'Science should not stand in the way' of schools reopening, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany says
And:
Home Depot isn't following Washington state's mask mandate. Says it's risky for staff
And no, they don't think the masks themselves are risky for the staff.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
From that article:Originally Posted by Flixy
Loren Culp, a Republican candidate for governor, announced in videos posted to social media that he opposed the statewide-mask requirement. He suggested the new law was unconstitutional.
"I will not comply. I am a free American," Culp said.
American Freedumb.
Looks pretty standard, certainly how it works in my store. Pretty much the same thing as happens with loss-prevention and shop-lifting. Normal associates are not supposed to confront and stop those "customers" either, that's for management and the security/Loss-Prevention people, for liability reasons. And Home Depot runs things with minimal staff, I'm not in the least surprised they don't have the security people to enforce masks.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
It seems the UK's daily death figures now are pretty useless. They're counting anyone who died in the community having ever tested positive with as a COVID death even if they died from completely unrelated causes. To put it into context George Floyd would have been reported as a COVID death under our figures.
Probably not a major issue in March and April, but proportionately now most 'death' would be accounted for by this. Excess death figures will be the only appropriate way to measure this by the end I suspect, thankfully those are currently negative and have been for nearly a month.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/...eck-nr-vpx.cnn
At least we know who's to blame!
Edit: fixed link
Last edited by Flixy; 07-17-2020 at 05:23 PM.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Even back then there were idiots who didn't know how to wear them properly.
Work has implemented temperature checks are arrival. 15 minute car ride to work with the AC blasting and I logged a temp of 96.6. So much for that safety check. Next week I'm going to look into what the procedure is if someone comes in to hot, see if I need to turn the heater on for my drive to work.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Work is grappling with the same concerns. Higher ups are starting to plan for reopenings and want quarter occupancy, 1 hour max, and face masks. But all the buildings are minimally staff and none of us are built or trained like bouncers to handle the public who won't comply. Middle managers are rasing all kinds of fuss over it, not wanting to be the masks police, but the higher ups don't want to assign security to cover enforcing the directives they are deciding on.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 07-17-2020 at 09:05 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Today I was at the office. It's still strange to see the place pretty much empty with half of work stations dismantled. One of those being mine. I've taken to work from a different room with a standing desk. I'm thinking of clearing out my drawers and file cabinet and go flexible altogether. My primary work place is in our living room. Which we only use for entertaining anyway, but is more pleasant than the guests bedrooms.
Congratulations America
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
How bad could Trump really be? He's basically doing what any other president would've done:
Twitter Link
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
It is unbelievable how fucking dumb this dude is, and, yet, he might be a thought leader for coming generations of American conservatives:
Twitter Link
The medical term for his condition is "stercocephaly".
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
NJ jumped to 176 per 100k pop vs. NY 167.
Texas is at 13.
Haven't posted the scoreboard recently:
Belgium 857.55
United Kingdom 678.59
Spain 608.17
Italy 579.45
Sweden 549.24
France 448.58
USA 422.33
Peru 394.35
Chile 389.23
Brazil 366.11
Stop treating this like a racehorse, it's disgusting.
But if you're going to post numbers, you should cite your source.
Needs to be cited. This data is either completely incorrect, woefully out of date, or using some weird metric. At the very least just numbers like this without any context cannot be interpreted.
The true picture, as of yesterday (19th July), is as follows:
Cases per capita:
Deaths per capita:
Cumulative cases:
Cumulative deaths:
Rolling average cases:
Rolling average deaths:
So the US may not have had the highest overall per capita infection rate since the virus first went global, but it has certainly fucked up its response.
European countries have had very high rates when the virus first appeared and not much was known about it, but have since controlled it and cases have fallen significantly.
Whereas the US has not learned a thing, it has the highest infection rate of those countries as of today, and the highest number of new cases daily. For supposedly such a capable country with the resources at its disposal and the time that has now passed, this is absolutely pathetic.
"Score"
This isn't Pacman.
Using Lewk's data there has been a 10% increase in US fatalities: far, far more than any of the other nations outside of South America at the bottom of the table. Depressing.
And I'm far from convinced that we are comparing like-for-like. The UK is counting amongst its COVID deaths anyone who dies after being tested positive for any reason at all. Even if they die months later due to being hit by a bus. George Floyd's death would have been registered as a COVID death in this country (not that it would have happened here). I doubt whether the same is the case in the USA.
The numbers are from statista. Curiously, he doesn't show figures for covid deaths or excess all-cause mortality.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
What will need to be looked at to make reasonable comparisons is net excess mortality across the year. Its going to take a long time for that data to come in though, as it stands many European nations are probably running at negative excess mortality whereas I suspect at the moment the US is running at excess mortality but we can't see those figures yet.
What should not be done in making reasonable comparisons is look at the excess part of the graph alone and 'lock in' any excess above average while ignoring anything below the average.
Why do you believe "negative" excess mortality is particularly interesting in assessing impact of and response to the pandemic? If people who might've died in September die in March, that's not a mitigating circumstance. You might see fewer deaths from accidents as well, but, again, how important is that in the grand scheme of things?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
There will always in an average year be swings and roundabouts in the data, variability, that is why you use a net average, it smooths out the data.
