For our resident excitable boy
[Powerline] The Star Tribune site highlights Pulitzer Prize-winning health care reporter Jeremy Olson’s long explainer on the COVID-19 death rate: "Months into pandemic, Minnesota’s COVID-19 death rate still elusive." The story seems to me an exercise in obfuscation at best, a contribution to the media’s panic porn at worst. Olson buries this key point:
Risk varies by age and with underlying health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. People 70 or older have suffered 10% of the known COVID-19 cases in Minnesota but 80% of the deaths.
Rhame said the death risk is “20% for people above 80 years of age, and less than a tenth of a percent for people in their 20s who are otherwise healthy, and it varies as a continuum in between.”
And he could have added that approximately 98 percent of decedents in Minnesota suffered from one or more specified underlying health conditions in addition to diabetes and heart disease. What are they again?
Having followed the politics and journalism of the epidemic in Minnesota, I should add that I found the death rate data presented by Minnesota Department of Health Director Kris Ehresmann at this past Friday’s press briefing more illuminating than Olson’s article. At about 25:00 of the audio that I posted in part 77 of my never-ending series, Ehresmann gave COVID-19 case fatality rates broken down by age. The fatality rates range from .01 percent in the youngest group to 59.6 percent among those in their 100’s. That’s why it’s good that the new cases skew heavily to younger demographic groups.
I asked Kevin Roche to take a look at Olson’s article. Kevin concurs in substance with my concerns about the story:
I don’t understand the point. The case fatality rate is obviously unknown but obviously also incredibly stratified by age, as is the population fatality rate. The overall case fatality rate is falling rapidly in the United States because the testing is at such a high rate that we are finding all kinds of asymptomatic and mild cases. But we still have no idea how many people have really been infected. The CDC’s estimate is ten times the reported number of cases. I think that would be 44 million cases in the US.
Nationally, 148,000 deaths (and I am more convinced after looking at the Minnesota death certificates, that we are wildly over-attributing deaths to coronavirus) is a 0.33 percent case fatality rate. It will go much lower because of what I view as front-loading of the most susceptible. In Minnesota for example, how many more long-term care residents could we kill?
The message that should be communicated is that unless you are over 70 or have some serious pre-existing illnesses, your risk is extremely low. It is truly less than the seasonal flu. For older people, it is very dangerous. It is just that simple.
These are the points to be made and obfuscating them is something other than a public service. Follow Kevin’s work at Healthy Skeptic.
On a related note today, the Issues and Insights editorial "Florida Is A Case Study In Media-Induced COVID-19 Panic" presents an extreme case.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/28/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
Referenced Florida Case Study, which suggests - unexpectedly - the media is fanning the flames instead of reporting!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2020 11:47 Comments ||
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Key Quote from Rowe:
[ZeroHedge] "I hope that doesn't sound blasé, or glib, or fatalistic, or selfish. [A projected f]our-hundred eighty thousand deaths is an obvious tragedy, and I'm deeply sympathetic to all who have been impacted thus far. I'm also very concerned for my parents, and everyone else in a high risk category. But when Dr. Osterholm says that COVID can be slowed but not stopped, I believe him. When he says a vaccine will not necessarily hasten herd immunity, I believe him. And when he says that people have confused "flattening the curve" with "eliminating the virus," I believe him.
Thus, for the last three months, I've been operating from the assumption that this is a year-round virus that's eventually going to infect 100 million people and kill roughly 1/2 of one percent of those infected, conservatively. I've accepted those numbers. Unfortunately, millions of others have not. Many people have no sense of where this is headed, and I understand why. They've been betrayed by a hysterical media that insists on covering each new reported case as if it were the first case. Every headline today drips with dread, as the next doomed hotspot approaches the next "grim milestone." And so, for a lot of people, everyday is Groundhogs Day. They're paralyzed by the rising numbers because the numbers have no context."
Key Line from the Article:
"A short shutdown would have allowed hospitals to get their ducks in a row for handling patients. Everything else we’ve been through has been hysterical insanity."
#1
Mr Rowe is correct. The damage here has been mainly due to media malfeasance that in turn destroyed any opportunity for rational and measured responses which would have controlled this earlier. Instead, we have panic and fear, which coincidentally benefit the Democrats.
