For hsh

by JanieM

5/16: US and UK updated to today. But US numbers are bizarre -- Worldometer doesn't agree with itself, in that today's total deaths minus yesterday's (as I copied them each day) gives a value quite a bit higher than the # they show in the daily deaths graph for today. If I dig deeper, I see that for at least the last few days, the #s in the "total deaths" graph don't agree with the numbers I copied into a spreadsheet every night after they cleared the by-state table for the day. I know they adjust numbers sometimes, but these are big numbers, and I don't see an explanation as yet. I'm not sure I'm going to bother continuing with this if the data is this murky.

5/14 note: I'm going to keep updating these for the time being, although even the number of deaths is reportedly being manipulated by different states in different ways, so I don't know how indicative these numbers are. The time when Worldometer cuts off each night varies, but usually the updates are ready by 10:00 p.m. eastern time, and surely by 11:00. If I get time I might see if I can put a link to this post on the front page, and if I really get time I'd like to do some other graphs as well. We'll see.

This didn't take long, although it would be quicker to make these if I had been collecting daily data in a useful format all along. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Any other countries you'd particularly like to see?

Numbers came from the "Daily New Deaths in the US" graph here.

*****

And for lj's "yellow peril" collection, from Tom Levenson at BJ: Weaponizing Bullshit, Chattering Classes Edition

*****

Worldometer changed its UK counts at the end of April, but I was too busy to deal with it right away. These are the graphs with the new #s, brought up to date. (Currently 5/4.) The old ones are below.

New UK #s

Old UK #s

Comments

[JanieM]

PS -- I have been paying no attention to the # of cases, for reasons that I mentioned in the other thread. We're not testing uniformly, apparently lots of people with symptoms aren't getting tested, there are different tests in use, there are allegedly a lot of false negatives, etc. etc. I don't see how at this point the # of cases means anything very useful.

[russell]

Thanks for this Janie. What is heartbreaking is to recognize that every point on the X axis is one freaking day.

"yellow peril"

We - the US - are now at more or less 10x the number of cases in China, and number of deaths in China. Feel free to adjust the reported Chinese numbers as you wish to account for however mendacious you think the government of the People's Republic is.

They have something like three times our population.

The peril is no longer "yellow", if it ever was. What the Chinese did do, are doing, will do, has nothing of significance to do with what we do or don't do.

[hairshirthedonist]

Nice job, JanieM. Seeing it graphically, I’m surprised it’s not even smoother than it is. None the less, hovering around 2000 per day since the leveling off. Hoping for decline soon. Wishing none of it was happening in the first place. Thank you..

I’m not sure why now in particular, but I’m crying a little over this whole situation. I’ve had a couple stronger beers, so maybe it’s that. And my dog just came up seemingly to comfort me. Everyone else is in bed already, so I guess that’s how it goes. I should write a country song about crying in my beer with my dog.

[JanieM]

hsh, sad to say, today is a bad day acc' to Worldometer: over 2800 deaths.

I've been crying at seemingly random times. Something will just hit me obliquely, and off I go.

Then again, there's nothing oblique about this story, just for instance.

[JanieM]

Your mention of smoothness makes me realize that I should have cut the numbers off as of yesterday, and I didn't. So that last little squiggle isn't valid. I'll fix it and reload, probably in the morning, with today's data added.

[wj]

hovering around 2000 per day since the leveling off. Hoping for decline soon.

Hope you're not too invested in that hope. Because with Georgia, Florida, etc. charging to reopen like lemmings off a cliff, a big uptick is probably a better bet.

[hairshirthedonist]

Then again, there's nothing oblique about this story, just for instance.

I read part of that earlier today, but decided to stop. Stuff with little kids is too much. And people want me to believe in god?

[Nigel]

We're not testing uniformly, apparently lots of people with symptoms aren't getting tested, there are different tests in use, there are allegedly a lot of false negatives, etc. etc. I don't see how at this point the # of cases means anything very useful.

I commented in detail on the other thread, but to an extent that almost certainly applies to the number of deaths reported each day, too.

[Hartmut]

Of course there is a certain interest to keep the undercounting up. Those invested in 'this is no worse than the flu' would prefer the official number to stay far below in particular the Spanish Flu but ideally also the normal seasonal one. All the negative consequences of the countermeasures have to be blamed on the libs/Dems to avoid an electoral disaster, so they must be a) ineffective (unfalsifibale claims that no deaths got prevented) and b) completely unnecessary (much ado about nothing for nefarious political purposes).
So, as little testing as possible even where the incompetence has not taken care of that already.

[Nigel]

'No worse than the flu" is ancient history now.

Official death statistics take a while to come out, but not that long.

For example:
https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab
The coronavirus pandemic has already caused as many as 41,000 deaths in the UK, according to a Financial Times analysis of the latest data from the Office for National Statistics....

[wj]

the latest data from the Office for National Statistics

Nigel, but here that data would just get discounted as a product of the "deep state". Unless it's from Fox News (and specifically the evening commentors, not the real news folks on the daylight hours), it won't be believed.

[Hartmut]

Well, ancient history is where a lot of people live or prefer to. And their media bubble is happy to keep it that way.

[John Thullen]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8241057/Abbotts-5-minute-coronavirus-test-producing-false-negative-results-15-time-study-finds.html

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3562903-covidminus-19-antibody-tests-disaster-roche-ceo

I have a sizable long term position in Abbott Labs, I note, and as a dirty little closet socialist, I am trying to figure a way to blame anyone but private sector capital for these failures, or at least limit the blame to the janitors that clean the labs at Abbott, not the higher ups.

