Which States are Leading and Why? That question was on my mind, so I made up this informative and puzzling slide. Thoughts? Any location related I have missed?
Maybe Liberals are more prone to die from COVID? :-) I think that would be a correlation vs causation error... :-)
COVID coming to a Neighborhood Near You?
As always, click the image to zoom.
Maybe Liberals are more prone to die from COVID? :-) I think that would be a correlation vs causation error... :-)
COVID coming to a Neighborhood Near You?
As always, click the image to zoom.
And a map for your convenience... :-)
56 comments:
It is likely still coming to a neighborhood near you :-(
The problem with numbers is that they don't mean anything.
==Hiram
Interesting, please continue.
It's like Trump with his press conference. He reads all those numbers, but without putting them in any sort of context. When asked to do that as he was yesterday, he seems unable to grasp the significance of the question, so he briefly resorts to racism and then storms out.
I am a numbers skeptic in this and in most other areas. Numbers, by their nature convey a specificity and a precision that isn't really supported by the underlying facts. We simply don't count well, particularly in times of crisis.
Also context. Is a million a little or lot? It's impossible to meaningfully answer that question without knowing what it's a million of. There are other context issues. I heard a state senator recently who is also a doctor complaining that the numbers were wrong because the standard that was being applied for the epidemic, were different from the standards he applied in his day to day medical practice. Of course they were because doctors were responding to the epidemic, not the specific health issues of any individual patient.
--Hiram
I think your statement is incorrect then.
"The problem with numbers is that they don't mean anything."
It should probably read that.
"The problem with numbers is that they can be misused, used in error and misinterpreted."
Without numbers, how would you communicate any of this?
Some people are dying, a big financial bailout has been passed, etc...
what does "five" mean? What does it tell you about policy? Is five not enough or could it be too many? Would you prefer? It's a prime number. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is 5 to hot, too cold, or just right?
What is it exactly that the number five communicates to us about our world?
--Hiram
Here is the number I am interested in: Compared to the average, month to month, what are total deaths this year from all causes? IOW, is CV simply killing people that would normally die anyway, of some "comorbidity," simple old age, or the flu? And I would point out that the number of "cases" is indeed a largely irrelevant number, since many of those tested are asymptomatic, we don't test everybody, and the tests may be unreliable. Look up the Tanzania experiment.
Those numbers are out there, and they are worrisome. We are under-reporting deaths caused by the pandemic.
Moose
Hiram,
As I said... "The problem with numbers is that they can be misused, used in error and misinterpreted."
Jerry,
As I have said before... The number is wrong... Unfortunately it is likely too low.
Now if it is 70,000 or 90,000 people that have died in the past ~2 month rather than 80,000 due to COVID... How will that change your views?
If old / sick people died 6 months to early because COVID weakened them. Is that a COVID caused death in your view? What if they died 2 weeks early?
If we lose an additional 30,000 to 100,000 people doue to opening prematurely or people resisting the simple act of wearing a mash... How will that change your views?
Oops... I forgot the forecast link
Excess Deaths
Moose
Yep... Not Looking Like More Analysis Will lead to a Happier Number :-(
Moose, that is very helpful. Thank you. It does seem to say that, except for a few outliers like NYC, the number of "excess deaths" do to CV is a teensy fraction of the population. It somewhat raises the suspicion that we are measuring people who died "with CV" rather than those who died "FROM CV." We also are not counting deaths due to the lockdown as, in a full analysis, we would subtract from excess deaths as defining the "cure worse than the disease."
I'm still seeing figures of total CV deaths/population somewhere near .02%, yet 20% of people have been forced out of a job. It doesn't make sense.
We can count/estimate the number of people who died as a result of there being a pandemic. It's actually very simple.
Moose
Really? We have exact figures on CV-CAUSED deaths (as opposed to some other), as well as the number of suicides, prohibited other surgeries or avoided hospitalizations, and on and on? Simple to you, incredibly complicated in reality.
Jerry,
You missed answering my questions as is often the case...
Now if it is 70,000 or 90,000 people that have died in the past ~2 month rather than 80,000 due to COVID... How will that change your views?
If old / sick people died 6 months to early because COVID weakened them. Is that a COVID caused death in your view? What if they died 2 weeks early?
