigested talking point so he as a Trump supporter can have something to say when the obvious lies are called out. They count on reporters to accept these answers and move on.
By the way, you don't have to die of covid for it to be a nasty fucker. I had it in April, and I still have symptoms that come and go. So if you're thinking "I'll get it now and be over with it", be careful what you wish for...
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:4, Informative)
Rob, if you do not think political astro-turfers are on slashdot, then you have not been paying attention
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
A retrospective review of incident year deaths as compared to prior year deaths is a completely valid way to "sanity check" counts taken.
This was used in Puerto Rico to adjust death counts, which were notoriously low after the hurricane.
In fact, the co-morbidity fallacy was addressed and debunked in the Puerto Rico death count adjustments, since people with existing conditions were certainly killed by a lack of electricity that shut down critical medical devices, due to the power outages after the hurricane.
Similarly, co-morbidity deaths are certainly an established part of any incident specific death counts that impacted their existing conditions, and certainly applies to elderly, ill and recovering people being killed by COVID-19.
I would suggest that 2020 death counts are also low due to the effects of the long shutdown on lowered driving miles and associated highway deaths, which should be considered when comparing 2020 deaths to 2019 baseline
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:4, Informative)
2020 deaths are not low. This page shows the total deaths in the US along with a nice little line on the graph showing the normal trend. From March onwards, the deaths are above the line, at times substantially above it (not coincidentally when the case-counts of Covid were high).
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nahhh.. What I want is for all these "it's a fake" assholes to volunteer at a clinic to work in the ward with C-19 patients. Let them go in there for a few weeks, and prove that it's all a fake, and we're wrong, and they're right.
Yup. Assuming they don't get it and are unable to post, and let more idiots take their place.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
.
I'm no doctor, but if you have a virus replicating in your body afaik that's called an infection. TL:DR but here's the long story https://medical-dictionary.the... [thefreedictionary.com]
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
Hospitalizations are also rising. There is always a lag between rising new cases and then rising hospitalizations and death. The hospitalizations are already starting to rise and will most likely increase at a fairly dramatic rate shortly. A few weeks after that the death rate will spike. The good news is the death rate most likely not spike as much as in the past waves, as we've gotten better at treating Covid-19, but they will rise quite a bit.
Or we could live in fantasy land where we are turning the corner, and the new Health Plan is due to be announced shortly and the economy is roaring back. Your choice.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
Hospitalizations are a less delayed and more reliable metric to predict upcoming mortality, for sure. Some states do not publish them though.
You do have to factor in the number of tests done when using cases as a predictive metric. But, most of the states where testing has been significantly increasing over October are not the states showing the latest surge in cases (with the exception of North Dakota, but there, the tests are increasing as a reaction because they are already in the middle of a hospitalization surge).
A good example is Pennsylvania, which doesn't seem to have hospitalization data in the sources I normally look at. There the case rate has doubled over October, but the testing rate only went up 25%. Comparing South Dakota to North Dakota is also a very informative exercise.
Of course, all the aggregate data is a fuzzy picture: testing strategies can focus on clusters and find more cases with the same number of tests (or the opposite: here in MA we have a lot of colleges doing surveillance testing which finds few cases per test), and hospitalization data can be spotty in states where patients are offloaded out-of-state or into systems that don't provide data. Unfortunately the most reliable statistic on spread is the death toll.
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Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
"If you test positive and have ZERO symptoms, or the sniffles, that's a case. It's not an infection."
That is so mind-boggling wrong that I am almost speechless. If you have zero symptoms, you can still be infectious. So, yes, that is a rather big problem.
"I know zero people who have died of COVID"
Apparently, "not my problem, so I don't have to care" is a valid response.
"The 200,000 number is the US for fatalities is very likely and overestimate, NOT an underestimate."
On the contrary. We can get a good idea of how many deaths can be chalked up to COVID-19 by just looking at how many deaths in total there have been in the US and seeing how much greater that number is than the ordinary number of deaths that ordinarily would have happened. This number of "excess deaths" is about 300,000.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Informative)
People are very selective in the facts they want to look at. I don't know anyone who died from the COVID virus. I did know a person who died because she was unable to followup with the doctor because of the COVID restrictions. Who is to say that her life did not matter as much as lives of people who died from COVID? How many people died like her - unable to access to the doctor on time?
I mean this with compassion and sensitivity, but the answer to your (loaded) question "who" is: statisticians and medical experts. Know a person who died because they were trapped in a burning car by their seatbelt doesn't qualify one for overriding statistical and engineering data that indicates - overwhelmingly - that seatbelts save lives.
The person you knew... the only way to make the judgement call is to compare her life versus lives. It's the eternal "lives of the many" deal. A huge part of "civilization" is acting as a group for the benefit of the group, even at the cost of specific individuals.
I also know members of our family who had COVID and had nothing but one day of fever and no other consequences. It was milder than a cold. If you go by the facts observed by me, COVID is nothing to worry about. I still take all the precautions very seriously as one never knows.