Posted by: Marilyn Tojo7566 ||
07/28/2020 3:22 Comments ||
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#2
We extend the life, by one month, of an bed bound 80 year old by taking a year of 2000 average aged people.
#6
In other news, an individual I personally know recently had a COVID test scheduled. For unrelated reasons, he skipped the appointment. A few days later he received his test results. Positive, of course.
#7
g(r)omgoru I dont know who hurt you (show us on the doll...), but seriously, give it a rest. You're looking like a corndog, and you'll need stilts to walk if you continue to have that stick up your ass.
Posted by: Marilyn Tojo7566 ||
07/28/2020 14:28 Comments ||
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#8
If you don't see any problem with what BP wrote (in addition to being counterfactual), I have nothing to say to you.
Update at 2:50 p.m. EDT. Abu Uluque posted this for tomorrow (now deleted — thank you for the heads up, my dear), providing the following comment and excerpt:
Hat tip to Breitbart. Forty-five minute video at link. Basically, they are saying that hydroxychloroquine not only cures but can actually prevent covid-19. They are also saying that schools absolutely must be re-opened.
Facebook has removed a video posted by Breitbart News earlier today, which was the top-performing Facebook post in the world Monday afternoon, of a press conference in D.C. held by the group America’s Frontline Doctors and organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots. The press conference featured Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and frontline doctors sharing their views and opinions on coronavirus and the medical response to the pandemic. YouTube (which is owned by Google) and Twitter subsequently removed footage of the press conference as well.
#4
Yikes, mods. I didn't see this post before I posted it myself for tomorrow. Sorry about that but would like to see what our own g(r)omgoru has to say about it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/28/2020 14:22 Comments ||
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#5
Time to administratively shut down the exemption they have and open them up to copyright, libel and other lawsuits - and then to file them en mass across all jurisdictions. Death of 1000 cuts to Twitter and Facebook.
Posted by: Marilyn Tojo7566 ||
07/28/2020 14:25 Comments ||
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[NYPOST] Portland, Ore., has seen 60 straight nights of violent mostly peaceful unrest, and now it’s starting to spread: Saturday was a national night of "solidarity," with demonstrations in multiple cities in support of the Portland goons.
Yes, goons: Shooting off mortar-style fireworks, hurling rocks and bottles, shining lasers in officers’ eyes, taking power tools to the fence around the courthouse area: All of it belies any claim of "peaceful protests."
The arrival of federal agents in Portland hasn’t stopped the nightly attacks on the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse. Saturday evening, police responded to a shooting in the vicinity and found nearby a bag packed with Molotov cocktails and loaded rifle magazines.
see also
The city finally declared the scene a riot — and Seattle followed suit after a violent mostly peaceful demonstration near the former "occupied protest zone." There, protesters breached a construction site for a youth detention center and destroyed windows at a court facility. This was after the county executive bowed to the mob and said he’d work to eliminate youth detention centers by 2025.
The thugs’ Gotham brethren also showed their support, with hundreds of demonstrators marching from the Lower East Side to police headquarters on Saturday night. Some set fires in garbage cans while others vandalized NYPD vehicles, tagging them with graffiti, slashing their tires and trying to smash in their windows. At one point, a few protesters jumped atop a police SUV, with one holding an inverted American flag scrawled with "F - - k NYPD." But the cops are under orders to show restraint.
Lefty pols prefer to simply deny the menace. Rep. Jerry Fester Bestertester Nadler ...the New York representative for life who stepped physically from a Don Martin drawing the pages of Mad® magazine, head of the House Judiciary Committee... insisted on-camera that the idea of violence in Portland is merely a "myth that’s being spread only in Washington, DC." (We asked his office for an explanation, but it declined to respond.)
Meanwhile, ...back at the mall, Clarissa spent the day shopping for new underwear. Tonight was going to be a special occasion... what’s going on in the City of Roses is inspiring more mayhem.
"Across the country people are committing violence, supposedly in support of Portland," the city’s police chief, Chuck Lovell, said Saturday. "If you want to support Portland then stop the violence, work for peace," he pleaded. "We want to get back to the critical issues that have been hijacked by people committing crimes under the cover of the crowds."
But that won’t happen as long as the mob besieging the courthouse gets to keep on committing crimes — indeed, the lack of response across the country only encourages more rabble-rousing. If mayors don’t want the feds coming in to clean up their cities, they better start doing it themselves.
