Guest “where have I heard this before?” by David Middleton
Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns
How a handful of Democratic activists created alarming, but bogus data sets to scare local and state officials into making rash, economy-killing mandates.By Madeline Osburn
MARCH 25, 2020As U.S. state and local officials halt the economy and quarantine their communities over the Wuhan virus crisis, one would hope our leaders were making such major decisions based on well-sourced data and statistical analysis. That is not the case.
A scan of statements made by media, state governors, local leaders, county judges, and more show many relying on the same source, an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The website says it is “built to enable political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling.”
An interactive map provides users a catastrophic forecast for each state, should they wait to implement COVID Act Now’s suggested strict measures to “flatten the curve.” But a closer look at how many of COVID Act Now’s predictions have already fallen short, and how they became a ubiquitous resource across the country overnight, suggests something more sinister.
When Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced a shelter-in-place order on Dallas County Sunday, he displayed COVID Act Now graphs with predictive outcomes after three months if certain drastic measures are taken.
[…]
The Federalist
The article features a photo of Fire Marshal Gump referring to a COVID Act Now graph.
He does this every day while complaining that the State of Texas isn’t locking down the economy enough, while nearly losing a federally provided temporary hospital by failing to confirm that the county would use it.
Fire Marshal Gump has even managed to p!$$ off fellow liberal Democrat John Wiley Price.
The Federalist article goes on to tally up the accuracy of these models.
COVID Act Now predicted that by March 19 the state of Tennessee could expect 190 hospitalizations of patients with confirmed Wuhan virus. By March 19, they only had 15 patients hospitalized.
In New York, Covid Act Now claimed nearly 5,400 New Yorkers would’ve been hospitalized by March 19. The actual number of hospitalizations is around 750. The site also claimed nearly 13,000 New York hospitalizations by March 23. The actual number was around 2,500.
[…]
The Federalist
As of yesterday at 5:00 PM New York had 15,333 people hospitalized with ChiCom-19, and they think they are close to the peak. The COVID Act Now model has New York at nearly 39,000 hospitalizations by tomorrow…
The model has Texas at around 2,300 hospitalizations by April 8. As of yesterday, the number stood at 1,153.
COVID Act Now might as well be the IPCC…
In Georgia, COVID Act Now predicted 688 hospitalizations by March 23. By that date, they had around 800 confirmed cases in the whole state, and fewer than 300 hospitalized.
In Florida, Covid Act Now predicted that by March 19, the state would face 400 hospitalizations. On March 19, Gov. Ron DeSantis said 90 people in Florida had been hospitalized.
COVID Act Now’s models in other states, including Oklahoma and Virginia, were also far off in their predictions. Jordan Schachtel, a national security writer, said COVID Act Now’s modeling comes from one team based at Imperial College London that is not only highly scrutinized, but has a track record of bad predictions.
[…]
So why is the organization or seemingly innocent online mapping tool using inaccurate algorithms to scaremonger leaders into tanking the economy? Politics, of course.
Founders of the site include Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Silicon Valley tech workers and Democratic activists — Zachary Rosen, Max Henderson, and Igor Kofman — who are all also donors to various Democratic campaigns and political organizations since 2016. Henderson and Kofman donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, while Rosen donated to the Democratic National Committee, recently resigned Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, and other Democratic candidates. Prior to building the COVID Act Now website, Kofman created an online game designed to raise $1 million for the eventual 2020 Democratic candidate and defeat President Trump. The game’s website is now defunct.
Perhaps the goal of COVID Act Now was never to provide accurate information, but to scare citizens and government officials into to implementing rash and draconian measures. The creators even admit as much with the caveat that “this model is designed to drive fast action, not predict the future.”
[…]
Madeline Osburn is a staff editor at the Federalist and the producer of The Federalist Radio Hour.
Photo NBC Dallas
The Federalist
Does this sound familiar? Juice up models for purpose of killing capitalism in the name of saving [fill in the blank] from [fill in the blank]. The COVID Act Now models are basically 2-3 times worse than reality and designed by left-wing Democrats to enable other left-wing Democrats to destroy our economy… Very GISS/IPCC’ish.
Day 22 of America Held Hostage by ChiCom-19
As of noon today…
| Dallas County | CHICOM-19 | |
| Population | Cases | Deaths |
| 2,637,772 | 1,261 | 19 |
| % of population with | 0.0478% | 0.00072% |
| % wth, rounded | 0.0% | 0.00% |
| % without | 99.9522% | 99.9993% |
| % without, rounded | 100.0% | 100.00% |
The number of cases should top the Dean Wormer line by tomorrow.
In other good news…
OPEC And Partners Eye A 3-Month Output Cut
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Apr 07, 2020Countries part of the OPEC+ group are discussing the idea to implement oil production cuts for at least three months from May to July, Russian news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, citing two sources at OPEC.
[…]
The leaders of the OPEC+ group, Saudi Arabia for OPEC and Russia for non-OPEC, are reportedly ready to negotiate a massive global production cut amid sinking demand, despite a bitter weekend spat between the former allies about who ditched whom in the OPEC+ talks.
A video meeting between Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other major oil producers, including representatives from the U.S., was slated to be held on Monday. However, the meeting was postponed for Thursday after the Saudis and the Russians accused each other of dumping the other in the OPEC+ alliance that had tried to manage oil supply and oil prices for the past three years.
Both producers are now signaling that they are ready to talk but are pointing out that any massive cut, 10 million bpd-15 million bpd, as touted by U.S. President Donald Trump, should involve the United States, too.
OPEC hasn’t asked President Trump to find a way to ask U.S. oil companies to collectively cut production, the President said on Monday.
“I think it’s happening automatically but nobody’s asked me that question yet so we’ll see what happens,” President Trump said at a press briefing, referring to U.S. oil production.
[…]
Oil Price Dot Com
Yes, Mr. President, a few months of $20-30/bbl oil prices will cut U.S. oil production. Even ExxonMobil has slashed their capital budget…
ExxonMobil cuts 2020 capex budget by 30% as it works to combat low oil price, weaker demand
Published: April 7, 2020 at 7:18 a.m. ET
By Ciara LinnaneExxon Mobil Corp. XOM, 3.126% said Tuesday it is reducing its 2020 capex budget by 30% and lowering cash operating expenses by 30% as it works to combat the effect of lower commodity prices due to oversupply and demand weakness caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The oil giant said capital investments will fall to about $23 billion from a previously announced $33 billion. “Our objective is to continue investing in industry-advantaged projects to create value, preserve cash for the dividend and make appropriate and prudent use of our balance sheet,” Chief Executive Darren Woods said in a statement. The bulk of the capital spending reduction will take place in the Permian Basin in Texas, reducing the pace of drilling and well completions. Deepwater discoveries offshore Guyana will not be affected…
[…]
Market Watch
So… With all this drop in oil consumption, atmospheric carbon dioxide must be taking a nose dive…
Here is more:
ON THE MODELS: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2020/04/covid-19-death-forecast-has-been-slashed.html
ON ‘EXPERTISE:’ http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2020/04/qualifications.html
And, yes, all of this further calls into question the climate models.
When this is all said and done we need to publish a list of doomsayers and then demand they go onto the Propaganda Ministry channels, starting with the so called “experts” on the news networks, and apologize to the American People for promoting this scamdemic.
Next we need to go to the voting booth and vote out every incumbent in office regardless of party affiliation. The message should be clear: we want you to lead not cower to the Propaganda Press and their Yellow Brick Road Socialist march toward the Emerald City.
Voting everyone out regardless of party strikes me as extremly foolish.
Can you vote out Fire Marshal Gump ? Never trust a man who dies his hair.
Unfortunately, Dallas County has become solidly light blue, as the surrounding counties have become solidly dark red.
No skipping the line!
Michael Mann is first in line to have to apologize. C’mon, Mikey you’re holding everyone up.
The CDC has a poor track record with their models and predictions. But we keep going back to them regardless.
What? Another conspiracy theory from the Right? Did I accidentally tune in to Fox News?
Interesting find Mike. Can you just clarify:
So very different model results with “same parameters”. That means it is not just a re-run it is actually a *different model *.
But the real world data also shows the number of cases doubling every 2-3 days, so even if their numbers are off by a factor of 2-3, in 2-5 days we will reach those numbers. And the data from S. Korea and Italy show that it really takes 5-6 weeks for numbers to clearly be moving down. Especially if you look at the daily bar graphs on worldometer, for example. I was thinking this was very exaggerated but the failure of the CDC and FDA to allow new and better tests to be developed 4-6 weeks ago and them delaying telling people to wear masks around other people on the street for 3 weeks has prevented us from getting on top of this. And when looking at the daily death rates (as opposed to the curvature on a log graph), the health officials will need to wait 1-2 weeks after it looks like it is leveling off before they start letting people relax the social distancing. It would be much better for the economy if they could let those who are young and healthy start returning to normal life but still take precautions but then the others who are not as young will not be out spending so the economy still won’t bounce back quickly.
