JFKA Forum Journals of the Plague Year?

[Jeff Carter]

In zombie apocalypse movies, after the initial onslaught, the gathered survivors debate what to do next. A minority faction argues for heading as a group to the airport. Another faction argues it is a bad idea as the route the the airport is unprotected and they could all be wiped out. The first faction manages to convince most of the people to head with them to the airport. It turns out to be a very bad idea.

Opening up for business and getting back to “normal” while the virus numbers continue to show it is not yet under control may be a “going to the airport” event. I hope not.

In Iowa, workers have been informed that should they not go to work over safety concerns related to the virus, they will not be eligible for unemployment benefits. This places workers in the difficult position of being vulnerable to infection and possibly infecting family members who may have underlying conditions which will place them at extreme risk. A terrible choice to force on people.

There are mitigation strategies which can work while the economy/ businesses are open. It requires first that control has not been lost (i.e. NYC). After that it requires an aggressive program of testing, and that is where everything falls apart for the USA. There are no tests.

[W. Niederhut]

I made the mistake of going to Home Depot today to buy several things needed for some lawn and garden maintenance projects.

The place was packed, parking lot full, and about half of the customers were not wearing masks or observing social distancing rules.

By the time I left, there was a line of customers about 1 and 1/2 blocks long waiting to get into the store.

Meanwhile, it looks like Rob Wheeler drank the Trump/Fox COVID "over count" Kool Aid.*

 

*    Fox News and Trump allies keep floating debunked theories about an inflated coronavirus death toll

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/fox-news-trump-allies-keep-searching-evidence-an-inflated-coronavirus-death-toll-all-wrong-places/?hpid

 

May 4, 2020

It’s the notion that some Trump allies and conservative media figures just can’t kick: The idea that the official death toll from the coronavirus is being inflated. They use the argument to suggest, as Trump has, that outbreak is being politically weaponized against him. They also use it to argue for a swifter reopening of the economy.

Unfortunately, their latest theory is just as specious as its predecessors.

Over the weekend, this quest for an inflated-death-toll smoking gun focused on one page on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Web page, which relays data from death certificates, currently shows the coronavirus death toll at 37,308 — far lower than other estimates, which have it around 66,000 or 67,000.

 

This led to allegations that the CDC had suddenly revised its death toll significantly downward or that the death toll is dropping off in recent weeks, as the week-by-week data on the Web page would appear to suggest. While it shows more than 12,000 coronavirus deaths for the week ending April 11, that drops to about 10,400 the following week and about 3,200 the next week.

Just The News, a website recently launched by Trump-friendly journalist John Solomon, ran with this headline: “CDC: Coronavirus, influenza deaths fall for second straight week.”

A tweet from right-wing media personality Tim Young went viral, stating, “Did I read this wrong or did the CDC just revised the national COVID-19 deaths to 37,308?!?!” Other right-wing media posts suggesting as much were widely shared.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sunday night promoted an article from a random website called trendingpolitics.com that alleged the CDC had suddenly cut the death toll “Nearly In HALF."

What’s the explanation here? “New CDC Coronavirus Data Cuts American Death Toll Nearly In HALF” https://t.co/CyyDpI8Fll

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) May 3, 2020

“What’s the explanation here?” she asked.

It’s pretty simple, actually.

Even a cursory look at the Web page at issue should disabuse anyone of this particular theory. At the top, the page clearly says these data are based upon death certificates and are thus a lagging indicator of the death toll.

“Note: Provisional death counts are based on death certificate data received and coded by the National Center for Health Statistics as of May 1, 2020," it says. "Death counts are delayed and may differ from other published sources.”

This word of caution is repeated throughout the page, in fact. Below the table of weekly deaths, it says, “Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to [the National Center for Health Statistics] and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more.”

In other words, there is a very good reason the data show a drop in deaths for the last two weeks: because the data are incomplete and hardly up to date.

Just look at the number of total deaths — i.e. not just coronavirus deaths — in the table. Did Americans suddenly stop dying of all causes in recent weeks? Of course not. The data just haven’t arrived yet.

And the idea that this reveals some kind of downward revision in the overall death toll is complete bunk. The Web page at issue has existed since at least early April, according to the Wayback Machine, with the same disclaimers about the lag in data.

What’s more, the CDC’s website elsewhere reports a similar death toll as everyone else: 65,735. These data, like the ones in media reports, cite reports of deaths from the states — deaths for which death certificates may not yet have been transmitted and coded by the CDC.