There must be line workers in a chicken-guttin meat-packing plant without toilet paper in the filthy bathrooms we can blame too, seeing as how they go home to their extended family loved ones every day in close quarters, made possible by insufficient recompense for their labor, whereas the white culture ... me ... but not necessarily, like to spread out and social distance from our families in much larger sneeze-guarded square footage domiciles even in the best of times.

I suspect the higher ups in these companies know nothing about the failures, like the Wells Fargo and Volkswagon higher ups originally alleged about their white collar ignorant so it's OK finagling.

How else to avoid personal responsibility, which is the entire point of achieving the status of a higher up, I hear?

No, it's gotta be gummint at full fault for these testing cock-ups.

It ends with "t", which rhymes with "p", and I'm tellin' ya folks, that spells Obama. You got those big, out-of town jaspers in the Deep State crossing their "t's" from both sides now, and it ain't no trottin race, it's a race where they sit right down on both sides of the horse, equally.

As much as we try to separate politics from the Covid, by the way, it's looking like politics is a vector for the Covid.

Whouda thunk? Can't think who arranged that:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/wisconsin-health-coronavirus-election-19

I am gratified, however, that both sides pick the bug up.

That makes it fair and square, I guess.

Seeing as how we're all in this ... apart and forever sundered.

Brett Bellmore, are you tracking this? Get yer fat ass out to the onion fields to replace that furrin stoop labor you wanted gone and unlike the Lt. Gov of Texas, who refuses to be a good example and die first, get down on yer knees and fetch me my vittles.

And then STFU.

[Hartmut]

And even if FOX News would start to tell the truth, it would not change the opinion of quite a lot of its viewers on that. They would instead claim that FOX got taken over by the liberal media. Some already did when Trump started feuding with the network.

[wj]

How else to avoid personal responsibility, which is the entire point of achieving the status of a higher up, I hear?

No, no! Avoiding responsibility is only half the point. It may be obvious, but getting massively overpaid is also the point. Otherwise one could just take one of the far more numerous badly paid jobs which also have no responsibilities.

[JanieM]

nigel: to an extent that almost certainly applies to the number of deaths reported each day, too.

Yes, this is true too. But I think we can take the number of deaths being reported as at the very least a(n appalling) minimum.

[Nigel]

Absolutely, JanieM.
UK numbers are (as the FT link describes) probably around twice the official Covid numbers.

Government messes up, too, JT.

Public Health England has been discharging infected patients directly from hospitals into care homes. A policy likely responsible for thousands of deaths.

They are only now beginning to test such patients.

[Nigel]

Story here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/discharging-coronavirus-patients-care-homes-madness-government/
Care homes cannot safely accept hospital patients suffering from coronavirus without risking the lives of residents, ministers were told on Wednesday.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said hospital patients who tested positive for Covid-19 would continue to be discharged into care homes despite growing evidence that the policy is fuelling outbreaks and deaths….

[Snarki, child of Loki]

When do we reach the point where the RWNJs are claiming that all those pandemic deaths are "crisis actors"?

Troofers gotta Troofer, I guess.

[JanieM]

More on "excess mortality".

[wj]

When do we reach the point where the RWNJs are claiming that all those pandemic deaths are "crisis actors"?

And complaining because discrimination in hiring against RWNJs kept them from getting those acting gigs, no doubt. Whiners gotta whine.

[Hartmut]

To fill body bags one does not need crisis actors or actual corpses (just mannequins or sex dolls). And who (but expert conspiracy theorists) can tell one patient in intensive care from another or tell what he/she is there for? A few random patients got filmed (whenever) and what we see are fake doctors and nursee originally acting in front of a green screen (not actually green or blue or their PPE would disappear).
For that one needs professionals not dime a dozen fake shooting victims.

[John Thullen]

I'm under no illusion that government doesn't screw up too.

I've worked for the US Government twice. I've also worked in the private sector.

In the United States, I'm a deep state suspect long lunch taker because of the first, but no suspicion attaches to the second where shit goes down too, but in the latter we aren't required to report our fuck-ups to the public, like the government is (and sometimes doesn't as well), UNLESS government REQUIRES us to report our private sector fuck-ups, and then only UNTIL the deregulators come along and tell us that reporting of our chemical spills and lead content labeling will no longer be required, because ... what?

That does not mean government is by it's nature a screw-up.

Matt Hancock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hancock

He's not Tory and Labor in both sides-do-it equal parts.

If he was Labor, he'd be hung by conservatives.

As it is, conservatives may hang him anyway, but only to prove their thesis that government sucks and he's probably a secret RINO.

Maybe some of the Brit infected being placed in group homes are Libertarians at heart and feel it's their God-given right to move into the group homes, since they are FORCED to pay for them anyway.

All opinions are precisely equal and must be respected.

There's not a lot of difference epidemiology-wise from placing the infected into group homes and taking them down to the beaches of Florida or letting them waltz around maskless on Capitol Hill in Denver violating my ten-foot rule spewing the Covid at my double masked, balaclaved, gloved self to explain to me that nowheres in the Constitution does it say anything ....... full stop.

DeSantis, by the way, just absolved by executive order all group homes in Florida from any personal responsibility for the bodies piling up in the common rooms.