Thank you. Deeply. For ignoring the personal data and focusing on the global wisdom, and for erring on the side of caution if you're erring at all. That is... wise.
We had over 44 million cases worldwide and 9 million in US. I would imagine at this point we should have a good understanding of the outcomes and percentages. Why don't we? Why is this made into a "liberal" vs "conservative" issue? What about shutdown effects on lives of healthy people? The ones that can't put food on the table of their children? Who's lives were ruined because of the shutdowns.
We do have a good understanding of outcomes. WHO and individual countries have pretty much figured out how the math works. There's only one (major) group that's asserting "alternate facts". They're the ones who politicized this. They're also - strangely - the ones who benefit the most from ignoring science.
As for the effects of shutdown... well, that's where civilization comes in again. Civilized nations are providing for those who are unemployed. Supporting the hungry. Suspending evictions. Basically preserving their citizens while sort of "pausing" the money-machine industry they're frequently invested in. THAT's governance.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seatbelts are an interesting thing. Today, almost everyone knows and accepts that they save lives and almost everyone wears them automatically. However, the seatbelt was common in many cars in the 50s and yet not used often. Congress had to pass laws just to require safety standards in cars in the 60s. The public didn't like the seatbelts though and even in the 80s many people would refuse to wear them, but then quickly buckle up if they were pulled over by the highway patrol. And even now there are still active campaigns to encourage Americans to use the seatbelt because some still refuse ("it's unconstitutional!", "it's uncomfortable!").
And I wonder if mask wearing goes the same say. The same sort of excuses get used, fake stories pass around about how they actually increase deaths, and so forth. After all, the government requires us to wear clothes in public, and I don't see few people arguing about the unconstitutionality of being forced to wear clothes (and those that do don't really correlate with right wing politics). But add one extra piece of clothing and hoo boy, the gummint went to far, let's start making up stories and excuses about why it's wrong, why the disease isn't harmful or is a hoax, etc. More people seem to be upset about wearing masks than they are about sheltering in place!
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In standard medical terms a case is an infection. The patient doesn't need to show symptoms to have an infection, and they may or may not be contagious.
An infection is "Invasion of the body by organisms that have the potential to cause disease."
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:4, Interesting)
Case counts are of course problematic as the rate of testing has changed dramatically - so comparing cases from 6 months ago to today is probably not good. On the other hand, methods of determining if you are dead haven't changed much. Have a look here
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
This just counts up the dead (of all causes). For some reason, there seems to be a large bump starting in late March. I know that correlation is not causation, but it is seems a bit of a coincidence that the curve seems to follow the case-counts rather closely.
Note that the last data seems to have an uptick, but it isn't yet glaring. But realize that deaths follow cases by about 4 weeks plus the CDC gets data several weeks late, so there will be a lag. So those numbers will be going up real soon now.
The 200,000 is likely an underestimate not an overestimate. If you take a look at their graph "Excess deaths with and without COVID-19", you see that the bumps are still there without. Those are likely the undercounts.
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If you have the antibodies, you have an infection. Having an infection can be minor, moderate, or severe, but if your immune system is responding, or there's viral particles in your body and they are replicating, you're infected. You know, that whole "germ theory of disease" thing we've known about for a couple of hundred years now.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't exaggerate :). The germ theory of disease was only convincingly demonstrated by Pasteur in the 1860s. So it hasn't been known for hundreds of years - only about 160. (Yes, it was suspected by some before, such as John Snow - but the real solid proof had to wait a bit).
The Wall (Score:3)
Well, to be fair, he was dealing with white walkers so couldn't devote the time to research this to a solid conclusion. Also, it's "Jon Snow." Try to get your facts right, eh?
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Funny thing, they did not have microscopes, but the Essene Jewish communities implemented good health practices to limit communicable diseases THOUSANDS of years ago
Abstract [nih.gov]
The Essenes were a Jewish sect, which flourished around the first century. We have limited our study to hygienic and medical aspects, as documented in the works of Josephus Flavius, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder; Josephus and Philo were personally in contact with these sectarian Jews. We have described the regimen of life of
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If you have zero symptoms, it is unlikely that you would even get tested in the first place, so no.... in general you aren't a case when you don't have symptoms.
There can be some exceptions to this, but it is generally true that if you don't have symptoms, you will not be able to get a test. The demand for testing is already simply too high to implement a policy that enabled any non-symptomatic person to be able to easily get a test as well.
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"If you have zero symptoms, it is unlikely that you would even get tested in the first place,"
Actually, although I have no symptoms, my employer tests me weekly, because my job may require me to be onsite, and they require that all onsite workers be tested.
Re:Cases Cases Cases! (Score:5, Interesting)
The 200,000 number is the US for fatalities is very likely and overestimate, NOT an underestimate.