Three months to a year from now, we hopefully will have a clearer picture of what the Ro and true death rates are but only if we continue to tests millions of citizens and use antibody tests as well to see how many had it and did not even realize.
I am in New Orleans and we have had a few days this week with 60 deaths and a few with 35 or so, but today it is now at 70 for the first time and NY is over 700 for first time and NJ over 200 for first time and several other states over 100. LA was about 9th in deaths today when we have been in top 3-5 for weeks. So other states are just starting to get into the more exponential type of growth and in a few weeks, if NY and LA start getting fewer cases, other states may have weeks of heavier deaths remaining so the USA as a whole may not decrease for a month or more. We are at ~13K deaths now, so while I don’t think we will hit 100K, we could easily hit 40K which is similar to the flu most years. It’s just with this one, many more people end up in ICU and on ventilators, so hospitals could get overwhelmed. France has been having 1000 to 1200 deaths a day for a week now and Germany was doing well but their count goes up each day and they are up to about 180 today and they have been doing a lot of testing. So, while the numbers are exaggerated, and had we handled it differently, maybe we could have done less damage to the economy, this is still a real and dangerous health crisis and it now looks like it will worsen for at least another week. In 2017-18, a bad flu season, we had some weeks with over 4K deaths from flu. This past week, we already had about 9,000 Covid-19 deaths.
” the failure of the CDC and FDA to allow new and better tests to be developed 4-6 weeks ago and them delaying telling people to wear masks around other people on the street for 3 weeks has prevented us from getting on top of this.”
And their wet-blanket, debunking, don’t-prescribe attitude toward chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
Yep,
That too. At least now they are trying a variety of meds and doing fast-tracked clinical trials, but FDA also slowed those down at first.
“them delaying telling people to wear masks around other people on the street for 3 weeks has prevented us from getting on top of this. ”
Hey man you should really rely no one for your safety but you. You live at time where a good 99% of all we know is available online.
I am not wearing a mask. There are just too many way to cross contaminate it in the outside world and that it may lead you to taking risks you otherwise would not. And contrary anybody’s belief none of us are disciplined enough. Furthermore, you are outside with the largest volume of air and hopefully sunshine. It is just a collector of all viruses and toxins that you bring into your home. Outside is not and will never be aseptic.
When I am at work and doing operations that require aseptic techniques I wear a mask but everything I touch is aseptic and it takes awhile to gown up and get to an aseptic level.
Medical folks will tell you to sneeze into your arm, bicep or elbow but that has never been proven clinically to prevent anything either.
Mask wearing is also based off modeling of the aerosol of human breathing and sneezing.
“But the real world data also shows the number of cases doubling every 2-3 days,”
The real world data isn’t real. Regular deaths in U.S. have dropped by 5,000 per week. Most of that drop is due to putting those deaths into the Covid-19 column.
SR
The colossal overstatement of cases from these models should help educate the sheep that currently blindly follow the hockey stick imaginings of Mann and the conspirators.
I doubt it. People like Simon, Lyodo, Steven…. want to believe so badly in man causing irreparable harm to the earth that they will just move on to a new model that pushes catastrophe out another 50 years. They will never see the benefits of CO2. In their religion, C02 is the devil.
This is a religion for them.
Probably can’t help the apostles. But the sheep aren’t the same level of lost.
Wait till they start adjusting the deaths to match the models
I have been. And every update they come down. Bad data, assumptions starting with no effort to slow the spread, no idea how many get the virus with no illness, etc. They don’t know what they don’t know. Sound familiar?
Did they do that in China with machine guns?
There’s an explanation for no shortage of ventilators in Wuhan. At least one resident claims that some patients were cremated while still alive.
Only the sick ones were burned alive… I’d use a /Sarc tag here, if I was being sarcastic.
I don’t believe any news coming out of China these days; there’s no way to verify any of it.
The deaths are already overstated. The CDC guidelines for reporting Covid-19 deaths ensure that.
Someday it would be interesting to see an analysis of how much it shortened the lives of those who died both “with” and “because of” the virus, factoring in the age and comorbidity information. Seems that would be very enlightening.
The virus forecast resembles the IPCC temperature forecast for the future.
On that Mona Loa graph, what happened Mar 22,23, and 24th?
There looks to be a level shift in the absence of data?
Even in the daily averages.
Very interesting, a 1ppm shift up after several days of no data. Proof we are in adjustocene age? Homogenizing data to fit model predictions?
You do realise there is an annual cycle of about 7ppm right ?
It is still rising steeply at this time. If David M. was a little more rigorous in presenting such off the cuff snipes, he would have compared to readings to the annual cycle. I was surprised to see so little change over a month. You’d want to overlay that with the mean annual cycle before jumping to any conclusions as to whether there’s a dip or not.
Only part of Chine went into lockdown and now the west is hit in spring but we don’t actually make anything any more anyway. We can look in 6mo at calculated “carbon” emissions and see what the impact really was on consumption.
Off the cuff snipes aren’t supposed to be rigorous.
Then RelPerm shouldn’t snipe, it only casts doubt on what he’s claiming. And on this website more generally.
They have criteria to accept or reject data based on its variability, for example wind conditions giving high or low readings that lead to erratic measurements.
Go to their web site and spend an hour reading about what they do.
Then come back and tell the rest of WUWT what is going on.
A scientist would do such a thing.
Just saying.
Daily data has to be checked for wind direction. They are sat on a low activity volcano belching CO2. Prevailing ocean winds don’t prevail every hour of every day. If the wind turns stop testing or redact data. It’s called QA. Seems legit.
BTW it Mauna Loa, often mispronounced Mona Lower in US. Polynesian languages do not have diphthongs , all vowels are separate letters so Ma-u-na Lo-a
I’m actually surprised there is not more increase due to annual cycle at this time of year. Maybe that is actually showing a dip against the annual cycle.
Yeah, it should peak in early to mid-May.
And that dip should correlate to the decline in fossil fuel, particularly oil, consumption. A smaller than expected dip would indicate that the anthropogenic contribution to the fast carbon cycle is even more lower than the “consensus” claims.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the biggest problem with computer models is getting them to match up with reality.
You are right, on the other hand, it’s hard propagandwork to fit the reality to the models.
Salute!
Great point, Science Really great.
On the 5 o’clock follies Monday, Dr Fauci tried to explain to the clueless media folks why he and others like the other doc change their “predicions”. He first reminded them of “gigo”, then, and I paraphrase, “models are neat, but data “trumps” models every time [ pun intended, and he almost said that] , and we are now getting data we didn’t have even 5 weeks ago. I trust real data more than models”.
Gums sends…
I second that.
For weeks now I have been trying to download up-to-date data on CO2 in air. Scripps has data in this NOAA gap in March 2020, presumably from the same or very similar instruments on Mauna Loa. Elsewhere, some authorities have no public data I can find, later than end December 2018, like Barrow and South Pole.
One country that routinely measures CO2 does not intend to make March 2020 data available for another year yet. Our Australian CSIRO is not forthcoming, yet, in making data public just now.
Anyone here who has current data to share, please let me know. sherro1 at optusnet dot com dot au
Geoff, look at QA markings on MLO data. They only delete real outlier data but some gets marked as suspect quality. If you get the raw data from MLO you need to check the QA columns. That probalby explains the gaps in NOAA.
A few years ago when I was working with this data I thought they looked to be removing more than was necessary and maybe removing legitimate actual short term variability information. I think they have 2 sigma cutoffs or something and anything outside of that gets marked as suspect.
Since a lot of variability is due to SST changes I think they are cropping out some useful data. Unlikely to be an issue in the greater story though.
Just about any model needs case specific data to then properly apply to a given instance. When this thing started there was no case specific data either of the virus’s ability to infect, its symptoms in any detailed or properly understood way. Thete was no data as to how it might spread in NYC, London or Milan vs in rural areas or less densely populated places. There was a reasonable understanding of what allowing unrestricted travel to/from overseas/internationally might do to the infection rate. Countries like Australia and NZ are Islands and can shut down international travel much more effectively that land border sharing nations. Australia has a very low per capita infection rate and a tiny death rate and was able to shut down a major vector in the form of Chinese university students returning for the new academic year. Australian and NZ were also coming out of summer whereas China, the US, the EU tec and say Iran were all in late winter so underlying health and related factors were fundamentally different.
Pretty much the same issues regarding accurate data for models applies to the climate clowns as well and it is crap, confected data that is a big factor in those predictions. Then again those models are modelling far more complex mechanisms and there are shortcuts taken which are probably the real problem.
How the heck can you just snap your fingers on day one and have an accurate model? Some people here need to get a grip on their brains rather than their firearms.
The fascist wolves are trying to stampede the gullible sheep, using scary models showing impending doom from Xi ChiCom -19 virus?
