Friday, March 29, AD 2024 12:41am

April 24, 2020: US Death Toll

Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find.  A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person.  However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost.  Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.

 

Note:  this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll.  As of the beginning of April 24 the death toll is 50,243.  May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.

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dekbert
dekbert
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 5:48am

So, you moron, we are on track to have about 80,000 deaths, just the first wave. Without shutting things down, we would have had 500,000 to maybe a million deaths. Pretty soon, the light is going to go on in your thick skull that we did the right thing

Ben Butera
Admin
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 6:03am

Don,
What’s your source for 90,000 deaths in bad flu year? What year?
It may not be your intent, but this daily post is a glaring reminder of how serious this thing is. We now have about 50,000 deaths in 55 days…and that’s with a lot of the nation shut down for about 40 of those days (73% of the time). This thing is a real killer!

Now don’t misunderstand me… I disagreed with shutting down “non-essential” businesses from the beginning, except maybe in NYC. They could have stayed open with common sense mitigation like masks, gloves, distance, protect vulnerable, etc.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 6:13am

They could have stayed open with common sense mitigation like masks, gloves, distance, protect vulnerable, etc.

If you can get any of these items. The most distressing thing has been the supply chain problems. They were unpacking some paper products at my local grocery last night. It’s the first I’ve seen of paper products in five weeks. We scored some TP for an elderly relative by ordering from an industrial supply house. Still no rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer anywhere in our vicinity. People around us all seem to have masks, which is good. We’ve ordered two sets, one of which never arrived and the other arrived just yesterday. Neither are of the medical variety. The experience of Japan suggests you can contain this mess by universal respect for certain rules of hygiene. We’re going to need the equipment to do that.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 6:33am

Disagree about Sweden. The number of deaths per resident there is about 1/3 higher than it is here and I’m not sure there’s good evidence about the prevalence of antibodies there (or anywhere here).

What’s distressing about the American figures (and it’s hard to interpret them because the advisories for enumerators at state public health departments have been rather protean – just a couple of days ago about 10% of the death toll consisted of a retrospective recoding by the Pennsylvania Department of Health) is that we appear to be following the Iranian pattern: you hit a plateau in the daily case count and death toll and stay there. Spain and Italy have suffered terribly, but at least they’re on the downward slope (as are Britain and France, though the slope is gentler). Given how people behave in my area (masks everywhere and hardly anyone gets within six feet of you), I cannot imagine who is catching this and how, but they logged another 31,000 new cases yesterday and another 2,400 deaths (who would, at this point, be as often as not people who contracted this ailment 8 days after New York City went on lockdown).

I’d like to see the population under 50 (and the population under 60 who don’t have an elevated BMI) back at work, but they have to be screened and protected, so we need plentiful supplies.

Glenn Reynolds has been saying for years that the CDC was a problem institution and we’ve seen them perform poorly and (in a double act with the FDA) get in the way of people who were not performing poorly.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 6:36am

Masks can be easily crocheted as my bride has just done due to the world’s dumbest billionaire, Pritzker, ordering that they be worn in public places in Illinois. I think breathing through these rags will cause more health problems than they prevent for most people.

There’s a reason Japan, which is densely settled and makes intensive use of public transit, has had fewer deaths in the last two months than we’ve had in the last four hours.

ken
ken
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 7:55am

At my “essential” job the owner has provided hand sanitizer, masks and gloves. Around 25% use the gloves and masks, the remainder use the sanitizer. Nobody follows the six foot rule. Many weeks ago one employee tested positive, but never had symptoms. Overwhelmingly male workforce with a median age of 40ish, I would guess.

Don, is it legal for the governor to mandate the masks? Seems an undue burden to those in poverty.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 7:55am

I cannot imagine who is catching this and how, but they logged another 31,000 new cases yesterday and another 2,400 deaths (who would, at this point, be as often as not people who contracted this ailment 8 days after New York City went on lockdown).

Because it’s theater, and they’re killing people for it.

New York put in an involuntary DNR for emergency calls– it seems that of course a lot of the medics “forgot”, thank God– after their refusing to allow anybody who couldn’t be resuscitated on site to be taken to a hospital.

