caulfield12

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Hasn’t been updated for roughly six hours, fwiw...Easter?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-governor-vows-issue-executive-185600728.html And thus, it begins. We can start tracking the anticipated uptick in Texas and compare rates to the rest of the states. Next up, Florida. Waiting for the excuse November 4th that he accidentally wiped out 10% of reliable voters over age 60. https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-neighbour-reports-commuting-nhs-worker-180537924.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html Now it all makes sense. The most authoritative account so far of what went wrong dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s. Makes the response to the Navarro warning all the more pathetic, because not only did he know about it, Trump was pissed it was so alarmist and had been put down on paper to create a trail. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/politics/social-distancing-us-economy-covid-politics/index.html A CNN poll last week showed most want to hold the line. Fully 80% fear the worst of the outbreak lies ahead; 60% express discomfort with resuming regular routines if current White House guidelines expire on April 30. Yet underlying those figures lies a sharp partisan divide. More than twice as many Republicans (53%) say they could comfortably resume their regular routines as Democrats (23%). Republican impatience, amplified by conservative media outlets, creates a feedback loop inhibiting the consistent national response the White House coronavirus task force calls necessary to roll back the threat. GOP elected officials, business executives and religious figures eager for church services again cast coronavirus restrictions as unnecessarily "draconian," as Attorney General William Barr put it last week.

Look at the Haiti hurricane. It was something of a recent tradition for presidents of the past to bring back former leaders, like Bush and Clinton in that situation. Jimmy Carter, for example, is the president that almost every American can respect equally for all his worldwide humanitarian contributions since 1980. But our president would prefer to ask Ivanka and Jared Kushner than those three or Obama. Even if it’s not a president of the opposing party. Of course, that leaves the Bush family, another open political wound. Or McCain and Romney, more grudges that are impossible to heal for the Republican Party itself until November 4th at the earliest. We’re kind of stuck with the likes of Sanders, Biden and Trump (suspended animation)...waiting for that next generation of leaders to carry the torch. It’s not inconceivable to imagine a future far right Trump wing, everyone in the middle (30-40%) and then what’s left of the progressive movement (AOC) splitting the country into three defined factions. And maybe I’m completely off...and the national dissatisfaction over this pandemic response will have the same practical effect of burying the Bush Era of compassionate conservatism mixed with the military industrial complex into another dustbin of history. But that would be too easy.

If we go along with the assumptions many are currently making about China....that 42,000 died here instead of 3300ish, then you would have roughly 12x the rate of 3%, which would be 36%. That’s preposterous, right? So then it has to be the lack of testing...keeping in mind many people in countries around the world are not being credited as Covid-19 deaths. Even Dr. Birx is arguing the US numbers are underestimating it. It’s just hard to believe it’s any lower than 2-3% looking at those numbers in Europe. I guess there really needs to be two numbers. Those who actually get sick, test positive and ultimately recover...versus the hundred thousands who recover on their own and/or are asymptomatic. What is the ICU admittance rate for the seasonal flu? For COVID-19, it has pretty consistently been running at 12-20% around the entire world. Estimates suggest that up to 10% of patients (already) hospitalized with influenza will be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). But more than half (51%) of patients diagnosed with either influenza A (higher rate of admission) or B who were admitted to the hospital also had cardiovascular disease. It’s almost impossible to sort out and isolate because of the preexisting conditions and co-morbidities. That’s not even considering the permanent lung damage many are being left with...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3050327/coronavirus-still-stumps-experts-when-human-carrier-turns-infectious Article discussing possibility of asymptomatic transmission on February 12th. Find it pretty disconcerting that the head of HHS (compared to GA governor) would be almost two full weeks behind the mainstream press...or even this thread if we went back to February and looked for the first discussions about it. But that’s one of the biggest questions for WHO and China. Why were they STILL reporting in mid January that there was no person-to-person transmission? Trying to prevent fear or panic is understandable...but not when you are lying and then still send out 5 million people across China (Chinese New Year) and the world on trains, planes and buses. Most likely, local authorities were attempting to bury the story as long as possible...but then every epidemiologist would have to know the rate of spread/transmission wouldn’t allow for any other rational explanation known to modern science. Seems that bipartisan meetings are going to be delayed until 2021 (shocking, right?) https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/11/politics/new-york-times-coronavirus-trump-administration/index.html According to the report, Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services, convened the White House coronavirus task force on February 21. During his meeting, the group conducted a mock-up exercise of the pandemic. It predicted 110 million infections, 7.7 million hospitalizations and 586,000 deaths. As a result, the group "concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation's economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans." However, it would take more than three weeks for Trump to enact social distancing guidelines on March 16. Two days after that meeting Kadlec learned of human-to-human transmission from asymptomatic individuals, the Times report states. But instead of immediately implementing mitigation steps, the President's focus turned to messaging. .

