Coronavirus Infection Rates: 10 US States Higher Than Any Country in the World (nytimes.com) 355
The New York Times has created a surprising interactive analysis of the number of coronavirus cases (per million residents) in different countries:
With its cases surging since mid-June, the United States is squarely in the top 10. Leading the outbreak now are countries in the Persian Gulf, where the virus has spread rapidly among foreign laborers. [Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.] Rounding out the top 10 are South Africa, Israel and several countries in Latin America. [Panama, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia]
The current U.S. outbreak is especially stark when compared to other large, high-income countries. All have few cases today compared to the United States... Italy and Spain saw some of the worst early outbreaks, before strict control measures brought cases down. Now, some schools are open, adults are back at work and tourists are on vacation. Even Sweden, where cases surged after the government chose to forgo the strict lockdowns of its neighbors, has seen cases drop.
The surge in the United States is so extreme that, once adjusted for population, these 10 states are recording more new cases than any country in the world. [Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee].
The current U.S. outbreak is especially stark when compared to other large, high-income countries. All have few cases today compared to the United States... Italy and Spain saw some of the worst early outbreaks, before strict control measures brought cases down. Now, some schools are open, adults are back at work and tourists are on vacation. Even Sweden, where cases surged after the government chose to forgo the strict lockdowns of its neighbors, has seen cases drop.
The surge in the United States is so extreme that, once adjusted for population, these 10 states are recording more new cases than any country in the world. [Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee].
Tired of winning yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it really a surprise that a racist scam artist whose chief accomplishments in the business world is a string of bankruptcies would kill thousands of Americans through sheer incompetence?
Come on people... be less gullible...
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USA is a society in Stockholm Syndrom.
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He's from New York. Cuomo is from New York. Since they've split the deaths, maybe we should question New York as a generator of arrogant poloticians.
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That has nothing to do with being leftist and everything to do with the fact that the Swedes tend to live inside their own heads as much as they can get away with.
Re: Tired of winning yet? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't it libtards and black lies matter who have meet in large groups?
Yes, as have those "conservatives" who gathered in Michigan and elsewhere, without wearing masks, demanding common sense measures such as wearing masks or not having people crowd into businesses be removed because . . . the con artist told them so. Some of those [newsweek.com] who attended these events [nypost.com] later tested positive [wtop.com] and a few have died [metro.co.uk] (fortunately for the rest of us). At the time, medical experts were saying these people would be spreading the virus [theguardian.com] because of their gatherings.
Not to mention churches [businessinsider.com] where people keep dropping [cnn.com] like flies [msn.com] because they said god would protect them [kctv5.com]. You know, true "libtards".
Re:Tired of winning yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually not so great.
Trump’s failed businesses:
Oh, and you can add the US Economy to this list, too.
Trump companies that sought bankruptcy protection:
>He became a multi-billionaire starting with a $1 million loan from his father,
"1 million" from his father is actually 14 million adjusted for inflation. Also, Donald Trump received at least $413 million (2018 prices) from his father's business empire. Most of it his squandered in bad business deals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you're going to lie and cherry-pick, try not to lie and cherry-pick about easily verifiable things.
Re:Trump Derangement Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you knew, or found a place to cut and paste that stuff from, pretty much confirms the TDS in you.
Nice ad hominem attack. The guy posts irrefutable facts and you can't deny any of them so you go after the person.
Congratulations. Now you know why Hillary called people like you uneducated deplorables. You're too stupid to understand how stupid you truly are.
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Let me quote that from your post again:
>> The fact that you knew, or found a place to cut and paste that stuff from, pretty much confirms the TDS in you.
Pretty clear now, eh?
Re: Trump Derangement Syndrome (Score:3)
"Being well informed on a topic means that you're deranged and hopelessly biased."
Heh. You lot don't have much lower to stoop.
Re:Tired of winning yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
He became a multi-billionaire starting with a $1 million loan from his father,
You're kidding, right? I understand why Trump's dim-witted son falls for this family story, but why are you falling for it?
Fred Trump. had to have his attorney go buy $3.5mil worth of chips (which they never used) from Donald's failing casino to help prop it up. I'm sure I could come up with dozens of other examples where Junior needed Daddy's help to stay afloat, but I've got better things to do with my time.
https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/how-donald-trumps-father-once-bailed-out-his-casino/article_934cb836-2c1d-11e6-8a13-173759856fe0.html
Fred Trump, through his attorney, bought $3.5 million in chips at a high-stakes blackjack table and left without gambling with them.
Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Insightful)
...For people who don't 'believe in' science.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Funny)
2150: The Hawking-IV deep space relativistic lander sets foot upon the second planet of the TRAPIST system. Its AI files its report:
Plenty of evidence of a formerly advanced civilization. Basic turing machine computer systems, hydrocabon powered transportation devices. Even a unique entertainment form based on rhythmically modulating infrared waves analogous to the music of humans. But theres nobody left alive. The automatic linguistics learner has translated a message found scrawled upon the wall of what appears to have been an Infrared performance hall. It translates as "Fuck you! I won't wear that mask! Viruses are just a myth by THE MAN to get us to accept microchips implanted in our probiscuses!". Analysis of a corpse shows a virus that would have been easily prevented by the medications of their species.
Official analysis: This civilization died of stupidity.
Extremely large numbers of cats present. What does this mean?
Re: Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:2)
I think the leaders for it here in Sweden want to think they had the most evidence based approach to handling the virus.
Didn't worked well.
My other response came to the wrong post.
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Here, as on the other post, you're really in need of looking up the English word "evidence" and then the phrase "evidence-based" and compare that to the word "theory."
I'm going to presume you don't understand what the words mean, that you're a major ignoramus, because the alternative is that you're a complete moron.
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Not exactly. C19 during an election year...there's a ton of politics mixed in with this.
Politics or incompetence, however, it's worth being skeptical of the numbers given the nonsense we've seen already with some of the reporting.
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Actually it's more like there is a tiny bit of an attempt to actually fix the mess mixed into the politics.
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Sadly, I suspect you're correct.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Insightful)
For morons who don't listen to the doctors, there is politics involved.
For most people, they just listen to the doctors and there isn't any politics involved.
Just because somebody else is being a moron and responding politically to a medical situation, that does not cause the actions of people listening to the doctors to become political. That is just part of the hyperbole that the morons are spewing.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Informative)
Which doctors?
There are plenty of doctors who are screaming about needing to be allowed to use HQC. There are many screaming about how schools need to open. There are even a few questioning the usefulness of masks.
Or did you mean we should only listen to doctors who are saying things YOU like?
There really aren’t. There were a handful early on who were suckered in - docs are human too - but at this point, the medical community is pretty clear that testing has shown no benefit to HQC for COVID-19, barring one or two whackjobs.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Insightful)
The results from large-scale studies on hydroxychloroquine with Covid-19 appeared over the month of June, most of them concluding that HCQ was not helpful.
Your first link ("6000 docs think HCQ is effective.") is from April 2.
The second link (the Henry Ford study, published July 1) has drawn plenty [factcheck.org] of criticsm [wdet.org], in particular because the patient selection (which patient gets which treatment) was not randomized but rather made dependent on the patient's condition.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:4, Informative)
There are plenty of doctors who are screaming about needing to be allowed to use HQC.
No, there are not. There are few quacks out there who refuse to read all the studies which have shown zero effect from those taking HQC and which in some cases have made the person worse. They fall into the category of the con artist's doctor whose own files were stolen by the con artist, and a letter written in his name proclaiming the con artist "astonishingly healthy" [bbc.com].
There are many screaming about how schools need to open.
Again, no, there are not. The only ones "screaming" about schools needing to open are the con artist because he's all about optics rather than protecting people, and the anti-vaxers who have had it with their shin biters being at home and unable to control them.
There are even a few questioning the usefulness of masks.
Once again, these are the people who ignore the evidence. If masks weren't useful, surgeons wouldn't wear them during open heat surgery. Or any surgery. These are the same people who believe the Earth is flat and vaccines are full of chemicals which harm the body.
Or did you mean we should only listen to doctors who are saying things YOU like?
We should listen to the evidence gathered through systematic and rigorous testing, which has been done to both HQC and the efficacy of masks. Clearly YOU don't listen to anyone who doesn't say things you like.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:4, Informative)
They're not very effective at preventing you from getting it, even if they're N95 and properly fitted
This is moronic, especially at this late a stage.
They protect the person wearing it too, even if it is just a cloth face covering and not a mask. A cloth face covering is in the range N50 to N65. They provide protection. And then you blather about N95 not protecting, that is pure speculation that contradicts all evidence.
And then the nonsense about fitting. Fitting of masks is necessary when you're wearing them in a work environment with toxic chemicals that you're not supposed to be exposed to AT ALL, and so any temporary breach of the mask's protection means the whole protection system has failed; potentially with catastrophic consequences. That is not the situation at all with these masks, and they don't need to be fitted. Fitted masks isn't even a thing outside of industrial usage.
Stop sitting on top of Mount Stupid giving lectures, jeeze. Read yous sum buuks.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:4, Informative)
Why don't you read what I actually wrote, instead of what you think I wrote?
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Even if the numbers are double the real figure they are still terrible.
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Well no. They're infection rates, not mortality rates.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a good read [juliansimon.com]. In an economically free society, the more the better, as people keep ahead of shortage problems via invention and substitution, and costs drop over the long run.
This isn't to say there aren't price spikes of a few years' duration politicians can, unfortunately, make hay over. But over the decade, this process works...as long as government resists the urge for command and control.