When the demonstrators take their pocket copy of the Constitution out and poke it authoritatively with their index finger, they invariably start the Covid-droplet infused harangue with "Nowheres in the Constitution does it say anything ..." and sure enough when they open their copy to check, all of the pages are blank.

Not a goddamned word about what's happening right this minute in 2020.

It's the Clarence Thomas approved edition, seems.

[John Thullen]

The meatpacking industry:

https://qz.com/523255/the-us-meat-industrys-wildly-successful-40-year-crusade-to-keep-its-hold-on-the-american-diet/

By Political Party:

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=G2300

No wonder so many middling conservatives kinda like Amy Klobuchar.

I wonder if Cory Gardner beings his own toilet paper when he's taking a shit at the JBS plant in Greeley Colorado, as if he would lower himself on to the unsanitary toilet seats to do such a thing.

Maybe Government would do the right thing if politicians, in unequal parts of both sides do it, weren't paid to do the wrong thing.

WE pay them to do the wrong thing and then botch that they do the wrong thing, because Americans are so full of shit that now we're run out of toilet paper trying to hide the evidence.

Citizens United In The Killing America.

Now, leave me alone.

I'm making chicken salad for lunch.

It's actually rattlesnake that I copped from a Texas wet market rattlesnake roundup .. Guuu-rrrosse recently.

But it tastes like chicken, and even could be because the labeling is deliberately vagie.

[John Thullen]

Spelling goes out the window in a good stem winder.

[John Thullen]

I simply don't understand how it is that conservatives are so favorably disposed to being infected with Covid-19, but were scared to death of the AIDS virus, but not enough to do anything about that either until too late in the going.

Wait, yeah, I do understand.

[Tony P.]

I'm going to get a tee shirt printed up that says

DANGER!
LIBERAL
COOTIES

on the front and back, in hopes that Covidiots will stay 6 feet away from me because of it.

--TP

[hairshirthedonist]

I know it's been mentioned before, but I'm going to mention it again (even though I don't think anyone here needs to be told this).

Liberals are losing their jobs, too. Liberals' businesses are being closed, too. Liberals' retirement accounts are being hurt by the stock market, too.

While liberals may be more likely than conservatives to see some small silver lining in things like the reduction in pollution resulting from shutdowns, it doesn't mean the shutdowns are the goals of liberals or that the costs are being shouldered exclusively or mostly by conservatives.

As conspiracies go, this one would incur significant damage to the people supposedly conspiring. (I don't know, maybe it's supposed to be like a suicide-bombing or something. Whatever.)

[wj]

As conspiracies go, this one would incur significant damage to the people supposedly conspiring.

Maybe this is symmetry? Or presumed symmetry. After all, anti-lockdown rallies are most likely to hurt those showing up for them. And yet people (at least some people) show up for them anyway. They may figure that if they're good with "cut off my nose to spite my face," probably the other side is equally self-destructive.

[cleek]

(I don't know, maybe it's supposed to be like a suicide-bombing or something. Whatever.)

it's simple vocalizing.

anyone willing to risk their lives - and the lives of their family and friends - for a haircut isn't likely to think these things through.

[John Thullen]

There are more important things than living.

Said Marie Antoinette as she asked her hairdresser to lower her ears to the shoulders.

[russell]

anyone willing to risk their lives - and the lives of their family and friends - for a haircut isn't likely to think these things through.

I doubt it's actually about the haircut.

[cleek]

Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death.

“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”

they need to be sued.

[Marty]

Liberals are, by their definition, more likely to be college educated, make more money on average, more likely to be able to be employed remotely thus less concerned about the length of the shutdown. In fact, they see it as a benefit as they push to create permanent wfh jobs and remote everything culture change. Infinite shutdown is just fine.

So, liberals lose their jobs too is sometimes true true but not informative in that debate.

[hairshirthedonist]

That's total horseshit, Marty. You might already know that, though. Do you think the shutdowns are a liberal conspiracy or not?

[CharlesWT]

"How do we reopen American society in a way that keeps people safe but also puts them back to work and school?

One of the most realistic and workable plans comes from a team of policy analysts led by Avik Roy, the president of the Austin, Texas-based Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Even without widespread testing, a vaccine, or a cure, they argue that we should reopen schools and allow healthy, younger employees to go back to work because COVID-19 kills mostly older people who can be protected without shutting everything down."
Health Care Expert Avik Roy on Saving the Economy From COVID-19: "The more we lock down the economy, the more we harm those individuals who are most vulnerable, who don't have the cash cushions or the white-collar jobs that allow them to keep going."

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Yeah CWT, it's just great that those Young Invincibles never share a house, neighborhood, family, or random encounters with Wrinkly Old Virusbait.

Oh, wait...is this *before* or *after* the Wrinkly Old Virusbait get put on the ice floe? Can we try it with MAGAts first, and see how it goes?

[Tony P.]

Marty: Liberals are, by their definition, more likely to be college educated, make more money on average, more likely to be able to be employed remotely

Taking Marty literally (since it's hard to take him seriously), we "liberals" are all those things by OUR definition, not necessarily Marty's. So maybe Marty himself agrees that "that's total horseshit".

Which would make hairshirt's question even more poignant.

--TP

[Girl from the North Country]

Liberals are, by their definition, more likely to be college educated, make more money on average, more likely to be able to be employed remotely thus less concerned about the length of the shutdown.

Marty, I'm very interested by the phrase "by their definition". What in the definition of liberals makes you think this? Or do you mean that these characteristics tend to be true of self=defined "liberals" by demographic analysis?

