Posted on 04/13/2020 9:20:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Coronavirus politics is a rare case of populist interests conflicting with Trump’s interests. Normally when that happens, righties side with Trump. When he clashes with Iran, for instance, principled nationalists like Tucker Carlson might scold him for succumbing to the interventionists in his orbit but most Republicans think it’s fine because it shows strength. In the present case, though, populists’ suspicion of experts is leading some to grasp for arguments that the pandemic isn’t as bad as scientists say even though implicitly that’s a knock on Trump for going along with those same experts (for now). Here we have Bennett noting that the projected 60,000 deaths from coronavirus are about how many there are in a bad flu season. Trump let the egghead scientists talk him into shutting down the economy over that? Watch, then read on.
Fox News contributor Bill Bennett compares coronavirus to the flu, claiming that "this was not and is not a pandemic." pic.twitter.com/Q4oBcXKISV
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 13, 2020
I can’t believe we’re a month into this, staring at graphs that look like this, and people like him are still trying to shoehorn COVID-19 into templates for the good ol’ flu. Comparing flu deaths during normal times to coronavirus deaths during a shutdown of the global economy to limit transmission is so glaring a case of comparing apples to oranges that an educated person can’t possibly do it in good faith. It’s like holding a three-point contest where one player shoots from normal range and the other shoots from under his own basket on the other end of the court, and they hit the same number of shots, and coming away thinking, “I guess they’re equally good shooters.”
Let me remind you of what fever rates look like right now in the United States via the Kinsa “health weather” map:
The blue line is the fever rate during normal times, when the flu dominates. The orange line represents the fever rate right now thanks to historic, unprecedented, economy-crushing measures of social distancing aimed at slowing coronavirus. Despite driving that orange line down about as close to zero as it can realistically get, we’re still momentarily seeing 2,000 deaths from COVID-19 per day in the United States from infections that (likely mostly) originated during the red “atypical” period in the graph. I’d be curious to see a model of what would happen to the flu if we shut down the economy and stayed locked indoors for a month or two every winter during flu season. How far would flu deaths fall every year? Ninety percent, maybe?
There’s no way Bennett doesn’t see that flaw in his argument. He has to be pandering willfully to the Fox audience, deliberately misinforming them in order to score a point on experts like Fauci.
Pay attention to the numbers he gives in the clip too. He says at one point that there’s a “two-tenths of one percent chance that you’re going to get” COVID-19. I don’t know where he heard that. Best estimates are that two to five percent of the country has *already* gotten it and fans of the Oxford model of the disease suspect the share is much higher than that (with many more cases being asymptomatic). Is he … calculating based on the number of confirmed cases (551,826) relative to the total U.S. population (330 million)? That’s around 0.2 percent, but everyone understands that the number of confirmed cases is almost meaningless. There are many, many undetected infections out there that aren’t being accounted for in testing, and that rate of 0.2 percent is obviously a moving target, not a constant. The only reason it’s as low as it is right now is because the country has been social distancing for a month. Send everyone back to work tomorrow and everyone’s odds of getting infected will begin to take off.
And by the way, no, it’s not just very old people who are at risk:
Starting at age 45, if you’re sick enough to need to go to the hospital, your odds of dying are around one in 10.
And all of this assumes that the official death toll from COVID-19 accurately captures everyone who’s died from it. We know that it doesn’t. There are many, many more people who’ve dropped dead in their homes in New York City over the last month than there usually are in the months of March and April, and few of them get counted as coronavirus deaths because they haven’t been formally tested before or after death. Even if everything else Bennett said was correct, he’d still be lowballing the threat from the disease.
But it isn’t correct. He’s basically spouting nonsense numbers at the audience. It’s inconceivable that he doesn’t know it.
China didn’t announce that they had a problem virus until December 31st. And until late January they were telling everyone that it only passed animal to human when they knew that wasn’t remotely the case. It was extremely infectious.
Our first US case didn’t happen until January 21st.
Models are built on available data. The only hard data at the end of January was that Covid-19 is another SARS virus, that it was spreading so fast in China that factories weren’t reopening after Lunar New Year, and that Italy it was in serious trouble.
The 2003 SARS had a death rate of nearly 9%. We don’t remember it because it only infected some 8,000 worldwide and barely affected the US. 775 died.
By late February Covid-19, SARS-2, had infected 82,000 people with an unknown death rate. Maybe it would be as high as the first SARS. No one knew. Wuxan, much bigger that NYC, was totally shut down and authorities were welding shut the exits of large apartment towers. China refused to let our virus hunters in to get a close look. In Italy their hospitals were overwhelmed and on the verge of collapse.
That was the situation when the CDC had to make estimates of how many could be killed by it. They didn’t have the luxury of two months of hindsight data available to the current armchair critics calling for their heads.
17 million unemployed sure ain’t no model.
bump
It was never about the number of deaths, but about overwhelming the healthcare system when tens of thousands are sick and dying at the same time. Why don’t the Flubros get this simple fact?????????
