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

[Del Tachi]

anyone else wanting to go out and join one of these protests against the quarantine? heard there was one in Nashville today, should have gone but I was tied up in Knox :<

obvious troll is trolling. reported.

He isn’t a troll, he just is greatly uninformed as to the severity of the crisis.

I mean, I'm greatly informed as to the severity that this crises poses to young people who are just starting out their careers. My wife and I are lucky that we are "essential employees" but I worry about all the other people our age just starting out and what this hysteria has done to the economy.

I'm honestly not worried about the elderly and immunocompromised. They can quarantine of their own accord, if they wish, but at least where I live, it seems like the older people are the least likely to do so, so I mean that's on them.

Like I said, if I die I die lol it's fine not like I care.

Husband of the year.

Seriously though, if your will to live is that weak, you really should seek professional help immediately for barely sublimated deep depression. Take care please.

What other perspective on death is there?  Being accepting of one's own mortality is a sign of self-actualization, not depression.  Why would the dead care what happens to them?  It's the alive who mourn.       

[Del Tachi]

Updated data from CDC show that more Americans over the age of 85 have died of COVID-19 than those under age 65.  The risks to young people are terribly overstated by the sensationalist media. 

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1252808909456203776

I was coming here to post this.  Here's the CNN article. 

CDC tissue samples now confirm that the earliest U.S. death from COVID-19 occurred on Feb. 6, and the decadent had no known travel history.  This implies that community spread was already happening in California in early-to-mid January.  This is more good evidence that most cases are asymptomatic and the true CFR is being overestimated.   

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1253329870790078466

This model doesn't take into account anything about how we have observed COVID-19 actually spreading thus far or environmental factors (like warmer weather, less reliance on public transit, etc.) that favor the South.  Urban areas have higher infection rates despite doing relatively more social distancing, and I don't expect that to change once things start gradually opening back up.

[Del Tachi]

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office (800,000 people; 10% of WA's population) has decided to stop enforcing Gov. Inslee's stay-at-home order.

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1253329870790078466

This model doesn't take into account anything about how we have observed COVID-19 actually spreading thus far or environmental factors (like warmer weather, less reliance on public transit, etc.) that favor the South.  Urban areas have higher infection rates despite doing relatively more social distancing, and I don't expect that to change once things start gradually opening back up.

What are your thoughts on Georgia reopening tomorrow? Even Trump has said that he disagrees with that decision, and in my view, it is reckless. Sure, the South may have factors that work to its favor, but nothing can be taken for granted, and there should be at least some precautions in place when reopening the economy.

I think something's got to give in regards to the stay-at-home restrictions.  Georgia appears to be blazing a trail, but the relaxations are more measured then what is being reported in the media.  I don't see it as any less controlled than Colorado's phased-in reopening on April 26.  The most important aspect of Kemp's plan, IMO, is allowing hospitals to resume elective procedures (i.e., like hip replacement surgeries) with is going to help immensely with severe financial bleeding hospitals are seeing due to the cessation of most outpatient procedures. 

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1253329870790078466

This model doesn't take into account anything about how we have observed COVID-19 actually spreading thus far or environmental factors (like warmer weather, less reliance on public transit, etc.) that favor the South.  Urban areas have higher infection rates despite doing relatively more social distancing, and I don't expect that to change once things start gradually opening back up.

What are your thoughts on Georgia reopening tomorrow? Even Trump has said that he disagrees with that decision, and in my view, it is reckless. Sure, the South may have factors that work to its favor, but nothing can be taken for granted, and there should be at least some precautions in place when reopening the economy.

I think something's got to give in regards to the stay-at-home restrictions.  Georgia appears to be blazing a trail, but the relaxations are more measured then what is being reported in the media. I don't see it as any less controlled than Colorado's phased-in reopening on April 26. The most important aspect of Kemp's plan, IMO, is allowing hospitals to resume elective procedures (i.e., like hip replacement surgeries) with is going to help immensely with severe financial bleeding hospitals are seeing due to the cessation of most outpatient procedures. 

Don’t you remember?
When Kemp does it, it’s a mass murder, but when Polis does it, it’s just responsible reopening.

It is more than reasonable 2 have significantly greater suspicion of the motives and judgment of such decisions made by leaders who openly scoffed at and downplayed the outbreak from day one, as opposed to those who took the matter seriously and enacted prompt responsible shut down measures.

