Posted on 04/01/2020 8:02:14 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Tuesday evening’s Coronavirus Task Force update was especially compelling in many ways. It was a very somber event, during which President Donald Trump, Vice President and Task Force leader Mike Pence and doctors Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci informed the nation about the reasons behind their current messaging that America should expect somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people to die from the Wuhan Virus, COVID-19.
It went on for more than 2 hours, as the single most accessible President in modern U.S. history and the Task Force members addressed every question the corrupt press corps wanted to ask. At the end, the President told the reporters that “it was an honor to be here with you today” and it seemed as if he actually meant it.
We watched every moment of it in our home, and felt like it had been an honor to do so. Here is a list of some of the more interesting aspects of the event:
– The press corps was actually fairly well-behaved. – Someone had obviously dressed down both Jim Acosta and Yamichi Alcindor, the two most idiotic and preening members of the White House press corps. Both were chastened and both asked questions that were actually somewhat on-point for the first time in memory.
– President Trump called on Acosta five separate times. – He did that despite the fact that the scumbags who run CNN chose to not air the President’s opening remarks, which contained the most important information for the public to understand. Why Trump continues to recognize anyone from what is nothing more than a rank propaganda outlet defies all understanding or logic. Enough.
– The President ignored Alcindor until the final 10 minutes. – When he called on her, she posed her questions politely and without her normal rancor and accusatory tone. She had obviously been warned, either by he White House staff, or by her bosses at PBS.
– The press can’t understand the model. – The most amusing part of the event was watching as the dimwitted members of the press asked question after question of Birx and Fauci in a vain effort to actually grasp what they were being told. They never really did figure it out.
– Birx and Fauci were presenting a worst-case scenario. – Birx especially kept subtly pointing this out. During at least three different answers to dumb questions, she basically stated that the model they are using takes what is currently happening in New York and New Jersey and assumes through extrapolation that every other state in the nation will experience the same progression curve with this virus. By doing that, this model – which just 2 weeks ago projected 1 million to 2.2 million U.S. deaths from the Wuhan Virus – is able to get to its current projection of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. As both Birx and Fauci pointed out, statistical models are only as good as their data and assumptions, and this one is based on very bad assumptions.
– This method is absurdly overstating the most likely outcome. – Both New York and New Jersey are densely-populated coastal states whose major airports received huge portions of the 10,000 China natives who flew into this country during November through January every damn day while the ChiCom government was lying about the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan Province, and how contagious the virus truly is. In addition, New York City was especially slow in responding to the outbreak, with Marxist Mayor Bill de Blasio still advising his citizens to go about their normal lives as late as March 10. The reality of our country is that virtually no other state is going to have anything remotely close to the experience in New York and New Jersey.
– Washington and California are more relevant. – Both of these coastal states were also receiving thousands of travelers from China every day throughout that early period. Both were also early centers for the outbreak. Yet, because both states are much less densely populated than New York and New Jersey, and because their state and big-city leaders responded much more quickly and forcefully than de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo, their curves are vastly lower than their East Coast counterparts. Washington’s curve already even appears to have peaked. Geographically and demographically, these two states look far more like the rest of the country than New York and New Jersey.
– Birx and Fauci are going to have some real explaining to do in the future. – When we get to the end of April and the numbers of actual U.S. deaths and infections turn to have been a small fraction of what these two alarmist doctors laid out for the nation on Tuesday, millions of Americans, while relieved at the lower numbers, are going to demand a real explanation. Sadly, just as they were yesterday, the White House press corps members will still be too confused and dim to even ask the right questions on behalf of the country.
– The mitigation strategy is still valid and should be heeded. – All the alarmist overstatement aside, this is still a very deadly virus and the strategy of taking social actions to contain it is valid. Don’t kid yourselves otherwise, especially if you fall into the most vulnerable categories. Stay at home, wash your hands and stay 6 feet away from literally everybody when you have to go out for groceries.
– Mike Pence is coming into his own. – I’ve never been all that impressed with Vice President Mike Pence. I find him to be wooden, boring and his speaking style to be artificial, stilted and largely insincere. But we all need to recognize the tremendous public service this man has done in leading this Task Force. By every account, he has worked tirelessly to ensure the best outcome possible for our country, and he has become a more imposing and impressive presence at these daily briefings with each passing day. Before yesterday’s briefing, during which he twice took charge of the process, I have never seen him as a potential future president. Now, I do.
Good for him, and good for the country.
Stay safe.
That is all.
It had better get going if its going to reach 200 thousand deaths. Maybe in a year or three and I doubt that.
I would fire those two. Get then to hell out of there.
What's amusing is that now that Acosta is getting face time he will be complaining that CNN is not showing him in real time.
DeBlasio and Cuomo will be the model of what NOT to do.
