Posted on 06/25/2020 9:00:37 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Once again, the U.S. is undergoing a media-driven COVID-19 scare after a “spike” in infections. But as we noted earlier this week, the number of cases depends on the amount of testing. The key gauge to watch is deaths. They’ve been falling since April, and there’s strong reason to believe they’re lower than the official count suggests.
The dreaded Wuhan virus is no doubt a nasty bug, worthy of our vigilance and ongoing concern. That said, its virulence, as measured by the daily number of deaths, appears to be waning, as the chart with this piece, courtesy of the COVID-19 Tracking Project of the Atlantic, clearly shows.
Hold on. That last number for June 23 on the chart shows a huge jump. Should we be worried? Is this the much-dreaded surge some have been talking up?
Apparently not. A big part of that one-time gain came from a revision by one state: Delaware.
As Youyang Gu, an MIT data scientist who created the COVID 19-projections.com site, tweeted: “To put the increase in deaths in context, Delaware added 69 deaths today: ‘The revision came from identifying 67 deaths dating back to April.’ So if you take out those 67 deaths, the week-over-week deaths have not changed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at issuesinsights.com ...
Worth noting: In many locations, if not all, if a patient has a positive Covid-19 test, they are subjected to further tests until they test negative. Each one of those positive tests is counted as a case, so obviously the number will rise exponentially. Also, hospitals are now opening for elective procedures, so the numbers of hospitalized patients will also rise. We need to keep an eye on the death and ICU rates. The rest is not significant. The numbers are being manipulated to create fear and cripple our economy.
If we were to do nation wide chicken pox testing, would the result be 3 million positive cases although very few have active virus? This is a real question.
So far the USA has experienced 387 job losses (and rising) for each Covid-19 death (and as we saw, the deaths from Covid have probably been over-estimated)
Has the economic destruction been worth it???
I meant 300 million.
Well! No wonder Biden has been holed up in his basement.
Depends on the test you’re doing and how recently they’ve had the virus active. A viral protein test should go negative within days or weeks of the infection being beaten. Antibody testing could show up as positive for a lot longer (around a year), but eventually that too would go negative.
The real story being buried By the Press, the current death rate is base on Governors who put infected people into nursing homes.
We know how to limit the spread of the virus and how to treat the virus. Our hospital system is ready for any outbreak.
We do not need lock downs, we need better public education and stop putting positive people in nursing homes.
Good point...I test positive for TB with the tine test.I have never had it but was exposed......way back in 1937.
thenks
Wuhan is entering now the background flu jumbles along with the Hong Kong flu and the various H1 etc flus. For a couple of years we will have interested parties trying to gin up new Panic!s but only a small coterie of neurotics will get properly fearful.
I agree death rate is the metric to watch. BUT...
Deaths may be starting to trend up a bit more, as of yesterday and today’s data.
https://covid19.who.int/region/amro/country/us
Maybe it is just an uptick on a downward trend.. but something to watch.
A very interesting way to view things
Especially when taking into account the skewed age and comorbidity demographics, the number would be even higher
See reply # 4. We need to change our attitude towards this, as we can’t afford to close our economy and schools again. There may be worse things to come, but we have dealt with worse things before. We need to buck up and deal with this, not cower in fear.
I agree. Looking at anyone day’s data is a complete waste of time. There is just too much noise in the data - the Delaware example being just the latest. There is also the general under-reporting on weekends and over- reporting on Monday’s and Tuesdays.
7 Day Moving Averages are a better way to go if you are looking for trends. Right now the death rate trend is but not falling like rock. It is still running about 500 deaths per day, falling slowly, and a projection of 180,000 deaths by October is perfectly reasonable.
Even if there is over-counting, a likelihood, the trend tells us where we are heading.
The one nice thing about liberals burning down the country for 3 weeks was we didn’t have to put up with these hysterical COVID stories, since it would look bad if we were having 100,000-people-protests if there was an actual COVID scare.
Now that things are calming down, we are back to the “COVID IS COMING” playbook.
Did people think that, as we let more people get together, there would not be more cases? Did they really think that 3 weeks after mass protests, there wouldn’t be a huge spike?
Well, Arizona hospitals are being overwhelmed by cases, it appears a lot of them from the indian reservations, which have more cases now than 10 states. I don’t know if the reservations were practicing social distancing, or what. I assume democrats didn’t take them COVID-infected blankets, like democrats did in the 1800s.
“Arizona hospitals are being overwhelmed by cases”
That is interesting. Are they giving the age groups? What is the average age on the reservations? I wonder if is a genetic factor in this besides just age group.
The hospital rates is the number that will tell us if we have a problem or not.
“I agree death rate is the metric to watch.”
The new cases could be all young people from social tracking. Very few young people will get sick from it. The USA should not panic until we see hospital rates go up to high.
Remain calm steady steady.. But something to watch..
Native Americans have high rates of obesity and diabetes.
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