The World-O-Meter Thread

[Elixir]

That's actually looking promising - UK, Spain, Italy in the 300s, US under 1500, on a weekday!

Agreed. Also a big drop in UK numbers over the last few days. I went out to WalMart today. Yesterday was the target date for Colorado to start "re-opening" measures, but that date was pushed back to May1. Today there was a noticeable increase in un-masked customers in the store vs last week, which I found discouraging.

 

[SimpleDon]

How did the President of China do a good job?

[removed] Can't tell the difference between 3 and 158?
Or did you think bigly has to be bigly better than tiny?
I have better things to do than to try to teach kindergarten math [removed].
Check S. Korea if you think those Chinee are too clever.


Read this or get someone to read it to you, then whine some more about Sleepy Joe..

You really believe that? There have been talks of them doing mass executions of people so the numbers will go down. There's also been talks of riots in China due to the virus.

If you really believe they miraculously have no more new cases and no more deaths, you are fooling yourself. THEY ARE A COMMUNIST REGIME! COMMIES AREN'T KNOW FOR BEING TRUTH TELLERS!

The Chinese won't even let our U.S. scientists in the country to examine how it started in the first place. Did the mainstream media tell you that, though? Nope, but Fox News does.

Fox News is the only network demanding to know why these wet markets even exist in China and why they aren't shut down. Every other network is too afraid of the Chinese to say anything.

I found ten stories in the New York Times searching for Wuhan wet markets and 25 on CNN. Do you consider these to be part of the mainstream media? I do.

Many butcher shops in the US would be considered wet markets. What the markets in China do that promote viruses to cross over to humans is that many sell both live wild animals mixed with live domestic animals, primarily ducks, together. A dead animal can't contract a disease. It is these wet markets that we need China to shutdown.

Do you believe that Trump did better than Xi?

Or worse?

China was dealing with a completely unknown virus. The US had two months of warnings about the virulence of the disease. Trump spent the time wishing the problem away. Yes, he closed the borders to people traveling from China but this was ineffective, the virus was already in the US, and because it is a community spread virus the travel ban was useless. Even if the 40,000 plus who traveled under exceptions to the travel ban had been excluded.

South Korea used the time to manufacture tests and PPE. The time that Trump spent wishing the disease away.

It is probable that Trump's drug and health insurance corporate lobbyist secretary of human resources and his dog breeder in charge of developing the tests assured Trump that we were prepared for the arrival of the disease. They were tragically wrong. And tens of thousands of Americans died because of this mistake. And they were incompetent to judge these things.

As of today, South Korea had 20 people per 100,000 who had the disease and 0.5 deaths per 100,000. The numbers for the US are 295 and 15 per 100,000. The US had 15 times the number who got the disease and 30 times the number of deaths. Not only did the US have more people infected and dying we didn't do as good of a job preventing the infected from dying.

It is reasonable to compare the two countries because they had their first known deaths on the same day. Is Fox News not telling you these things?

This is not even getting into Trump disbanding the White House pandemic study group or the incompetent people he has put into government offices and judgeships. Or his continued lying. Or his preferential treatment of states with Republican governors. Or his refusal to wear a mask voiced at the same news conference that they announced the recommendation that people wear masks. Or the idea of injecting bleach into the people who have the disease. Or testing. Do you want to discuss any of these? Perhaps you can tell me what you have learned about these from Fox News.

 

[Elixir]

Yikes. Back to where we (US) were last week.
Fortunately we now have an example in New Zealand for what an effective strategy for a Democracy looks like.
Unfortunately that strategy requires a leader with the intellect, the will, and the ability to unite people to act together for a purpose.
The US doesn't have anything like that, at least for another 9 months.

 

[Elixir]

Another huge jump puts critical cases in the US well into record territory. Back up to almost 30k new cases and the mid 2 thousands daily body count.

A fine time to start "re-opening". The TCFA at work.

 

[lpetrich]

Sweden’s coronavirus death rate suggests its response isn’t great - Vox - "Sweden’s coronavirus death toll is worse than America’s but better than New York City’s."