[cleek]

Even without widespread testing, a vaccine, or a cure, they argue that we should reopen schools and allow healthy, younger employees to go back to work because COVID-19 kills mostly older people who can be protected without shutting everything down.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY'RE HEALTHY WITHOUT A TEST??????

[John Thullen]

Conservatives, particularly of the trump variety, prefer to stay home and tend to their opioid and porn habits, while leaving their loaded guns laying around for their kids to blow the heads off their neglected siblings who could have used a diaper change a week ago.

When conservatives do leave the house, it's usually for a shoplifting spree, or to dump their used motor oil down storm drains, or to clutter up hospital rooms with complaints ranging from impacted anal cavities to their last remaining tooth coming loose after biting down on of those hard over-baked stale Cheetos they call their latest diet fad, same as the last one.

It's hard to tell their home schooling methods from simple truancy.

There's also the daytime FOX watching, while picking cracker crumbs out of their fat folds, and the masturbation over Ainsley Earhardt's beaver shots on Fox and Friends as she wonders on the air what's going to happen to her foreign au pair, who took the job from a liberal and is probably schtupping her little kids while she's lying through her fake expensive dental work to her fellow fuckwads.

Conservatives are five times as likely to not use the toilet paper they've hoarded for its express purpose, and to skip wiping their asses altogether, having hoarded the paper merely as another way to have it on the libs and to soak up the bacon grease.

Just getting started.

Your turn again, Marty.

[CharlesWT]

As much as there is a reluctance to discuss tradeoffs and make them, they have to be made. Otherwise, at some point, Cytokine Storm becomes a metaphor for the condition of the country.

[nous]

Like my university teaching job is not at risk in an extended shutdown. I can teach remotely. It's more work and I do a crappier job of it and it's discouraging and exhausting.

Universities are losing millions, too.

We are doing this because we have to, or our colleagues, our students, and our students' families are going to be going to a lot more fucking funerals.

So we do the hard thing and watch the jobs become even more contingent than they have been under the normal budget pressure. And I worry about my retirement.

But I stay on course because the dead cannot be helped and their loss cannot be fixed or rebuilt.

[cleek]

As much as there is a reluctance to discuss tradeoffs and make them, they have to be made.

is it too much to ask that these decisions be made by people who didn't first hear of the word "epidemiology" in the last month?

[JanieM]

As much as there is a reluctance to discuss tradeoffs and make them

Like, people with the political and real-world chops to become, say, governors of diverse states, they've never heard of, much less made, tradeoffs.

Only the logic (or should I say "logic" -- because logic is not a word I would apply to people who prefit the treatment of every topic to their preferred policy outcomes) bros at Reason have ever heard of trade-offs.

Thanks for cluing us in, CWT.

[wj]

Liberals are, by their definition, more likely to be college educated, make more money on average, more likely to be able to be employed remotely thus less concerned about the length of the shutdown.

In what universe?

Liberals are, by definition, more educated? Not, in my experience, in practice. Let alone by definition. (Although I suppose you can argue that this is somehow the converse of the less educated being, by definition, more conservative.)

Liberals, by definition, make more money? If so, it's a very recent definition. The more traditional definition, at least in my experience, was that the rich were more conservative.

Liberals are, by definition, more likely to be employed remotely? It's possible that those who are employed (or at least have jobs that can be done) remotely are more liberal. But that seems far more like an observation than a matter of definition. Unless there's a definition of "liberal" somewhere that I merely haven't encountered.

[JanieM]

And I would add, looking more locally, who here has given the slightest evidence of not being aware of the tradeoffs we are all making?

FFS.

Reason wants the world to look a certain way. Everything CWT posts has a slant designed to make it look "reasonable" (ha ha) to push the world to look that way. But one kind of trade-off (ha ha) is the one that gets made when some people want the world to look a different way. Like just for example, it should have fewer dead people.

[JanieM]

"By definition" -- great phrase.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

[Marty]

hsh, I think liberals are more likely to fall into the end of the economic spectrum that is most capable of sustaining a shutdown, mostly they can wfh. So they are quite content to wave their hands and call anyone who thinks that waiting for a vaccine or the ability to trace every person in the country is untenable, a murderer. Because calling people murderers is how they bully people into spending their life savings waiting for their perfectly safe world.

Stay home. I need a job. I cant live on the gigs I have. So between spending what little I have left to retire someday or taking some level of risk I vote for the second. If you dont, then stay home. Dont work. WFH. I dont care what you do. If I want to go to work, at some reasonable point I should be able to.

Same point I've been making for a week. People who complain because wfh is hard because their kids make noise shouldnt get a vote, they should quit whining and wfh if they want to. (Not saying anyone here)

But, no it's not a liberal plot. It's just easier to be against opening businesses when you still have the same paycheck you always did. Empathy in that decision needs to work both ways.

And every unemployed person, restaurant owner, etc knows the clocks ticking on government payments. The economy dies more every day. It gets less likely that restaurant, consulting company etc. is there to go back to every day.

[John Thullen]

There are plenty of tradeoffs being prepared and made on the ground, Charles, even in states shut down by Democratic Governors, if you get your nose out of Reason Magazine and look for them.

Including in Colorado, my state.

I will note that ReOpenColorado, one of the groups who organized and sponsered the pro-Covid, anti-shutdown demonstrations last weekend claims (the Libertarians demurred from such Reason-able requests, preferring to go bareback) they want state-mandated universal masking in public and mandatory universal testing for the disease, as well as the reopening of all Colorado businesses.