By only counting the data above the line you are only looking at half the data, getting the swings but not the roundabouts.
What you are proposing would flatter Trump and the USA. Because they've consistently been above the line . . . but dragged out over a period of time . . . they have nothing to net off as they've never gone negative. But in other nations that have had peaks and troughs (South Africa springs to mind) the picture is different. In South Africa they had major negative data (disproportionately negative) when they went into lockdown before the COVID deaths started coming.
Net shows the whole picture. Only looking at one side of it is disingenuous.
Another way of putting it Aimless, lets say there are two examples (purely hypothetical)
Country A has 10 deaths per million above the line in part of the year, but negative 6 excess deaths per million below the line, so net over the year 4 deaths per million extra occurred.
Country B has 10 deaths per million above the line, never went negative, so overall finished the year with 10 deaths per million extra.
I would suggest B has done over the span of the year 2.5x worse than A. Country B would have 2.5x the net excess deaths by the end of the year than A has. But if you only look at the above the line period you would suggest they have done identically the same, despite A having had 60% fewer net deaths than B.
RB, they are already guesstimating excess mortality numbers for countries with decent reporting. On a rolling basis it ain't negative:
https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-...3-955839e06441
Now you could imagine (as you do) that mortality will be a bit lower in the future because we already killed some of our oldest people. Which might be true (albeit in a macabre way) but the timing of a death matters as well; in QALYs if nothing else. You're essentially making the argument that it's not as bad as it looks because most of those people were going to die eventually anyways - which, in the long run, is true of all of us, I suppose.
What's fascinating (for good or bad) about the US is how different states and regions have very different looking curves. There are some nice comparators out there, but my individual state's curves look like they're from an epidemiology textbook - perhaps, in fact, because most of the authors of said textbooks live in my state and that governor actually listened to them. It just so happened that most of the earliest hit states (especially NY and MA) had decent public health capacity and decision making so they were able to arrest the epidemic - albeit at a huge human and economic cost, especially since they had less preparation and knowledge back in March when it really took off.
What you're seeing in the US is a superposition of many different regional curves that have had very different kinetics and magnitudes over the duration of this epidemic. It actually lends some (very minor) credence to the WH position that some of the decision-making should be done on a regional or state level rather than a federal level (not to discount the truly horrendous effects of the federal mismanagement of this crisis).
Last edited by wiggin; 07-20-2020 at 12:08 PM.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
For all practical purposes, covid doesn't save lives. Comparing excess mortality relative to average for specific time periods across the year helps answer questions about the impact of the covid pandemic; netting that against "negative" mortality averaged out over the year obscures information about the impact of the covid pandemic. The approach you describe has been used by some commentators to make Sweden's pandemic response look better than it is, by including mortality stats from before our outbreak in the calculations of excess mortality. The issue of natural fluctuation in mortality is something that can be addressed, and is usually addressed by comparing specific periods in a year with the average for the corresponding periods in previous years—not the averages for entire years. That way, you can glean more useful information about the impact of the pandemic. The approach you propose is the one favored by our ministry of public health, because they believe it will make them look better than they would've otherwise. However, it doesn't adequately answer the question that the investigation of excess mortality is supposed to answer, in this debate, namely: approximately how many people have died of covid in settings where we don't have 100% test coverage? The two approaches have two completely different objectives.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
To be clear I'm not suggesting that it is OK that someone dies earlier in the year from COVID because they may have died later in the year anyway, that is not my point at all. Even if someone may have died anyway then simply dying peacefully from old age versus dying by drowning in your own fluids by COVID as you struggle to breath are not the same.
What I am saying - and you subconsciously made the same point with regards to "for specific time periods across the year" - is that in making comparisons between countries we need to look like-for-like over the same time period. EG if we want to look at say March to August then look at March to August consistently. If you're going to make comparisons then like-for-like comparisons over the same time period are appropriate was my point.
To take the example given earlier about someone dying in March who might have died in October, that is a tragedy in March. Now if we look at 2 different countries both of which have an excess death in March, but one has a negative one death in October (because the person who died earlier in the year didn't die then) while the second country has the same number of deaths as normal in October despite the fact the October person had already died in March . . . because this was a genuine excess death on its own that shouldn't have happened in October because country B hasn't stopped the pandemic yet . . . then it is reasonable to contrast that and say that B is suffering more still is it not?
If you "lock in" the death figures by looking at different time periods for different nations then you are distorting the figures. If you wish to compare how did nations A, B, C and D do over time period x to y then look at time period x to y for all 4 nations - don't look at their shaded above the line graph for each of them. Doing that flatters the countries that halted the virus later.
Twitter Link
Some good news!
Ironically the virus has been suppressed so much within the UK that the domestic later phases of the Oxford vaccine may struggle to demonstrate efficacy (since there's not going to be much infection within the placebo group either) so we need to see the results from the trial Oxford are taking in Brazil and elsewhere to see if this works fully before it can be delivered to people.
AstraZenica are so convinced this is going to work though they've already started producing the vaccine while the Phase III trial runs in Brazil so that if it does work the vaccine will be produced and ready to go the moment it gets a licence.
The UK has ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine. Not sure why we need so many.
If it's like the vaccine the US is working on, you need 2 doses per person.
Hope is the denial of reality
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