“flu has a season; this doesn’t.”
Do we even know this doesn’t have a season? It hasn’t been around long enough to know. I think that even the experts have said it could be seasonal like the flu but can’t say for sure yet.
That was my own opinion based on what I’ve read as the pandemic has progressed. I haven’t seen anyone say it definitely doesn’t have a season. I hope and think it may slow some but I don’t think it’s going to behave like the flu.
Here’s the latest study I’ve seen.
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2020/04/01/13993003.00517-2020
I see that yesterday the projected total death count was raised to almost 69,000 in the IHME model. Last time before that I looked at it it was under 62,000. Who knows where we’ll actually end up.
Nice snag SAF
THANK U
“I hope and think it may slow some but I don’t think it’s going to behave like the flu.”
It’s definitely odd. Personally, I hope everyone gets it quickly so we can be done with it — whatever’s going to happen. (Is that what they call “herd immunity? I’m not sure.) If it’s as contagious as they say, everyone WILL get it eventually, so just rip off the proverbial bandage now so we can get on with America.
I understand that some people who get it won’t survive, but that happens with the regular flu, too. I say that as an at-risk person — over 70 with a history of pneumonia. To get the country going, I’m willing to take a risk. If we don’t take risks now, this thing will drag out for five years.
Yeah, herd immunity. I think it’s estimated to be something like 65-70% for COVID-19. The percentage varies depending on how contagious something is.
I’ve seen the idea floated that maybe we should try to figure out the minimum amount of virus it would take to infect someone and infect people intentionally, the thought being that the smaller the amount of virus the less severe the illness. Sounded nuts to me when I heard it, but if we can figure out some sure-fire treatments to keep people from dying from it might be something to consider. I’m not too crazy about infecting people and just hoping for the best.
“figure out the minimum amount of virus it would take to infect someone and infect people intentionally, the thought being that the smaller the amount of virus the less severe the illness. Sounded nuts to me”
I think that’s basically what George Washington did to his troops to deal with smallpox, so the concept has been around for centuries.
“To counter both the fear and the actual disease itself George Washington ordered a bold move on January 6, 1777, to have the entire Continental Army inoculated. At this juncture it became a matter of policy. This act alone may have saved the Revolution. The process was simple. A physician lanced one of the infected patient’s pustules with a knife or scalpel and then inserted the infected blade under the skin of a healthy person. Generally the inoculated person contracted the disease, but in a much milder form.”
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/washington-inoculates-army
I figure that Trump was advised by scientists who believed the virus had been manufactured as a weapon and were not sure as to what exactly it was programmed to do.
“Coronavirus deaths in the US are vastly inflated”
In MN if you have had contact with someone with the Whu Flu and die of a heart attack, you are still counted as a flu death. You don’t even have to be tested!!
You know damn well if Cankles was pres, this stuff wouldn’t be happening at least according to our MSM.
“We know that it doesn’t. There are many, many more people who’ve dropped dead in their homes in New York City over the last month than there usually are in the months of March and April, and few of them get counted as coronavirus deaths because they haven’t been formally tested...”
This passage refers to a shocking story that appeared in the New York Times. Did anyone else’s fake-news-O-meter peg out while reading that story or a discussion of it? It was a bit too perfect and horrifying, possibly designed to shame skeptics into silence. Or by any chance has it been independently verified and the fake-news-O-meter in question needs to be sent into the shop for calibration?
After supporting an “assault weapons” ban, Bill Bennett can KMA in Hell for eternity.
“I believe the current word to describe that belief is ‘anecdotal.’ ”
Hey now, we are only supposed to wheel out that adjective to bash Trump!
Go sit in the corner and wear that cone thing on your head for a while until you regain your senses.
That’s all assuming that the lockdowns actually did anything. Sweden is suggesting that they haven’t really done that much to change the numbers. Possibly because they came too late and the virus spread so rapidly, that much of the spread had already been done. Also possibly because there are many exceptions and violations of the lockdowns.
Heck, look at how many nursing homes were affected by this. Those should have been the easiest things in the world to lockdown. So if lockdowns were working, nursing homes should not have been hit.
Regardless, there is still next to zero evidence to suggest our case numbers would be much higher if lockdowns never happened. Sweden, we’re looking in your direction. No significant lockdown and case numbers not much different from their neighbors. So this article’s premise is faulty to begin with. The preventive measures against the virus are unproven and have been so inconsistently implemented, there is little to suggest this virus would be much more deadlier than it is without these measures in place. And the numbers as they are are not that much more deadly than a bad flu season. Certainly not enough to suggest we need a drastically different policy in place than we do for the flu.
We could go a long way to herd immunity if they just let young people get on with their lives and get infected through their normal daily routine. The virus is much less harmful to young people than a normal flu. So there is zero reason to try to prevent them from getting it by taking trillions out of the economy. But, yes, old people should be doing the social distancing and mask-wearing and hand-washing while the virus is allowed to surge in the young.
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