I can't argue with much of that.

Now where are the 95% accurate tests and the fucking masks, not scarves and bandannas, as I get ready to accept these trade offs?

And when they read Reason Magazine, which most of them have never heard of, will the name of the institution who is going to do this mandating be "Government" and where is it in the silent empty pages of the Constitution, they might well arsk, ad nauseum in a billion court cases urged by the White House and dark money conservative vermin groups?

I was going to ask a similar question as I backed away from a shirtless, maskless guy at the demonstration waving a cootie soaked anti-government, anti-mainstream banner around near me without a whole lot of regard for social distancing, to wit: "Hey, Thomas Jefferson, you come one step closer to me and you will celebrate big uniformed government as it rushes in to save your fat ass in the goddamned fight to the death with me you are about to lose."

The same to the unmasked, degloved upper-middle-aged female tootling and blatting through a three-foot plastic purple horn at fellow demonstrators as they passed by. You could see the Covid spit droplets gleaming in the noonday sun like fairy dust.

The nearby cops on their motorcycles, masked, seemed rather blase about that deadly weapon being waved about in public, though I'm sure if I'd brought my machete to wave around in her face, they'd have gone straight into their big gummint, tyrannical stance and protected the dumbass.

On the other hand, if I or any of my loved ones die or are otherwise hobbled by this killer virus, I'm not going to be using the term "tradeoff" to describe the experience.

I'm going to make sure it's a fair trade of the eye for eye variety.

[John Thullen]

"And every unemployed person, restaurant owner, etc knows the clocks ticking on government payments. The economy dies more every day. It gets less likely that restaurant, consulting company etc. is there to go back to every day."

I'm giving the owners (via tips at their curbside food and beverage service they are providing three days a week) of my local watering and karaoke hole $200 a week to go toward operating expenses during the shutdown.

Further, I've told the owner who I've become close with that if any of the employees, who to a man and woman are great people and hate Trump's guts and lost three, not just one job in the service industry, particularly those who have kids, have a serious financial shortfall regarding rent or medical expenses during this period, to let me know and I'll see what I can provide personally, but anonymously (I'm telling you guys to dispel whatever notion that bloviating is my central pursuit in life.)

Happily, socialist government is providing unemployment/plus to them and they will have access to Medicaid, against ALL conservative republican odds set against them, if whatever meager health insurance they have managed to hold on to fails, so I've had no requests, which makes this an empty gesture and I hope this situation lifts so they aren't desperate enough to cause the gesture to be fulfilled.

[cleek]

And every unemployed person, restaurant owner, etc knows the clocks ticking on government payments

if only we, the people, could make the government do what we want it to.

McConnell, of course, just wants the states to go bankrupt.

thanks, GOP.

[Marty]

The government cant be the economy for very long cleek and no matter how long it can work. we will still need jobs.

[JanieM]

For the ages.

*****

And once again...

As much as there is a reluctance to discuss tradeoffs and make them

Besides the unfounded implication that the courageous folks at Reason are the only ones willing to discuss tradeoffs, there's also the fact of the actual existing tradeoffs that are already being made, after much consideration by lots of people with more information than we have here.

The fact that the ones being made aren't the ones you want doesn't mean there aren't any.

[russell]

hsh, I think liberals are more likely to fall into the end of the economic spectrum that is most capable of sustaining a shutdown

If voting patterns are any indication, this is false. It is certainly not true in my personal experience.

With respect, I think you're talking about the liberals in your head. Of whom I am probably one, but that's just freaking luck, not political persuasion.

I'm sorry you're finding it hard to work. You're not alone, although that is probably cold comfort.

But the folks who are up against it span the spectrum politically.

[cleek]

The government cant be the economy for very long cleek

i'm in favor of seeing just how far it can.

maybe we don't spend so much money on presidential golf events this year.

we will still need jobs

of course. as soon as the chance that we're all going to have our lungs turn to soup has been adequately diminished, we'll get back to normal-ish.

i don't know why anyone would want to 'get back to work' before then.

[John Thullen]

Another angle.

https://newrepublic.com/article/157399/medias-coronavirus-coverage-exposes-ignorance-working-class

You watch.

I guarantee you as states start to open up and some folks reluctantly venture out, the republican vomit machine will pivot overnight (Georgia will be the first; their cracker filth leadership are already making noises about cutting those who CHOOSE not to go back to work for fear of goddamned dying off from unemployment and other benefits) let my people go, to insulting and disparaging the people who CHOOSE to stay home out of fear as takers and layabouts, and on the dole, and stepinfetchits, and fat black welfare queens and all the usual Romney/Trump/FOXNews pigshit they always peddle toward the underclass when the latter's chips are down and the comfortable classes' chips are coming up roses.

Because republican subhuman vermin can't manage to pull up their bootstraps and rise above their republican subhuman vermin natures, ever.

I find it (whatever the word is that now substitutes for ironic) that the NRA is going belly-up financially just at the very time that America needs armed resistance and insurrection.

The Deliberate Bankruptcy of States:

All of the creditors are conservative money managers and bond holders. Bankrupting state and municipal governments is part and parcel of the radical conservative movement blueprint to destroy the drowning babies of government, a feature not a surprise.

A Bankrupt state government will halt all unemployment benefits and Medicaid payments. Unemployed State and municipal employees will be competing with all of those millions of service jobs republican dicks are now so concerned about.