Let's do some statistics:
a) 200,000 deaths / 330,000,000 people (US population) = a 1:1,650 ratio (~0.06%).
b) Dunbar's number = 150 people (aka, the number of people you're psychologically able to keep tabs on if you spend all of your time socially grooming).
c) Odds of you knowing someone who died of COVID = 150:1,650 = 1:11 (~8.3%).
d) Odds of you NOT personally knowing someone who died of COVID WHILE the number of 200,000 deaths is true = 1,500:1,650 = 10:11 (~91.7%).
See? That's how one debunks conspiracy theories. Feel free to use it everywhere.
You're welcome.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with statistics is that they are very unintuitive, and people will reject a statistical argument if it "sounds wrong" even if it is unassailable.
There is a common cognitive bias that the only possible probabilities for any outcome are 0%, 50%, and 100%, corresponding to "it won't happen", "it might happen", and "it will happen". If no instances are directly observed, the conclusion that is jumped to is that 50/50 is ruled out and the only remaining possibility is 0%.
Re: (Score:2)
Now, you can account for that in all sorts of ways, most of which might contribute to a lower death rate such as restrictions during lockdown (less traffic deaths etc).
IF this information remains on track, and there is no statistical difference this year, compared to previous differences, then the whole thing is overblown.
If everyone did things that reduce the death toll from "normal" causes but the death toll for the year stays steady within statistical bounds, then it's not overblown - it's just disguised.
I don't know enough about US death stats to say anything else about it at the moment.
Re:Total Death Rate (Score:4, Insightful)
You are so full of shit you ought to rename yourself Archangel Compost Heap.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]
Re:Total Death Rate (Score:4, Insightful)
There are over 230000 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the USA so far, Mr Dung Heap. The number of excess deaths will be even higher because many of the early deaths haven't been confirmed due to the lack of available tests.
Re:Total Death Rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Have a look here.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
It looks like since March, the number of deaths every week is above the typical expected number of deaths for the time of year, most of the excess is attributed to Covid-19 (look at the second option to subtract out deaths attributed to Covid-19). My bet is that the rest of the excess is missed cases of Covid-19 - as the graph follows the same up/down pattern.
Re:I Wonder What they are Smoking? (Score:5, Funny)
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That press release is something that one would expect coming from the former Soviet Union or NK, not the USofA... A bunch of weasel words and talk about "leadership" and then this jewel...
"Ending the Covid-19 Pandemic"
There you have it... we done. Time to move on to glorifying the dear leader.
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But it's not official. The official one is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-... [whitehouse.gov] ... and it does not match these documents from politico or buzzfeed (I mean wtf). Sounds like pre-election trolling tbh
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The White House is not denying the authenticity of the press release; it's just saying the thing was "poorly worded". I actually think that's the truth. If you follow the link in the PR release to the report, it makes no such claim, although the report is not without it's fair share of BS claims, none are quite that astonishing.
This is the kind of thing that happens when you get editorial tunnel vision. In the first press release draft maybe you write down "Areas of programmatic focus" and list "Ending CO
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"Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
This whole chapter rails on men like Trump while simultaneously painting what I would consider "dark times" for America because of the leaders a majority have embraced. The older I get, the more OT is amazing but the best way I would express is it is to better borrow from my interfaith -- the Yin and Yang of the NT's expression of God's love for his children versus the OT's necessity of justice over creation. In these times, it
Re: (Score:2)
It makes a great lead-in for the obligatory Two Minutes of Hate.
Re:Weasel words rule! (Score:4, Informative)
It says the government "has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease."
Except you left out context. It says, [politico.com]
Highlights include:
ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.
They put "ending the COVID-19 pandemic" in all caps. I don't think you can spin that.
Re:Weasel words rule! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the actual press release: https://www.politico.com/f/?id... [politico.com]
For some reason it's a fucking JPEG inside a PDF file meaning I can't copy/paste, so I typed the relevant bit out for you:
ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.
The headline in ALL CAPS is pretty misleading, and the rest of it doesn't really offer much of a caveat.
Re:Out of context (Score:5, Insightful)
It says verbatim that the Trump Administration's "Accomplishments" include "ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC".
How can it be an accomplishment if it hasn't been accomplished? Do you even know what words mean?
Re:Out of context (Score:4, Insightful)
Trumpers going to Trump.
The GP and the rest joined the cult. Sacrificed their brains to the great orange leader.
I mean, this is the administration which came up with 'Alternative Facts', and which has had more than one spokesperson for the president tell the press that they can't speak for the president. Given that sort of mirror-world shit, it's not surprising that a trumper is going to come out and say that an accomplishment doesn't mean they're claiming to have done something.
I don't know how people went so far off the deep end, but here we are. One on side we have some sanity, and the other side seems to be in some sort of alternate mist-world where words mean whatever you want them to and facts are whatever you can imagine.
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The sort of mental gymnastics you have to do to argue that ending the pandemic does not really mean ending the pandemic, but something entirely different is pretty impressive. I feel like I just attended a church service or something. Maybe "Dewey Defeats Truman" actually meant "Dewey ran against Truman and did not succeed."