As the chart shows, Sweden is actually faring worse than other Scandinavian nations and even worse than the United States, which has the highest number of confirmed total cases in the world. (It’s important to note that other nations — such as Spain and Italy — not included in the chart have higher death rates per million people than Sweden.)

...
Following the advice of the country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the Swedish government chose not to impose strict lockdowns, curfews, or major border closings because the government felt it would hurt the economy and would only push the crisis further down the road.

...
And while experts say the vast majority of Swedes followed the government’s social distancing guidelines and voluntarily stayed home, those who continued to drink at bars and shop at stores likely spread the disease around.

The New York Times even noted what Sweden’s public health officials now admit: That “more than 26 percent of the 2 million inhabitants of Stockholm will have been infected by May 1.”

There are some reasons why NYC has it worse: higher population density, some hospitals getting overloaded, and more international travel. Some additional reasons are poverty, inadequate medical insurance, and air pollution -- the South Bronx is especially bad in asthma.

Denmark, Norway, and Finland are doing much better much better than Sweden or the US.

 

[lpetrich]

How China is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic it helped cause - Vox

The coronavirus pandemic that rages across the globe is a fire China helped light. And now, while Beijing grasps a fire hose with two hands, it’s also planting a boot on the world’s neck.

The Chinese government spent weeks denying and downplaying the severity of its growing coronavirus outbreak that eventually spread to the rest of the world. That obfuscation cost nations crucial time in preparing for and potentially curbing the damage of Covid-19. Some experts Vox spoke with believe President Xi Jinping’s regime should be held accountable for the more than 3 million infections and 200,000 deaths that have taken place worldwide.

But China isn’t letting the crisis go to waste. Instead of looking to make amends, Beijing is taking advantage of the chaos to pursue its long-term foreign policy goals more aggressively.

Between 1405 and 1433, China sent out its big Treasure Fleets for trading with other nations, visiting Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and East Africa. The voyagers brought back exotic animals like zebras and giraffes. They knew about Europe, but it mostly had such plebeian stuff as wool and wine. But some decades later, the Treasure Fleets were gone, a result of changes of policy of China's leadership. They didn't want to spend a lot of money on fleets that mainly brought back luxury goods and odd animals.

China ended up being vulnerable to European imperialists, and some of them took over some Chinese cities: Hong Kong and Macau. Mao Zedong led Communists to victory in 1949 there, with the former Chinese government fleeing to Taiwan. It was a disastrous excursion in some ways, with the Great Leap Forward being a Great Leap Backward and the strife of the Cultural Revolution. But after he died, his successors denounced some of his close associates as a villainous Gang of Four, thus moving away from Maoism without attacking Mao himself. His successors also made China into an enthusiastic capitalist roader, to use an old Maoist insult. But it was capitalism under the direction of the Chinese state and Communist Party -- and it still is.

China has been using the coronavirus to expand its international influence:

• Claiming disputed islands in the South China Sea
• Bullying Taiwan
• Bullying Hong Kong and cracking down on the pro-democracy movement there
• Offering debt relief for African countries, in exchange for lucrative national assets -- colonialism
• After the US stopped funding WHO, China stepped in, making it seem like a good international player
• Disinformation: insinuating that the COVID-19 virus originated outside of China
• Sending medical equipment and doctors, to seem like a hero instead of a villain

In short: make China great again, like the days of the Treasure Fleets.

(China's insisting that debt relief for African countries must come at a price)

But acting this way in the time of Africa’s need may sour once-budding Sino-African relations. It doesn’t help that racism against Africans in China has increased during the coronavirus crisis, leading many to be barred from hotels, restaurants, shops, and more.

Frank Nnabugwu, a Nigerian businessman who lives in the city of Guangzhou, said authorities wouldn’t let him return to his rented home. “The security guards said to us: ‘No foreigners are allowed,’” Nnabugwu told the Guardian on Monday. “I was upset, very upset. I slept on the street.”

(China's disinformation: the virus came from outside China...)

This is a classic Russian disinformation technique, Brandt said. Instead of coming up with a new theory based on facts, the regime repeats a false claim until it makes enough people doubt the truth.