“….this model is designed to drive fast action, not predict the future.”
Yep! They sure are… Now, where else have we seen this use of scary models? Hmmmm….
PS: COVID – 19: China Origin Viral Infection Disease – identified in 2019.
But, but – you don’t understand. Those models are merely projections; we can’t help it if some politicians mis-understand and consider them predictions that by some strange coincidence encourage them to enact policies consistent with our own political and economic philosophy.
Okay, I’ve seen enough. Ask any health care professional working with hospitalized Covid patients. This is a horror show, and we have very little idea how to treat it. We also don’t know how survivors might be affected. Lung and heart damage are distinct possibilities. It’s irresponsible to suggest this is some sort of Democrat or media conspiracy. It’s very real and very dangerous.
The worst betrayal would have been if our leaders had suggested otherwise.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Yeah, the people who are screaming that this is bogus are the ones been spared by it. It even goes for many in the health care field, who have trouble taking it seriously when they have managed to dodge the bullet.
If I recall Dr. John Ioannidis predicted US deaths might be as low as 10,000 several weeks ago. We seem to have blown by that.
Of course this virus is real. So is SARS, MERS, Ebola, etc. And yes, people are dying. Those over 60 and/or with serious health complications are the most at risk, but young healthy people are suffering and dying as well. But that doesn’t automatically mean that the response by our leaders is proportional to the actual risk. You have to look at things in context. In a normal month in the US 2500-3000 people die from automobile accidents. Ask anybody that works in an ER; that is an ongoing horror show for them. But we accept it, because absent draconian restrictions that the population is unwilling to accept, there is no way to eliminate these deaths.
Questioning the decisions our leaders make, and their rationale for making them, is not only the right of all free people, it is our responsibility. And asking these questions is not equivalent to denying that the virus exists and is potentially a serious health risk. Blindly accepting what our leaders and their “experts” tell us is the real sin.
“In God we trust. All others bring [real] data.” is a worthy motto.
Paul, that was stated beautifully. We cannot blindly accept anything the government does or we will end up a people in chains.
NO ONE said conspiracy, no one implied conspiracy.
Self-serving reactions by the media (hyping the worst case scenario);
Self-serving actions by the democrats (millions for the Kennedy Center, more millions for the arts, trying to start a political inquiry against Trump, rationalizing and trying to give money to Planned Parenthood…);
Improper action by ‘professionals’ that repeatedly release make-believe models (knowingly, or unknowingly through ineptitude).
It is all happening. Similar has happened in the past.
Acknowledging that it is very real and very dangerous shouldn’t give rise to price gouging in any form.
Hoisted on their own petard? The liberals may have a dilemma on whether to credit Trump for saving lives or admit that their models were terribly wrong. I just can’t see them saying anything negative about models.
https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2020/04/07/clay-travis-media-must-blame-faulty-coronavirus-projections-admit-trump-saved-millions-people/
They’ll simply adjust the data to match the model. Job done.
Your table shows “as of noon today” Harris County has 1261 cases and 19 deaths. As of right now (22:00 UTC) the case count is 1809 with 22 deaths.
…
Your numbers are off by 43% in the number of cases, and 16% in the number of deaths.
…
What, in less than 30 hours you get this kind of rise? At this rate, tell us what will it be like tomorrow?
…
I’m guessing over 2000 cases and 26 deaths, and it would be worse if there was no lock down.
“I’m guessing ” . . . .
Well, Henry – it seems that’s what all the “experts” are doing, so you might as well pitch in as well.
I didn’t post a table for Harris County. And, there’s no need to guess. The data are updated daily.
These dumbasses will never learn about Mr exponential.
Shit when the USA was at 0 deaths and 68 cases None of the geniuses here got it
It was “mosher doesn’t know stats”
And then they thought it would be like the diamond princess.. haha
New York… one day
https://apnews.com/72a432c5ef566621f3b288146d2bc00d
ya know here is the deal. in truly conservative places like Singapore ( no tax)
and Korea ( compulsory military service), they took this thing seriously
and beat it down. They didn’t play games with data or doubt shit that was obvious
or call it the flu. They beat it down so they could continue business.
On Jan 23rd the city of Wuhan was welded shut.
That fact alone, that undeniable fact alone should have told reasonable people that there was
a shit storm coming.
. . . should have told reasonable people that there was a shit storm coming.
All I see so far from the sh*t storm you’ve been predicting are clouds. And even those are beginning to break up dood.
Sounds like yer mad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/06/americas-most-influential-coronavirus-model-just-revised-its-estimates-downward-not-every-model-agrees/
“Shit when the USA was at 0 deaths and 68 cases None of the geniuses here got it”
But some climate contrarian bloggers did, especially JoNova, starting Feb. 1. (55 threads on the topic since then.)
Steven…….
You may now something about Korea but you don’t know much about Singapore, apparently.
I lived there for 23 years and can assure you there is both personal & corporate taxation in the city state. The rates are somewhat lower than in most western economies but they are progressive so high earners pay a significant chunk of money to the Singapore government every year.
It’s a shame you have to appear so smug in your ivory tower there, Mistra Know-it-all Mosher…..you could just offer helpful information without the snide comments! Just sayin’……
Here in the US, many of us thought the CDC were the most savvy disease experts anywhere, or at the very least that they could be relied upon for up to date information, that they did not make best case scenario guesses, and that they were not just making assumptions about all manner of details of the virus, how it spread, if it might be spreading already in the US, etc.
Well, it turns out that all such assumptions were ill-advised.
The CDC was so far behind the curve on this virus it is sickening.
They were reporting no evidence of community spread in the US when it was spreading rapidly and far and wide.
In fact they had no surveillance in place at all…they were not testing random people, and it seems they were not testing anyone when we all thought they were.
In other words…they were guilty of the worst kind of wishful thinking possible, during the critical time period of the most important job they would ever have to date.
They were still assuming that the new virus behaved like other corona viruses when there were reports circulating that it was very different in several important ways…such as that people were spreading it without having any symptoms themselves, and a larger number had mild symptoms and were spreading it prior to even having these mild symptoms.
If a new fruit fly or a new mosquito gets into the US, there are thousands of traps all around the US that are checked frequently, and the people responsible for that will know almost right away.
But when a new and deadly virus was causing absolute mayhem in another country, and there are daily flights from the center of the outbreak to major US cities every day…they did almost nothing.
They were like a lazy watchdog in some inane cartoon, snoozing while burglars climbed in the window and stepped right over the guard dog…who then woke up, glanced at the burglars, and went back to sleep.
Here in the US, many of us thought the CDC were the most savvy disease experts anywhere
That’s a real problem — the indoctrinated illusion that 3-4 letter gov-departments are “experts” or even honest. Generally, they are rather careless bureaucrats & regulators, easily bought-off. Look how the FBI was easily used/corrupted by the Trump haters. How trustworthy are the EPA? IRS? Many others….
SM “ None of the geniuses here got it”
You’re in no position to snark at others for analytical foolishness, Steve.
“…These dumbasses will never learn about Mr exponential…”
Gee Mosh, maybe before you start calling people “dumbasses,” you fact-check the guy you’re agreeing with. He used Harris County numbers for Dallas County. RTFR. Mocking a claim that “mosher doesn’t know stats” and then believing made-up stats from another poster is quite ironic.
“…ya know here is the deal. in truly conservative places like Singapore ( no tax)
and Korea ( compulsory military service), they took this thing seriously
and beat it down. They didn’t play games with data or doubt shit that was obvious
or call it the flu. They beat it down so they could continue business…”
Here is the deal…Singapore keeps reporting a record increase in cases https://news.yahoo.com/singapore-reports-record-increase-coronavirus-141852282.html and is now imposing a lockdown. They only this week banned public gatherings while closing schools, and non-essential workplaces. They’ve got tens of thousands of foreign workers in “isolation.” And their growth in cases is…umm…following Mr. Exponential. Their infection rate is comparable to many US states. Sure, they’ve done much better than the world as a whole…but they are now imitating much of the world.
“…Your table shows ‘as of noon today’ Harris County has 1261 cases and 19 deaths. As of right now (22:00 UTC) the case count is 1809 with 22 deaths.
…
Your numbers are off by 43% in the number of cases, and 16% in the number of deaths…”
The table shows ‘as of noon today’ that Dallas County has 1,261 cases and 19 deaths. Dallas and Harris are totally different Counties.
Your numbers are off by 250 miles or so. Try again.
I think Mark Levin will have something to say about this today !!!
marklevinshow.com
JPP
It’s exponential growth with a lag time of 2-6 weeks. Totally unreliable to draw any conclusions in any time frame less than 21 days. There will be no peak in the next two weeks in New York, it will still go up.
Influenza and COVID-19 are not comparable. Influenza has some to a lot immunity in the population depending on the prevalent strain, COVID-19 has near zero. On top it seems to be deadlier than the average flu without intensive care options.