https://www.yahoo.com/news/keep-workers-lay-them-off-141821376.html But some of the workers have said they would rather stay on unemployment or be laid off (because of the extra $600/week.) “If you don’t feel comfortable leaving your house in a pandemic, I am not going to push you. That’s not fair,” Blondy said. “But I might not have work for you in the future.” She said she wished the unemployment system were clearer about how to handle situations like these. Can employees refuse work? Does she have to challenge their unemployment claim — something she does not want to do? Can it be considered fraud if she doesn’t? A spokeswoman for the Department of Labor said Wednesday that states could interpret their own laws and that employers were not responsible for challenging unemployment claims. But in general, “individuals that quit without good cause or refuse suitable offers of employment are not eligible for benefits.”

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/04/11/andrew-yang-joe-biden-trump-attack-ad-gary-locke-ebof-bts-vpx.cnn Earlier in this thread, there was a worthwhile discussion of trying to take the high road, not politicizing things...but ads like this come directly out of the 1988 playbook. It’s beneath the office of the Presidency to resort to transforming an Asian-American into a nefarious “foreign agent.” While this type of crap happened after Pearl Harbor (concentration camps like Manzanar) ...that was almost 80 years ago now. There’s simply no excuse for it today. Worst of all, it’s simply another passing along of the buck in an interminable series of them, an attempted distraction, and shirking of any responsibility for the Federal government’s heretofore pathetic response to Covid-19.

That’s because Imperial and everyone else is working off 3-5 different models depending on the amount of mitigation/suppression. That was their worst case scenario for the UK, and it made the headlines because of the eye popping numbers, but they had other models being published looking at a full range of scenarios. Just like we originally had 1.6-2.2 million predicted deaths with no social distancing (see UK original response), then revised down to 100-240,000k, then 86k and finally now into the low 60’s. Each day keeps changing and updating the various scenarios. IHME will start putting out forecasts next week for what happens in the case of various openings of the country beginning in May. The most important point is that things will look exactly like they do this Friday through Monday (peak deaths) sometime in July if they reopen May 1st. Trump administration shuttered pandemic monitoring program, then scrambled to extend it https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/politics/trump-usaid-prevent-program-coronavirus/index.html

For other large states – such as Florida and Texas – the worst is expected to come later. on April 27 and 28 respectively. Some context: While it’s unclear when exactly the state (NY) expects to return to normal, lifting social distancing measures too soon – before the peak, for example – could reignite transmission of the virus and cost lives. The current version of the IHME model says it expects social distancing until the end of May, and assumes that states will enact other measures – such as mass screening and contact tracing – that will prevent any resurgence of the virus. The institute previously told CNN that the projections assumed social distancing until August, as the model’s FAQ had stated in now-deleted language. But on Thursday, the institute’s director, Chris Murray, said that was not actually the case – despite what a professor behind the model and an institute spokesperson had both said earlier. cnn.com

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/coronavirus-pandemic-neil-ferguson-did-not-walk-back-covid-19-predictions/

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-stay-at-home-order-social-distancing-summer#nt=liF1promoSmall-7030col2-7030col1-main LA County extends social distancing/stay at home until May 15th. Los Angeles County health officials warned Friday that the region needs to significantly increase social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus and that stay-at-home restrictions could remain into the summer. Even with the dramatic social distancing the county is now seeing, officials forecast that up to 30% of residents could be infected by mid-summer without more behavioral changes, such as reducing shopping trips. As a result, Los Angeles County is extending the stay-at-home order for California’s most populous county through at least May 15. Officials could not provide a definitive answer as to when the stay-at-home order will ease.