“For China to be using official channels to promote conspiracy theories is new,” Brandt told me.

More Chinese bullying:

When the Australian government launched a global effort to open an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese officials threatened economic retaliation.

“Maybe the ordinary people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” Cheng Jingye, China’s ambassador to Australia, said in a recent interview with the Australian Financial Review. “The parents of the students would also think ... whether this is the best place to send their kids.”

But instead of caving to Beijing’s demands, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne spoke out. “We reject any suggestion that economic coercion is an appropriate response to a call for such an assessment, when what we need is global cooperation,” she said in a statement Monday.

Also lots of grumbling about the low quality of China-provided supplies. Something that won't help China's image.

 

[lpetrich]

Bolsonaro undermined Brazil’s coronavirus response. Now there’s a political crisis. - Vox - "The right-wing president downplayed the pandemic. It left him isolated politically — and then the real political turmoil started."

Several field hospitals are being built in Rio de Janeiro for people suffering from the disease.

That same day, on April 19, Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro joined a protest outside army headquarters in Brasilia, the country’s capital. There, protesters supported military intervention and demanded an end to lockdown measures state governors in the country have put in place — and which Bolsonaro opposes.

“I am here because I believe in you,” Bolsonaro shouted to the tightly packed protesters. “You are here because you believe in Brazil. We don’t want to negotiate anything; what we want is action for Brazil.”

During his speech to supporters, Bolsonaro, his face uncovered, coughed.

This split-screen moment highlights the strange situation in Brazil, where state governors and public health officials try to battle a deadly pandemic that is threatening to overwhelm the country’s health care system while the elected leader of the country downplays the severity of the virus and fights against their efforts at every turn.

Bolsonaro has referred to the coronavirus as the “little flu” and scoffed at social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of the virus, proclaiming in late March that “we’ll all die one day.” He’s called on citizens to go back to work, directly contradicting the orders of state governors and the recommendations of his public health experts.

Brazil is the most populous nation in Latin America, with 200 million people. But it now has some 68,000 known cases and 5,000 known deaths, with the actual number of cases likely 12 times higher.

Many of the poorer citizens of that nation live very close together and without access to adequate water and sanitation, and their jobs don't allow for much social distancing.

Reports suggest that the local gangs that control territory in major city favelas are also trying to enforce quarantine measures and distribute supplies, organized crime filling in for where Bolsonaro’s government is failing. Brazil’s government has taken measures, including approving a monthly stipend of 600 reals (a little more than $100) for three months for the unemployed and those who work in the informal economy.

Meaning that these criminal gangsters are outdoing President Bolsonaro.

In early March, as the coronavirus was taking hold around the world, Bolsonaro traveled to the United States to meet with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. At the time, both leaders had been questioning the seriousness of the virus, but the Mar-a-Lago meeting turned out to be something of a virus hot spot.

Bolsonaro’s top aide tested positive for the virus, as did other US officials who attended the session. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo told Fox News his father had tested positive but later claimed he didn’t say that. Then Bolsonaro released an official statement saying he’d tested negative and accused the media of spreading fake news.

He is very dismissive of the virus, and not just rhetorically.

Bolsonaro also flouts social distancing guidelines: He does not wear a mask when in public and still shakes hands with supporters — who, in gathering to greet the president, are often squeezed together.

His cavalier approach to the pandemic has put him in direct confrontation with state governors and other local leaders, some of whom used to count themselves among his allies.

 

[lpetrich]

In mid-April, Bolsonaro fired Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta for contradicting him about social distancing.

Despite many politicians and Brazil's Supreme Court going against him,

But Bolsonaro’s actions are still potentially dangerous. The president garners a fervent base of support, who tend to fully buy into Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and who are distrustful of the mainstream media. As Bolsonaro agitates against these lockdown measures, so do they. Bolsonaro supporters are protesting the lockdowns and decrying the dire health warnings as “fake news.” In São Paulo, Bolsonaro supporters blocked access to hospitals.

Seems very Trumpian.

