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

[Beet]

Here is some important context, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert



2016 USDA map. According to the Medley Food Desert Project,[6] nearly 24 million Americans live in food deserts. Food deserts are heavily concentrated in southern states, which correlates with concentration of poverty. The map presents percentages of people without cars living in areas with no supermarket within a mile.

You can complain that there are so much poor people in US/these states (it's a tragedy) and that the [southern] states didn't fix that, but you can't complain that these people didn't stop "travel more than 2 miles". They doesn't have that privilege.

By the way -- this criticism of my post is also misleading.

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.

One of the biggest food deserts is West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky -- but you see strong social distancing practices being put forward in those areas. West Virginia issued a statewide lockdown on March 24. Kentucky Gov. signed a similar order on March 25.

Therefore "Food Deserts" are no excuse.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

https://mobile.twitter.com/CGothnerKCCI/status/1246162124428267522

[Landslide Lyndon]

https://mobile.twitter.com/CGothnerKCCI/status/1246162124428267522

I'm yearning for the good old days when Inks was assuring everyone that Republicans don't have an anti-science bone in their bodies.

[Beet]

https://twitter.com/ilyseh/status/1246055366716198914

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

Highest testing states:
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1245838887135481857
Lowest testing states:
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1245838564404998144

These stats is by the way fairly misleading, too.

As far as I know most states have similar policy — test only people with symptoms. So states with more infected people per capita will test more per capita. It should be very strong correlation there.

Death is very good (but lagging) proxy for infected people. So take a look
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/coronavirus-maps-charts-states-testing-deaths



See the correlation with your stats?


For instance New York test 10 more people per capita than Alabama, but also has 20 more deaths per capita (https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/). Then you can say that AL test 2 more than NY per dead person.

As I said death is lagging proxy. About 2-4, perhaps. Therefore, NY, perhaps or even likely, test more than AL per infected but not a lot more. 100% not 10 less per infected as your highly misleading stat might have suggested for people who not good at stats and logic.

Hopefully, you understand what I mean. From Russia with Stats Explaining! 

Except your entire "misleading" criticism is also misleading-- because the only way a "death" can be confirmed as due to COVID19 is from testing.

Don't test -- death not due to COVID19 = low deaths per capita.

Simple and obvious. If you have lower tests per capita you will also have lower deaths per capita. The only way to be sure is either to test broadly, or compare total mortality statistics compared to a normal baseline.

Ok. I've tried to explain and lost. If you really don't think, there is no very strong correlation between # of people seeking help with corona symptoms and # of testing, I give up.

By the way -- this criticism of my post is also misleading.

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.

One of the biggest food deserts is West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky -- but you see strong social distancing practices being put forward in those areas. West Virginia issued a statewide lockdown on March 24. Kentucky Gov. signed a similar order on March 25.

Therefore "Food Deserts" are no excuse.

I didn't say there is 100% correlation or that lock-downs didn't help...

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.
There is no correlation there?

 JFC. 

[T'Chenka]

The governor of Iowa is half-wit apparently.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

WSJ: BREAKING NEWS The CDC is recommending Americans voluntarily wear nonmedical masks in public to limit coronavirus transmission, Trump says

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The governor of Iowa is half-wit apparently.

How stupid are is the people Governor of Iowa?

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

WSJ: BREAKING NEWS The CDC is recommending Americans voluntarily wear nonmedical masks in public to limit coronavirus transmission, Trump says

But Trump says that he himself won't wear one, because he is mentally deficient and completely devoid of leadership skills.

[T'Chenka]

WSJ: BREAKING NEWS The CDC is recommending Americans voluntarily wear nonmedical masks in public to limit coronavirus transmission, Trump says

But Trump says that he himself won't wear one, because he is mentally deficient and completely devoid of leadership skills.

It isn't good for his TV ratings.

[Hammy]

The governor of Iowa is half-wit apparently.

How stupid are is the people Governor of Iowa?

The people of Iowa keep electing these idiots so they hold the blame--politicians are nothing more than the reflection of the voters.

[GP270watch]

I went on a grocery run(much needed). Supermarket was well stocked and good number of people are already wearing masks. I didn't see any n95 construction masks or medical mask. I saw dust masks and cheaper masks. Cashiers have signs asking people stand 6 feet away but are still doing a lot of talking. Publix put some skinny floating plexiglass shields in front of the cashiers, looks very ineffective.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Data from Bank of America points to a YUGE drop in consumption. GDP is falling off a cliff (not unexpected, but just look at the magnitudes, it is really YUGE).

https://twitter.com/pueokeffer/status/1245543006918381568

[Virginiá]

Isn't it the perception of where economy is going (near election) day that matters?

[...]

Maybe, although one of the studies mentioned Q2 as being the most important. Can't find a link to it right now. Either way, how much of a rebound are we talking? Will the GDP recovery still be notably less than where it started? The drops we are seeing are so incredible that perhaps it overshadows the fact that plunging two dozen points and then surging about 70% of the way back is still a large drop overall. You're still going to have a lot of people whose livelihoods have been hurt, or maybe are still even out of a job, or have gotten a new job that pays less and/or has less benefits. And this is all assuming we have some sort of instant recovery. What if this stretches out into the summer? It's pretty easy to see America walking into election day with high unemployment and a very muted recovery - if it's even ongoing at that point.

