Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

also, the positive test % in april was around 16%, in may it was around 7%, further proof we are on the downside.

 

The only major difference appears to be the addition of an extra day in low figures due to the holiday on Monday (which is reported on Tuesday). However, that lower than usual Tuesday is still in the 7 day average until after today. The only day that you can really complain about that would be after today's figures are added into the totals and before tomorrow's figures are.

 

The very fact that we are having this specific a conversation about one days numbers proves that deaths are not rising in Texas...or Georgia...or Florida...or NC. I keep saying, they are flat lining at worst.

Could that change? Yes. But at this moment the increase in testing is what is resulting in cases and the deaths are going down over the 2-3 week trend line since these states started opening.

 

...by the way, the entire nation saw a weird spike on the Wednesday after memorial day. It is a reporting delay.

 

Yes, but Suicides and drug overdoses will inevitably rise as well.

 

Right. The point is there are thousands of factors contributing to the death total being different for this period of time than for any other comparable period of time in recent history as a result of the lock down.

So your proposed method of determining the death total from COVID by comparing this year's total death count to an average year's death count is extremely faulty.

 

First, I sated that it was flat in Texas in terms of deaths (with a takeoff in cases). You stated that it was decreasing. That was untrue.

Second, there has been an increase in deaths in North Carolina (with a linear increase in cases). 3 of the 5 highest death total days in the entire epidemic happened in the past week in North Carolina.

North Carolina Coronavirus Map and Case Count

Georgia is flat in terms of deaths and cases. Florida is flat in cases and decreasing in deaths.

The increased testing is not the only reason for increased cases. As I pointed out to you about North Carolina, if the positive rate is consistent with increased testing, that is likely a sign of increased infection rates unless the tests are randomly assigned or purposefully allocated in a manner that doesn't maximize positive tests. If the positive test rate decreased while the infection rate increases, it could be a test driven increase in case totals.

 

Not at all. In fact it’s the best way to determine if it was a good move to shut down the country for a virus that affects only a small portion of our population. Let’s say the past 3 years the 3 months of March-May period totaled an average of 675,000 deaths(7,500 * 30 days times 3 months). Let’s say for these 3 months in 2020 the total is 725,000 for the March-May so a net of 50,000 more died(total hypothetical on my part). Was losing 40 million jobs in trillions of dollars in debt worth it? I don’t know how you answer that.

 

They should. NC is lost for Republicans.

 

I don’t disagree with that. I’m talking specifically about the number of people who die as a result of being infected by COVID. Your method would not work for that. You’re talking about all the collateral damage and I agree it’s impossible to answer that question.

 

I have no idea what day Abbot is referring to, but it's not any of the last 7. You must have an old tweet there. 1823 new cases in Texas today. Texas has been above 1000 new cases 8 days in a row.

 

Positive yes but it must be considered when determining total likely covid deaths

covid deaths = 2020 total death - 2019 total death + differential in vehicle deaths - differential in suicide

not sure how else the real impact will ever be known

 

How do you know? I've heard that hard drugs have been difficult to transport due to the global lockdowns.

The economic hits are to prevent deaths, so you can't answer that question by knowing how many died, but only by how many deaths were prevented. In turn, we can't answer that question for sure unless we know how many would have died without lockdowns, which we'll never know for sure.

 

not old.

 

We will see what our total deaths were for that time period and people will draw their own conclusions on whether they think the shutdown was worth it.

I believe that we should’ve isolated only the elderly and those with preexisting conditions but we succeeded in flattening the curve with no hospital being fully overrun. Hopefully the US numbers Lee dropping.

 

Then he was being fundamentally misleading/lying.

Texas Coronavirus Map and Case Count

I could say he was being misleading, cherry picking the lowest day of the week to post that tweet, but even that isn't true. The lowest recent day was May 31 with 7 deaths. May 25 had 3 deaths. So it was only the lowest since the previous weekend.

The lowest case count in recent days was June 1, with 1,107 cases. He claimed that was the lowest in 6 weeks, but that is false. It was the lowest since May 26, with 1,083 cases.

Recoveries is a fundamentally unreliable statistic because there is no set definition of the term on a state-by-state basis.

 

I looked into it further and the cases on the Texas coronavirus dashboard don't match what is on world o meter or on the NY Times site. Texas dashboard showed 593 new cases yesterday. Worldometer showed 1130. And NYT showed 1107. Not sure why there is such a big disparity for the numbers.

 

For your first point, nothing would change. You know many will say we went from 2 million predicted deaths to 150k or whatever and say it's worth it. Would you accept that? I don't think so, and I don't think the other side would either.

As for your second point, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions make up well over 50% of the US population, so it's unrealistic to expect a successful isolation of that many people.

What's done is done, I'm ready to move on. The phase I trial data from the Chinese vaccine is pretty promising, and the Oxford vaccine uses basically the same technique. Both are expected to be widely available late this year to early next year. I'm hoping we can put this behind us for the most part by then.

 

Texas had 1900+ cases today.