 I admittedly am skeptical of reopening hair salons and tattoo parlors this early, and I'm not yet willing to say Polis is making the right decision here. However, it is not unreasonable to trust someone like Kemp significantly less when his entire record and rhetoric the last several weeks have shown consistently poor leadership and foresight.

Can you just admit that you're letting partisan considerations color your evaluation of how governors have been responding to this crisis?  Georgia hasn't seen any considerable growth in new cases in almost two weeks and has done approximately twice as many tests as Colorado.  The "motivations" of the governors in question don't change these facts.  Georgia is one of the states best-positioned to responsibly reopen, at this point.

As a small business owner, I also figured you'd be more sympathetic to nail/hair salons who have not been able to operate for well over a month now despite historically being some of the most well-regulated industries from a public health standpoint.  Kemp and Polis are correct in considering that The lost jobs, wages and income security resulting from these arbitrary stay-at-home orders has to end at some point (and probably sooner rather than later).   

[Del Tachi]

So what are the chances schools don't meet in the fall?

Many universities seem to be leaning towards cancelling in-person classes.

Yep

I hope governors in less-affected states would close purse strings to them if they do.  Having in-class instruction is an irreplaceable part of collegiate education.  This is also an accreditation problem (the big accrediting bodies for U.S. IHLs are not set-up to assess widespread all-online curricula), so hopefully we see some pushback from them as well.

College students are at relatively low risk of serious complications from COVID-19, and steps can be taken to protect more vulnerable staff/faculty.

Plus, how is it fair for students at most state schools to shell out $10k a year for online classes?  The entire boondoogle that is college education (as funded by federal student loans) only works by milking the "in-person" experience that students require.

I expect the compromise solution will be students choosing either in-person or online classes (to justify tuition rates) at some schools, and then normal operations at others.

[Del Tachi]

In their rush to count cases, Gov Wolf’s Dept of Health overinflated COVID-19 deaths and stepped on the toes of county coroners.  More than 200 deaths have been removed from the state’s tally.

[Del Tachi]

https://thebulwark.com/we-cannot-reopen-america/

The movement to “reopen” America is a fallacy based on a fantasy.

The fallacy is the notion that lifting stay-at-home orders will result in people going back to their normal routines. This is false. The state-issued stay-at-home orders did not determine most people’s desires to stay home—they merely ratified behaviors that the vast majority of people and institutions were already adopting in response to COVID-19.

The fantasy is that we can go back to what the world looked like 12 weeks ago. This is not possible now and will not be possible until we possess a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Understand that I am not saying that stay-at-home orders should be indefinite. What I am saying is that whenever the stay-at-home orders are rolled back—whether it is tomorrow or a month from now—it will not result in anything like a “reopening” of the country.  And the sooner people grasp how completely and fundamentally the world has changed, the faster we’ll be able to adapt to this new reality.

This is true, lifting the stay-at-home orders won't bring the world back to where it was at the beginning of March.  There will be some people who will be willing to go out as they normally would have (and even more who would choose to go out on a more limited basis) once orders are lifted, but the the hit to public confidence will take a long-time to recover (potentially over a year, or until a vaccine is found).

However, I do think ending the stay-at-home orders will be an important part of instilling confidence; and if lockdowns can be ended safely, then things need to get back open as soon as possible.  I also think that, after a certain point, the harm that protracted lockdowns do does exceed the benefits of "flattening the curve", and once that point is reached we need to let people assume personal responsibility for how much risk they are willing to expose themselves to.  The relaxations on restrictions coming from states like Georgia and Colorado seem consistent with that goal.

And also, I think we all need to say this together:  this is not normal.  We don't need to accept restrictions on the movement of people, the death of locally-owned small business, the suspension of religious services, and millions of unemployed Americans as a new normal.  Its important that we remember that the most blunt force instrument of implementing social distancing (i.e., a stay-at-home order) should only be the most temporary of stopgap measures, and we should demand we move on from them as quickly as possible.

[Del Tachi]

Axios reports that nearly 96% of over 3,300 cases in U.S. prisons were asymptomatic.  Because resources are prioritized for symptomatic and at-risk populations, these findings add to the understanding that we have a severe undercount of cases in the U.S. and the true case fatality rate is low.