The whole things harks back to another easily debunked theory floated by a Fox News personality. A month ago, some conservatives pointed to other data on the CDC website — for pneumonia deaths — to argue that the coronavirus death toll was inflated. The apparent drop-off in pneumonia deaths, they argued, suggested pneumonia deaths were being wrongly coded as coronavirus deaths to juice the numbers.

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson even did a segment on it. The only problem? The data was, again, lagging. And it didn’t even account for the time period in which coronavirus deaths began to rise significantly.

As I wrote then:

“For the last few weeks, that [pneumonia] number has come in far lower than at the same moment in previous years. How could that be?” Carlson asked. “Well, it seems entirely possible that doctors are classifying conventional pneumonia deaths as covid-19 deaths. That would mean this epidemic is being credited for thousands of deaths that would have occurred if the virus never appeared here.”

...

But the CDC says these data are generally incomplete, even for months. A study of 2015′s data showed that “mortality data is approximately 27% complete within 2 weeks, 54% complete within 4 weeks, and at least 75% complete within 8 weeks of when the death occurred.”

As you look closely, you’ll notice the dates of these data. The last week for which we have any data is the week that ended March 21. Why is that March 21 date important? By that point, the United States had logged just 385 deaths from the coronavirus. There’s no way “thousands” of pneumonia deaths were being wrongly classified as deaths from the coronavirus because there weren’t even 1,000 coronavirus deaths logged, period.

This theory has apparently been shelved — and for good reason: Now that the data have actually arrived for recent weeks, they actually show the number of pneumonia deaths has spiked, rather than dropped. By the same logic featured here, that would suggest coronavirus deaths might actually be undersold, because some are reported as being due to pneumonia.

On the same show, Fox News analyst Brit Hume lodged one of his own oft-repeated theories about an inflated death toll, suggesting that people who have underlying conditions who die in the brief period after contracting covid-19 might have in fact somehow died of those underlying conditions. The theory was also floated the next day during Fox’s daytime programming.

 

Except Deborah Birx, a leading medical expert on the White House coronavirus task force, quickly quashed that idea.

“Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a covid infection,” Birx said. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”

The other leading medical expert on the coronavirus task force, Anthony S. Fauci, followed up by warning against such “conspiracy theories.”

Even Trump himself has rejected the idea that coronavirus data are incorrect. Despite retweeting a claim that mortality is being inflated because infection rates are underreported, Trump last week assured, “I can only say what we’re doing; we’re reporting very accurately."

He added: “It’s very important to us to do very accurate reporting, and that’s what we’re doing.”

But Trump has sent other signals on this, including with that retweet and with the early argument that the virus is being weaponized against him as some kind of “hoax.”

So apparently the idea of an inflated coronavirus death toll is something that just won’t go away, no matter how easily debunked the various theories are — and even as there is much more convincing evidence that it’s actually understating the number of deaths.

[Ron Bulman]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/models-shift-to-predict-dramatically-more-us-deaths-as-states-relax-social-distancing/ar-BB13AKrZ?li=BBnb7Kz

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-disavows-administration-forecast-of-3000-coronavirus-deaths-a-day-by-june/ar-BB13ANr8?li=BBnb7Kz

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/flint-family-dollar-security-guard-killed-after-turning-away-customer-without-mask/ar-BB13ALXu?li=BBnbfcL

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/miami-beachs-south-pointe-park-closes-after-nearly-8000-break-face-mask-and-distance-rules/ar-BB13AATO?li=BBnb7Kz

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/park-ranger-pushed-in-lake-after-enforcing-social-distancing/vi-BB13AOkh

[W. Niederhut]

          The park ranger incident in Austin fits with what I have observed here in Denver-- most of the guys who are not social distancing or wearing masks are, typically, 20 to 30-something white males.   In our local park, the Baby Boomers are almost all wearing masks and making an effort to socially distance.

         At Home Depot today, most of the Mexican American guys were wearing masks and gloves, and politely attempting to socially distance.

         In contrast, several white guys without masks walked right up next to me while I was perusing merchandise on the shelves -- making no effort at all to maintain any distance.

