"Greatest Presidential Felony" in History

[_MeDotOrg]

Again, the covid definition for "fatality" is nowhere near the definition when used for war.
But your hyperbole is consistent.

Please elaborate.

[Guest]

Gunnar, you don't have to be that embarrassed. Although Sub labels his numbers "death rate," that's not what they are. Death rate, more commonly called "mortality rate" is deaths per capita. That figure is one measure of the "burden" of disease.

Sub's numbers represent one method of estimating a different number: the Case Fatality Rate (or Ratio). It is calculated by dividing the total number of deaths during time t by the number of cases over time t. Infectious disease experts have warned over and over again that we cannot reliably estimate CFR during the course of an epidemic. The reason is obvious: the people who get sick during time t are not necessarily the same people who die during time t. In other words, the comparison is not apples to apples. In addition, the ratio depends heavily on how accurate the number of cases is, which with COVID-19 depends on the extent of testing. For example, early in the Pandemic, South Korea tested like gangbusters. As a result, there early CFR, estimated the way Sub's numbers use, went to tenths of a percent. Why? Because they had identified a buttload of cases that hadn't had time to die yet. The period between infection and death is generally weeks with COVID 19. Over time, South Korea's CFR using this method to estimate has gradually crept up to be in line with others.

Here's another way to look at it: Sub's method of estimating CFR assumes that nobody infected with COVID-19 today will die.

Here's the other way of estimate CFR during an epidemic: Divide the number of deaths by the total people who have died or recovered. This method answers the question: of those people who have had an outcome, what percentage of them died? This method assumes that the people who are infected with COVID-19 today will die at the same rate that we have experienced so far. It is also heavily influenced by testing. If only the seriously ill are tested, the rate will be high. If the mildly ill or truly asymptomatic populations are tested at a high rate, the number will be lower.

In addition, counts reported in real time can have all kinds of problems, from inconsistent methodologies to simply missing cases or deaths. When the pandemic is over, the experts will look at all the data and provide a final estimate of disease "burden." Here is the final report on H1N1 in the US. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52 ... S75/499147 CFR can be calculated from that, and both methods of calculation will give the same number. And, based on past experience, the final estimate of CFR can be wildly different from estimates in the course of the pandemic.

So, assuming that no one in the US who is infected with COVID-19 will die, CFR is 4.6% What happens if we estimate it assuming that currently infected people will die at the same rate infected people in the US have died to date? I'm going to use Worldometers "yesterday" numbers (because I'm lazy and know where to find them). https://www.worldometers.information/coronavir ... Sauthorbio? US deaths: 201,348. US recovered: 4,119, 158. US deaths+recovered: 4,320,506. Estimated CFR: 201,348/4,320,506 X100 = 4.6% How does that stack up? No idea. It's not worth spending the time because of question we haven't asked yet: Is CFR the best metric for judging how well a country has handled the virus? Nope. Why not? Because it tells us nothing about how effective we've been at keeping people from getting sick.

For example, take two countries, both with a population of 1 million people. In Country A, 1000 people were infected and 10 died. In Country B, 500,000 people were infected and 5000 died. Which country handled the epidemic better? The CFR won't tell you -- it is 1% for both countries. A much stronger case could be made for mortality rate as a measure because it incorporates both how successfully a country kept people from becoming infected and how successfully it kept sick people from dying. I can find that quite easily on Worldometers just go to the "yesterday" numbers and sort by deaths per million of population. We're the 11th worst country in world, with a mortality rate five times higher than the world average.

Is that the best measure of how we've handled COVID-19? Arguable not, because it doesn't account for available resources. All things being equal, we would expect poorer countries to have worse outcomes than rich countries. Roughly speaking, the GDP per capita in the US is six times higher than the world average. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/New York.GDP.PCAP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true Yet, our mortality rate from COVID is five times higher than the world average. If by worst handling one means the gap between what should have been and what happened, I don't think there's much hyperbole in your claim.

ETA: Here's a look at how badly we've handled testing: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07 ... o-thin-air

In April, we had a plan to distribute 5 reusable masks to every household to help protect essential workers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/ ... _manual_10 Instead, we sent billions of dollars to companies that the government refuses to identify.

Thanks, RI. I was just trying to be fair. Taking into account all that you pointed out, and considering the whole picture, it still remains true that we did far worse than almost any other country. It makes sense, as you said, that at this stage of the pandemic, the total number of corvid-19 cases we failed to prevent is more telling than the percentage of those cases who have, so far, died. We have no sure way of telling how many of those still sick are going to die (from covid-19, that is -- surely all will die eventually, from some cause or other ).

[_Gunnar]

Again, the covid definition for "fatality" is nowhere near the definition when used for war.
But your hyperbole is consistent.

Please elaborate.

Looks to me like yet another feeble attempt by subby to grasp at or fish for straws.

And it is still both ignorant and dishonest of him to cavalierly dismiss the undisputed fact that the the U.S., with only 4.5% of the world's population has 1/4 of all the covid-19 cases and deaths.