[Del Tachi]

I'm sorry, but if there is no hope of a vaccine happening anytime soon by this time next year, I'm just not going to care about any "social distancing" or whatever.

I have a less than 0.1% chance of dying if I even contract this disease, why the hell should I have to waste nearly my entire 20s being afraid of this? And I'm certainly not alone in this either.

If people can't develop immunity, as there have been hints of since the beginning, this may end up fundamentally changing our society. Obviously things won't remain exactly as they are now forever, but there will be significant change from the old "normal."

There have been literally zero hints towards this.

Yeah, for every chicken Little who vows not to leave the house or touch anyone for years and years until a vaccine is found, there will be 10 of us who won't. If the media ends its insane fear mongering thatd help. I don't see corona news having the same money making power after 6 months of nothing else.

It's already dropping off rapidly. Spikes in news viewership at the beginning of the crisis have disappeared, and ratings for news channels are not much different than they were pre-crisis. Mainly because there's no news, really: "Coronavirus still happening" doesn't draw the viewers in.

This is blatantly false.

From 4/22:

Network Newscasts Keep Up Ratings Momentum During Pandemic
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/network-newscasts-keep-up-ratings-momentum-pandemic-1291263

The data alluded to in this report is only for the week ending April 13.  This article is also only about network news, and is making the implicit case that they seem to be improving market share over cable news (which is disgustingly sensational and overproduced, especially now).

[Del Tachi]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

This is why hospitals and laboratories keep ethicists on staff.

Forumlurker was here.

[Del Tachi]

You can have serious disagreements about the timeline for entering different stages of reopening, but the people who downplay that all the epidemiological models used to justify stay-at-home orders and lockdowns have blown-up spectacularly and there is no massaive mortality wave or resource shortage (outside of New York's uniquely ill-equipped hospital system) despite chicken littles promising us we were all doomed even if we did socially distance are downright sadistic.

You would think that the same people saying that every ICU in the nation would be overwhelmed when we only had <1k deaths would have admitted the public response was an overreaction, but of course they haven't because they're driven by ideological dogmatism and election-horserace watching rather than any sort of understanding of the economic/social consequences of lockdowns, isolation, and mass joblessness let alone compassion for the hundreds of millions of lives that have been disrupted.

[Del Tachi]

We really need to deliberately infect 1000 volunteers in an isolated facility with this virus just to see how dangerous it really is. I seriously doubt the claims of a 0.1-0.3 mortality rate, but it would be good to have more information on the true severity of the disease.

This is why hospitals and laboratories keep ethicists on staff.

Forumlurker was here.

Note the word, Volunteer.

Which, of course, makes the hypothetical study complete junk from an epidemiological standpoint because you're letting participants self-select into treatment regimens. 

[Del Tachi]

You can have serious disagreements about the timeline for entering different stages of reopening, but the people who downplay that all the epidemiological models used to justify stay-at-home orders and lockdowns have blown-up spectacularly and there is no massaive mortality wave or resource shortage (outside of New York's uniquely ill-equipped hospital system) despite chicken littles promising us we were all doomed even if we did socially distance are downright sadistic.

You would think that the same people saying that every ICU in the nation would be overwhelmed when we only had <1k deaths would have admitted the public response was an overreaction, but of course they haven't because they're driven by ideological dogmatism and election-horserace watching rather than any sort of understanding of the economic/social consequences of lockdowns, isolation, and mass joblessness let alone compassion for the hundreds of millions of lives that have been disrupted.

Very cute.

Just gonna leave these here to demonstrate how utterly wrong you have proven yourself to be repeatedly in this thread

You, on April 5, using a misunderstanding of fractions to minimize the increase in confirmed cases. (Oops, turns out there are now 8 times as many confirmed cases as there were on March 27 )

So the rate of new diagnoses has slowed everyday since 03/27 despite the steady improvements in testing availability?

You, on April 5, saying that panic buying was somehow inflicting more damage than the virus itself:  (oops, now there are seven times as many fatalities as there were the day you posted this )

Panic buying is already a *major, major problem (and so far is actually a bigger problem than anything we've seen on the healthcare side).

You, on April 9, claiming the US is one of the "success stories" of the pandemic whereas today the United States has six times the worldwide deaths per capita and being sixteenth highest fatality rate per capita on Earth.

