Crucial_Infra

Remember when they crowed that the death toll would “only” be 60,000? Oops, turns out it’s twice that. Probably gonna be 3x that! Enraging tbh.

Welp. Looks like the RNC continues to step on its own member. Moved their convention to a third tier city only to have the exact same restrictions. Word is Boise is still an option.

The data show no upswing in cases in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area where there were huge protests. Also, no jump in NYC where there were big protests so while I think large protests are risky — especially without masks — we just haven’t seen any correlation. It appears most of the upswing is a matter of re-opening coupled with failure to wear masks. If you watched the BLM demonstrations, most people were masked, which was in stark contrast to Trump’s indoor rallies in Tulsa and Arizona where most people were not masked. I’ll be very interested to watch the numbers in Oklahoma particularly.

It’s actually pretty complicated. Red states were hit later and have been on the upswing but now blue states — which had been improving — are increasing in numbers too. Here’s an interesting graph of red and blue counties. As you can see, it’s complicated and the relationship between partisanship and new cases is pretty weak.

Florida just hit its highest daily number: 9,000. Yesterday it was 5,000. And Duval county (Jacksonville) is exploding in cases just as the RNC prepares to come to town. I’ll be honest, I’m feeling pretty smug about this.

Charlotte has dodged a bullet. This is a relief.

IHME revised numbers upward again to 147,000 deaths by August. Also, projects >4,000 deaths in North Carolina now???

No more dangerous than the west wing.

There’s actually no definitive data to support that. In fact, there are many studies that show vote by mail would disproportionally favor Republicans. We just don’t know. But it’s tru that if the GOP believes it helps Dems, they won’t go for it. My prediction: not gonna matter In terms of turnout. Dems will crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump. See what happened in Wisconsin recently.

A draft report prepared by Johns Hopkins researchers for the CDC shows 200K deaths by June 1. The White House disagrees. A "cubic model" prepared by White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett predicts deaths essentially stop by May 15. LINK

Finally, the IHME model faces reality: new update DOUBLES the previous projected death toll to 134,000 by August 4th.

The 7- day rolling average for hospitalization is at an all-time high today, but we’ve had four days in a row of drops for the first time since the pandemic began so perhaps we’ve reached the peak here.

Wait, no one is being commanded to cower in place forever. Many states are moving to re-open today or very soon. Time will tell whether it’s a good idea or not, but the re-open people don’t have much to complain about imo. We’re re-opening. Some states are in a better position than others. Georgia and Florida’s trajectory actually looks pretty good compared to North Carolina so they’re going for it. Hopefully, NC won’t be far behind them. And hopefully, it doesn’t backfire for any of us.

Via

Yep. For me the thing to watch is not total cases but total deaths and more importantly hospitalizations. We’re at an all-time for hospitalizations so we’re not over the hump yet.

New IHME model projections revised downward slightly from ~74,000 to ~72,000 US deaths. NC deaths revised upward again to 394 but we’ve already passed that number as of this afternoon.... Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this model anymore. I am not an expert but I think it’s being way too conservative at this point. I know it only measures through Aug but my prediction is we’re gonna be at or above 100k by end of 2020 — especially as they are likely to find more excess deaths that weren’t counted before. Hope I’m wrong.

Not great news today: North Carolina surpassed the IHME death projection (370) and our hospitalizations made a huge jump to highest level yet.

Glass completed on top floor of the south face today with the east face possibly done by end of this week.

^ Some might look at those revisions as bad news and yeah it’s not great but if the IHME projections are correct, they see virtually no further deaths within just 8 weeks. That would be remarkable. I’m skeptical but I hope they’re right. We really might be able to have a (new) normal summer. A three month pause will have been very painful but never did I think this virus could potentially be defeated within such a short time. Fingers crossed.

New IHME projection out: US deaths revised upward once again to 74,073 and NC deaths revised upward to 370. These projections are only for deaths occurring by August 4th.

New IHME model update: US deaths revised upwards to 67,641 and NC deaths revised upwards to 310. But good news is NC will be among the first wave of states to re-open. Look at the other states in dark green: all are isolated and/or rural. Only NC is a large industrial state with multiple large MSA’s and yet we’re looking great (as I predicted we would several weeks ago :-)) LINK Only 2.5 weeks to go. Stay the course!

All shutdown protesters should be forced to sign one of these:

Lates COVID tracking project numbers are out and the testing numbers are a bit discouraging. Avg number of completed tests over the last 7 days: 144,655 Avg number of completed tests over the 7 days before that: 145,529 In other words, the scaling up that has been promised has yet to happen, and until it does, many parts of country will remain in lockdown. This is the problem.

Regarding the theory that this novel coronavirus might have accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan, I’m not dismissing it yet. No, we don’t have evidence (yet), but the fact that that particular lab has had safety lapses in the past means it’s not unreasonable to investigate the possibility. Now, do I believe they were developing this virus as some super weapon? No, that’s absurd and even Tom Cotton has backed off his original assertion. But in the end, the way it started has no effect on how we fight it. We’ve got a raging fire that needs to be extinguished. Whether it was started by kids playing with matches or by a natural lightning strike isn’t the main concern at the moment.

Please scroll back through the last few pages and see if gman or dale contributed one iota to any of the thoughtful discussion of acceptable risk. I agree, we should celebrate opposing views but what we’ve witnessed here has been consistent bad faith trolling, not just a difference of opinion.