State bankruptcy will be used as precedent for Trump, whose one area of expertise is bankruptcy, to renege on the entire federal debt, and cease Social Security and Medicare.

The military will be provided pay raises and plenty of beautiful shiny bullets, the better to keep them on the conservative side when they are called upon to intervene with deadly force in the coming domestic chaos and violent resistance.

Gun purveyors will be essential businesses for liberals, blacks, gays, immigrants, and all other decent people too.

McConnell's cold fingers will be buried with his cold heart, the coldest middle one raised eternally.

[Priest]

Thing is even, absent any evidence one way or the other, if you concede the point that a majority of the people who can work remotely and/or have the resources to withstand loss of income are politically liberal:

This says nothing about whether a majority of liberals are working remotely/can withstand loss of income. Within my community that is certainly not true.

[Marty]

russell, it could be that mostofmy exposure to liberals is most everyone I know in Massachusetts. It's not in my head, it's in my experience. I made no claim about the people who are it the other end of the spectrum.

But let's be clear, I'm not "having trouble finding work". The companies that I work with are largely shut down, by edict, and while most of my work could be done remotely, they arent sure they will be around to pay me.

The government, in this case Charlie Baker, has arbitrarily decided which companies are important enough to take the risk of being open. Challenging that arbitrary list doesnt make one a murderer.

Which is my biggest problem here. People are dying, could be me, or someone I love. I'm not void of empathy or fear. But I'm also afraid of an uncertain future for me and others that are suffering and will continue to suffer from the economic destruction going on. Questioning at what point those risks cross isnt being a murderer.

[wj]

If I want to go to work, at some reasonable point I should be able to.

I doubt you will find a single person here who disagrees with this. The disagreement is over what constitutes a "reasonable point."

There's also some disagreement over what, and how much, should/can be done to ease the pain of getting to that point. But that's actually a separate issue.

[wj]

McConnell, of course, just wants the states to go bankrupt.

I have no use for McConnell. Either as (an excuse for) a human being or as a politician. But I'm not sure this actually means what you seem to think it does.

What he's saying is that states should be allowed to get out of their debts. That, after all, is what bankruptcy actually does. Which would be far less harmful to those government bodies (in the short run) than to the poor fools who have invested in municipal bonds. (Which, in effect, includes anyone with a government pension plan.)

Yes, in the long run it would make it more expensive for governments to borrow -- they'd get stuck with a risk penalty. But it wouldn't actually force the state governments out of business, or even to cut back drastically, however much McConnell might like that. More likely, it would just result in higher taxes to pay for them.

[John Thullen]

See what's coming:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32238552/trump-personnel-office-refuse-brief-congress/

The dream corrupt unelected federal bureaucracy, free of merit, and loyal only to corrupt vermin republicans.

Fuck you, conservatives.

[John Thullen]

The anti-vaxxers:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxers-are-forming-an-unholy-alliance-with-shelter-in-place-protesters?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

Fuck you conservatives and liberatarians.

Enjoy your shingles and future unvaccinated Covid-19 potlucks, dumbasses.

[russell]

it could be that mostofmy exposure to liberals is most everyone I know in Massachusetts.

I'm 63. I've lived 40 years of that in MA. MA is generally "liberal" in broad terms, but contains a mix of political persuasions. The popular vote for POTUS in 2016 went about 3-2, Clinton-Trump. It's not so much a liberal state as a (D) state, and a state that is more comfortable with an active public sector than would be typical in other places.

Lotta Trumpies in MA, ranging from blue collar to quite wealthy. Lotta extremely anti-Trump people in MA, ranging from blue collar to quite wealthy.

There's sort of the cartoon version of the limousine liberal sitting on a pile of wealth and telling the rest of the world what to do from their secure, out of touch perch. Not really many people in the real world that are like that.

If by "liberal" you mean people who generally vote (D), have no regard for Trump, approve of and support the lockdown, then those people are by far not confined to professions where it's convenient to work from home.

Charlie Baker, has arbitrarily decided which companies are important enough to take the risk of being open

I'd say Baker's choices are far from arbitrary. You or I might not agree with all of them, but that's a different point.

It's a messed up situation. I'm sorry it's affecting you, financially, and I hope it works out for you. We're mostly all in the same boat, my company is doing OK but many are not. If I lost my job I'd probably be fucked, nobody is going to hire a 63 year old SW engineer, I'm lucky I have the gig I have.

Even with that I may well be looking at delaying retirement. I'm just trying to get the freaking house paid off so we don't lose our home if things continue to go south. 'Cos I don't have another 10 or 15 years to make up for another 2008.

Right?

We're all just trying to get through this in one piece.

[John Thullen]

Kentucky Republican subhuman protests stay-at orders:

https://juanitajean.com/well-thats-one-way-to-get-out-of-the-house/

The women always gets it.

Lorena Bobbitt for President and let the cutting begin.

[russell]

Meanwhile 100 USPS employees in MA and RI are positive for COVID. One has died.

FWIW, I generally have little patience with people who complain about the USPS, and these days that's less than little. People are getting sick to make sure you get your mail. A tiny scrap of respect seems due, to me.

Same for UPS and Fedex, I'm an equal opportunity kind of guy. Public / private, same / same. People are putting their lives at risk to keep the rest of us safe, healthy, fed, and with access to whatever it is we need.

[Tony P.]

Marty: I need a job. I cant live on the gigs I have.

Don't know about you, Marty, but most people could get by without a "job" if only they had income enough to pay their bills. It's money, not work, that most people need in order to get through a disaster. Or through ordinary life, come to think of it.