Chris Murray from UWash (the national model Trump admin has been relying on) just stated that if the social distancing doesn’t go at least through the end of May/early June...the peak numbers we are experiencing these four days will return again with a vengeance in July. CA, FL, TX, PA still to come...Detroit is nearing, along with New Orleans and Chicago, but then you have the DC area, Baltimore, Houston, Philly, etc. His model has blipped back up about 1,000 in the last 24-36 hours to 61500. Of course, that model is also based on the expectation of continued stay at home for the next two months. Going from 200-240,000 to 100k to 60k in the span of a week is now turning into a trap. Because it means that putting everyone back to work again May 1st makes it patently obvious we’ve made the decision to kill another 40,000-80,000 Americans in order for Trump to get his way with the economy...and he’s not going to be able to force every individual state or governor to relax their rules without creating one Constitutional showdown after another. I can just see the Fox headlines now. “Those scaredy-cat Dem governors and mayors don’t love their country. They’d all rather we don’t go back to work because they want to destroy the economy and prevent President Trump from being re-elected. The cure is worse than the illness itself blah blah blah.” US now only 183 deaths behind Italy...at least we’re not passing them on “Resurrection Sunday,” both those will be the headlines for every Easter newspaper carrying over from Saturday’s news.

Was that a tweet or direct quote? Trying to figure out if the TOO/TO grammatical error was intentional assumption or interpretation...of how Trump makes so many mistakes, because that makes the quote even rougher in conjunction with the 5th grade science take. Things are really going to get testy well before we even get to May 1st... LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said the state will require people who participate in mass gatherings this weekend to quarantine for 14 days. In his Friday press briefing, Beshear said the state will record the license plates of any people at a mass gathering, including in-person church services this weekend, and give the information to local health departments, who will order people to quarantine for 14 days. https://www.whas11.com/article/news/local/kentucky-mass-gathering-quarantine-in-person-church-service/417-378a3d5e-849b-4b0a-8fb7-aee72ceeb60a

Trace/Track/Target Test Treat Three T’s approach to opening up the economy seems to be taking hold. Tracing required hundreds of thousands doing that super-challenging work here in one concentrated population center, Hubei Province. In the US, this is going to require a nationalized approach from severely underfunded public health departments, one of the weakest areas of current health care networks due to a series of cutbacks over the course of many years...but those beleaguered civil servants and lots and lots of volunteers with at least some basic training.

The worst case scenario is we just gifted GM $14,000 per unit for about 30,000 new ventilators that will go into the Federal stockpile. Let’s hope they don’t have to use most of them when they’re delivered in June and late summer. There’s just no reason not to throw the money we need to into fixing these testing problems...because you have a current scenario where at least 60% of America doesn’t feel confident enough to go back to work. It would cost hundreds of billions, if not trillions...if they rush back and then experience second and third wave outbreaks where majorities of the workforce have to go back home.

That middle paragraph is unlikely to happen if Trump retains office...in fact, quite the opposite. As long as the primary system appeals to or attracts only the most committed party members on both sides, you’re going to see extremism prevail. Look at AOC knocking out Crowley with something like 7,000 votes. The middle has to become more active, and they need to change their messaging to a more hopeful/aspirational tone in order to motivate people to get involved. No more of the same establishment, status quo, neo-liberal bromides. You can be pragmatic and realistic while developing new ideas. Look at Yang’s campaign, for example. Even if Biden wins, there’s going to be a huge battle over the future direction of the WHO...either you reform it, or start an altogether different entity. Even then, let’s say you exclude Russia, Iran and China but somehow manage to get India, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea mostly on board...what does that actually accomplish? What about the Middle East and Africa? We talk about political polarization in the US, but Europe is going to have to make a choice at some point between an American and Chinese-led version of the future in terms of technology, the use of surveillance, press and internet freedoms, shared scientific research and a whole range of things that are unresolved. Who currently possesses the credibility to get that done and bring the entire world together in one common cause? Europe is weakened...the Chinese economy is in shambles and America has to sort its own problems out first.

Germany is still putting the US to shame. We can’t get the Covid rollout right, and now we’re going to introduce the antibody one in another week? Without nearly enough reagents to pull this off...and with every country in the world fighting over the same materials? Science would argue you’d need to have those antibody tests for roughly 900,000 (10% of population) in the NYC area alone, and they don’t have close to those numbers. No way private labs can keep up with this.

Even here, you’re getting a really conservative editorial thrust from WSJ, center left from Economist, center left from WaPo and pretty much down the middle with the Tribune. NY Times has a variety of opinion columnists, but they’re also center left editorially. In general, reading detailed articles from reporters is the best, and the Times is still the gold standard there. To me, the Tribune and LA Times have become virtually indistinguishable (well, there’s an obvious reason there.) I try to catch BBC and Al Jazeera and anything from outside the States that’s not Chinese-centric.

