COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I went to one of the protests in Cincinnati last Sunday. I didn't mask up though. There were plenty of other maskless people.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Where did this 33,000 business come from? The site right now has 21,000.

I ran yesterday's numbers at the same time to today's. Their totals are usually cut off at different times, and sometimes they edit the numbers for days that had already been accounted for, artificially inflating or deflating the current day's count, which makes it difficult to track.

Doing what I'm doing keeps the numbers stable and avoids the downsides of their glitches. All of my numbers are available from the day that I started counting. If there's any miscalculation in them, please let me know, and I'll fix it.

The only thing I can think of is that some antibody tests came back which aren't assigned to any specific day.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

It looks like the only state that's a big worry now is Arizona. Utah's new cases dropped a lot yesterday, and it turns out most of the spike there was from one meatpacking plant in Cache County.

Even in Arizona, most of the increase is from increased testing.

Hotspots usually don't last long unless it's a huge city like New York. Some towns that were hotspots a few weeks ago like Gallup, N.M., are just like any other town now.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

That graph doesn't even start at 0!

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Are people even able to conceptualize the idea that pandemics don't last forever? I don't think there's any doubt that the numbers in the U.S. are much better than they were (Worldometers had only 373 deaths yesterday. and the rate of positive cases is almost down to 4% now), but a lot of people apparently believe everything is still all doom.

But it's not. There's so much negativity from websites trying to profit off this crisis that people have become conditioned to believe that there will never be any positivity.

I lost a lot of respect for websites I once trusted because they try using this crisis for their own profit. Their name is mud now.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Well...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-patients-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html

So we just locked ourselves at home and wore masks to Kroger for 3 months for nothing?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I went to a local supermarket yesterday, and maskless customers were probably a slight majority. Even not all employees had masks.

I'm pretty sure there is still an order requiring customers and employees to mask up.

This shows just how tough it is to really enforce stuff like this, especially when it's not usually an industry practice.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

My supermarket I went to yesterday still has a sign on the door allowing only one person per household at a time. That was clearly disregarded.

I think any sort of markings on the floor to denote a 6-foot distance were gone now too.

It is what it is. We can't just live in panic forever.

But the clear screen between the customer and the cashier is still up. Removing it just wouldn't be worth the trouble.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

This shows why I've switched from the Democrats to the Socialists.

What IN THE WORLD is wrong with the Democrats lately? Everyone I know is out and about regardless of political affiliation. How is it that the Democrats in this poll are lagging behind?

And that's in a state that (like so many others) is actually starting to reopen. Do some people just want to stay closed forever?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Does this graph refer to ALL hospitalizations, or just covid hospitalizations?

If it's the former, that explains it.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I gotta hand it to New York, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Massachusetts, D.C., Michigan, Pennsylvania, and perhaps a few others for somehow bringing the case count so low.

So why are California and Arizona so bad now?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Before anyone wonders about the numbers from Louisiana today, it includes 560 cases backlogged from April.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Why do all these stories keep using new cases as their central metric?  If you are trying to argue that the virus is an escalating problem, demonstrate it through stats on hospitalizations or deaths.

They keep using new cases but not the percent positive rate, which is way, way down from April.

I am absolutely convinced the media wants more lockdowns and other authoritarian measures, and I think they want it because the major media companies have investments in China, and the Chinese government wants us locked down. I now believe the Chinese government is influencing stories published in the Western media. There's just no other explanation for it.

It's completely contrary to science to use the wrong metric for a pandemic, yet it continues.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I don't understand why you are appealing to science when you appear not to understand very much of it.

I know more about science than the guy who came up with that model that said America would have 2.2 million deaths by now.

I do my homework on this.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I don't understand why you are appealing to science when you appear not to understand very much of it.

I know more about science than the guy who came up with that model that said America would have 2.2 million deaths by now.

I do my homework on this.

Didn't that figure assume no social distancing or lockdowns?

That figure was so unrealistic that I have no reason to trust anything put out by the media ever again.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

+3,909 new cases in Texas alone today on Worldometer, and they have not even finished updating for the day...

There's a note underneath the chart that says this includes 1,500 old cases from state prisons.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Very interesting:

https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1273667511788109829

Someone actually invented this? Does it really work?

Where can people get one of these?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Remember, today's hot spots are tomorrow's New Yorks.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1274127246404595712

So just because you can't trace every case, you shouldn't trace any of them.

Yeah, that'll really help.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Here's an idea. Since everyone wants to make stuff mandatory, how about if instead of a "stay at home" order, we have a "stay outside" order.

Since the virus doesn't spread as well outside, why don't we all stay outside as much as poss?

[Bandit3 the Worker]

This is wintertime in South America.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

I'm starting to think this virus is starting to become endemic more like the coronaviruses that are already out there.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

If I die, I die.

There's no point shutting down society and ruining younger people's lives just to save a 47-year-old man like me who won't be around much longer anyway.

Now, because of the lockdowns, life is pretty much over for anyone in America between 18 and 45.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Now, the fact that the US is incapable of having a coordinated federal response that brings the virus down back to manageable levels nationwide and is unable to introduce anything mandatory (like mandatory masks or actually forbidding any large gatherings such as rallies or crammed indoor spaces) is a completely different story.

I also generally have a hard time with making things mandatory. Sometimes it's necessary, but usually I expect people to exercise personal responsibility.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

According to Worldometers, yesterday had the fewest deaths in the U.S. of any day since March 23. If it takes 2 weeks to die of this virus, those who died on March 23 caught it back when there were only a handful of cases in the U.S.

The 7-day rolling average is the lowest since March 31, so those who died then would have caught it back when the exponential growth was occurring.