Is there anyone here who still maintains that the US is on an Italy-type disease trajectory?  Or can we all reasonably agree that the United States looks like it will be one of the "success stories" of the global pandemic?  If so, can we talk about what factors have influenced the U.S. emerging relatively unscathed from this?  Better testing, more docs/ventilators, lower population density, younger demographics, warm weather, etc.

You, on April 21, citing an article to make a definitive claim about age-specific mortality without realizing that the sampling here is incomplete and totally reliant on state reports which are inconsistent in timing and methodology.

Updated data from CDC show that more Americans over the age of 85 have died of COVID-19 than those under age 65.  The risks to young people are terribly overstated by the sensationalist media. 

Face it kid, you are not nearly as smart as you think you are. You've been trying to present studies, findings, and inference which are apparently totally outside of your training or field of expertise to try to make conclusions which are not only methodologically unsound but also hugely embarrassing in retrospect. That is to say nothing about your transparent bad faith and immunity to any sort of refutation of your talking points.

1.  The availability of testing is the primary determinant of new case counts, which makes its value as an indicator of the pandemic's progression inherently problematic.  This is mainstream opinion.  U.S. testing capacity has continued to expand and the test-positive rate has declined, suggesting that the level of U.S. testing has sufficiently expanded to keep-up with growth in new cases.

2.  The "worldwide deaths per capita" includes countries where there's practically zero testing, and therefore zero cases and zero deaths attributable to COVID-19.  ~30% of U.S. deaths have been in New York, the U.S. death rate excluding New York is only 120/1M.  Let's compare that to the 67,000/1M in the U.S. who are now U3 unemployed (so it doesn't even include people who have taken reduced hours, stopped looking for work, etc.)  The economic consequences (mostly brought on by lockdowns and other restrictions) of this virus have by far eclipsed the death toll.       

3.  The U.S. is not on an Italy-type trajectory.  Outside of a few isolated cases in New York City, hospitals have not had to triage patients.  There was no shortage of ventilators.  Hospital and ICUs across the U.S. are more empty now than they were at the beginning of March.  This, quite frankly, doesn't look like a pandemic in most of the U.S.  Demographic, institutional and cultural differences between the U.S. and Italy go far in explaining why the pandemic's progression has been so different in the two countries.  I don't see how this is a controversial observation.

4.  All U.S. death statistics rely on state reporting, which necessarily has different standards/lags.  There is no Federal/CDC death count that is independent of what states are reporting.  This is the data we have, and I'm only letting it speak.  All mortality data suggests the elderly are exceptionally more at-risk than <50s, and the chicken littles' obsession with outlier cases and anecdotes is not an accurate representation of what is happening.       

[Del Tachi]

It's funny how there is a lot of hate for DeSantis and lots of love for Whitmer, although Florida has less cases and deaths than Michigan even though it has more than double the population of the Wolverine State.

Death counts matter, but they still don't account for the fact that DeSantis is an idiot and Whitmer is not.

But if we’re taking the position that the public response should be motivated by data and evidence-based, there’s nothing in the data that suggests Florida should be as lockdowned as Michigan.  This is just further confirmation that most mainstream voices and liberal posters only think data matters when it can used to promote maximum panic. 

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/otis_reid/status/1254510389225807872

Good thing America is nothing like The Bronx.

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/otis_reid/status/1254510389225807872

Good thing America is nothing like The Bronx.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but The Bronx is part of America.

What is the point of parroting these uncontrolled statistics with absolutely zero additional analysis or commentary?  Is the implication that 550k Americans are going to die from COVID-19?

The fact that The Bronx is nothing like the rest of America (in fact, the United States even including the Bronx is nothing like the Bronx) is a relevant point to consider when considering the progression of the pandemic.

[Del Tachi]

1.  The availability of testing is the primary determinant of new case counts, which makes its value as an indicator of the pandemic's progression inherently problematic.  This is mainstream opinion.  U.S. testing capacity has continued to expand and the test-positive rate has declined, suggesting that the level of U.S. testing has sufficiently expanded to keep-up with growth in new cases.