[Kirk Gallaway]

I saw the original clip of the Bakersfield guys. Kern County is largely out in the desert. The biggest city in rural Kern County and the only place with a major hospital is  Bakersfield and the county's death rate is among the lowest in the state. So they haven't  paid any heavy dues.They've been reprimanded by the "Deep State"Kern County Public Health  Department because the Bakersfield boys are arguing to open up right away. California's a big state and there are other more remote areas that would like to open up as well. Newsome today announced he's starting phase 2 of opening up on Friday. Now I see today there's 16 infected in Bakersfield at a nursing home.

But in fairness, there are some people on the front lines who have come to similar conclusions.  I don't question their data. Here in the link below is  a guy, not quite as spooked, with a bit more on the ball, whose done a little walking the walk. 

 

They both agree the path up to now,  that is, flattening the curve has been the right strategy. But they say everybody just  staying home will build no herd immunity. And if we don't build herd immunity, are we just to stay home and wait for a cure vaccination that may never come and probably won't come this year?

 

I think of the Bakersfield boys as perhaps a tad bozo, trying to make a name for themselves. They cite Sweden as an unqualified success, but Katz isn't quite so impressed. The Sweden method is keep everything open and everybody try to distance though they don't wear many masks.  They are flattening the curve but they've lost a lot of older people. And their number of deaths is 5X times their neighbors, Norway Finland and Denmark which has a much greater population density. And they're taking a lot of heat. Then this headline now:

 

SWEDEN: Updated: May 02, 2020, 13:17 GMT Coronavirus Cases: 22,082 Deaths: 2,669. Sweden records the highest weekly mortality rate since the turn of the century. They say that elected politicians must now intervene with "swift and radical measures." Swedish Public Health has claimed on four different occasions that the spread of infection has levelled out, despite evidence to the contrary. Sweden's relatively relaxed approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus has come under fire in international media and from many locals in the capital Stockholm.

I do wonder what their evidence to the contrary is?

Katz has the more conventional .5 % or one in 200 infection to death rate but concedes it could be lower. I think in the Bakersfield opening clip which isn't available now on youtube (which is BS) I think I heard the head guy say they thought it was .03% or 3 per 10,0000! Katz says they could figure it out pretty fast with random testing. A random test in Santa Clara County shows  4% of asymptomatic people have CV antibodies.
 

But in assessing this, how fatal is it? One problem in all this is that each state has different criterion for CV death, some states report CV death solely from respiratory illness. While some report other organ failure as result of CV infection as well. Some didn't count the increased fatalities in nursing homes. Now they're talking about young asymptomatic young people whose first symptom is a stroke! And there is still a lot of inaccuracies in testing.

They still know very little about this. They don't know if having antibodies even gives a solid  immunity.  Is it a stronger immunity if the symptoms were initially greater? How long does it last? Would that be more useful plasma to treat others?

 

And this is a pretty good Sweden link from CNN, But at the end  there's Tom Friedman (pfff!) who makes a statement that Sweden is 25-30% on the way to herd immunity.  HowTF can he say that?  Besides the Swedish FM says that herd immunity isn't the goal of their policy.

https://youtu.be/vWPIGty2f6Q

Edited May 5, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

Good article on how this happened:

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/04/trumps-desperate-april-34-days-of-fumbling--and-it-was-worse-than-we-thought/?fbclid=IwAR3qRTEkzt4PHn93bv9xmleZANedX_a1MCpPtbakplH3Fq-1JqO1QhKpeUE

[Ron Bulman]

"This is nothing to worry about"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-gov-admits-dangers-of-reopening-state-on-private-call-with-lawmakers/ar-BB13DMzB?li=BBnb7Kz

Friday the beauty salons open back up.  The 18th it's the gym's.

Oh, BTW, Dallas county broke their own record for new cases in a day three day's in a row.

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/coronavirus/article242512376.html

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Robert Wheeler said:

We’ll, that’s one way to get the numbers up.

During a COVID-19 briefing, The Virginia Department of Health announced it will now count the number of positive virus tests instead of the number of people who test positive.
 

https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/01/virginia-is-seeing-jump-covid-testing/
 

 

False negatives, Robert. Don’t forget those!

[David Andrews]

MUTATION !!!

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/05/the-coronavirus-has-mutated-heres-what-that-means/

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

MUTATION !!!

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/05/the-coronavirus-has-mutated-heres-what-that-means/

It will take the msm a while to catch up with D614G.