[_Res Ipsa]

An article from the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/heal ... tw-nytimes

Officials at HHS have been changing guidelines drafted by CDC scientists to be consistent with Trump's political positions on the virus, posting them on the CDC website as if they are the CDC's recommendations, and ordering the CDC scientists to change the CDC's own postings so that they are consistent with the HHS postings. Two examples are the school reopening guidelines and the statement that asymptomatic people shouldn't be tested, even if they have had close contact with a confirmed case. (This would make contact tracing ineffective as a tool to suppress the virus.)

Remember, the spokesperson for HHS just went on a two month leave of absence after he posted a paranoid, conspiracy theory filled rant on Facebook accusing CDC scientists of sedition.

The Trump administration is lying about what the CDC scientists are actually recommending for the sole purpose of getting Trump re-elected. And they don't care how many people they kill or sicken to do it.

ETA: A follow-up piece from Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09 ... id-19-fate

In late March, American business leaders and venture capitalists met with the Trump Administration with plans for producing and procuring the testing supplies and PPE that the country needed to combat the coronavirus. All that was needed to execute their plans was for Donald Trump to use the Defense Production Act to sign contracts with manufacturers. Jared Kushner killed the plans. Because free markets.

Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”

One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction.

“Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.

“That’s the CNN BS,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.”

According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

“That’s when I was like, We’re screwed,” the shocked attendee told Vanity Fair.

"His people are going to suffer and that's their problem."

You know how free markets solve the problem of scarce resources needed to keep people from dying? it makes the prices skyrocket. The rich live and the poor die. Eventually, if there's enough money to be made over the long term, more people will get into the business of making the scarce thing. But at the same time, the sky-high price (and the potential profit to be made) lowers over time because demand is reduced. Or, in plain English, the people who need the resource die.

Anyone who stays awake through an introductory microeconomics course should understand this. Kushner understands this. But he'd rather let hundreds of thousands of Americans die rather than demonstrate the need for government leadership.

Death by nepotism.

[_subgenius]

...
rather let hundreds of thousands of Americans die rather than demonstrate the need for government leadership.
...

So, I get that the thread author may be absent doing research to better defend pedophile rioters, so perhaps....
Spin this one for me:

n June 30th, contact tracing was given a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes were found to be causing problems with more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks, “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just information for Mayor’s Office?"

“Correct, not for public consumption,” writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles.

A month later, the health department was asked point blank about the rumor there are only 80 cases traced to bars and restaurants.

Tennessee Lookout reporter Nate Rau asks, “The figure you gave of 'more than 80' does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?"


“My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site.

We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be because that number is increasing all the time and we don’t want to say a specific number."

Neither the health department nor the mayor’s office would confirm the authenticity of the emails but council member Steve Glover had a Metro staff attorney inquire. Here’s the official answer:

“I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real,” the staff attorney answered.



emphasis above mine...so, is this a little more of a greatest felony, or are we all still holding the company line at "hair-fire, vote #tds"?

[_subgenius]

Again, the covid definition for "fatality" is nowhere near the definition when used for war.
But your hyperbole is consistent.

Please elaborate.

Ok.
Let us assume that "war" fatalities are all reported as deaths due to the actual war...in action or while in the "theater" of war. So, a fella getting killed in a car accident driving to work at B52 factory does not count, right?
Ok (again).
So, let us look at the following quote:
Brian Stelter, reported on August 16:
We are likely to see the 170,000 mark crossed today—confirmed deaths from Covid-19. But researchers have looked at the actual number of excess deaths in this country—estimated deaths above the norm—and they say it’s closer to 200,000 so far this year. So the real actual death toll from Covid-19 is around 200,000. We have to constantly remind viewers that it’s even worse than we know. It’s even worse than the data indicate. (emphasis mine)

excess deaths? what is that? and how did that result in an almost 20% increase in the death count?

well, “excess deaths" is defined as the total number of deaths from all causes during the pandemic minus the number of deaths that would normally occur at this time of the year.

U.S. death certificate data shows that the rise in deaths during the pandemic has indeed been greater than the number of reported C-19 deaths. Some jump to the conclusion that these additional fatalities must be C-19 deaths that were not recorded as such, but a broad array of data indicates that the bulk or all of them are caused by societal reactions to C-19—instead of the disease itself.
...thus the "reporting" by Brian Stelter. What has happened is a conflation between confirmed and suspected. This methodology being clearly different than the method used to determine how many died at war.

[_Res Ipsa]

Another story from the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/p ... f943162115

HHS spokesman and a new science advisor attempted to intimidate and silence CDC scientists.

[_Morley]

This methodology being clearly different than the method used to determine how many died at war.

No it isn't.

[_Morley]

See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... 0billion).

[_Res Ipsa]

See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War ... 0billion).

Cheater cheater. You can't include people who starved. They had the pre-existing condition of needing to eat.