They have also been deliberately forcing nursing homes to take known infected people. Because there’s going to be a surge Any Day Now.

Which goes from stupid and into homicidal.

ken
ken
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 8:14am

Wasn’t the main reasoning behind shelter in place to avoid overwhelming hospitals and a lack of ventilators? Has that been the case? The overflow hospital built at McCormick Place in Chicago has greater than three patients, even though they admit there is still plenty of room at area hospitals.

PK
PK
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 8:29am

The part about sending patients back to nursing homes — which are, if I recall correctly, the site of what, 25% of NYC’s extraordinary death count — makes me want to scream. More than the rest of it, even.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 8:56am

Yep, Art, and if you have seen videos of how they are still packed together on subways, the ideas that masks would make much difference is farcial.

And, yet, it apparently does make a difference. Why do you suppose that is?

DJH
DJH
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 9:06am

“Masks can be easily crocheted…”
.
Your wife is a genius, DRM!! Thanks for the project idea! Gretchmer has lifted some restrictions, but not of the variety in which I normally participate, so I need something to add to my Henle Latin, music theory, algebra, and political arguements with my college grad.
.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 11:19am

The Manchurian Media, Pandemic Porn, Brainwashed Public School Victims (see Dickbert above), and Wildly Overstated Body Counts:

One, NYC [‘exponentially’ the worst in the nation] China Murder Virus patients: “. . . 94% had at least one additional ailment. 88% had more than one.”

Two, It is estimated that 250,000 (2016 Johns Hopkins study) US people die each year from medical mistakes – they don’t count as mistakes because they had underlying medical problems. It’s the complete opposite for the China Murder Virus Narrative/Pandemic Porn.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 12:10pm

This thing is a real killer!

So’s the seasonal flu, which we’d all know if they’d relentlessly remind us of the fact with daily updates. But they don’t, so we go on with our lives

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 12:21pm

For what it’s worth, South Dakota’s active cases plateaued over the past weekend and started dropping. The total number of recoveries exceeded the number of active cases on Wednesday. Even in Minnehaha County (Sioux Falls & the Smithfield Hot Spot) the total number of recoveries exceeds the number of active cases.

John Flaherty
John Flaherty
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 12:28pm

From all that I’m hearing, and all that I’m not, I think we’ve mostly flattened the expected infection curve. That still doesn’t mean none though. I don’t get though why I keep hearing that we’re likely to have a second wave come fall. If the virus needs cool, we’re leaving the most hazardous time. We shouldn’t have any particular problem if the virus has been contained and can’t survive in heat.
Sadly, it seems some of the disease death numbers we’ve heard HAVE been inflated. By blending deaths of people who died WITH the virus amongst those who died FROM the virus, we’re getting inaccurate impressions. Prosecutors may need to examine legal consequences later this year for alarmist reporting.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 12:43pm

I think the “second wave” is a historical analogy. It’s what the Spanish flu did, and just for emergency planning purposes, it’s what we should prepare for the Wuhan flu to do too.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 12:55pm

Which goes from stupid and into homicidal.

There’s a line between speculation and slander. You can lack respect for people, doubt their intentions, but we’re responsible for our words. We’re responsible for the damage we do to society by saying them. Don’t you worry about what it does to your soul to make horrifying accusations without concrete proof?

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 1:28pm

Probably because it mutated into a less lethal strain. But that’s just speculation on a hypothesis from a barstool epidemiologist.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 2:08pm

That was a more rational and scientific era than our present credulous one.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 2:36pm

“That was a more rational and scientific era than our present credulous one.”

Truth. Our post-modern era starts with the conclusion and plays with facts and principles to prove the preconceived conclusion.

Our era is a completely politicized one and every thing is employed to advance a narrative.

For sure, exaggerating the perceived impacts of the China pestilence is advances the leftist agenda; wrecks the evil, unjust economy, and is useful to attack Orange Man Bad!

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 2:36pm

Don, what’s that from?