Lmao that's not why your post was so egregiously bad. You tried, in the first week of April, to say that the declining rate of growth in the absolute number of positive cases indicated that we were past peak. Not only was it hilariously untrue that we peaked at the end of March but you literally ignored the fact that there was an increase in the raw number of cases over the prior week and instead opted to herald the fact that we had a decreasing percentage of cases even though this is explained by the fact that the ratio features an increasing denominator.

That level of innumeracy alone is reason to doubt most of what you say.
 

2.  The "worldwide deaths per capita" includes countries where there's practically zero testing, and therefore zero cases and zero deaths attributable to COVID-19.  ~30% of U.S. deaths have been in New York, the U.S. death rate excluding New York is only 120/1M.  Let's compare that to the 67,000/1M in the U.S. who are now U3 unemployed (so it doesn't even include people who have taken reduced hours, stopped looking for work, etc.)  The economic consequences (mostly brought on by lockdowns and other restrictions) of this virus have by far eclipsed the death toll.       

Brilliant analysis. If you exclude New York city then the number of cases per capita in the US goes down. Maybe I was underrating your quantitative instincts before.

Of course, to your point, there is an alternative way to supplement or provide income to these people: give them government assistance! Weird how you never invoke this as an option! It's almost as if you are concern trolling about the economic impact.

Also absolutely ridiculous and unfounded claim that most of the economic damage is due to the lockdowns and not to, uh, a highly contagious and deadly virus which has a high number of asymptomatic carriers. The fact that we saw >5 million people sign up for unemployment insurance before any of these lockdowns were even ordered is obvious evidence for this. The fact that restaurants are still operating and not coming anywhere near standard business levels is evidence for this. The fact that stay at home orders are still overwhelmingly popular by over 2-1 margins is also evidence for this.

I'm sure the response to this is going to be some nonsense claim that "the media" oversensationalized this and convinced people to not order take out at restaurants or some similar nonsense.

3.  The U.S. is not on an Italy-type trajectory.  Outside of a few isolated cases in New York City, hospitals have not had to triage patients.  There was no shortage of ventilators.  Hospital and ICUs across the U.S. are more empty now than they were at the beginning of March.  This, quite frankly, doesn't look like a pandemic in most of the U.S.  Demographic, institutional and cultural differences between the U.S. and Italy go far in explaining why the pandemic's progression has been so different in the two countries.  I don't see how this is a controversial observation.

Uhm... if you look at per-capita case loads by state and compare them to case loads per province in Italy you get rather similar numbers. Just like in the US/NYC, one region (Lombardy) accounting for more cases than the next three hardest-hit regions and has 10x the cases as the sixth largest region (out of 20!) These Italian cases of triaging and shortages were also happening almost exclusively in Lombardy. If "does this feel like a pandemic in the whole country" is your criteria for differentiating the two then it's failing to meet your standard.

Source; data is only two days old.

And that wasn't even the worst part the your post. I was mainly referring to the "success story" part; strange how this catastrophically bad impact on the economy, which was totally avoidable according to you, doesn't stop the US from being a "success story".

4.  All U.S. death statistics rely on state reporting, which necessarily has different standards/lags.  There is no Federal/CDC death count that is independent of what states are reporting.  This is the data we have, and I'm only letting it speak.  All mortality data suggests the elderly are exceptionally more at-risk than <50s, and the chicken littles' obsession with outlier cases and anecdotes is not an accurate representation of what is happening.       

You can let it speak but I still see nothing from you that acknowledges or even indicates that you understand that this data is incomplete (at the time you posted it it had less than half of the total number of fatalities accounted for) and that any inference from it is, to borrow a concept you appear to care about, quite imprecise.

The age-dependent mortality has, of course, been a central feature of reporting since the very beginning. This was a central part of reporting when the virus was still confined to Wuhan! Of course people with pre-conditions are more likely to be elderly; nobody has ever said anything resembling the contrary. To this day I do not understand the point you were trying to make. Of course the weirdest thing about this argument is that it, apparently, presumes that elderly people can only catch the disease from other elderly people... as if there was not a benefit to limiting the number of asymptomatic younger carriers!

1.  Arch's presentation of the numbers was not entirely clear, and after I raised my questions about how to interpret the % change figures he was including in his posts he started listing the daily change and cumulative increase figures separately.  I won't apologize for a brief misunderstanding of the numbers he was presenting, especially when I've contributed no shortage of statistics, data and perspective of my own to the thread.