Your guess is as good as mine, but there are enough studies to show that unless this country quickly makes the biggest and fastest recovery possibly ever, that the GOP is in for a world of hurt.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Isn't it the perception of where economy is going (near election) day that matters?

[...]

Maybe, although one of the studies mentioned Q2 as being the most important. Can't find a link to it right now. Either way, how much of a rebound are we talking? Will the GDP recovery still be notably less than where it started? The drops we are seeing are so incredible that perhaps it overshadows the fact that plunging two dozen points and then surging about 70% of the way back is still a large drop overall. You're still going to have a lot of people whose livelihoods have been hurt, or maybe are still even out of a job, or have gotten a new job that pays less and/or has less benefits. And this is all assuming we have some sort of instant recovery. What if this stretches out into the summer? It's pretty easy to see America walking into election day with high unemployment and a very muted recovery - if it's even ongoing at that point.

Your guess is as good as mine, but there are enough studies to show that unless this country quickly makes the biggest and fastest recovery possibly ever, that the GOP is in for a world of hurt.

The most important question is, who does the public blame? The real answer "Trump partially, but China more" is probably much too complicated for the public to digest. And if Trump does fail at pinning it on China, then his best bet is saying Ds would have handled it worse (judging from Biden calling the ban on travel to China racist and other stuff). Will the nation accept that? It's much too early to tell.

[vitoNova]

People won't even care about catching the Rona if the economy continues to worsen. 

[Badger]

Here is some important context, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert



2016 USDA map. According to the Medley Food Desert Project,[6] nearly 24 million Americans live in food deserts. Food deserts are heavily concentrated in southern states, which correlates with concentration of poverty. The map presents percentages of people without cars living in areas with no supermarket within a mile.

You can complain that there are so much poor people in US/these states (it's a tragedy) and that the [southern] states didn't fix that, but you can't complain that these people didn't stop "travel more than 2 miles". They doesn't have that privilege.

By the way -- this criticism of my post is also misleading.

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.

One of the biggest food deserts is West Virginia/Eastern Kentucky -- but you see strong social distancing practices being put forward in those areas. West Virginia issued a statewide lockdown on March 24. Kentucky Gov. signed a similar order on March 25.

Therefore "Food Deserts" are no excuse.

But the Appalachian food desert is one of the few exceptions on that map, isn't it? There are a couple others such as the county just north of Vegas, plus what I believe is Native American territory in Northeast Arizona. Otherwise there is a tangible, albeit imperfect, correlation between the two maps.

I'm not saying food deserts are "an excuse" either, but it's certainly a consideration that can't be lightly dismissed.

[Virginiá]

The most important question is, who does the public blame? The real answer "Trump partially, but China more" is probably much too complicated for the public to digest. And if Trump does fail at pinning it on China, then his best bet is saying Ds would have handled it worse (judging from Biden calling the ban on travel to China racist and other stuff). Will the nation accept that? It's much too early to tell.

The cause of it doesn't matter.

It’s unlikely to matter, either, that the president bears little responsibility for a global economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’s theory of “blind retrospection” suggests voters will reward or punish presidents for short-term changes in the election-year economy regardless of why they happened.

Mitch McConnell understands this. He didn't care that organizing the GOP against the stimulus under Obama would be unpopular, because by the time the next election came around, voters would be focused on Obama and the general state of the economy. If the stimulus helped, Obama would get credit for a better economy. If it didn't, or if there was no stimulus, they would still blame Obama. Yeah, maybe partisan Democrats remember what the GOP did, but they were never going to vote for the GOP anyway.

TL;DR elections are determined for dumber reasons than people think

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/ilyseh/status/1246055366716198914

Fake news! Cut taxes! Repeal Roe versus Wade!!! GAAAARGH!!D

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

[Dr. Arch]

In terms of raw numbers of case gains and deaths, today will be the worst one yet, unfortunately

[GP270watch]

In terms of raw numbers of case gains and deaths, today will be the worst one yet, unfortunately

I've been following these projections and they've been a good predictor of what's coming so far.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I genuinely think that this is very, very funny.

https://twitter.com/scottbix/status/1246206126473043968

I didn't say there is 100% correlation or that lock-downs didn't help...

The data looks like it correlates, but actually doesn't.
There is no correlation there?

 JFC. 

There's a correlation but it's not really illustrative of anything. You could probably find state-level predictors which are much more informative than whether the county has a food desert.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Erm. Washington DC, we have a problem that you might want to do something about...

https://twitter.com/SBAJovita/status/1246218482762514433

There are about 30 million small businesses in the USA...

If the small businesses that have gotten loans so far are representative of the average small business, and each small business got a loan equal to the average sized loan so far, that would come out to a total of $9,255,556,190,367.37 in loans (30,000,000/17,503*5,400,000,000 if you want to check the math). That is $9.26 trillion... But only $350 billion is budgeted for the program in total...

That means there are only enough loans for something like 3.8% of all the small businesses in the USA...

Let's say that this rough estimate math is off though substantially, by an order of magnitude. In that case, there would be enough loans for 38% of all small businesses.

Which is not remotely enough!!! What on earth were they thinking in how they set this up???

[Nyvin]

https://twitter.com/stevesilberman/status/860595784424620034