A couple days ago a group of researchers in California released a study saying many more of us are infected with the coronavirus, and that it is much less deadly than originally believed. Great news! But Mark Sumner of Daily Kos doesn’t believe it. He gives several reasons why. One is that to match the number of dead in New York City requires that the number of infected be pretty much all of NYC.
A day later Sumner reported Andrew Gelman of Columbia University pointed out the statistical anomalies of that California study. He also says it was pushed onto the public before peer review.
Another study, which received a much favorable nod from Sumner, looked at the average rate of death in various places around the world to the rate of death this year. The study suggests the difference is due to the virus even though that difference is much larger than the official virus death counts. So, yeah, in contrast to the study above, the death rate is much higher than currently stated. The study says there are 25,000 more deaths that should be attributed to the virus. I think that number is for worldwide deaths.
For example, Indonesia says they’ve had 84 deaths due to COVID-19 in Jakarta. This study suggests there were actually 1,500.
Reasons for the undercount, besides governments not wanting to admit the seriousness of the problem (see: nasty guy), is a victim wasn’t tested, simply didn’t get medical attention, or medical examiners were overloaded. This underreporting is another reason we should not downplay the seriousness of the situation and relax physical distancing too soon. It also means we’ll never know the full virus death count.
Kurt Andersen tweeted a quote from an article in Politico:
11,000 more Republicans than Democrats 65 and older could die before the election in both Michigan and North Carolina. Pennsylvania could lose 13,000 more Republican than Democratic voters in that age category.It reminds me of the quote a few days ago asking why the nasty guy doesn’t care if his base is killed off.
This is both scary and not surprising. Leah McElrath tweeted:
Trump’s acting director of the Office of Personnel Management challenges the Constitutionality of an act mandating MERIT as a basis of hire, says all hires should be POLITICAL.
I had written about the primary election in Wisconsin which was, sheesh!, two weeks ago. The GOP refused to postpone it in hopes it would drive down turnout and their candidate for the state supreme court would keep his seat. The Democrat won anyway. There was a lot of pushback against the requirement of in-person voting in the midst of the pandemic.
And, indeed, a couple days ago health officials confirmed at least seven cases of COVID-19 linked to the election. And today the number of election related cases has grown to 19. A democracy does not ask their citizens to risk their lives to vote.
Today we got the report for the number of people who filed for unemployment in the last week. It’s another 4.4 million, for a total of over 26 million in five weeks. This is the number who actually filed. It doesn’t include those who didn’t make it through the overloaded state unemployment systems.
Bobby Allyn of NPR spoke to Bill Hinshaw of COBOL Cowboys. One reason why these unemployment systems are having a hard time is because they’re still running on antique computers using the antique programming language of COBOL. Sheesh, COBOL was considered old fashioned when I learned programming in the 1970s. But if you’re one of those old timers who knows COBOL or a younger guy willing to learn it, you’re in great demand these days.
Someone with the Twitter handle TheTweetOfGod offered this one for Earth Day, which marked its 50th anniversary yesterday:
The next time I create mankind I'll conduct an environmental impact study first.
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