2.  New York has proven to be an exceptional case.  >30% of American cases/deaths have been in NYS.  In terms of human suffering brought about as a direct consequence of the virus, this is a New York problem.  And New York-style measures are not justified almost anywhere else in the country (and especially not in states like Georgia and Florida, red avatars be damned)   

And the costs of >$2Trn is government assistance is of no-concern?  And even so, no amount of government stimulus (assuming its easy to get, which has not always been the case in these times) can supplement the security afforded by a stable job.  Government bailouts and emergency measures are only temporary stopgaps, and cannot be sustainable long-term strategies the economy.  Fiscal considerations aside, the human costs of the current economic downturn dwarf the suffering brought about as a direct result of deaths/infections/PPE shortages or whatever. 

3.  As has been rehashed one million times, positive case counts are a function of testing.  Italy has done almost 30k tests/1M (which makes sense, they ramped up testing before any other European/NA country) while the U.S. sits at 16k/1M.  The U.S. is not on an Italy-type trajectory in terms of deaths or resource strain.  Italy has almost 3x the deaths/1M as the U.S. does.  The positive case incidence between the two countries is of little concern to me because a) this number is almost entirely a function of testing and b) it says nothing about the divergent outcomes between the two countries, where the U.S. appears to be doing inexorably better despite less restrictive lockdowns/social distancing.

4.  There's no problem using incomplete death counts to talk about age-specific mortality unless there's reason to think death reports from only certain age groups lag more than others.  At any given point in time, an incomplete assessment shouldn't affect the age distribution of deaths because the age of a decadent is irrelevant to when it gets reported.  If you have a reason not to suspect this, please share. 

I really don't understand what you're trying to get out of this exercise.  If you want a blue avatar to kick around, DTT is a much easier target.

[Del Tachi]

1.  Arch's presentation of the numbers was not entirely clear, and after I raised my questions about how to interpret the % change figures he was including in his posts he started listing the daily change and cumulative increase figures separately.  I won't apologize for a brief misunderstanding of the numbers he was presenting, especially when I've contributed no shortage of statistics, data and perspective of my own to the thread.

Maybe this means you should... think more before you post? The raw case numbers Arch was reporting were increasing that week; very conveniently, you ignored those for the figures that reaffirmed your pre-existing beliefs despite much more clear and obvious data to the contrary.

It's not hard to see why this episode illustrates that your posts deserve to be scrutinized more than apparently you are doing yourself.

And the costs of >$2Trn is government assistance is of no-concern?  And even so, no amount of government stimulus (assuming its easy to get, which has not always been the case in these times) can supplement the security afforded by a stable job.  Government bailouts and emergency measures are only temporary stopgaps, and cannot be sustainable long-term strategies the economy.  Fiscal considerations aside, the human costs of the current economic downturn dwarf the suffering brought about as a direct result of deaths/infections/PPE shortages or whatever. 

There is no serious person who thinks that lockdowns are going to persist beyond the summer, even if that long. Temporary stopgaps to deal with a temporary crisis.

And there's no guarantee (or even evidence to suggest) that spending will resume to January-February/Q4 2019 levels. Consumers are (rightly) spooked and that's percolated upwards to halt economic activity at higher levels. If you're concerned that government spending can't fully revive a person's income, then reopening the economy shouldn't make you feel much better, especially considering the potential lost activity due to workers and consumers becoming reinfected.

4.  There's no problem using incomplete death counts to talk about age-specific mortality unless there's reason to think death reports from only certain age groups lag more than others.  At any given point in time, an incomplete assessment shouldn't affect the age distribution of deaths because the age of a decadent is irrelevant to when it gets reported.  If you have a reason not to suspect this, please share. 

Erm... you acknowledged in your last post that Italy has a very different demographic breakdown than the United States. That is true! It is also true that states (and even counties!) have differing demographics, including wealth and comorbidities. Unless you have evidence that you're getting an unbiased sample of states then your claims are pretty uncertain.

Also, the age of the decedent does potentially influence the reporting probability if older people are dying in nursing facilities and younger patients aren't.

This is why you shouldn't be talking about statistics with authority! You very obviously don't have the training or experience in this type of work to understand the potential reporting biases (et cetera) that you are failing to account for.