“Bolsonaro seems to be betting that he has very few tools to solve the health crisis,” said Matthew Taylor, an associate professor of international studies at American University, “and so he’s better to bet on the economy.”

...
“I think he wants to be able to say, at the next election, ‘Those governors stopped you from working; it would have been a lot better if I had been able to prevail,’” Anthony Pereira, professor of Brazilian studies at King’s College in London, told me.

...
Bolsonaro’s battles over the coronavirus have left him isolated — and now an explosive political crisis is making it worse

The bolsonaristas, his most loyal followers, remain as devoted as ever. They include evangelical Christians, who ardently buy into Bolsonaro’s promises to restore traditional culture, and those with a nostalgia for the country’s authoritarian past, such as the protesters earlier this month who wanted the military to intervene on behalf of Bolsonaro to help overrule lockdown measures.

But the bolsonaristas alone did not bring Bolsonaro to power. He also needed buy-in from the establishment. So he brought in technocrats and those who embraced a more traditionally right-wing agenda, like smaller government and a more free market, liberal economic ideology.

Also very Trumpian. But that coalition is splintering.

Bolsonaro’s popular Justice Minister Sérgio Moro resigned after Bolsonaro fired the chief of the federal police, Maurício Valeixo, without a clear reason. And just like that, a political crisis threatened to overshadow both the public health and economic crises.

... Upon his departure, Moro delivered an exit speech, and he did not hold back. He accused Bolsonaro of trying to meddle in law enforcement, saying the president had fired Valeixo because he wanted “a person he could be in touch with personally, whom he could call directly, from whom he could receive information, intelligence reports.”

 

[Metaphor]

Coolangatta airport serves a population base of about 500,000 people. How the fuck does Port Hedland get a mention, but not Coolangatta??

Whoa nelly, calm down.

 

[Elixir]

SSDD
Still no "5 million tests a day".
Gilead's remdesivir looks like it might very well help open some critical care beds by speeding some recovery times, but no more than that.
The Trump Crime Family is giving away the treasury to Trump donors and allowing governors to force re-openings.
Armed terrorists are allowed in State houses...
This is going to be a horror for a long time.

 

[Elixir]

TESTS - TRUMP'S NIGHTMARE

With the Trump Crime Family abdicating all responsibility for dealing with the pandemic, it will be interesting to follow LA County and the State of Maryland.

LA County is offering free testing to all residents, with or without symptoms. Maryland's Governor, much to Trump's chagrin, has managed to obtain 500,000 test kits from S Korea and has hidden them away from Trump's thugs.

One or both of these should give us a window into "the rest of the iceberg" that Trump is desperately trying to keep hidden from view. I hope there will be plenty of demographic info attached to those test results so they can be reliably extrapolated to other parts of the Country...

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

With the Trump Crime Family abdicating all responsibility for dealing with the pandemic, it will be interesting to follow LA County and the State of Maryland.

LA County is offering free testing to all residents, with or without symptoms. Maryland's Governor, much to Trump's chagrin, has managed to obtain 500,000 test kits from S Korea and has hidden them away from Trump's thugs.

One or both of these should give us a window into "the rest of the iceberg" that Trump is desperately trying to keep hidden from view. I hope there will be plenty of demographic info attached to those test results so they can be reliably extrapolated to other parts of the Country...

I don't follow. If more people are infected than we know, that is beneficial, at least in the sense that the fatality rate of Covid-19 does drop. We are showing 2% which we know likely isn't accurate, even when assuming there are unrecorded deaths. We are probably fishing between 0.25 to 0.5%. The trouble simply is the pool is too big to contain. If the entire country gets it, that is still a lot of people dying. And we still aren't certain as to all of the damage it is doing to those that survive but needed hospitalization.

The concerning thing is the upward trend in 18 states that is going on at the moment. Whether that is tied to higher testing, I have no idea.

 

[Elixir]

With the Trump Crime Family abdicating all responsibility for dealing with the pandemic, it will be interesting to follow LA County and the State of Maryland.