I’m a fan of Samuel Gregg for interpreting the present moment. Daniel J. Mahoney too.

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 2:37pm

I’m following these comments with interest, but I don’t think anybody but me has the correct perspective (: > ) . I’ve been following the data for about a month now for US, SKorea, PA (and local counties). The problem is that methods of reporting have been changed (CDC changed mortality accounts to include “probables” around April 19 and PA Dept of Health followed suit).
Nevertheless there is some sense that can be made of the numbers. I’ll be posting within a few days.
And it is strange that the Asian countries–S. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore–are doing so much better. Or a wild thought: has this virus been designed to affect Caucasoids and Negroids rather than Mongoloids?

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 2:45pm

Bob, I forgot to mention earlier, going to your earlier post: South Dakota’s downward trend began on April 19, the 40th day after the first 5 cases were announced on March 10th.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 3:00pm

Ok thanks. I know he touched on the concept in Abolition of Man, but I need to refamiliarize myself with it.

And if this is bioengineered, it’s war.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 3:12pm

Our post-modern era starts with the conclusion and plays with facts and principles to prove the preconceived conclusion.

Our era is a completely politicized one and every thing is employed to advance a narrative.

Ah, I see you’re aware of the latest musings from Congress’s very own bartending economist too!

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Friday, April 24, AD 2020 4:22pm

“An examination of the ethnicity of the dead in this nation might be illuminating on that question.”
I imagine that examination is currently being done but I doubt that any of us plebes will ever hear the results.

TomD
TomD
Saturday, April 25, AD 2020 1:10am

Ben Butera wrote “Don, What’s your source for 90,000 deaths in bad flu year? What year?”

Don replied with a September 27, 2018 press conference.

Now, if you go to the CDC’s current site on disease burden (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html) you get a different picture.

First, the last two seasons listed, 2017-18 and 2018-19, are footnoted as: * Estimates from the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons are preliminary and may change as data are finalized. So even as of today they are not final. This tells us that a full sorting of current flu estimates from COVID-19 estimates isn’t going to happen before 2023 or so.

Second, it is obvious that these estimates fall on a probabilistic distribution. Look at 2017-18. You will see that the CDC’s estimate for that season is 61,000. This is their best estimate. The full range of estimates is 46,000 to 95,000. The thing to grasp here is that these two limits have a very low probability of being true in the CDC’s eyes, around 5% or less. An 80,000 to 90,000 estimate is probably only 10-15% true. I can’t say with certainty because it’s obvious this is not a Gaussean standard normal distribution: the 61,000 is not smack in the middle of the range.

Based on this disease burden page it appears likely that if the CDC considered 80,000 to have been their “Best estimate” they later backed off and re-estimated downward. But again, it’s hard to know, perhaps this was the upper limit on a certain deviation. and so it never was the ‘best guess’.

In any case the 2017-18 season was the worst year since the Hong Kong flu. The average CDC ‘best guess’ for 1976 through 2019 was 26,618 and the 5% ‘high guess’ average was 33,897. For the earlier years go here and use the second table with the higher numbers: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5933a1.htm

TomD
TomD
Saturday, April 25, AD 2020 1:23am

Just as a follow up, just to show the uncertainty that the CDC has to deal with, the 2009-10 flu season has a ‘best guess’ estimate of 48,614 and a min-max range of 46,710 to 54,024. Why do I mention this? Because this was the only year that I could find a number of laboratory confirmed deaths on the CDC site. That number is 2,125. It must take quite a bit of work to get these estimates in any way that passes peer review. I wish we knew more about the process, but I assume they are behind professional journal firewalls.

Dave G.
Dave G.
Saturday, April 25, AD 2020 5:51am

“Our post-modern era starts with the conclusion and plays with facts and principles to prove the preconceived conclusion.”

Most true statement I’ve seen recently. Nowhere is this more obvious than the realm of historical studies, which has always been as much art as science. But looking at the history my boys are studying in college and comparing it to what I studied even in the late 80s, it’s as if we are looking at the history of two different worlds. I don’t think it gets any better in other areas, including science.

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