If we lose an additional 30,000 to 100,000 people due to opening prematurely or people resisting the simple act of wearing a mask... How will that change your views?
How many lives saved would be required to justify 20% unemployment and these massive bailouts?
It looks like you avoided weighing in the cost vs lives saved discussions..
Link 1
Link 2
And the Trade offs discussions
Moose,
I agree with Jerry on the difficulty level of getting an accurate number
However +/-10% should be pretty attainable. So we have lost 85,000 +/- 8,500 lost lives in ~3 months...
If we stays at that rate for another 9 months we will be at 340,000 +/- 34,000...
Of course if we stay at 1,500 per day for another 9 months we will be at 410,000 +/- 41,000...
Though Jerry says he wants to challenge the data, I just think he is scared of a very nasty virus... :-(
Jerry,
On the upside, even though you are older...
It is more likely that you will survive COVID than die...
Though it is likely that 8 out of your 100 hundred friends will not be so fortunate. :-(
I look at it as just another seasonal flu virus, but one for which we currently lack both herd immunity and a vaccine. I see deaths/day already coming down as the weather warms. I remember Gov. Walz's justification for the shutdown as predicting 70,000 MN deaths without the shutdown and 50,000 WITH it. So far, 638. Hospitals laying off staff for lack of patients. Most ICU beds and ventilators going unused. In short, we're suffering from a severe overreaction. So far, CV is about like a bad flu season, and remember we have a vaccine for the flu. Do we shut down the entire economy for months on end because of the flu?
Jerry,
I often wonder how you develop these ideas in the face of so much data that shows you are incorrect.
I am pretty sure the country has never lost ~85,000 in 2+ months to the flu. And that was with States keeping people away from each other.
By the way, you are ignoring my questions again...
Just Like the Flu... Not...
COVID vs Flu
MN Hospitalizations climbing
How hard can it be to come up with a decent estimate of the number of deaths due to the existence of the pandemic? Every state tracks deaths. We know how many people typically die in a month, year, etc. Simple statistics will show us how many more people than average have died. What that won't do is show us the direct causes of these deaths, but it WILL show us the total effect of the pandemic as it relates to lives lost.
Moose
New Post On Costs and Savings
Moose,
Ah... The problem with your last statement...
"the total effect of the pandemic"
The problem is that COVID 19 is likely only one of many...
As Jerry noted... We have people dying from the "cure" also.
- Increase in abuse
- Increase in depression due to financial loss, loneliness, anxiety, etc
- Increase in people avoiding hospitals and clinics
- Other?
Or do want not acknowledge that the "shut everything down" path also caused suffering and death?
Not to mention the goofy terminal patient dies while they have COVID 19 issue...
Do we really want to blame COVID 19?
"The problem is that COVID 19 is likely only one of many..."
You're insufferable. Don't twist my words to suit your nonsense.
The effect of the pandemic includes those deaths not caused by the virus but nevertheless are a result of the pandemic. Of course, that's what I already said, but you can't seem to read with the proper comprehension.
Moose
"Not to mention the goofy terminal patient dies while they have COVID 19 issue..."
What does that even mean? If they have COVID 19 and die, it doesn't count as a COVID 19 death?
Moose
For a bean counter, you don't count beans very well.
If the average number of deaths in April in the U.S. is 100,000 but this year 160,000 died, it's pretty easy to come up with an estimate of the deaths attributed the existence of the pandemic.
And again, for those in the back not comprehending anything, that doesn't mean they all died of COVID-19.
Moose
Moose, the problem is that the "average deaths per year" is a +/- number, there is a confidence interval. I understand the average flu deaths per season is about 50,000, but that runs from 30,000 to 80,000. And remember the vaccine is 70% effective, so that 50,000 number would be closer to 150,000, without the vaccine. For something like CV for which there is no vaccine, we should expect the higher number, except that this virus is nowhere NEAR as contagious nor as lethal as the exaggerated claims made for it.
The other thing we should be looking at, and we do have some numbers, is to compare locked-down states and countries with those that did not. There doesn't appear to be a significant difference. Large differences, yes, but not compared to locked/not-locked distinction.
I also note two things: 1) the Wisconsin Supreme Court just struck down the stay-at-home orders, and 2) MN has the highest death rate of all states in long-term-care facilities. And those people are already staying at home!