We will have “fun” with this until there are effective treatments or vaccines not any time sooner. This beast has the potential to overwhelm every health care system in two month if you let it totally loose.
There are effective treatments. While the classic studies have not been done (that will take until this crisis is over) there have been enough small scale studies (including in NY) to say that Hydrochloroquine along with Zythromax do the job.
Nope.
I’d love that to be true, but there is very little published data, actual data on this.
I’d take the drug, but out of hope not science.
Steven, there have been studies published. They are not as robust as anyone would like. They have been published. Maybe they have not been “peer reviewed”, which for those who haven’t been paying attention isn’t all that and a bag of chips. The French study for example.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300996
Wayne
28 patients!
Spain used it a lot ( 60% of docs said they had used it , not more detail ) they also had the best cure results in EU 40,000 +ve outcomes so far. Better than Germany. Twice as good as Italy. Linkage of the two is speculation since this is treatment not a controlled study.
Plus treatement at Marseilles of >2000 patients seems to be going well.
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19/
@Greg
Spain has 13,897 deaths and 43,208 recovered how is this better than Germany with 1,905 death and 36,081 recovered?
“Plus treatement at Marseilles of >2000 patients seems to be going well.”
Even if that small drop of death rate with the treatment is real it’s still too high that aiming for herd immunity would be a good idea.
Steve Mosher, “I’d take the drug, but out of hope not science.”
There’s plenty of science lending inferential support for use of CQ and HCQ for treatment of covid-19.
One example among several: Savarino et al., (2006) Potential therapies for coronaviruses
Ironic, mosher is a CQ and HCQ d*nier.
It appears someone else disagrees with Steve:
https://techstartups.com/2020/04/06/american-thoracic-society-backs-the-use-of-malarial-drug-hydroxychloroquine-for-treatment-of-coronavirus-patients/
That is an urban legend people like to believe. The reality is not that pleasant:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6485/1412.long
Money quote for hydroxychloroquine:
““Researchers have tried this drug on virus after virus, and it never works out in humans,” says Susanne Herold, an expert on pulmonary infections at the University of Giessen.”
Malaria is not a virus. Total different molecular target for the drug and working mechanism.
“““Researchers have tried this drug on virus after virus, and it never works out in humans,” says Susanne Herold, an expert on pulmonary infections at the University of Giessen.””
Evidence below says that Susanne Herold — expert on pulmonary infections at the University of Giessen — doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Spencer, et al., (1995) Hydroxychloroquine treatment of patients with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 Clinical Therapeutics 17(4), 622-636.
From the abstract: “Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an antimalarial agent used to treat patients with autoimmune diseases, has been shown to suppress human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication in vitro in T cells and monocytes by inhibiting post-transcriptional modification of the virus. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial [of HCQ as a potential anti—HIV-1 agent in HIV-1—infected patients] was conducted in 40 asymptomatic HIV-1—infected patients … The amount of recoverable HIV-1 RNA in plasma declined significantly in the HCQ group over the 8-week period …, while it increased in the placebo group. … HCQ thus may be useful in the treatment of patients with HIV-1 infection.
Paton and Aboulhab (2005) Hydroxychloroquine, hydroxyurea and didanosine as initial therapy for HIV‐infected patients with low viral load: safety, efficacy and resistance profile after 144 weeks HIV Medicine 6(1), 13-20
“We recruited antiretroviral‐naive patients with viral loads less than 100000 HIV‐1 RNA copies/mL and CD4 counts greater than 150 cells/μL. … This novel and well‐tolerated combination controls viral replication during long‐term follow up, with development of few resistance mutations.
Plantone & Koudriavtseva (2018) Current and Future Use of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine in Infectious, Immune, Neoplastic, and Neurological Diseases: A Mini-Review Clinical Drug Investigation 38, 653–671 “Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, with an original indication to prevent or cure malaria, have been successfully used to treat several infectious (HIV, Q fever, Whipple’s disease, fungal infections), …“
Wayne
There is just about as much ‘scientific’ support for ivermectin, viagra, and AIDS/Ebola drugs as there is for HCQ!
I guess the primary medical organization of Doctors concerned with respiratory diseases disagrees with you.
https://techstartups.com/2020/04/06/american-thoracic-society-backs-the-use-of-malarial-drug-hydroxychloroquine-for-treatment-of-coronavirus-patients/
Wayne,
I think an important point that you overlooked in your zeal to promote HCQ is the following: ” c) the disease is adequately extreme to warrant investigational remedy, …”
“This beast has the potential to overwhelm every health care system in two month if you let it totally loose.“
Has, could, might, maybe…or maybe has, could, might, maybe have run its course.
The problem is both statements could be true 🙁
https://apnews.com/72a432c5ef566621f3b288146d2bc00d
remember all you people claiming it is not following the exponential curve.
Derg April 7, 2020 at 3:32 pm
——————-
It should NOT be following the exp curve AFTER distancing and lockdowns have been implemented. Remove these and a new exponential will be started!
Currently there is no cure, no vaccine. It is an easily communicated disease – witness its amazing spread round the world. You must have something to limit the communication of the virus this is the only attack point on this virus to date.
It is not FLU!!! flu rarely kills hospital staff. FLU rarely over stretches even the under funded uk NHS. Covid-19 does this – please explain?
Why do Americans think only we can discover cures for this Pandemic. The South Koreans used the Azithromycin/ hydroxychloroquin model and stopped it in its tracks. The Chinese even used this combination. Could it be that chloroquin being off patent doesn’t generate enough revenue to the drug companies? Individual Drs. use drugs “off label” all the time. If I got infected you can bet your life I will demand that treatment.
“The South Koreans used the Azithromycin/ hydroxychloroquin model and stopped it in its tracks.”
The South Koreans did testing, testing, testing, tracking and isolation of infected people. This and harsh social discipline of how people act. No treatment contained the virus.
They reported some cure of critical patients with blood from cured individuals very recently though but this approach has been done in other contexts and was very likely to work.
There will be variation from locale to locale, but if you look at a larger scale
?resize=511%2C477&ssl=1 , it is pretty easy to draw conclusions.
Are you actually looking at the numbers for New York and following Governor Cuomo’s morning updates. The last five days new cases in New York are 10428, 11299, 8240, 8898 and 6947 from worldmeter. New hospitalization in New York the last two days are under 400 each day from the Governor’s press conference. Discharges are way above new hospitilazations the last several days. Yes it is the big war zone but also 4-fold below model predictions. Where are you getting the 21 day figure to know what is going on?
@ IAWulf
Don’t make the mistake and take hope from results close to a weekend. Today is +10,468 again.
For New York you have 142,384 cases out of 340,058 tests. Do you really think those numbers give you an adequate idea of how many people really are and will be infected? I doubt it.
Germany has done 918,460 tests and found 105,604 infected. Way more likely to give you a real estimate.
But then there is still the problem of people who were asymptomatic and are immune but not contagious now. You can’t track those with PCR based tests you need antibody based ones. We will most likely get a way higher number of ones infected people with these tests from Italy than from PCR based ones.
The case count in New York is not from actual test results but comes from models of what the state expects from tests done that day and furthermore they do not correct the data if it proves wrong. I know this because I live in Pound Ridge, NY and my neighbor is head of ER at Northern Westchester. Also, hospitalizations are no where near 15,300 stated above. That is total hospitalizations since the start. Look at daily actual REAL data in NYC. It doesn’t tell the same story Cuomo is claiming: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page On top of all that deaths are being reported NOT based on positive COVID tests alone, but also includes deaths with a clinical diagnosis of suspected COVID. NYS Health department is simply following CDC guidelines, but very likely overstating the case dramatically and skewing the numbers for the entire world.
New York not New York City:
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Map?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n
NY State has been basically flat in new cases for 10 days…yet alongside an increase in testing.
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-DailyTracker?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n
And Westchester County is NY State, not NY City.
Predictions only double the actual are actually quite good. I don’t think I would use the term “Wildly Exaggerated”.
Agree. If the model resulted in precautions that resulted in a 50 percent reduction in cases, that’s good not bad.
The predictions were based on the implementation of the precautions, though.
yes given the uncertainty quite good.
Nobody likes to make decisions under uncertainty.
Hey, the Russians might attack
If they do, we should have a great bomber instead of the B1
So we built the B2
for an attack
that never happened.
The uncertainty in this, the uncertainty in “will the Russians attack” was TOTAL and absolute
from 0 to 1. yet we spent money, somebody had to decide, how real was the threat and how
much do we spend.
There was ZERO SCIENCE and ZERO DATA behind the estimates of “will they attack”
an attack was ASSUMED and then defenses were built.
we face an invisible enemy as Trump has noted. Your job as a citizen is simple
1. Dont try to convince others that the invisible doesn’t exist
2. wash your hands
3. dont touch your face
4. maintain your distance
was it really that hard? apparently it was hard to follow simple rules. since Feb this has been clear.
