If you’re willing to rely on very short-term trends, deaths seem to be leveling off, too, as you’d expect if the fall in new cases is real (rather than a result of testing capacity):
So at this point, I don’t think we’re going to hit a nationwide average death count higher than 1,200. I think that’s better news than a lot of people in this thread were thinking.
GALACTIC-SIZE CAVEAT: Of course school openings are the biggest wildcard ever.
Right. Next big hurdle is school openings which then flows directly into flu season, so there are still a lot of huge bullets to dodge
I’m a lot more pessimistic than you, since I feel like a lot of the fall off in numbers is due to testing decreases and not case decrease, but I havent hesr a lot of stories about hospital overflow, so that is certainly a positive data point.
I think we largely agree. I’m a pretty natural pessimist, so I’m also hesitant to rely on case counts. But what I’m trying to do is say, "If recent reported case counts are artificially low, there should be some sign of that elsewhere. In particular, we should see:
A continued increase in deaths
A stable or even increasing recent CFR
As you mentioned, continuous increases in hospitalizations
I posted the trend in deaths above. Here’s the trend in CFR, where CFR = 7-day average deaths divided by the 21-day lagged average case count. If that case count is artificially low, it would push the CFR up:
Anyway, my attitude for the last several months has been, “No you morons (in real life), this is absolutely getting worse and continues to be very deadly. You can see it in the data.” Now that my metrics seem to be turning for the better, it would be hypocritical of me to completely ignore the trends. (Of course, the levels are still terrible.)
Yea of course it has to be someone like Dewine, who’s doing a pretty good job despite being bombarded from the idiot wing of his own party. Of course it can’t be DeSantis. With the way 2020 is going I don’t likw his chances.
This is a pretty thoughtful writeup of estimating true infection rates based on reported cases and positivity rates, and then using those estimates to calculate IFRs.
Seen a huge push on fb that children are 60,000 times more likely to be abducted for child sex trafficking than die of covid and making people wear masks is making this easier for traffickers.
This has been from crazy moms who dont even post political stuff but look for this to be a new thing for the non maskers
I don’t know why one should even bother to engage these people in good faith. Just tell them that you’re happy to see a child being sex trafficked if it saves you from COVID.
