Coronavirus:

[chuck]

Anybody have a source that says the US daily death count is going up?

It was dropping by end of last week and was close to flat most of last week, Starting last Thursday it jumped. It's now reported that there have been 68,276 death as of 30 minutes ago. Main source is Wikipedia and it is citing multiple sources for its info, including WHO. It looks like John Hopkins is supplying US data and does do by 8 PM every night. It shows US total approaching 60K and not much of a "curve". Looks overall like a 60 degree slope, with the number of deaths between 20K, 40K and now 60K linear and about two weeks elapsed time between each "milestone", aka about 10K/week. While the initial hot spots have quieted down, the disease has spread geographically and it is hitting lower population density areas but more of them and these areas seem to have less robust/equipped health care so the overall (country wide) fatality rate seems to be disturbingly constant. If this holds we will hit 100K by end of May. With the relaxing of social distancing and official's caving on people wearing masks I suspect that any offset in new treatment regimes will be eaten by a major jump in infections.

The 1983 film "The Day After" has a great scene about 1 hour and 22 minutes in. A young girl starts to loose it after being cooped up in a fall out shelter. She breaks out and starts running around in the fallout saying how blue the sky is and what a great day it is. Her boyfriend pursues her and tries to explain that you can't see it, feel it or taste it but the radiation is blasting through her cells and killing them both. They were going to have to stay in shelter for a lot longer with a lot less and they couldn't do it.

There is some irony in that the things we can do to make the situation less bad are really not that hard but people seem to be incapable of doing them. I don't see why I have to stay 6 feet away from everyone else. Eww, I don't want to wear a mask. This is taking too long. Are we there yet!

Compared to what people went through in the Great Depression and WW2 (both the servicemen overseas and the people back nome}, this is an inconvenience.

On a side/snide note I suspect NASA needs to really rethink their approach to getting to Mars. If we can't get the trip time down to 6 weeks, I don't see it happening,

[HONDO74]

This virus doesn't seem to effect everyone that gets it the same way

Over 1 Million Coronavirus Patients Have Recovered Around the World
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-re ... ly-1501583

The global pandemic has seen more than 1,056,300 patients recover from COVID-19, with the U.S. reporting the highest number of recoveries in the world, as of Saturday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.

There are now over four times more reported recoveries around the world than confirmed deaths, with the latest global death toll at nearly 238,800.

Over 164,000 have reportedly recovered in the U.S., the current epicenter of the outbreak, which is nearly 15 percent of its confirmed infected population.

The official number of recoveries in the U.S. has yet to be released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A CDC spokesperson previously told Newsweek in late March that it does not "have the current numbers for recovered patients at this time, and CDC has not included this data in our ongoing case counts as of yet" but the CDC "may put it [the data on recoveries] together in the future."

[up148]

Sorry about the double posting. But, I think it is important to show how well we did containing this epidemic by percentage of population.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Having been a victim of the Polio epidemic of the early 50's, actually having been a patient at U. of Pittsburgh's hospital, for a while, I have great respect for the ability of doctors and scientists to find cures. Dr. Salk was known to my parents.

And the fear was nearly as widespread as it is nowadays.
Murph

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Sorry about the double posting. But, I think it is important to show how well we did containing this epidemic by percentage of population.

So far....we've flattened out at 2,000 /day dead. That might not change for a long time. I'm not thinking that we have anything to celebrate just yet. I'm hearing that parts of the mid-west are beginning to ramp up and probably are only lagging behind due to lack of population density.

We still lack adequate tests and testing, adequate PPE equipment, and are plagued by a Gov't that continues to reinvent reality in it's failed response.

We have one therapy drug that is only a 1st iteration in availability solely due to luck (we're going to need a far better and specific anti-viral drug), we're not going to have a vaccine fully tested and available this year (I'm hearing that we might be up to phase 3 later this year and end up using it in controlled regional outbreak areas - think entire cities...), but we will be able to get a tattoo to go with our shot of Chlorox.

[MartyE]

Just remember, get hit and killed by a car and test positive for Covid...you died of Covid. Jump out of an airplane and your chute doesn't open, and test positive for Covid...you died of Covid.

While I do believe that this is serious and does have a large number of deaths associated with it, one would be ignorant not to believe that, I also believe that the death rate is being inflated even if marginally. Maybe they should use the term died "with" Covid infection rather than "of" it.

Getting hit by a car doesn't get you federal dollars. Just saying. While I'm sure my opinion is not popular that's ok.