Since Feb people who were going though this told ya’ll to wash your hands.
Instead ya’ll spent your time trying to convince others that it would not be a problem.
well now you have a problem
“Instead ya’ll spent your time trying to convince others that it would not be a problem.”
Not JoNova, who has been sounding the alarm loudly in 55 meaty threads nearly every day, starting on Feb. 1.
“…we face an invisible enemy as Trump has noted. Your job as a citizen is simple
1. Dont try to convince others that the invisible doesn’t exist
2. wash your hands
3. dont touch your face
4. maintain your distance
was it really that hard?…”
So that is how S.Korea, Singapore, etc., “beat it down?” Simple as that?
The US is faring better than the model predictions/projections and on par or better than pretty much every western nation. Must be doing something right.
Dear Watts Up With That community. We have a friend and fellow WUWT community member who is in serious condition on day 16 of a virus, and day 7 on a ventilator. Yesterday afternoon his temperature finally dropped without medication, but his lungs are still in bad condition and if he recovers, the damage from the ventilator on his body may cause permanent problems.
My good friend has asthma and is a pharmacist. As this scenario was unfolding and while he was conscious and able to speak with me by phone, he still thought our reaction to this virus was overboard. Having an MS in BioChemistry and being a lifelong skeptic, I am sure he still feels the same. Though, he did say he does not wish “this flu on anyone… it was pretty bad,” he would not want to know what has happened to his country over the shutdowns. Let’ hope he wakes up to something better than what were living with, now.
Funny, though I’ve known him for almost 12 years, I never knew he followed WUWT until about two weeks before he became ill. This brings up an important point: we need to share this project with as many people we know– even if they will object and scream to you that AGW is real — as you never know how many allies you have out there. I think my friend would want it that way.
For his privacy, I cannot give his name and I do not know of he ever wrote comments on this site. But, however you might do it: please pray for or think for our fellow WUWT traveller and his doctors.
Regards from Lockdown Central
AK
Best wishes.
Thanks AK in VT.
Out here in the left coast State of Washington your wish is heard.
Hoping for a full recovery. Please tell your friend.
We live in a rural area and the County has a small population.
There are 13 confirmed cases and Zero deaths here.
The State started off with a bang — Life Care Center of Kirkland.
If this hasn’t been in your news, look it up and see how badly things can go wrong.
Same people behind the global warming business are big on the pandemic business. Its all about sustainable development s agenda 2030 and a green economy, digital id, mandatory vaccines, complete control over individuals energy /carbon use using 5G and IoT, digital currency (no cash) and total technocratic control over every individual using surveillance, tracking and social credit scores which will be used to decide what you can buy and where you can go, if you can have children and where you can live or work.
It’s called the College of Idiots.
According to Balletopedia the Honorable Clay Jenkins (Fire Marshal Gump) will be up for re-election in 2022. As a Dallas Co. resident, I will remember.
Word is he’s angling to run for governor in 2022.
BTW, I see a bit about the H+Z+Z combination. Hydrochloroquine + Z-Pak +ZINC. The zinc is important because the Hydrochloroquine primarily facilitates the transport of zinc into the cell wall. If you are deficient on zinc, the hydrochloroquine is less effective.
While we hear some of the doctors question the H+Z therapy, including one pretty obnoxious Harvard doc I saw yesterday, I have only seen actual numbers on some that have been pretty successful. The naysayers never cite any actual results or studies. Is anyone aware of a reliable site for such testing?
It is very difficult to properly test a “cure” for a disease which most people recover from on their own. Doing nothing is highly successful. Then if you select only infected patients, it is very likely that the medication will be “just too late” and fail, unless it is truly a “miracle cure”. Quinine is unlikely to be “miracle cure” because it has literally been used for nearly 300 years and someone would have noticed its effect on the common cold Coronavirus over that time. Zinc pills were all the rage a decade ago to fight the common cold, and have gone the same way as Vitamin C before that. Large group studies relegated these to being just as effective as Chicken soup…..I would really hope Chloroquine works…..but odds are that it is grasping at straws.
I posted this on a different thread. I’ve heard numerous reports of success, citing specific examples. I’ve heard of large lupus practices that use hydroxychloroquine have no virus infections. Similar for rheumatoid arthritis populations. I’ve heard many whining about lack of trials, and even unclear results, but none have presented any statistics. My doctor’s firm started recommending it as a prophylactic almost 3 weeks ago.
Earlier a gentleman pointed out the warning, I gather from a bottle of hydroxychloroquine. I gather he’s a long time user. Short term use has almost zero complications; rashes and upset stomachs. This based on reports by doctors who have been prescribing hydroxychloroquine for decades. I gather he’s never read the warnings on any other medicine. The lawyers list every possibility. You’re more likely to be hit by a meteorite than to have some of those complications.
Yes there are long-term chronic use complications.
Short-term use, not so much.
Quercetin and Epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG) are natural zinc ionophores. No prescription needed and available at Amazon.
Zinc ionophore activity of quercetin and epigallocatechin-gallate: from Hepa 1-6 cells to a liposome model
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25050823
Because pouring something on cancer cells in a glass dish proves that it cures a virus in sick people.
BTW…any idea what being a zinc ionophore does to a cell, and why this is thought to be beneficial?
Because it induces apoptosis.
Yup…it makes the cells kill themselves.
This is why the malaria drugs were being investigated…for use as cancer drugs.
Causing zinc to enter the cell kills it…very good when you want to kill a tumor.
The trick is getting the drug to just kill cancer cells.
It can be useful to selectively kill cells in the case of an infection, if the ones it kills are infected and thus have become virus factories.
But again…the trick is just killing cells in the respiratory epithelium.
Any evidence these drugs concentrate in those tissues?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/
For the record:
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins (D) wanted to bring all of the illegal children from the border and house them in Dallas County. He was willing to expose DFW citizens to 3rd world diseases in order to get Gov’t funding which would have been laundered into democrat election coffers. He is an arrogant grandstanding a$%; but that is ubiquitous in Dallas County – JW Price is a self aggrandizing racist using the Jesse J /Al S/ Charlie R methods (IMO).
That’s why this is the first time I have ever agreed with Price in the 39 years I have lived in Dallas County and 35 years he’s been in county government.
Fire Marshal Gump also wanted to import as many Syrian refugees as possible. I seem to recall that he even suggested forcing Dallas County residents to house them.
The refugee crises were a nice cover-up of wars without borders and shifted responsibility, and were the basis for useful blood libels of anyone who questioned their motives, people left behind, and the community dislocation at their destinations. Very well planned and executed.
Good and timely posting of the two issues, David. “Shelter in place” and “quarantine” seem to me to be maintain social distancing for the masses, those whose analytical skills are not up to the basic safety tasks associated with a pandemic. I am almost 3 weeks into quarantine and I can readily see how the quarantine could be modified to allow commerce to go forward in safety, but the masses would abuse the process. The Chinese are running wild all over the world doing whatever, then saying the opposite, and somehow the Democrats are onboard with that, even to the point of giving them a pass on “carbon pollution”! Oil is a commodity and eventually supply and demand, absent political strategy and artificial price support, would set the true value. Russia decides to have an oil pissing contest with Saudi Arabia at the worst time possible, and Russia will suffer tremendously for this. It is easy for me to imagine oil companies deciding which activities to curtail (probably reflected in lowering rig counts) and which wells to continue producing. We will get through this and will be better prepared for potential future pandemics, but the Chinese and the Democrats will find another unholy alliance.
Social distancing was easy for my me and mywife… We don’t like people. But we love dogs and have 11 of them. The dogs are really enjoying Daddy working from home… Now if I can just convince them that the one who barks the least will be named Employee of the Week, life would be as perfect as any hostage situation could be… 😉
People who are under high threat of infection by covid-19 should protect themselves with hydroxychloroquine. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated e.g. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/04/are-lockdowns-working/#comment-2955438 and a survey requested by Dr. Mehmet Oz of 14,000 Lupus cases treated with hydroxychloroquine had no incidence of covid-19. It is commonly used for lupus, malaria, rheumatoid arthritis etc. (“10s of millions of cases”) so its safety with no significant side-effect risks are well known especially by doctors specializing in treatment of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. An expanded assessment is under way to compare the covid rate of those already using it with the general population (H/T Brian Kilmeade). New Yorkers have to contend with their politically blinded governor but the rest of the states are not so encumbered.
Pangburn
You ignorantly claimed, “so its safety with no significant side-effect risks are well known …” Perhaps you should do some research:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200325212209.htm
Besides that, my prescription bottle explicitly warns about mood changes and suicide. I guess you don’t consider suicide to be significant.
It is irresponsible of you to make medical claims that can be shown to be false with 10 seconds of effort.
Belgian singer Stromae had four year of depression after taking another anti paludique drug, Lariam, to go to Africa. And knowing the subjects of Stromae’s sings before he went to Africa (divorce, lacking a father, debt, brokenness, cancer, death…), it’s quite a thing.
