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

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The updated numbers for COVID-19 in the U.S. are in for 4/4 per: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'll be keeping track of these updates daily and updating at the end of the day, whenever all states finish reporting for that day. The percentages represent the daily increase from the last report.

3/26:

• Cases: 85,390
• Deaths: ±1,200

3/27:

• Cases: 103,798 (+18,408 | ↑21.56%)
• Deaths: 1,693 (+493 | ↑41.03%)

3/28:

• Cases: 123,428 (+19,630 | ↑18.91%)
• Deaths: 2,211 (+518 | ↑30.60%)

3/29:

• Cases: 142,178 (+18,750 | ↑15.20%)
• Deaths: 2,484 (+273 | ↑12.35%)

3/30:

• Cases: 163,490 (+21,312 | ↑14.99%)
• Deaths: 3,148 (+664 | ↑26.73%)

3/31:

• Cases: 187,917 (+24,427 | ↑14.94%)
• Deaths: 3,867 (+749 | ↑22.84%)

4/1:

• Cases: 215,003 (+27,086 | ↑14.41%)
• Deaths: 5,102 (+1,235 | ↑31.94%)

4/2:

• Cases: 244,433 (+29,430 | ↑13.69%)
• Deaths: 6,070 (+968 | ↑18.97%)

4/3 (Yesterday):

• Cases: 276,965 (+32,532 | ↑13.31%)
• Deaths: 7,391 (+1,321 | ↑21.76%)

4/4 (Today):

• Cases: 311,357 (+34,392 | ↑12.42%)
• Deaths: 8,452 (+1,061 | ↑14.36%)

Yet another day in a row where the percentage increase in new cases was less than the day before (and testing is up again).  It wouldn't surprise me we're approaching the peak of new cases in the next couple days (the peak of active cases and deaths would follow a couple weeks behind), and we can start on the downward part of this curve by next week.

Bottom line is that I am confident that most business will reopen on May 1st.

There are plenty of unbounded functions of new cases that satisfy these requirements.

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South Dakota state representative dies from coronavirus, first sitting U.S. lawmaker to die after testing positive for COVID-19

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-south-dakota-state-representative-bob-glanzer-dead-20200404-43tkdggt3zakfj26i7zoczghnu-story.html

Michigan Rep. Isaac Robinson probably beat him.

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Its the same at the Wal-Mart I work at. Strict limits on most everything, and now with the restrictions on foot traffic to maintain social distancing, I think panic buying is dead.

How are the limits enforced with self checkout?

At the Walmart's that I am familiar with, there is a clerk monitoring the self-checkout area. It would be easy to program the checkout machine to check limits. You've probably had to wait for the store clerk to clear something out.

   "Please Wait For Store Clerk"

It could as easily say:

   "Please Wait For Police. Put hands over head. Do not make any sudden movements.
    You have the right to attorney. If you do not have an attorney, an attorney will
    be appointed for you.

    Customer: What is this about?

    "You have the right to remain silent. If you speak, everything you say will be
     used against you.

    Customer (agitated): Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

    (SWAT Team Arrives, Handcuffs Social Deviant)

Don't some people use the self checkout to make multiple purchases at once? There are certain credit cards where this can be useful for the rewards.

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No one has it harder than high school seniors right now.

Is this some sort of parody account?

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I don’t think we can convincingly say the worst is over until we see week-over-week decline.  

This Sunday the US had 1165 coronavirus deaths.  
Last Sunday the US had 363 deaths.  

So we definitely aren’t there yet.

We're hopefully near the peak number of new cases. New deaths will lag.

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I feel like if the virus is as contagious as it now appears, it won't really matter how long we keep the lockdown going; we're not going to be able to eradicate to a sufficient degree that it won't just pop back up as soon as the lockdown ends.  If this is true, a universal lockdown really has no benefit, because most people are going to get the virus.  It's would be much better to enforce selective social distancing to control when people get the virus rather than if.  We can protect the most vulnerable until we reach herd immunity.

We're going to need to test everyone at some point and have everyone positive continue the lockdown.

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I just noticed that Trump's grandfather Frederick Trump was one of the early deaths of Spanish flu in the weak 1st wave.

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https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1248737943130451971

Everyone is undercounting them. It sounds like Germany is especially undercounting them.

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How are today's numbers looking?

Good

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We spent trillions of dollars fighting a war that stemmed from 9/11. We did that because we "never again" wanted to lose 3,000 lives in a terrorist attack. We could have kept the money for tax cuts, infrastructure, whatever you want; and lived with the possibility that another big terrorist attack could happen. But basically everyone supported going to war. So how is this different? Because the people dying will mostly be old? Because we won't lose any buildings? Because we weren't shocked to our core in an instant? Or because you're worried it will be a lot more than 2 trillion lost? Something's different.

We've already eclipsed the 9/11 death toll by a factor of 8!

The coronavirus isn't brown skinned, arab or muslim though, so it's harder to justify to the American people wasting money waging war against it.

This snarky comment isn't too far off the mark. People are far more comfortable with a human enemy. The 1918 flu pandemic killed more people than World War I, but it's the trenches that (until this) got almost all the historical attention. If something is supposed to be scary, we expect it to be big. A missile? That we can understand, even though missiles have killed a grand total of zero people on American soil in all of history. But a virus? It's hard for some people to wrap their heads around being beaten around by a microscopic organism, 0.1 micron in length, something 1/750th the diameter of a human hair, let alone that can't be seen. It's even debatable if it's alive at all.

Even 9/11, was never really grasped. People never really psychologically came to terms with the fact that something that dramatic could be pulled off by just a dozen hijackers funded by some rich guy living in a cave in Afghanistan, and that that was the end of the story. Overthrowing the Taliban didn't seem to be enough, it was too easy. Hence the Iraq War. It took a decade of high drama and a million dead Iraqis for America to get 9/11 "out of its system."

But this virus is even more insignificant than that. When the true enemy is ignorance, stupidity...

The warmongers are far more evil than that. PNAC was already waiting for a Second Pearl Harbor.

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Today's numbers look good until you notice that NY has only 395 new cases. That can't be right.