COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1249042597835870215
For now, Bush #43 and Trump are the worst POTUS in this century.

Which is meaningless because there have been only 3 presidents this century.

Well, you could claim for there to be 4, but you do have a good point. Small time frames, past a certain point, result in small sample sizes, which makes comparisons less useful.

Donald Trump's term to date is easily the worst of any resident in the White House since the Civil War. He's highly likely to rapidly end up as the worst in history once he's gone.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Strictly speaking, shouldn’t conservatives be the ones cautious about opening up the country and the liberals be the ones wanting to open the country more willingly?

If we take the standard definitions of conservative and liberal, the two should be flipped on this issue.

Or we can look at the data objectively, instead of through a partisan or ideological lens?

You guys really want to score political points while thousands of Americans are dying on a daily basis?

Looking at the data objectively is partisan. The Republicans reject data, because it incriminates them. I can't speak for anyone else, but I think it's important for the future to understand the reason this is as bad as it is rests firmly on the shoulders of one man and the political party that enabled his crimes and betrayal.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

In unprecedented move, Treasury orders Trump’s name printed on stimulus checks

The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that could slow their delivery by a few days, senior IRS officials said.

The unprecedented decision, finalized late Monday, means that when recipients open the $1,200 paper checks the IRS is scheduled to begin sending to 70 million Americans in coming days, “President Donald J. Trump” will appear on the left side of the payment.

It will be the first time a president’s name appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Different, recent trial results on a clinical trial of chloroquine diphosphate.

The high dose CQ arm presented more QTc>500ms (25%), and a trend toward higher lethality (17%) than the lower dosage. Fatality rate was 13.5% (95%CI=6.9-23.0%), overlapping with the CI of historical data from similar patients not using CQ (95%CI=14.5-19.2%). In 14 patients with paired samples, respiratory secretion at day 4 was negative in only one patient. Interpretation Preliminary findings suggest that the higher CQ dosage (10-day regimen) should not be recommended for COVID-19 treatment because of its potential safety hazards.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Anyone know why new cases in New York went up by so much today? Outside of New York, new cases in the U.S. dropped.

New York added a bunch of "probable" deaths/cases backdating all the way back to March 11.  Extremely questionable stuff.  We don't even attempt to count deaths from other respiratory diseases with such a level of precision. 

From the article you quoted:

People whose death certificates don’t mention the virus still are not counted. From March 11 through April 13, 8,184 city residents died of causes not classified as confirmed or probable coronavirus.

I think that's a factual misrepresentation on the part of Poltico (wouldn't be the first time).  From the press release from NYC Department of Health:

A death is classified as probable if the decedent was a New York City resident (NYC resident or residency pending) who had no known positive laboratory test for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) but the death certificate lists as a cause of death “COVID-19” or an equivalent.

Key phrase being "or an equivalent".  What's an equivalent?  Are all pneumonia deaths from March 11 forward now being counting as COVID-19?  No answer from NYC Health there. 

Do you have any methodological basis for questioning these results or is this more of your wishful thinking/motivated skepticism?

Anytime you have a disease that primarily effects older people with severe comorbidities, its more difficult to determine a singular cause of death.  If an 87-year old with CHF develops rapid-onset pneumonia and dies in the hospital, should it get counted as COVID-19?  Different countries have varying (yet reasonable) standards for who gets counted and who doesn't, which is one reason why death counts in a country like Germany are so low.     

Individual causes of death may be difficult to precisely and accurately identify. But looking at overall statistics, large spikes in number of deaths are pretty obvious, and you can get close to the deaths causes by the pandemic by taking total actual deaths and subtracting expected deaths (based on prior years' statistics).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/gdinwiddie/status/1250130371242582016

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

As a novel virus sweeps across the globe in a pandemic, hordes of former human beings howl mindless as they seek the kill the surviving humans (oops, my mistake) Republicans demand Ohio governor DeWine end the state-wide quarantine.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1250042805021532162

Nothing alternate about it. While there are no guarantees the United States will break up in the next two decades, if we do, it will be along these lines that are being drawn right now.

7 Midwestern governors announce their states will coordinate on reopening

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The people at these 'protests' are going to be responsible for more cases and more deaths. You don't seem to see the protests happening anywhere else except for the U.S., because half the country is ignorant apparently

What borders on stupidity?

Mexico and Canada.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I can't wait for the explosion in new cases here in Florida after seeing those Jacksonville pics. Why they decided to reopen the day we recorded the highest number of cases yet is beyond me.

And then seeing that pic of the beaches crowded just minutes after reopening.... what a joke. DeSantis is a fool and Florida is going to suffer b/c of it.

"Fool" may be too generous.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1251300355582935046

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1251607949736161281

We've hit a plateau all right. A testing plateau.



Even the CDC's numbers are showing the same thing:

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

WTF ?



How selfish can you be ?

Apparently, the Trump scum thinks a virus only affects themselves and nobody else.

Let's not be too judgemental here. Times are very tough, and I'm sure this lady and many others really need the money they're being paid for this.

In case the exceptionally well-done sign and facemask removed for the photo-op are insufficiently persuasive, here's The Guardian:
The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1251898695056011267

The media is falling face flat on their coverage of these protests. Absolutely shameful.

The media, as a general rule, has fallen flat on their faces covering anything in Trump/Republican orbit since well before he was elected. I agree it's shameful, but it's also 'business as usual'. A good part of the reason we have a "Fox News" and a "resident Trump" is that the Fourth Estate has normalized them; the media will criticize the right endlessly to attract outage eyeballs, but they refuse to accurately describe them, much less reject them.

The current media, even Trump "critics" like CNN and the New York Times, would provide breathless "fair" coverage of a future Trump administration's (hypothetical) decision to carry out summary executions of the White House pool reporters.