Spencer,
You must be incredibly naive to not be aware that just about all medications carry dire warnings of possible side effects. Blame that on the lawyers, insurance companies, and sue-happy people.
As to the Science Daily article, apparently they didn’t think to check with doctors specializing in treatment for lupus etc. where 10s of millions have been treated with no significant side effects.
I wonder how many thousands of people have died and will die from covid-19 because of ignorant assertions like yours and ill-informed articles like you found with your 10-second search.
Do you mean that the listed possible side effects don’t exist?
Guy,
No, I meant what I said.
Does the concept of relative risk mean anything to you? The risk is pretty low with 10s of millions used with no significant side effects. Do you risk riding in or driving a car? In the U.S. about 100 people a day take that risk and die from it. If you are actually interested, some data are here: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death . Interestingly, some of the things that frighten a lot of people don’t even make the list.
Obviously a doctor prescribes something using the judgement that the benefit outweighs the risk.
The dosage they are prescribing for ChiCom-19 is comparable to lupus treatment. But, unlike lupus, this is a short-term treatment. Most of the side effects have only been observed with long-term use (>10 years) and/or high dosages. The sort of regimen being used for ChiCom-19 is well-below that which would likely trigger bad side effects. Decades of treating lupus patients pretty conclusively demonstrate this.
The effectiveness of Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) on ChiCom-19 has not been demonstrated in clinical trials; but the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming…
https://www.ptcommunity.com/wire/lupus-therapeutics-affiliate-lupus-research-alliance-developing-study-focused-lupus-patients
The CNN/MSNBC screams of “snake oil” and prosecuting President Trump for “crimes against humanity” are a lot more insane than allowing doctors and patients to decide whether or not to try this. My wife has been on Plaquenil for lupus for over a year and has experienced no side effects, gained significant relief from the symptoms. If this also provides protection against ChiCom-19, it’s lagniappe on steroids!
Driving a car is useful.
Most vaccines and Tamiflu and many other drugs have no proof they are useful
David
I’ve never been overwhelmed by an anecdote. 🙂
Guy,
“One of the problems with successfully dealing with threats is that people start believing that there is no threat.” – Thomas Sowell
Polio, diphtheria, small pox, pertussis , are just a few often-devastating diseases that are no longer a threat because of vaccination. A full list of recommended vaccinations is at https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
Pangburn
“The COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance says no evidence of a protective effect from hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19 in a self-report survey of patients on the medication. April 4, 2020”
Also:
https://www.rxlist.com/plaquenil-side-effects-drug-center.htm
The bottom line is that there are pros and cons for the efficacy of HCQand most people are so desperate for a cure that they ‘de-nye’ the fact that side effects are well known and, while in and of themselves are usually not life threatening, when used with someone who is on their last legs anyway may be as dangerous as the disease.
Clyde,
Apparently your perception is so biased that you do not recognize that “no evidence of protection” is not the same as ‘evidence of no protection’. I am not aware of any evidence of no protection.
I am still only monitoring worldwide deaths. Seemed to ease of for a day or two but today over 7000. First posted here when deaths under 1000 in a day and stated that if followed exponentially would see doubling every few days. Today still on that path. If unbroken would mean over 10,000 soon and eventually (20 or so days) 50,000 plus per day. That is why we are taking extreme measures.
Forget the extreme measures. Because the models on a rapidly moving unpredictable unresearched virus with many unknowns semi resemble the over exaggeration of of climate models America should just do nothing.
Honestly it will be fun to watch it burn. I honestly dont see the resemblance here at all, ok ok maybe a little bit.
There is actually some good modelers out there for the virus most are based on if no measures such as social distancing etc are taken.
Forget about atmospheric CO2 levels changing noticeably due to a couple months of reduced human activity.
I’m much more interested in how arctic sea ice is doing. The reduced activity has to have included and has to still be including significant reductions in the dirtiest Chinese coal plants.
Has arctic sea ice been skyrocketing, with a significant reduction in particulate pollution?
Melt season has begun. Perhaps it’ll melt more slowly but don’t expect it to skyrocket.
Pretty much nothing was going to stop the lockdown because it is very hard to convince people not to be fearful when media stoking fear 24/7.
Given that there is a lockdown now best to make it as short as possible by ensuring that social distancing is strictly followed. I can see this going on for months if cases don’t drop by huge amount.
What is that huge amount you are referring to?
With testing comes more cases.
I second that.
For weeks now I have been trying to download up-to-date data on CO2 in air. Scripps has data in this NOAA gap in March 2020, presumably from the same or very similar instruments on Mauna Loa. Elsewhere, some authorities have no public data I can find, later than end December 2018, like Barrow and South Pole.
One country that routinely measures CO2 does not intend to make March 2020 data available for another year yet. Our Australian CSIRO is not forthcoming, yet, in making data public just now.
Anyone here who has current data to share, please let me know. sherro1 at optusnet dot com dot au
This is funny
https://nypost.com/2020/04/07/pastor-who-criticized-coronavirus-mass-hysteria-dies-from-illness/
It almost tops the NBA player who tried to make light of the invisible enemy
https://youtu.be/bbZ3WKZdD1k?t=62
darwin awards all around
Now is not the time to try to convince your fellow citizens that the threat is not real.
But hey, if you think that it’s not dangerous go volunteer to work in an ER,
There’s also the Italian politician who was out high fiving people. Not sure that he died, but I think so.
There is no disputing the danger of the virus. Or the stupidity of some of the populace, especially some people who traveled and didn’t self isolate. To me that is the worst, as it moves the virus in leaps and bounds.
Finished my 10 days of hydroxychloroquine about 6 days ago. Staying home mostly, and things are pretty spread out where I live.
” There’s also the Italian politician who was out high fiving people. Not sure that he died, but I think so. ”
No, he recovered after a mild illness.
But hey, if you think that it’s not dangerous go volunteer to work in an ER.
That’s a ridiculous statement, Steven M.
You may as well have said something like this: If you think that a match won’t burn you that badly, then go jump in a fire.
Point being: Existing in society at large is NOT like being in an ER with the most active, dense concentration of an ailment. Come on! — you’re smarter than that … I think?
You’re blowin’ up on this thread aren’t you dood? What’s that . . . 5 posts? So far?
Hug a Chinese was an interesting Italian concept.
Seth and Gavin getting nervous!
7 Apr: AP: Modeling coronavirus: ‘Uncertainty is the only certainty’
By SETH BORENSTEIN and CARLA K. JOHNSON
“The key thing is that you want to know what’s happening in the future,” said NASA top climate modeler Gavin Schmidt. “Absent a time machine you’re going to have to use a model.”
Weather forecasters use models. Climate scientists use them. Supermarkets use them…
https://apnews.com/88866498ff5c908e5f28f7b5b5e5b695
… astrologists us them too.
Of course the models were wrong, all models are wrong.
But where are all the wrong models, that weren’t made by “Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Silicon Valley tech workers and Democratic activists — Zachary Rosen, Max Henderson, and Igor Kofman” guys?
The way I see it, New York city should be “lock down” 2 or 3 days before it was done, but “perhaps” that 2 or 3 days earlier would not have made that much difference, maybe less than 1000 deaths in total and we would not have gotten out lock down earlier or we adding 2 or 3 days to lock down. Or we would be in same spot that we are now with maybe as much as 1000 less deaths. Though New Yorkers may not followed the lock down as much as they did and if was the case it may have been only much as 500 less death or might be less 100 less deaths the degree New Yorkers didn’t follow it. And I think if New Yorkers followed the lock down even worst than they did, might added more than 100 deaths. I think main thing was shutting down the subways and buses, and not having large gatherings [particularly indoors}.
So, a question is, when to open bars and restaurants in New York city. Or when do you open Times Square.
It seems if open Times Square, it will be not be busy.
For Times Square to busy, you need hotels, airlines {including international flights] to open and lots of people traveling. Maybe opening Time Square, tomorrow, would fine, but doubt it will be crowded.
Now, if made any sense, I close subways and buses the soonest and open them the latest. So if don’t open subway and public mass transportation in general, but allowing bars and restaurants be opened, I might wait couple days or more.
And of course if going open bars and restaurants, all shops would be included, but without mass public transportation opened yet, it seems {like Times Square} they aren’t going be very busy.
So question is opening all bars, restaurants, all stores before Friday morning starts, waiting too long in terms keeping the lock down going?
Or does it have to be that everything is running by tomorrow?
Now, how about schools? Well, I think something like 1/2 school attendance could start as soon as possible, but maybe “normal” school starting next Monday.
Though maybe 1/2 schools starts next Monday, and a week later go to full schools.
Or do you think full schools should start as soon as possible.
What about international air travel. I think a problem with that is most nations would not open up air travel, but I think China would.
Do you want to open air travel to China as soon as possible?