Here where I work we had several people in early January with all the popular Covid symptoms and the doctors told them straight up it wasn't the flu. Those people were opening packages shipped from China's epicenter of the virus. This IMO has been here in the states longer than they care to admit which leads me to believe that there have been more people that have had this and recovered as well as died from it before, with all due respect, it was popular to do so, than reported.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

..............has been here in the states longer than they care to admit which leads me to believe that there have been more people that have had this and recovered as well as died from it before, with all due respect, it was popular to do so, than reported.

And, I would wager that we also were aware of it at some level and ignored it, or refused to believe it.

[chuck]

I also believe that the death rate is being inflated even if marginally

Without widespread testing it is more likely that it is being under reported. They are now looking at people that died of flu like symptoms back in late December and early January and finding that the disease was already "here" with "here" being anywhere outside of China.

If you want to really inflate the numbers you could also add in people that died BECAUSE of Covid 19. aka people that should have gone to the ER/Urgent Care because of some other health related issue but couldn't because of hospital's being choked with CV19 patients or the very real fear that the patient would come down with CV19 just being in the hospital.

The most disturbing fact is the ratio of deaths to known/confirmed cases. This is currently running at about 6%. That is a very scary number.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The most disturbing fact is the ratio of deaths to known/confirmed cases. This is currently running at about 6%. That is a very scary number.

Indeed. But probably double what it really is factoring in unknown cases that are/were probably out there, I hope.

[bob turner]

This is fascinating because the split of opinion seems to track political orientation. I am a moderate leftie who was rooting for Warren, so I automatically consider this more serious than the average flu. One of my good buddies (and a really bright guy) is an honest-to-God Dittohead. He thinks this is no worse than a garden variety flu epidemic. He still wears a mask.

Still another - nice guy, fellow aviator - believes that 5G electromagnetism caused it.

Why this tracks political/social orientation baffles me - the numbers for flu and Covid are collected by the same people, subject to the same inaccuracies, and published.

Butch's charts are a better way of looking at how "we" are doing compared to the rest of the world. We should find the same charts labeled May 4, instead of March 23, when we were at the very bottom of the exponential part of the curve.

[MartyE]

Well I certainly believe that the death rate will be less. I am of the opinion that more folks have had, or have this, that are not be diagnosed as Covid 19 because of mild or no symptoms. Once factored in the death rate drop dramatically. Still not saying this isn't serious but I still believe the numbers are not accurate.

[E7]

29 non communist states are starting to open up today

partially opening.

Yeah, what's up with that, Robert? I'm hearing the northern part of PA is opening, but the southern part is remaining restricted.

They're allowing the deer and elk to come out!

[E7]

The question should be: Does anyone have an ACCURATE source of statistics, and the answer is NO! Too many AGENDAS trying to influence what people think. Go back to what my late Father once said: Don't believe anything you hear and about half what you see. He made it to 93...must have known something.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

TDoes anyone have an ACCURATE source of statistics, and the answer is NO!

Not sure I agree with that; I think we do but that some don't like the numbers or don't believe them and that fits in directly with "agendas". But it really doesn't matter since it all ended around Easter......and it's all just a Chinese plot to take over the world....

[chuck]

"Accurate"? We can quibble over a few thousand dead people whether it's US or global figures. I don't care whose figures you use, a lot of people are dying at an alarming rate.

This is no worse than the flu? The number of people who die from the flu in any ONE year (aka deaths from the whole year) is between 30K and 60K so let's average that out to 45K. That's for the year. Covid 19 had killed 69K in about 10 weeks. If the current rate holds that will be between 200K and 300K, say around 250K if we "average".

While some people can get infected and get over it without hospitalization/emergency treatment that doesn't translate to this disease being no big deal.

If the outbreak were to spread like it did in the North East to the rest of the country the effects would be devastating. The North East almost suffered total collapse of the medical/health care system. There aren't many parts of the country with access to the facilities/resources to sustain such an attack. People would be dying from Covid 19 along with almost any other medical emergency that could become life threatening without medical attention as the health care workers would be stretched beyond the limit dealing with Covid 19 patients. This isn't an A or B scenario/choice unless you decide to let Covid 19 patients take their chances on zero treatment. I don't have the stomach for that kind of behavior.

Saw a protestor's sign that "People dies from poverty too!". Not in 2-3 weeks they don't. Dead is dead is dead. The economy can recover. It did from both the great depression as well as the great recession. It will take time and will be painful but it will come back. The one thing I can tell you is that NONE of the 69K that have died so far are coming back.

This war but a war with an enemy we can't see, bully, intimidate, bluster, posture, etc. It doesn't care what country you live in or what your political/economic ideology is. It just kills. There are no shortcuts, no miracle potions. Anyone peddling anything different is full of BS. The quicker EVERYONE understands/accepts this the better and quicker the chance that we will get through it.