I don't think there's any reason to actually doubt the numbers but my point is you're so far out of your depth in trying to interpret studies like this that you don't even understand why you could potentially be wrong. You'd think after being dunked on time and time again in this thread you would learn some humility and lay low, but apparently not so. A person who gets refuted this often and returns to make the same points repeatedly is clearly dealing in bad faith.

I really don't understand what you're trying to get out of this exercise.  If you want a blue avatar to kick around, DTT is a much easier target.

Maybe I'm trying to drill into your head that you are not that smart and you should listen to people who actually know what they are talking about?

e: my other larger point from my initial post is that you make posts which assess the current point in time as not being bad, but those posts age poorly because... the situation doesn't get any better! Maybe your posts about the severity of the pandemic that you made today (when there are 55K confirmed deaths) will age just as poorly as the posts you made a month ago (when there were <5K deaths).

1.  The raw case numbers increase every week (because they can never by definition decrease), and there's the added effect of growth in testing identifying (often less serious) cases that would have previously been untested.  You and other posters are more than welcomed to scrutinize my posts as much as you want, but I'm not going to stop contributing because you don't like me or whatever. 

2.  I love how you bypass my statement about New York being an exceptional case and New York-style measures not being appropriate in places that haven't seen major outbreaks (like Georgia and Florida, or most of the country for that matter) to default to the standard response of "only two more weeks guys!  I promise!" while meanwhile ignoring that people's livelihoods and savings are being destroyed right now.  The onus is on those who wish to justify continued lockdowns, not those who want a semblance of normality to resume.  I'm glad to bring that perspective to this thread.

3.  Your somersaults re: calculating morbidity are a real doozie.  Inherent in your post are assumptions that (a) deaths in nursing homes are getting reported accurately while deaths among younger cohorts in other settings are being reported with a delay (or maybe not even at all?), (b) the accuracy/lag in which a state reports deaths is correlated with wealth or the number/severity of comorbidities within the population, and (c) the true age-mortality distribution in states with delayed reporting is different than the distribution in more quickly-reporting states.  You imply these things with no empirical or theoretical reasoning to support these assumptions.  I'll say it again so you understand:  the age-distribution of mortality should not be affected by reporting delays unless the delay occurs differently based on the age of the decadent.

Peenie, I had much more respect for you as an informed poster prior to this interaction.  Being "so far out of depth" in my case apparently means having baccalaureate and graduate degrees in applied economics (lots of advanced coursework in economic theory, stats, and experimental design) and working a full-time, salaried, benefits-eligible research position.  I would advise you tuck your tail for a while unless you actually have something scientific or data-driven (or maybe even just cogent?) to contribute to this conversation, instead of just telling me how stupid you think I am.  I had no idea you actually were this insufferable.     

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254792999080349697

Of course, not all the excess deaths are necessarily due to COVID-19.  It's likely that there are some due to other medical conditions where people sought help too late due to fear of going to the hospital.  In the other direction, there's probably also a decline in deaths due to auto accidents.  But regardless of the exact numbers, it seems clear that "official" COVID-19 deaths are an underestimate (which is not really a surprise).

I would just like to add that this probably isn't as scary as it looks because almost all of the excess mortality from COVID-19 is occurring in the oldest age cohorts, and a lot of these people would have probably died in the next 24 months anyway.  The pandemic has just hastened their demise.  If anything, we should expect to see reduced all cause mortality for several months after the pandemic ends (as a lot of folks who would have died in that future time period ending up dying early from COVID).   

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254792999080349697

Of course, not all the excess deaths are necessarily due to COVID-19.  It's likely that there are some due to other medical conditions where people sought help too late due to fear of going to the hospital.  In the other direction, there's probably also a decline in deaths due to auto accidents.  But regardless of the exact numbers, it seems clear that "official" COVID-19 deaths are an underestimate (which is not really a surprise).

I would just like to add that this probably isn't as scary as it looks because almost all of the excess mortality from COVID-19 is occurring in older age cohorts, and a lot of these people would have probably died in the next 24 months anyway.  The pandemic has just hastened their demise.  If anything, we should expect to see reduced all cause mortality for several months after the pandemic ends (as a lot of folks who would have died in that future time period ending up dying early from COVID).   

This is, of course, entirely speculative, in addition to being a rather cruel way to minimize the impacts of the virus.