If Trump gets through this without people dying in New York City hospital halls, he will have won.
Every region in the US will be different. NYC will be the worst.
Yes. The idea that Cuomo will replace Biden as the Dem nominee is losing traction, in my opinion. Cuomo really isn’t handling this especially well.
THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!
Good summary. I watch every daily press briefing twice—once live in afternoon (I’m Pacific time—I listen to it while I work) and then again at night with my family after we are all done with our teleworking and online learning (thank God all 4 of us are blessed/lucky to be able to do this).
Tuesdays was informative—they all are—and very long! Trump said he’d take questions all night if needed.
“statistical models are only as good as their data and assumptions, and this one is based on very bad assumptions.”
“Bracketing” is an important concept here. Lacking good data, you work with what you have to identify how good/bad it could possibly be, what the absolute maximum & minimum values are.
Given the bad data available, and reasonable predictions, we’re looking at 200,000 max dead. Plan accordingly, figure a likely starting goal, work the standard deviations from there knowing it won’t get worse than 200k.
The task force needs to provide estimates from more than just one model. This is what they do with hurricane tracking estimates and it would help give credibility to their analysis. Where are the models from the US government agencies like the intelligence and health agencies? They seem to be AWOL or clueless which is worse. The U of Wash model may be good but it is one set of assumptions taken from the Internet.
The figures presented are based on the assumptions that may be invalid. First, they require optimized social separation for the duration in all urban areas. That may be optimistic. Second, they don’t reflect some technological breakthrough like the studies of HCQ that could significantly reduce the death rates. This is like estimating the US casualties for an invasion of Japan in WWII without accounting for the atomic bomb.
they said in two weeks at the peak we would have 100000 deaths. Right now that is 4200 per day. somebody better start dying cause it does take a while to die.
I think the idea that Cuomo would or should replace Biden said a lot more about Biden’s support than it does about Cuomo.
Thanks for the synopsis!!
I agree with that. I think most recognize that Biden just can’t be their nominee. They need to find a replacement and they don’t really have someone online. I’ve been know to express concern about Oprah, Michelle or Hillary but I’m not sure any of those are a realistic threat. But who else can they pick? Cuomo was a shiny new thing for a little while but I think he’s done. So they need to replace Biden and they don’t have a name.
We are destroying ourselves over a bad flu.
“Vice President Mike Pence. I find him to be wooden, boring and his speaking style to be artificial, stilted “
A good man, and we’re lucky to have him as VP, but . ..
Gotta look into who was the dialect coach for Luke Wilson in “Idiocracy”. Joe Bauers sounds just like our Veep; cadence, intonation and overall delivery.
“Birx and Fauci are going to have some real explaining to do in the future”
That’s absolutely right.
Both of the applied biological technicians known as “MDs” have no understanding of the statistics they are slinging around. Babbling things like “its a logarithm” when they referring to a simplistic plot type shows they have a superficial understanding of the noise they are pushing.
And much of what they are saying is OBE. They downplayed the Hydroxychloroquine therapy because they didn’t have the usual 2 to 6 year agonizing trials that FDA goes through but are now forced to retreat as others just simply did it and got decent results.
Both of them are medical bureaucrats hedging their statements for liability. If we want an early solution we absolve the medical world of that liability in this case.
As for Debbie Birx, Good Girl from small town college Pennsylvania, maybe someone could ask her why she was the pushing the meme that AIDS could be transmitted by hetero sex back in the early ‘80s when every line Doc knew it was due to mixing blood, and there’s only one common way you do that: ask any Bondage Boy from the Castro.
The AIDS epidemic that she and the other social activists pushed never materialized since it had no basis in actual understanding of the virus.
She’s doing the same thing now: scaring the crap out of people with wild worst case claims based on trivial math and no constraints like possible therapies impacting those numbers.
She should stick to bugology. Math and real world outcomes are not her forte.
As for Fauci, he’s merely a government chameleon, a court jester, always sucking up to the guy in charge to keep his position. He has nothing useful to say.
DB, I think New York/New Jersey still don’t understand, or aren’t willing to follow, the fundamentals of social distancing. EX: subways. Of course, that’s true of Seattle, also. Still running buses.
Dr Deborah Birx tried repeatedly to explain that the model assumes all our big cities will look like New York and she doesn’t think that will happen IF people practice social distancing (and wear masks).
Masks I think are the key, when out and about wear a mask, not to protect you but to protest those around you.
We’ll know a lot more in three weeks.
It’s not Fauci and Birx coming up with the numbers.
They mentioned during the presser last night that the models are built with input from a whole bunch of leading think tanks and universities, including Harvard, U of Washington and a bunch of others I don’t remember.
Point is..these are not “Fauci and Birx’s numbers”..they’ve - rightly or wrongly - been put together with input from a LOT of different (supposedly smart, educated) people.
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