#5
Been rather quiet in Albuquerque since the anarchist decided to assault someone who defended himself with justifiable force. We're still the 'Wild West'. The DA screwed with the defender for 10 days then had to release him while threatening further action. Given the normal level of daily crime here about, I'd take a Vegas bet that they can't get a conviction and would face a civil law suit that would really really hurt the limited budget they already operate on.
[American Thinker] In the world of politics, repetition is almost without fail the key to winning elections. The dominant campaign issue in the upcoming election that President Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative media must relentlessly repeat is the now irrefutable fact that Joe Biden, the Democrat party and the mainstream media have tacitly sanctioned sedition and have betrayed the American people. Consequently, if Biden and the Democrats win in November, they will be incapable of preventing the Marxist ultimatums of the radical left from becoming the law of the land.
By refusing to not only condemn but implicitly encouraging the ongoing riots and violence as well as meekly acquiescing to the demands of the left-wing extremist, the Democrat party establishment, which includes the mainstream media, has exposed their spinelessness for the world to see and signed on to government by mob rule.
The Marxist ideologues in the nation’s professoriate, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the media and the extreme left-wing of the Democrat party have unabashedly declared their primary objective is to overthrow the government and radically transform the nation. Yet, there is no condemnation or repudiation of these goals from Biden, the Democrat party hierarchy or the mainstream media. By their silence they have wordlessly endorsed sedition.
The dedicated Marxist ideologues now know with certainty that these self-absorbed elitists will cower and surrender in the face of no more than the threat of turmoil throughout the country. Meanwhile, the Party hierarchy and the bulk of the ruling class has naively convinced themselves, that when the time comes, they will be able to mollify these radicals and still maintain command of the levers of power.
Were the Democrats to take over Congress and place a senescent mannequin in the White House, the only remaining ingredient the radical left would need to complete their revolution is the elimination of any serious opposition from the monied capitalists and major industrial sectors while strong-arming them for financial support.
#3
Hitler was very aware of two factors that he could exploit to overturn the government and assume dictatorial power. The first, once violence was not firmly dealt with and tolerated then just the threat of violence would be sufficient to intimidate the ruling class. The second, was the inbred naiveté and egocentricity of the ruling class in believing that they, by their extraordinary powers of persuasion, could placate anyone or any movement and still maintain power. These lessons are not lost on the Marxists running amok in the United States today.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2020 15:12 Comments ||
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#4
Is that photo with the flags of America and Cuba behind President Obama and the other guy?
[PJ Media by the essential Jack Dunphy] Perhaps by now, you're among those suffering from riot fatigue. Since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests have spread from that city to both coasts and most places in between, making it impossible for any but the most avid news junkie to keep up with all the freeway disruptions, looting, clashes with police, and general mayhem. You discuss the events with your friends and coworkers but have trouble remembering where any given incident may have occurred. "I think it was in Portland," you say, but then you're told it was really Seattle. "No," says someone else, "that happened in New York." The incessant descriptions in the media of these protests as being "mostly peaceful" reminds one that in 1944, France, Belgium, and Holland could have been similarly described if you merely overlooked the war going on.
On Friday, another "mostly peaceful protest" was held in Chicago, this one resulting in injuries to 49 police officers. Chicago police Superintendent David Brown and some of his senior staff held a press conference on Monday, displaying video of the event that began with a march through Grant Park before devolving into a melee as a brave band of Chicago police officers protected the statue of Christopher Columbus from a mob bent on toppling it.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/28/2020 00:00 ||
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...one fears it's only a matter of time before we see a deadly incident such as occurred at Kent State University fifty years ago when National Guard troops opened fire on protesters opposing the Vietnam War. I suspect there are those on the left who would welcome such an incident if it serves to weaken the resolve of the police and bring about the president's defeat in November. After all, there must always be martyrs to the cause, comrades.
I think that's precisely the intent of these riots, and the reason they keep spreading and escalating: the Democrats, acting through their BLM/Antifa shock troops, are trying to goad Trump into doing something that will kill his re-election chances.
And I fear that sometime between now and November, they'll succeed.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/28/2020 7:46 Comments ||
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#2
Didn't Kent State sort of end the 60s riots? Didn't they result in Nixon being elected? Or am I confused.