Now, you may think that The Government should NOT provide money to people who cannot work due to Covid-related restrictions. You may think so based on ideology (eek! soshulism!) or you may think so based on "economics" (won't anybody please think of the national debt?), or for some other reason which I'd be interested to learn.

But the practical question is: if The Government was willing to "pay you to stay home", would you refuse the money and demand an early end to Covid-related restrictions?

--TP

[Girl from the North Country]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (today's NYT):

The doctor who led the federal agency involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine said on Wednesday that he was removed from his post after he pressed for a rigorous vetting of a coronavirus treatment embraced by President Trump. The doctor said that science, not “politics and cronyism,” must lead the way.

Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

Instead, he was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health. “I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman.

“I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way,” he said.

The White House declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The medical publication Stat reported on Tuesday that Dr. Bright had clashed with Bob Kadlec, the assistant health secretary for preparedness and response.

Dr. Bright, who noted that his entire career had been spent in vaccine development both in and outside of government, has led BARDA since 2016.

In the statement, he said: “My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this — to confront and defeat a deadly virus that threatens Americans and people around the globe. To this point, I have led the government’s efforts to invest in the best science available to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Unfortunately, this resulted in clashes with H.H.S. political leadership, including criticism for my proactive efforts to invest early into vaccines and supplies critical to saving American lives,” he said. “I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections.”

[doretta]

Yes, let's be clear, plenty of liberals are feeling just as much economic pain as Marty is and all the people I know who work from home understand that they are just a little bit behind the curve of the people who have already lost jobs, not
magically protected from a cratering economy.

[bobbyp]

Because calling people murderers is how they bully people....

Yes. Abortion debate, which see. How does it fucking feel? Take that butt hurt somewhere else, please.

Higher education is roughly correlated with higher income.

Higher incomes are roughly correlated with leaning conservative, but varies around a rough equal split. Older folks with high net worth/incomes tend to lean conservative.

Dems do very well with lower income voters, esp. african americans and latinos, who-if you have not noticed, skew lower income.

White rural conservative nut-jobs are not the majority at any income level.

Here endeth today's lesson.

[liberal japonicus]

Probably (no actually) a bit misogynistic, but karma really is a bitch, especially to those who are unaware of its presence...

[JanieM]

Graphs in the OP updated to include 4/22.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

The Karmavirus is going to kill a bunch of old, physically inactive, "Trump supporters"; or as I sometimes call them: "virus bait".

And a lot of very fine people, also too.

Karma's a beach. And then you dry.

[Priest]

doretta makes an important point; the fact that folks have a job and paycheck now is no guarantee that will continue as the weeks and months of contraction go on, and owners/managers look to tighten up in reaction. So yay that I'm getting a 20% Covid-19 bump as long as I am one of the few going to work on-site. But I am under no illusion that those bills will not come due, sooner rather than later. Shareholders expect their dividends to keep flowing.

[nous]

I am under no illusion that families affected by the shutdowns now will be able to send their kids to university next year, or that the university itself will not be struggling for budget, or that my retirement will not take a huge hit. So, no, I do not want the shutdowns to go any longer than public safety dictates. My suffering is just deferred.

[John Thullen]

Rabies, distemper, and wolves:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alex-azar-hhs-secretary-tapped-former-dog-breeder-to-lead-early-government-coronavirus-task-force-report?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition

I wish I had the chops to make this shit up.

This goes along with the new head of OPM' top bullet point in his resume being a crack trick shooter in basketball.

The Trump Republican Party, now Deep Dogshit State, is an incontinent mutt lifting its hind leg and pissing on our country's pantleg, when it's not forming a doggy conga line taking turns sniffing Trump's butt hole.

Fauci has been demoted to assistant dog walker for Ivanka's shih tzus, the latter of which will also go to the front of line receive the first Covid-19 vaccines hot off the production line, ahead of niggers, kikes, fags, and assorted libtards in blue states, all slated for slow death at the hands of republican vermin.

Could the conservatives here please take a break from reaching around and licking your nether regions and explain to the rest of us what you think you are doing to our country and what was once our government, and what action you will take to rectify the current situation brought about by your voting choices in 2016.*

Further, even if you are misguided enough to believe the bushwah that the gummint should be run like a business, explain your hiring practices in your own businesses. Is expertise even a factor when you interviewing candidates for positions in your companies? Or do you invite in hookers, hotel cabana towel boys, pool sharks, lickspittles, and your ex-con brothers-in-law to handle those important matters in your enterprises?

Any reset, even one single T recrossed in America, must only take place AFTER the murderous Republican Party is removed from the face of the Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XocQNESUmQ

*That you are decent people and patriotic Americans is beside the point as the shit comes down around our ears.

[hairshirthedonist]

Questioning at what point those risks cross isnt being a murderer.

Yes, it is! (Not really. I just figured I'd play the role of the imaginary person you think you're arguing with.)

[John Thullen]

Elizabeth Warren's brother dies of the Covid-19.

Dan Patrick, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Trump hail his sacrifice (Booyah, Jesus!) and do a little fake Christian dance inside their hermetically-sealed, disinfected (by illegal immigrants) Covid-19-free safe houses.

Too bad he wasn't a fetus.

[hairshirthedonist]

Now there's this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/new-york-finds-virus-marker-in-13-9-suggesting-wide-spread

The antibody testing took samples from 40 locations in 19 counties, from people over the age of 18 who were shopping at grocery and big-box stores, Cuomo said.