LA County is offering free testing to all residents, with or without symptoms. Maryland's Governor, much to Trump's chagrin, has managed to obtain 500,000 test kits from S Korea and has hidden them away from Trump's thugs.

One or both of these should give us a window into "the rest of the iceberg" that Trump is desperately trying to keep hidden from view. I hope there will be plenty of demographic info attached to those test results so they can be reliably extrapolated to other parts of the Country...

I don't follow. If more people are infected than we know, that is beneficial, at least in the sense that the fatality rate of Covid-19 does drop. We are showing 2% which we know likely isn't accurate, even when assuming there are unrecorded deaths. We are probably fishing between 0.25 to 0.5%. The trouble simply is the pool is too big to contain. If the entire country gets it, that is still a lot of people dying. And we still aren't certain as to all of the damage it is doing to those that survive but needed hospitalization.

The concerning thing is the upward trend in 18 states that is going on at the moment. Whether that is tied to higher testing, I have no idea.

The pool IS too big to contain, as long as "peeing sections" are allowed. The best thing that can come out of true broad-based testing would be an awareness of that fact. There are a lot of "fuzzy facts" associated with antibodies, re-infections, times of contagiousness etc. and maybe some of that will come clearer as well.

If the virus is currently infecting 3% of the population (vs about 0.3% known) then the current 6% fatality rate (63k deaths from 1m cases) might actually be as low as 0.6%, but that still means that if it eventually spreads to 10% of the population without any mitigation of the mortality rate, about 200,000 people will die. And if it should spread to half the population... it's pretty ugly, even without considering non-lethal adverse health effects. No wonder the Trump Crime Family are feeling the heat.

The Big Reveal won't come for a couple of years when average lifespan expectancy stats come to light.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nuts, I tangled my numbers up. Yeah, 6% based on the on going numbers, which puts it likely at 0.5% or higher. Which is still a lot of people!

 

[ronburgundy]

If the virus is currently infecting 3% of the(vs about 0.3% known) then the current 6% fatality rate (63k deaths from 1m cases) might actually be as low as 0.6%.

Nuts, I tangled my numbers up. Yeah, 6% based on the on going numbers, which puts it likely at 0.5% or higher. Which is still a lot of people!

So, this is a minor point in your posts, but a major one in discussions more generally that is being ignored virtually every discussion of death rates. In fact, I've never heard it mentioned, except here by myself. The current fatality rate even when limited to known cases is higher than everyone is saying, b/c no one is accounting for the time-lag between diagnosis and death. Three related things we know for certain are that dying takes time, the vast majority of COVID diagnoses are being made days and weeks prior to death, and that if no new cases emerged after today existing cases would continue to die for weeks if not months.

What that means that people diagnosed too recently to have had time to die yet shouldn't be counted among the current cases when computing death rate. Now, we don't know who these people are, so the next best thing is to use an estimate of the median time-lag from diagnosis to death and then use the #of total cases that had been diagnosed by that day. I wish I could find something about that lag, but 1 week would seem like a conservative estimate. That would mean the estimated death rate is 64k / 886k = 7.2%. If the lag is more like 2 weeks, the the death rate is 9.4%. Even though we all know that is well high of the true population death rate, it matters for all discussions where it's being used as an anchor from which we adjust to the population. It also matters from that standpoint of the prognosis of those unfortunate enough to be diagnosed.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If the virus is currently infecting 3% of the(vs about 0.3% known) then the current 6% fatality rate (63k deaths from 1m cases) might actually be as low as 0.6%.

Nuts, I tangled my numbers up. Yeah, 6% based on the on going numbers, which puts it likely at 0.5% or higher. Which is still a lot of people!

So, this is a minor point in your posts, but a major one in discussions more generally that is being ignored virtually every discussion of death rates. In fact, I've never heard it mentioned, except here by myself. The current fatality rate even when limited to known cases is higher than everyone is saying, b/c no one is accounting for the time-lag between diagnosis and death. Three related things we know for certain are that dying takes time, the vast majority of COVID diagnoses are being made days and weeks prior to death, and that if no new cases emerged after today existing cases would continue to die for weeks if not months.