Moose,
To determine if the lock downs and bail outs were a good or bad thing...
We need to know:
- How many died of COVID?
- How many died due to the lock down?
- And ideally, how many would have died of COVID without the lockdown?
And should we mark down someone dying in hospice as a COVID death if they just happen to have COVID in their last days?
Jerry,
Do you ever read the data filled sources I provide you?
Please provide some sources for all the foolishness you just wrote down.
Higher Rate. Possibly due to better testing.
FYI
Sweden death toll
If MN had followed Sweden's plan we would have had ~1800 dead instead to ~600...
What are the lives of 1200 people worth to you?
You keep avoiding my questions.
Oh, but the total cost is NOT 1200 additional deaths. First, we don't really know how many of the 600 we already have actually died FROM CV rather than WITH CV. Second, had we just locked down the long term care facilities, most of those 600, and the 1200 after that, could have been avoided. Instead we put everybody under house arrest. That has already cost the state budget $2 billion, and the real people far more than that, including some lives ruined and perhaps even lost.
And that is a most curious citation "higher rate... better testing." That's terrible math, but it does illustrate something important. There is this grand deception that the infection rate and the mortality rate are the same-- that everybody that gets this disease dies. But the "known cases" only tells you how much testing you have done, so finding the overall infection rate is impossible until you test everybody, and in the meantime you have a highly biased number because asymptomatic people don't generally get tested. What matters is the mortality rate, because those people, assuming we count cause of death correctly, is the same regardless of how many people you tested, and apparently that is something under 0.1%.
The article you cite claims, quite astonishingly, that the number of deaths in long term care is higher because we do more testing!
"To determine if the lock downs and bail outs were a good or bad thing..."
Straw man. This was never my argument.
Move along.
Moose
Jerry,
Still just opinions and no sources... :-(
Actually I think they are indicating the more likely problem. A lot of older people are dying in other states and they are not be listed as COVID deaths.
Too bad you are scared to answer my questions... :-(
Moose,
Sorry, apparently I never got your point.
Jerry: "Here is the number I am interested in: Compared to the average, month to month, what are total deaths this year from all causes?"
Moose: "Those numbers are out there, and they are worrisome. We are under-reporting deaths caused by the pandemic."
That's it. That's my point. No need to create an argument just so you can show us how much you like to regurgitate your own opinions.
Moose
My point is that the "Pandemic" is not the "Cure"...
There are 2 unique causal factors that need to be separated.
I mean if 120,000 people died.
- 85,000 from COVID illness
- 35,000 from Lockdown related depression, avoided hospital stays, etc
This pretty important to know... Isn't it?
Sure...but not my point. There are deaths related to the existence of the pandemic. The number of deaths due to the pandemic is not currently part of the general conversation, only deaths due to COVID-19.
Moose
If we CAN reliably establish the number of "excess deaths," then the important question becomes "is the lockdown making a difference worth the cost?" I have no idea what your "question" is that you want me to answer. This is the one that matters.
Jerry,
I will make it easier for you.
If we acknowledge that the shutdowns saved lives by:
- slowing the spread of the virus
- ensuring healthcare systems did not get more over run more than they did
- buying time to procure and manufacture more protective equipment
- buying time to procure and manufacturer more ventilators
- buying time to develop and test plasma based treatments
- buying time to develop and test other treatments. (remdesivir)
- etc
How many lives would need to have been saved for you to agree that the actions were justified?
Please remember if you have a temptation to say COVID is "normal" that the loved ones of people in New York had to be stored in refrigerated trailers even with people sheltering in place... And they also went to temporary storage in mass graves.
You have not made it easier at all. You simply assume facts not in evidence, and we should not "acknowledge" them as such. There seems little solid evidence that the shutdowns did ANY of those things, since the only evidence that those bad things WOULD happen without the shutdown came from models, estimates and wild guesses. The fact they did not, was it due to the shutdown, or simply to the natural course of the infection itself? And no evidence that maintaining these shutdowns for months is even necessary.
Obnoxious strawman argument: suggesting that only people who died in NYC have "loved ones."
Jerry,
You could just say that you are scared to put a dollar value on a human life?
The question still stands... It does not even require you to believe that shutdowns did anything positive.
How many lives would need to have been saved for you to agree that the actions were justified?