The weighted results showed more than 1-in-5 New Yorkers testing positive, as well as 16.7% of those in Long Island and 11.7% of those in Westchester and Rockland counties. The estimates showed 3.6% testing positive in the rest of the state.

Positive tests were highest among multiracial people -- at 22.8% -- along with African-Americans and Latinos, both around 22%.

"New Yorkers" in the excerpt means NYC residents (if that wasn't immediately obvious). The state overall positives were 13.9%.

[nous]

50,000 official US deaths due to COVID-19, with a long way still to go before we have a vaccine.

58,220 official US deaths in the whole of the Vietnam War.

Been thinking about that parallel a lot while watching right-wing protesters zero in on healthcare workers in uniform to scream at them.

And this is really where I just boggle at the cognitive dissonance of the people who drive to the protest in a truck with an American flag and a "support our troops" sticker, who are adamant that we need to fund the military at historically unprecedented levels in order to be prepared for any threat anywhere, and multiple threats at once.

Yet here we are, with a president who is calling himself a wartime president, calling for people to protest the war effort. And the president's most ardent supporters are out there getting in the faces of the people who have been on the front lines, who have been on duty and in deadly danger for weeks, and those protesters are screaming at them personally.

We are a badly broken society, and I don't know how we can begin to fix that.

[John Thullen]

As everyone's blood pressure over events spikes, we get this:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/should-you-keep-taking-your-blood-pressure-meds/

[JanieM]

Graphs updated for 4/24.

[russell]

The Karmavirus is going to kill a bunch of old, physically inactive, "Trump supporters"

It's going to kill all kinds of people, and it isn't going to give a shit who they voted for.

I don't wish it on anybody.

[Hartmut]

I am increasingly wishing it (and worse) on those that brought us into and keep us in this situation out of callousness, outright malice and simple greed. Jury still open on the willfully ignorant (emphasis on willfully).
The only reason not to wish it on anyone is that it is contagious and (as said) does not care about who it spreads to.
The teaching effect would also be rather low, I fear (Has e.g. Boris Johnson really changed his mind or is it just for show or temporary?).

[Hartmut]

Btw, I wonder whether the idea to inject disinfectants and to channel UV light into the body got somehow inspired by Underworld(2003)
https://underworld.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraviolet_Ammunition
https://underworld.fandom.com/wiki/Silver_Nitrate_Bullets
Silver nirate (aka lapis infernalis) is a classic emergency disinfectant (e.g. used in the past by doctors to cauterize skin lesions caused by potentially infected objects).

[cleek]

it came from a snake oil salesman, of course.

game knows game

[John Thullen]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fema-diverted-masks-from-veterans-hospitals-va-official-says

It's remarkable the brazen malign murderous corruption republican filth can get away with in a country they have armed to the teeth via the Second Amendment, with many of the victims of the corruption being war veterans who know their way around automatic weapons.

VA staff have died. Veterans have died.

The Republican Parry murdered them.

[JanieM]

4/25 data added, including graphs for the UK.

[Girl from the North Country]

Thanks, Janie!

[JanieM]

Graphs updated for 4/26. Numbers are way down in both countries today, but Worldometer also seems to have cut off counting earlier than usual. Not going to dig further; we'll see what tomorrow looks like.

Fingers crossed, though.

[hairshirthedonist]

Thank you for keeping this updated, Janie. I noticed they cut off earlier, too. Yet another reason for a moving average.

[cleek]

What he's saying is that states should be allowed to get out of their debts. That, after all, is what bankruptcy actually does.

states can't declare bankruptcy. Congress would have to make a law allowing it.

[Hartmut]

Moscow Mitch made it very clear in that interview that the debts are not the target but the obligations of the states for their employees. It's about stealing the pension funds first (and allowing/forcing* the states to abandon the common welfareas a secondary goal). I assume any banruptcy (made possible by Congress) would give priority to the rich and influential holders of the debts with unpaid bills for services already received a distant second and employee salaries and pensions dread last.
In other words the Dems would be insane to consent to something like that (but quite a few will be quite willing nonetheless).

*depending on who runs the individula state.

[JanieM]

Graphs updated for 4/27.

[JanieM]

Graphs updated for 4/28.

I didn't notice before, but there's a rough pattern of big jumps on Tuesdays, for both countries. I assume it has something to do with weekend reporting or recording, but I really have no idea.

[hairshirthedonist]

Tuesdays tend to be generally dangerous.

[JanieM]

Numbers will be delayed. I have family stuff going on, plus the UK numbers were just revised from start to finish, and I don't have time to deal with it right now.

Stay well, everyone.

[CharlesWT]

Possible Reasons for differences in COVID-19 deaths
• Reporting Differences
• Stage of the Epidemic
• Age Demographics
• Social Customs
• Climate
• Population Density
• Government Policies
• Luck

"If you're trying to figure out why some places have been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic while others so far seem to be largely unscathed, there is no shortage of hypotheses. But for each seemingly plausible explanation, there are counterexamples that complicate the story."
8 Possible Reasons for the Huge International Differences in COVID-19 Deaths: For each plausible theory, there are puzzling counterexamples.

[russell]

For each plausible theory, there are puzzling counterexamples.

Here is my simple explanation:

We don't know jack about the virus yet.

[hairshirthedonist]

Worldometers has overlain a 7-day moving average onto their bar graphs. You were ahead of your times, JanieM.