This is very much true. There are two actual problems.

1) knowing every COVID-19 related death
2) potential long-term health complications or eventually death after having initially "survived" COVID-19.

The problem with these two things is they simply aren't quantifiable and I find it easier to argue saving 500,000 to 3,000,000 definite lives verses the 1 to 20+ million overall lives.

Why in the fuck do I have to even argue that saving half a million lives is important?

 

[ronburgundy]

So, this is a minor point in your posts, but a major one in discussions more generally that is being ignored virtually every discussion of death rates. In fact, I've never heard it mentioned, except here by myself. The current fatality rate even when limited to known cases is higher than everyone is saying, b/c no one is accounting for the time-lag between diagnosis and death. Three related things we know for certain are that dying takes time, the vast majority of COVID diagnoses are being made days and weeks prior to death, and that if no new cases emerged after today existing cases would continue to die for weeks if not months.

This is very much true. There are two actual problems.

1) knowing every COVID-19 related death
2) potential long-term health complications or eventually death after having initially "survived" COVID-19.

The problem with these two things is they simply aren't quantifiable and I find it easier to argue saving 500,000 to 3,000,000 definite lives verses the 1 to 20+ million overall lives.

Why in the fuck do I have to even argue that saving half a million lives is important?

True, but it matters in attempts to refute those making seasonal flu comparisons. And if we're going to use the numbers we have (official cases and deaths), then we should use those numbers properly and choosing today's number of cases definitely makes no sense. So, we need to pick a more scientifically plausible prior day to use as the denominator. That data on the median time lag exists somewhere, it would be useful to know it, but until we do, assuming 7 days is more reasonable than assuming 0 days.

 

[marc]

Is there a way on that worldometers site to see earlier breakdowns? They have a breakdown by state, and just saw that Georgia had over 900 new cases today, with 613 yesterday. Wouldn't mind seeing the trend over the past week, and the next week without having to screen grab the chart every day.

 

[bilby]

It's very difficult to estimate a case fatality rate, largely because we don't know how many cases are unrecorded.

But 0.5% seems to me to be too low - New York City sets an unquestionable lower bound on CFR. We have an official death toll, and we know from excess deaths data that this underestimates fatalities. And we have an upper bound on the number of cases, taken by assuming that every single NYC resident has had the disease (we know this overestimates the number of cases).

So dividing NYC fatalities by NYC population gives us the absolute lowest possible CFR (with the actual CFR likely considerably higher).

NYC Covid deaths: 13,000
NYC Population: 8.4 million

Minimum bound for CFR: 0.15%


Any estimate of fatality rate that is lower than this must be wrong. However the actual CFR is likely at least an order of magnitude higher than this, as many NYC residents have yet to contract the disease.

 

[Jokodo]

It's very difficult to estimate a case fatality rate, largely because we don't know how many cases are unrecorded.

But 0.5% seems to me to be too low - New York City sets an unquestionable lower bound on CFR. We have an official death toll, and we know from excess deaths data that this underestimates fatalities. And we have an upper bound on the number of cases, taken by assuming that every single NYC resident has had the disease (we know this overestimates the number of cases).

So dividing NYC fatalities by NYC population gives us the absolute lowest possible CFR (with the actual CFR likely considerably higher).

NYC Covid deaths: 13,000
NYC Population: 8.4 million

Minimum bound for CFR: 0.15%


Any estimate of fatality rate that is lower than this must be wrong. However the actual CFR is likely at least an order of magnitude higher than this, as many NYC residents have yet to contract the disease.

And unfortunately, many who have already contracted it game yet to die.

Also, including excess deaths not officially attributed - and we can safely assume most of them are undetected covid cases - New York City already has around 20k deaths and this a population level fatality rate in the region of 0.24%.

There had been a study bases in antibody tests estimating 20% of NYC's population had contracted the disease. 5x0.24%, plus some allowance for already infected people yet to die, would our us in the region of 1.5%

But then again, data from South Korea, Germany and Iceland seems to suggest a CFR in the region of 0.5-0.7% when including asymptomatic cases.