Please note that I only raised the NY issue because your position is that COVID is no worse than the flu... I am pretty sure NY has ever had to bring in refrigerated trailers to store their dead in due to a flu outbreak.
And apparently Louisiana is Struggling also
Maybe kind of like the flu but 10+ times worse...
"Most of the fatalities occurred in Orleans Parish, the epicenter of the contagion in Louisiana and a nationally recognized hot-spot of virus activity.
Even though makeshift morgues have been set up for coroners and funeral homes, last week Mayor LaToya Cantrell requested federal aid in the form of refrigerated units for body storage, explaining that the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office is overwhelmed by the mounting death toll.
One funeral home director compared the body storage situation with Hurricane Katrina. Others said it brought to mind the yellow fever epidemic of the 1800s, when undertakers became overwhelmed and the Crescent City became known as the nation’s "necropolis."
And in Michigan...
Dead bodies everywhere... :-) Let's all go have a COVID party at Jerry's. :-)
"State officials and members of the Michigan Interdisciplinary Mortuary Response Team are looking for a site to store the bodies of COVID-19 victims as morgues at Metro Detroit hospitals and funeral homes have been filled to capacity.
Officials from the Michigan Health and Hospital Association and the Michigan Funeral Directors Association said Friday the site will be located in Metro Detroit, where hospitals and funeral homes have been stressed by the number of people who have died. The three-county region has experienced 1,088 COVID-19 deaths or 85% of Michigan's fatalities.
Health care workers at the Detroit Medical Center's Sinai-Grace hospital told The Detroit News this week that they have been overwhelmed by coronavirus patients, resulting in patients dying in hallways and nurses searching for body bags and places to put the dead. "
So....
How many lives would need to have been saved for you to agree that the actions were justified?
And if you die in MN you or your loved one may get stored in a newly purchased refrigerated warehouse like butchered cattle...
Is that close enough to home?
How absolutely inhuman you must be to try to put a dollar value on a human life, and insist that I must join you in that miserable state. I refuse. My question is whether Almighty Government has done what it can reasonably do to protect us from threats not of our own making.
Just look at your own data. Michigan is locked down tight, yet Detroit cannot keep up with deaths? Other states that have NOT locked down don't seem to be having that problem. So, is the lockdown a reasonable effort by government to keep us safe?
Jerry,
You put a very low value on a human life every time you say we should not have shutdown and slowed the transmission. You are just scared to admit it for some reason?
What do you think the states should have done differently that could have saved more lives?
Remember that the virus needs people moving and mixing to get to other people. It has no feet of its own. Someone brings it into the old folks home.
This is an interesting piece on how a proactive experienced government saved lives by preventing people from helping the virus move.
There you go again, simply ASSUMING that the shutdown "slowed the transmission." And by the way, I value human life in its entirety-- the freedom to move about, worship, speak, socialize, WORK, and to take reasonable precautions with ones own health and the health of others.
In New York, Cuomo ORDERED nursing homes to take in active COVID patients! And he let the subways continue to run. A shutdown that should have been well-targeted and lasted 2-3 weeks might have been effective, but what was actually done was not, so 1/3 of all US deaths attributed to CV are in New York.
Time for you to admit that these statewide tyrannical edicts have done more harm than good over huge swaths of the country. I'm simply not buying that "if it saves one life" nonsense. People die. Governors are not gods.
Jerry,
So based on this.
"And by the way, I value human life in its entirety-- the freedom to move about, worship, speak, socialize, WORK, and to take reasonable precautions with ones own health and the health of others."
You are willing to have other people literally die so you can do as you wish?
And of course lock downs work, as Vietnam proved very well.
We just did not lock down early enough or hard enough... Remember that Trump was denying the need in the end of February, just before it became real to him and he supported the lock downs.
Same question:
What do you think the states should have done differently that could have saved more lives?
Please be specific.
States could have locked down just long-term-care facilities, perhaps even quarantining employees in place. They could have /suggested/ stay-at-home, masks, social distancing where possible. NYC could have sanitized the subways frequently. They could have NOT criticized Trump for shutting down travel with China and Europe, and NOT shut down medical facilities unnecessarily, and not picked winners and losers in other businesses. They could have had emergency supplies available or at least on order.
And what makes you think that states "saved more lives" with these drastic measures? Might the opposite be true?
costs more lives
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