1) It's not speculative.  Almost 60% of U.S. coronavirus deaths have occurred in persons age 75 or older.  Life expectancy for a 75-year old U.S. male is only 11.8 years, and only 5.6 years for an 85-year old.  People who are dying of this disease are mostly already at end-of-life, or at least very susceptible to developing other severe conditions/complications under non-pandemic conditions.

2) This is how excess mortality works in flu pandemics (and while COVID-19 is *not the flu, pathologically and epidemiological it behaves like a flu virus - one aspect of that being mortality is mostly confined to older, more comorbid populations).  Excess mortality from the 1957-58 flu pandemic was followed by a period of reduced all-cause mortality.  That's how epidemiological theory tells us excess mortality from an unmitigated flu pandemic works - a short period of high excess mortality, followed by a longer period of less noticeable below-average mortality.

You'd think after being dunked on time and time again in these exchanges you would learn some humility and lay low, but apparently not so. A person who gets refuted this often and returns to make the same points repeatedly is clearly dealing in bad faith.

[Del Tachi]

More news from the frontlines of the lockdown:  the number of visits at primary care clinics (including telehealth) has declined more than 60% since mid-March.

Patients are deferring "non-essential" visits and letting chronic healthcare conditions (like diabetes or heart disease) go unmanaged.  Unmanaged conditions will eventually become urgent. At worst, this will contribute to increased mortality from non-COVID conditions (and will make the true scope of the pandemic's lethality difficult to calculate).  These small family practices are also not well-posited to absorb the lost revenue, and many will have to either close or be bought by larger hospital systems or health conglomerates. 

[Del Tachi]

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1254792999080349697

Of course, not all the excess deaths are necessarily due to COVID-19.  It's likely that there are some due to other medical conditions where people sought help too late due to fear of going to the hospital.  In the other direction, there's probably also a decline in deaths due to auto accidents.  But regardless of the exact numbers, it seems clear that "official" COVID-19 deaths are an underestimate (which is not really a surprise).

I would just like to add that this probably isn't as scary as it looks because almost all of the excess mortality from COVID-19 is occurring in older age cohorts, and a lot of these people would have probably died in the next 24 months anyway.  The pandemic has just hastened their demise.  If anything, we should expect to see reduced all cause mortality for several months after the pandemic ends (as a lot of folks who would have died in that future time period ending up dying early from COVID).   

This is, of course, entirely speculative, in addition to being a rather cruel way to minimize the impacts of the virus.

1) It's not speculative.  Almost 60% of U.S. coronavirus deaths have occurred in persons age 75 or older.  Life expectancy for a 75-year old U.S. male is only 11.8 years, and only 5.6 years for an 85-year old.  People who are dying of this disease are mostly already at end-of-life, or at least very susceptible to developing other severe conditions/complications under non-pandemic conditions.

2) This is how excess mortality works in flu pandemics (and while COVID-19 is *not the flu, pathologically and epidemiological it behaves like a flu virus - one aspect of that being mortality is mostly confined to older, more comorbid populations).  Excess mortality from the 1957-58 flu pandemic was followed by a period of reduced all-cause mortality.  That's how epidemiological theory tells us excess mortality from an unmitigated flu pandemic works - a short period of high excess mortality, followed by a longer period of less noticeable below-average mortality.

I was referring to the clearly bogus statistic that people in the US would likely be dying within 24 months. That's the bolded claim and it's contradicted by the data you provided. Nobody argued that a 75 year old has the same life expectancy as a 25 year old.

This a classic motte-and-bailey tactic.

Also, while on this topic, it's incredibly dangerous to equate dying by COVID with dying by other natural causes. The difference betwen dying of, e.g., COVID at age 80 and dying of heart failure at age 85 is that the person who contracts COVID is highly contagious. Heart disease and the other typical diseases these people suffer have R0 of zero. When people contract COVID (regardless of age) the primary effect is that they could die but the secondary effect is that they can transmit the disease to others. Given the number of health professionals who have gotten sick due to being bombarded with the virus (without proper PPE) there's no reason to equate a COVID death with most non-COVID deaths because COVID deaths are likely begetting other hospitalizations, lost productivity, and deaths.

Yeah people can catch COVID and spread it around to others, but the very negative outcomes (i.e., deaths) are associated with the subpopulations that already have the highest mortality.  I’m unsure what your point is here.