Fire Marshal Gump, just got is wings clipped because he started ordering things “just cuz I say so”.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/04/07/dallas-county-commissioners-vote-to-limit-judge-clay-jenkins-emergency-powers/
Hallelujah! 👍👍
One question I keep asking is “What are they testing for?”. Are they testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Any corona virus (of which there are lots)?
Are all the tests the same? Does the USA, Europe, Asia all the other countries use the same test ?
The fellow who invented the PCR test says it isn’t suited to this. Yet that seems to be the dominant test in use. Is it valid?
TRM April 7, 2020 at 5:30 pm
One question I keep asking is “What are they testing for?”. Are they testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus? Any corona virus (of which there are lots)?
SARS-CoV-2 but maybe they also test for the other flu of common flu- and one of four of common flu is SARS-CoV-1
But far as I know they testing for SARS-CoV-2 and it’s possible they testing for other flu viruses and/or other known and common “problems”
“Are all the tests the same? Does the USA, Europe, Asia all the other countries use the same test ?”
well, no, one say they evolving, one aspect is making different tests which get faster to results. And could say number of tests with different precise- there is bias towards not having a high error in terms of failing to detect SARS-CoV-2 but it seems one can have the Chinese virus and takes few days before it can be detected- at least with some of the tests. Or it takes about 4 to 5 days to develop symptoms, and there seems to uncertainty about detect virus before symptoms appear. Or you take test and if negative, one takes test 2 days later, to confirm it’s negative.
If a PCR based test is carefully designed and you have the appropriate positive and negative controls in your run, yes, it is valid.
First designed test in the US didn’t seem to fulfill those requirements. So called “primer dimers” formed that compromised it’s validity. Not so in other countries.
But but but these are “projections” not “predictions.”
And they are based on certain virus transmission scenarios. If you adjust the models to the actual transmission, they are almost right, lol.
I don’t have a TV but look occasionally at snippets for various reasons on youtube. Don’t have twitter either but found the hashtag #filmyourhospital on youtube. Scary, frightening and puzzling all at the same time. I’ll leave you to look if you want without putting any single video up but from Copenhagen, Canada, Ireland and especially the US the Hospitals are empty. There’s no big rush no war zone no health services under pressure. Staff within the Hospitals in some with no masks on. Freaky.
All elective procedures have been put on hold and these are the majority of demands placed on hospital resources. This has resulted in many medical personnel being furloughed.
I Don’t feel that addresses the issue of Health Services under siege, why are they on furlough when staff are reputed to be working to breaking point and all the empty tents for the overflow of patients etc, etc?
There are certain hotspots where the hospitals are very busy. Non-essential procedures and appointments have been cancelled and staff has been moved ER and ICU. I know one young doctor who moved to ER from a completely unrelated area and has been using Hydrochloroquine extensively. I, too, saw Dr. Oz and his comment was that the bad reactions to the drug were from people who had been using it for 5 to 10 years. The naysayers mostly have a bad case of TDS and cannot accept the proposition that President Trump has made a true statement.
They were filming in the hotspots NY and NJ in example. It isn’t an actual naysay it’s just a questioning about the level of hyperbole, especially from our media friends.
Entertaining, as always. Glad you spend the time you do
Dallas has John Wiley Price, Houston’s blessed with Sheila Jackson Lee. Might be other differences between the two but the most significant one (in my mind) is a pair of swinging testicles.
John Wiley is actually not that bad of a guy… for a corrupt democrat politician. He is much smarter than SJL and he will pick a public fight with other Democrats, which is rare these days.
And he daily drives a ’71 Monte Carlo SS454 (I saw him gassing it up at Fuel City) so he’s got good taste in classic cars.
And they are driving massive supply purchase orders from China with states outbidding themselves or taking each others orders.
In government epidemiological model projections, I think we have found people who are even more incompetent in modeling the future than the Energy Information Administration (EIA). (I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible!)
Here is what I wrote at the “Marginal Revolution” blog in response to Tuesday link #4: “Could it be that scientists are rising in stature?”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/tuesday-assorted-links-257.html
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/tuesday-assorted-links-257.html#blog-comment-160063086
Fauci estimates on March 29th that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 (but he doesn’t “want to be held to that”)
P.S. Speaking of the EIA’s incompetence, coal-fired power generation in January 2020 (that’s BC…”Before COVID-19″) was 65,170 gigawatt-hours…down a spectacular 35 percent from January 2019.
P.P.S. Considering the first postscript, I guess it’s pretty clear who is in “fantasy land”, eh, David?
I put it to you that the main reason we are seeing an increase in hospital admissions is because having previously subscribed to the ‘choose who gets to live or die’ panic out of Italy hospitals were sending the moderately ill people home again.
Then, having discovered (fortunately) that they were not double stacking the infected in hospital corridors while desperately trying to find an unused ventilator, hospital are now admitting the moderately ill because they have room and resources and basically why not.
I believe this can been seen in Australia at least. Your Country May Vary as I honestly haven’t looked, but ‘Serious’ cases the last couple of weeks has only been 1%. This is now 3% despite the fact the detection rate from testing seems stable at 1.7% (more or less) and that new infections seem to be trending down. I have seen news reports claiming that Australian hospitals, having cancelled all elective surgery in anticipation, are now filled with empty beds.
Sadly there still seems to be some people who are refusing to recognise these observations and are sticking to the ‘Until Christmas’ mantra. Our work Team Lead at our morning stand up repeated this this morning as well as the claim that New York, both city and state, were in utter chaos that was ‘worse than Italy’. Guess you believe that sort of thing if you watch and trust the ABC.
In the real world we see people who no longer believe. WHO seems to be more gaga over Lady Gaga, so clearly they are taking the apocalypse serious and when driving home last night a local skate park was well occupied. People no longer see Wuhan Virus as a realistic threat.
I have read several reports of people who were sent home from hospitals, who then died before ever getting back to one…including some young and previously healthy people.
He was feeling better for a few days, then in the middle of the night started having trouble breathing, and died alone because his wife was sleeping in another room…even though she was infected already…and she had it first and only a mild case!
My gut feeling is, any such story in the newspaper likely indicates a far larger number of such cases.
Most people who are dying are not getting a newspaper article.
I am not even sure the official numbers we all watch on the various websites, include people that die at home.
In the midst of this, it is probably more likely such people are not counted at all.
“Dallas County Commissioner Judge Clay (Fire Marshal Gump) Jenkins babbling incoherently.”
Is he Forrest Gump brother?
The models in Australia have done a dismal job, vastly overestimating the expected number of cases. Our number of new cases peaked a couple of weeks ago, and it now appears that the number of active cases has as well. The majority of cases here were imported, and it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than at this time of year the virus was never going to spin out of control. So many things were changed so quickly that unfortunately no useful conclusions can be drawn about what measures were useful, and what measures were useless.
We have 6000 known cases in Australia, half recovered , 93 in ICU, and 45 deaths – all but one aged over 60.
Most positive cases are evenly distributed over the 20 – 80yr ages.
Our open spaces, sun, large block homes, low density living, fresh breezes should enable effective isolation of those at risk and over 60 without shutting down the country. Retirement age is 67 and most of those in between have funds and family.
Still do distances and wash hands, etc. But most could still earn a living. Spend gov. $$ on beds and testing rather than bailouts.
11059 new cases and 1417 new deaths in France
Ren,
How many of those deaths were Covid 19 and how many were just Corona virus?
I don’t see the COVID-Act Now model showing that “flattening the curve”, by preventing herd immunity, causes repeated outbreaks of the virus following the first outbreak, as was modelled in the Imperial College papers. Under “flattening the curve”, at-risk groups and their households will need to stay isolated for much longer, possibly for 18 months until there’s a vaccine. Older people could need to stay isolated from their younger relatives and from routine medical care for 18 months. Many of the at-risk people will not have 18 months to live anyway, so for them this would be a life sentence of solitary house arrest and poor medical care.
That’s assume the vaccine helps and doesn’t make people more vulnerable to the disease, unlike many other vaccines.
Good point; the most important aspect of the vaccine even for the at-risk groups may well be the excuse it would give to halt the disastrous lockdowns, rather than how safe and effective it is.
Fauci said pause your life until there a vaccine. He never said anything about a useful vaccine, or anyone gets it!
Here in the UK, we have daily press briefings to put the wider public in touch with the latest government action.
Basically, the UK has closed down everything, even the pubs and churches and all places of worship.
The actual data coming out from government is what we observers cal,l economic truth. That is nothing to do with economics, it refers to official releasing only the part of the reality of events going on they wish to release.
We have wall to wall MSM coverage of every cough and wheeze, in case it might be indicative of the pandemic, but despite all this effort to massage the crisis into a crisis, the numbers of people dying in the UK when compared to the last five year average for this time of year is …down!