[Ron Bulman]

Mask?  He looks really presidential in the safety glasses.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/arizona-workers-blast-live-let-022028385.html

He deserves a clearer presentation.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=live+and+let+die+guns+n'+roses&view=detail&mid=AC8306103ED838EC211BAC8306103ED838EC211B&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dlive%2band%2blet%2bdie%2bguns%2bn%27%2broses%26form%3dPRUSEN%26mkt%3den-us%26httpsmsn%3d1%26msnews%3d1%26rec_search%3d1%26refig%3ded45278092f94d4f861d4a1a6c6520ae%26sp%3d1%26qs%3dAS%26pq%3dlive%2band%2blet%2bdie%2bgun%26sk%3dPRES1%26sc%3d8-20%26cvid%3ded45278092f94d4f861d4a1a6c6520ae

[Ron Bulman]

8 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

So a goat and a paw paw (a fruit) tested positive for CV19 in Tanzania.

https://qz.com/africa/1850839/tanzania-president-magufuli-blames-covid-19-rise-on-faulty-tests-goats/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
 

 

 

Make's me wonder if Foie Gras is safe.  You think this is all a joke?

https://www.markys.com/Foie-gras/FOIE-GRAS-FROZEN-Whole-Grade-A-1.4-2.1-lb.html?msclkid=77df57eec1a51047e84d095c937db420&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping&utm_term=4580290568600615&utm_content=Ad group %231

[Ron Bulman]

5 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

We’ll, that’s one way to get the numbers up.

During a COVID-19 briefing, The Virginia Department of Health announced it will now count the number of positive virus tests instead of the number of people who test positive.
 

https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/01/virginia-is-seeing-jump-covid-testing/
 

 

Robert.  Your sudden interest in this thread makes me question your motivation for posting.  A quarter of the posts over the last five days you'd not posted on before on a over month old thread?  15 of 60 in that time.   Did we talk about statistics too much regarding covid 19 , requiring some of your lengthy diatribes?

Edited May 6, 2020 by Ron Bulman

[David Andrews]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

It will take the msm a while to catch up with D614G.

 

[W. Niederhut]

4 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

I've been busy. I like posting articles that counter the threads dominant narrative. I did the same thing on the Mark Zaid thread, which is still going, albeit with less volume. (Another similar type thread before that.)

I find the "banter" enjoyable and informative.

When the "crew", (Niederhut, Ness, Kirk, and maybe a few others) said the Mueller report/testimony would finish the President, I disagreed and said the whole thing was a farce.

Similarly with the Impeachment.

Now we are are Plan "C", for "C"oronavirus.

I see it as a media enabled "Op", where politicians and the MSM are trying to construct a Narrative in order to achieve some short and long term goals.

Don't get me wrong, their is a real virus, people are sick, and many have died.

Nevertheless, the number of sick and dead do not justify some of the government actions that have been taken, especially at the State level.

Feel free to dismiss the article from Tanzania. Assume the President of Tanzania is another Tin-Hat Dictator from a Continent full of Tin-Hat Dictators, and therefore a joke can be made out of the test results from a funny sounding fruit.

Follow the MSM narrative and agree with the consensus outlook, here on a JFK Assassination Conspiracy Forum.

Rob,

     MSM narratives about most things are hardly monolithic.   And your exclusive focus on right wing alternate reality sources of "news" is problematic, to say the least.   The latest example is your Kool-Aid chugging approach to misinterpreting the COVID epidemiology data.

     I sincerely hope that you don't end up drinking your aquarium cleaning products.

     Your misinterpretation of the Mueller Report, and its suppression by Bill Barr, is equally bizarre.

     Are you even aware that Bill Barr suppressed and blatantly misrepresented Mueller's own summary of his Russiagate investigation?

     That Barr is currently taking his case for withholding the unredacted Mueller Report from Congress all the way to the Supreme Court?  Why?

      That the adamant refusal of Trump and multiple witnesses, including Paul Manafort, to honestly answer critical questions about the 2016 Trump campaign's numerous contacts with Russian officials and cut outs severely obstructed Mueller's investigation?  Manafort continued to lie to Mueller's team even after he agreed in a plea bargain deal to cooperate with the investigation!

       Mueller documented multiple, clear instances of felony obstruction of justice by Trump, beginning in the spring of 2017, but he was not permitted to indict Trump under Barr's DOJ guidelines.  He intended that Congress review the damning evidence.

      Have you even read the transcript of Trump's long-delayed, written responses to Mueller's questions?

      Trump repeatedly claimed that he "did not recall" details relating to Mueller's questions.

Edited May 6, 2020 by W. Niederhut