#3
And we could also, God forbid, have a reverse Kent State: In Portland there are about 120 federal officers dealing every night with a crowd of a couple of thousand, not all of whom are in full possession of their already limited faculties.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/28/2020 10:39 Comments ||
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#4
"#2 Didn't Kent State sort of end the 60s riots? Didn't they result in Nixon being elected? Or am I confused."
I don't think the proggies are taking that possibility into account. Or, if the are, they are clearly not taking it very seriously.
And if I were one to place bets, I'd probably put my money on a Kent State-like incident doing Trump more harm than good.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
07/28/2020 12:05 Comments ||
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#5
I think Kent state isn't a great example, this is right out of the Palestinian play book. Put innocents in the line of fire and then claim they were innocents killed by warmongers.
The Moms for Antifa were all out so that if they are killed doing Antifa tasks they can claim they were innocent moms after the fact.
I suspect the same is true of the Veterans for Antifa marchers.
#6
Was at Ft. Jackson that summer. Got some additional info which muddied the public outrage thing. Don't send guys whose only defense is to shoot people. Need defensive shields, etc.
Next couple of years, I discovered people who thought "They" deserved it. Not necessarily the guy walking to class, or..... But a kind of amorphous "They". Those who might today be seen as trying to gain the TWANLOC certificate. Whether anybody wanted some hippy they never heard of to be pulverized by rounds from a battle rifle is not the point. "They" were not popular, "They" needed to be.....something or other. "They" were blowing up buildings (zilch compared to today) and assaulting cops (also zilch) and couldn't claim the moral high ground.
And Nixon won in '72.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/28/2020 15:50 Comments ||
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#7
if the media and dems get their way, yes
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 ||
07/28/2020 15:58 Comments ||
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#8
just let the peaceful protesters completely destroy the Dem. cities they're operating in, dont hinder them at all. in 2 more months they will be out of things to wreck except their cause.
#2
Tad more than that. What it does to the cardio-vascular, renal and other body systems is kind of unique for a single virus type.
Almost like it was 'planned'.
I still wouldn't put it past the ChiComs to unleash this before an election. Losing a million people (or 6...or 10) is nothing if it perpetuates their regime. Trump was getting too nasty with them and they needed the Dems back in power.
"You think Russian Facebook meddling was bad? Get a load of what the Middle Kingdom can do!"
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/28/2020 9:34 Comments ||
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#4
There are some genuine reasons to speculate that the COVID-19 Frankenvirus has less than natural beginnings (see, e.g., https://www.zerohedge.com/health/what-expanse-tells-us-about-covid-19-pandemic-and-gain-function-research); however, regardless of origin, it’s transmissibility is truly horrifying — eventually everyone will be exposed. Give COVID-19 even a hugely unrealistically low mortality rate of just 1% and that’s 3 million dead Americans.
For the some 10-20% of the population that COVID-19 is problematic for the virus is devastating -- about half of those are going to die without an effective treatment, and almost the same number will be incapacitated for months. For those susceptible (due to genetics, preconditions, or viral strain), COVID-19 disseminates widely though-out all organ systems of the body, wrecking widespread apoptosis, necrosis, thrombosis and inflammatory carnage.
The other 80-90% of the population will think there's way too much alarm over this novel flu-like virus—because half of them are natively immune to the disease or fight it off like a common influenza.
Such disparity in experience and outcome necessarily sows division. That societal disquietude will only dissipate with effective treatment and elimination of this scourge. God bless American ingenuity; God damn the quislings.
#5
A good, concise compendium (over 200 pages) of the state of research re COVID—although a bit too dismissive of lab origin theories and off-label treatments for my liking—is https://rega.kuleuven.be/if/pdf_corona
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...the New York representative for life who stepped physically from a Don Martin drawing the pages of Mad® magazine, head of the House Judiciary Committee...
[American Thinker] In the world of politics, repetition is almost without fail the key to winning elections. The dominant campaign issue in the upcoming election that President Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative media must relentlessly repeat is the now irrefutable fact that Joe Biden, the Democrat party and the mainstream media have tacitly sanctioned sedition and have betrayed the American people. Consequently, if Biden and the Democrats win in November, they will be incapable of preventing the Marxist ultimatums of the radical left from becoming the law of the land.