Even more disturbing than the scale of the destruction being done to our economy, is the subtle but noticeable change of words being used by the officials. The definitive Covid 19 description has been replaced by the general group term Corona virus.
At the start of the “crisis” the description of the villain was Covid 19. I notice that definitive ID has been dropped, and we now hear about deaths from Corona virus! Now, while Sars Cov 2 aka Covid 19 is a corona virus, so are most of the virus that impact health during the winter months here in the UK. Those “normal” Corona virus deaths, which number a few thousand in a good year and and tens of thousands in a bad year, do not merit economic shut down.
This, as I pointed out earlier, is a good year for UK virus mortality rates. Deaths were lower during the prime extra winter deaths period of the year, thousands lower than the past five year average, as officially stated by the ONS (Office for National Statistics).
What is troubling me is this,
The specific Covid 19 virus is clearly a new virulent in the soup of viruses, but is it that unusual? Is it more dangerous to children? The answer seems to be no. Is it more dangerous to young healthy adults than normal Corona virus that turns up every year, and most of us call a cold? No.
The only sector that is at high risk, are those with health issues or are old with health issues. That I would argue is no different from normal virus infection and in number of deaths it is in line with past outbreaks of novel virus infection.
Going back to the words being used now in press briefings. The talk is of death from Corona virus, which clearly now includes everyone with any form of corona virus in them, not just Covid 19.
We need to ask specific questions of those leading the fight. One question is, how are you differentiating between Covid 19 infection and other corona virus infection? Another question is, what is the death rate from corona virus, excluding Covid 19. I suspect, you would be greeted with silence as an answer.
As Ratty once said to Mole:
‘Don’t mean to grumble but has the entire world gone completely mad?’
‘Yes’ said Mole ‘and that’s a fact, and no mistake!’
Ratty and Mole, though, set a great example by listening to those who really did know what they were talking about, normally Badger, rather than Toad…….
Being unsuccessful in finding Badger, I nevertheless found the following:
‘……I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic!’
Professor John Oxford of Queen Mary University London, one of the world’s leading virologists and influenza specialists
‘How a profession that is supposed to control the powerful as an independent, critical, impartial Fourth Estate can succumb as quickly as lightning to the same collective hysteria as its audience, almost unanimously, and give itself over to court reporting, government propaganda and expert deification: It’s incomprehensible to me, it disgusts me, I’ve had enough of it, I dissociate myself from this unworthy performance with complete shame.’
Harald Wiesendanger, science journalist with a focus on medicine for over 35 years.
Great allusion. Thanks for some literacy.
A different literature and a different Rati.
[106]”Giants’ dwellings were | over and under me. I used Rati’s tusk | to burrow out | and gnaw away the rock— in this way, I risked my head.” (From Odin’s Love Adventure, The Wanderer’s Havamal, tr. Jackson Crawford. Hackett 2019)
Sweden is to start reporting “died from” deaths rather than “died with”. They believe this will reduce the numbers by 80%. https://web.archive.org/web/20200404005730/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/03/coronavirus-swedish-experiment-could-prove-britain-wrong/
“Nothing to see here, move along.”
wtf is Chicom19
https://zilliongamer.com/call-of-duty-mobile/c/weapon-guide/chicom-stats-attachment-skin ?????
how is this relevant?
maybe you mean COVID-19?
I didn’t see Chicom 19. Was it there before?
Thanks. I imagine too little, too late.
We have responded too tersely “No it’s not.” to panicked THE SKY IS FALLING so that it is CRYING WOLF to the hysterics of all sorts.
We must have Damocles’ Sword of Truth scythe through all prognosticators!
As for the effect of the recent economic downturn on atmospheric CO2 level: Dr. Roy Spencer is not expecting much, despite the current ~ 415 PPM being above the ~ 280 PPM of the 1800s due to manmade emissions. That extra ~ 135 PPM took decades to build up. To the extent that removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere by nature can be approximated by exponential decay, its half-life is about 30 years according to a simple model by Spencer, about 41 years (time constant 59 years) according to one by Willis Eschenbach. Manmade emissions and the longer term rate of natural removal of the manmade surplus are at rates less than those of the seasonal sourcing and sinking by northern hemisphere vegetation (which causes the ripple in the Mauna Loa plot that peaks in the spring and bottoms out in early autumn), so it’s expectable for CO2 at Mauna Loa to continue rising in March and early April despite a sharp economic downturn.
So just drop me off at the next stop, I’ll maybe join the bus tour around the Sun again when the bus has calmed down and people can once again simply enjoy the ride without one upping each other in piety of conformity or shame. I prefer to not be around people that are intent to make everyone feel like a dirty no good organism for simply breathing. Just drop me off at the next stop ok? Pick me up again when the sheeple have gone squirrel onto something else, I hear it’s a good time of the decade to visit Saturn.
Debating on the error of overestimation in models based on…..what? What IS the base for these models? What are the assumptions built into the models? WHAT DID THEY ASSUME FOR IMMUNITY IN THE POPULATION? Zero? Did they assume the virus was 100% communicable because no virus is 100% communicable. There is always someone immune….a great number of those in the community are immune. But without antibody testing, nobody knows…so why assume that nobody IS immune? Why not run the numbers from the flu? We have data for that. Or SARS or MERS? Or Swine Flu, again, we HAVE that data…real data, not assumed data based on Italy(? is it? according to the sheeple watch it is, aren’t we all locked down to flatten the curve…or is it so stay home and stay safe….when did THAT morph?). No virus wipes out 100% or infects 100%. So why assume that with this one? Humanity has seen some pretty nasty viruses that are highly contagious with high death rates. Which means we have historical knowledge. USE IT. Because the numbers here don’t even hold a candle to what we’ve come to expect in seasonal viruses and loads every single year. And doesn’t even come close to a killer that is in our population that we don’t talk about anymore–TB. So why debate on the overestimation of the prediction models? Why not attack the basis for those models in the first place? I want to know what those models are based on and more importantly the confidence levels of the assumptions made.
We need real data, not assumptions. People go off about the testing, but if all your doing is testing for an active virus without viral load? Or only testing those you suspect have it? Well, your numbers are going to be confirmed no matter what. It’s called bias. We need widespread antibody testing. Get everyone tested for antibodies and get us all out of the house and back to freaking work. I know I am not alone here when I say, I suspect I’ve already had this virus in January. It wasn’t the flu, I can tell you that, I normally don’t get the flu but the few times I’ve had it, it wasn’t that at all. Very different and all the symptoms match exactly. It took me down and out for 3 full days, fever, no taste, no smell, dry cough, feeling like I got hit by a truck. It took me the better part of a week to feel normal again and regain my sense of smell. Symptoms match and that was in January. But without antibody testing I don’t know for sure and neither does anyone else.
My point is you can debate on the numbers all day long, but the numbers are without meaning if they are based and run on bad assumptions. Lets start with a basic run on a regular virus, stratify the data we do have and for cripes sake, start INCLUDING those with co morbidity because that is something that has come out of this. You can’t tell me that our modeling isn’t sophisticated enough to include those with co morbidity..that’s just bunk.
All models are wrong, some models are useful. The COVID Act Now model is not one of them.
The real problem is policy-makers and the hysteria-loving media do not understand the limits of models. The U.K went on lockdown because a (very dated) model predicted 500K deaths. The Rosanne Rosanna Danna moment came 2 weeks later when the updated model predicted 20K deaths instead. Only nobody seems to have noticed.
It is WITH THE ZINC flush. The hydroxychloroquine opens the pathway for the zinc. And the sooner the better. Waiting until “they are dying” to justify off label use is KILLING people. Start the treatment with the first symptoms. Hydro – Zinc – ZPac.
Pass it on.
Its hydrox plus zinc plus Zpac to save people. Start with first symptoms. Pass it on.
Models/modelers are the modern soothsayers, or prognosticators, or chicken entrails, or Tarot cards, or tea leaves, or Chinese Fortune Sticks. And about as accurate.
Bow down to the modelers (or else).
This is a tyranny of the “experts”.
Some people call it the medical mafia.
They had been planning for and expecting a pandemic of this type for a long time (they had been licking their lips in anticipation of DOING A LOCK-DOWN).
Remember this… “experts” are not necessarily right because they often have an agenda or they are determined to maintain they are right in their beliefs… and damn any evidence to the contrary.
Interesting to say the least that the people who formulated the models often have Democratic activist backgrounds.
Each individual has to make a decision about what is really going on… depending on your decision & conscience, there is action to be taken: contact your governor!
You might be able to only leave a message:
OPEN THE ECONOMY… GET PEOPLE WORKING AGAIN.
Remember, it’s the governors who shut down the economy… so, it must be the governors who open it up.
This situation will change only if the People Demand It.
The People are sovereign, not the governors, they serve at our pleasure.
The more I see the promotion of lock downs, the more I KNOW that was the goal, not a side effect. I feel that something HUGE is happening. We need answers. We need a revolution.