Even if you listen to Washington Journal on C-Span for three hours every morning, you’re simply going to absorb biased opinions from BOTH sides of the spectrum in roughly equal number, but an infinitesimal number of objective or at least nuanced opinions.

For example, “the A team comes in Monday morning, the B team comes in Monday afternoon, and then the C team comes in Tuesday and the D team comes in Tuesday afternoon,” he told Yahoo Finance’s “On the Move.” Gary Cohn says the key is to isolate the teams from each other so “the Monday crowd and Tuesday crowd never cross, because if someone gets sick in the A and B crowd, we don’t want them to contaminate the C and D crowd.” The success of this strategy, however, depends on regular testing for COVID-19. “If we don’t have testing when someone starts feeling ill and we don’t know what group to isolate, we’re going to end up having to isolate everyone again,” Cohn added. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/gary-cohn-restarting-economy-after-coronavirus-not-going-to-be-an-overnight-big-bang-204735941.html This is the strategy they used with essential office workers returning over the last month here in Wuhan. Ongoing staggered rotations. Even VP Pence now realizes there’s not going to be one big grand reopening without mass-scale testing. Otoh, “one prominent voice pushing for a return to normalcy, according to The Washington Post, is the vice president’s chief of staff, who is not a medical professional.” Iceland's 10% figure, confirmed by Stefansson, is not about bragging rights. Among the Nordic nation's findings: about half of its citizenry at any given time who have coronavirus but don't know it, will be asymptomatic – a large percentage many experts studying the virus have suspected, but have had little firm data to corroborate. "That's a bit scary," said Stefansson, who noted that Iceland is testing its citizens at random by selecting names out of the country's main telephone directory, another large-scale testing strategy that has not been adopted elsewhere. "They could be spreading it and not knowing it," he said. https://www.yahoo.com/news/iceland-tested-more-population-coronavirus-081244404.html Which means we would have to test at least 32 million Americans to get to 10%.

16,691 vs. 18,279 We are now poised to pass Italy over the weekend for most deaths related to COVID-19, but certainly not the highest mortality rates.

The race was always going to be close from an electoral college standpoint...as most have been since 2000. National polls having Clinton up 2-4% are perfectly understandable looking at the popular vote. Bill Clinton himself was already worrying the last two weeks that Wisconsin had been totally taken for granted and they tried to save MI and PA in the last week but it was too late to reverse the late changing tide (Comey on server/emails.) It was certainly an upset and a shock to many...and the amazing leveraging of limited ad dollars through social and free media, but it also wasn’t reinventing the wheel. I was more upset that HRC was the best candidate we could come up with, and many certainly feel similarly this cycle. Not sure when this “us vs. them” mentality will be overcome...it’s going to take more than a global pandemic IMO.

Increasing the rate burials by a factor of 7x isn’t necessarily the sign of a genocidal apocalypse, but is certainly alarming and shows the scale of the problem. Just like 42,500 urns here in Wuhan would be 12,500 more (30000 the number of expected natural deaths over that time frame) than would be needed if you stopped all burials/funerals in a city larger than NYC for almost 70 days...and then had them altogether over a 3-5 day period. One is an increase of approximately 33%, the other 700%. Statistics!!!

I’m not even sure that would have happened as quickly as it did without the twin shocks of the NBA and NCAA tourney cancellations that week of conference tourney play, with Rudy Gobert/Jazz being the first domino to fall. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-cdc-fda-red-tape-invs/index.html (CNN) A weeks-long testing delay that effectively blinded public health officials to the spread of the coronavirus in the US might have been avoided had federal agencies fully enacted their own plan to ramp up testing during a national health crisis. The plan, which is spelled out in an April 2018 agreement between the Centers for Disease Control and three of the biggest associations involved in lab testing, called for boosting the capacity of public health labs, bringing big commercial labs into the testing process early, and making sure labs would have whatever they needed to mount a rapid, large-scale response. But over January and February, agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services not only failed to make early use of the hundreds of labs across the United States, they enforced regulatory roadblocks that prevented non-government labs from assisting, according to documents obtained by CNN, and interviews with 14 scientists and physicians at individual laboratories and national laboratory associations.

The quintessential beating heart of a Romney Republican, the WSJ, is now LSM? Because if that paper is not center right, I don’t know what is...just Breitbart and the National Review, Washington Times, etc. I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s, a Republican meant something between William F. Buckley and George Will/Bill Kristol. With the current monetary policy of creating seemingly endless amounts of IOU’s, not sure what is still recognizable beyond abortion and gun rights.