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:5, Insightful)
In an economically free society,
So unlike the U.S. where the taxpayers are repeatedly, and endlessly, forced to hand over billions of dollars each year to corporations and where the central planning committee has now spent over $7 trillion buying corporate bonds because private companies are run so incompetently they can't go more than a week [imgur.com] without the taxpayers bailing them out.
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Now look up what rust is, and ask yourself where it goes after you label it "rust" that prevents recycling?
Re:Covid-19 is the Fermi filter... (Score:4, Informative)
Now look up what rust is, and ask yourself where it goes after you label it "rust" that prevents recycling?
In fact, the Stone Age turned into the Iron Age when early man started finding hunks of iron oxide ("bog iron") concentrated by ferrophilic bacteria, mixed in with the peat deposits they were already digging up and burning as fuel.
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Now look up what rust is,
Cockery like this is why I have you foe'd.
and ask yourself where it goes after you label it "rust" that prevents recycling?
Developing the industrial apparatus to perform that step. We don't do it now because it's too energy-intensive. There won't be readily available oil, either. Fucking pay attention.
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Iron ore is mainly iron oxide aka rust.
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Only 0.4% of the infected people die,
In other words, covid-19 is 20 times more deadly than the flu. Got it.
and most of these are past their reproductive age anyway.
Some are killed [wsoctv.com] even before [cw33.com] their reproductive age [cnn.com] while more [usatoday.com] people of [foxnews.com] reproductive age [thegrio.com] are dying [nypost.com].
This is missing data (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't really compare this without also knowing how many tests per million people were done. For example a country doing a large number of tests on random people is going to find a lot of asymptomatic people. A country that is only testing people with symptoms will miss all of the asymptomatic people. The first country will have a much high number of tests per million than the second country.
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That's okay. You don't need to test people to look at Death statistics. Funny enough the graphs look similar.
Re:This is missing data (Score:5, Insightful)
Because while these countries had more deaths per million of population, they HAD more deaths per million of population. 10 people died in France yesterday. 1,100 in the US.
Yes, the US has more people than France. About 5 times more people. Not 110 times. Granted, that's about to change...
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Please elaborate, I don't quite understand what point you're trying to make. If you think my calculation is faulty, please correct it.
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Do you happen to be a politician? That was an awful lot of words just to say absolutely nothing.
Re:This is missing data (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they have it under control and you don't.
You will pass France next week. I'm sure they will wave as you go by.
Re:This is missing data (Score:5, Informative)
Because your numbers don't reflect that you're comparing a dynamic situation (US, strong growth) with an essentially static one (Europe). For that you have to look at the daily new case figures:
New COVID-19 cases, 2020-07-24 (source: Johns Hopkins):
Belgium: 352
Germany: 742
UK: 769
France: 1.1k
US: 73.7k
So the US has got 70 times as many new diagnosed cases per day as the next contender on your list. And this is with local testing capacity maxed out, so the actual case numbers are higher, only we don't know them. In Europe, on the other hand, they're already quite concerned by the still relatively low growth they have; some countries are reintroducing lockdowns.
That also means that in terms of deaths per million population, the US will overtake France next week, the UK the week after, and Belgium the week after. Only the US population is several times larger, so the absolute number of deaths will be staggering.
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Recently did a serology survey here in BC, seems the total infection rate was about 8x what tests showed, still way lower numbers then neighbouring Washington State.
The Streets will flow... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen such stupid memes circulating amongst people in these states on social media. For example, one claims that because one can smell a fart through a mask, they are obviously not effective at stopping viruses and should not be worn. Another claims that the virus is everywhere, but so is God, so the faithful will be protected.
This is the predictable result to politicizing masks and protective equipment. States with the highest number of die-hard ideologues with a history of rejecting science (Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee), and coming up with alternative science to justify their racism, are now seeing what happens when convenient beliefs meet reality.
In short, is anyone surprised that states who didn't want to teach evolution are now making the United States the sick man of the OECD?
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Re:The Streets will flow... (Score:5, Insightful)
High deaths amongst immigrants can also be, at least partially, explained by lack of access to medical facilities and care, a problem that other Texans in wealthier areas do not have.
You seem to enjoy pulling narrow statistics and anecdotes to justify a myopic view, while ignoring things that are larger which are incompatible with your pre-determined conclusion. For example in your signature you note "Believe Tara Reade," which would be sensical if perhaps you added something like "Believe Virginia Guiffre," but that would implicate Trump as being connected to a well-known pedophile, whose associate Ghislaine Maxwell he continues to "wish well."
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Re:The Streets will flow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Streets will flow... (Score:5, Insightful)
What would you like POTUS to say to someone who is on trial? 'Hope you rot in jail?'.
The con artist had no problem disparaging a veteran who was tortured [politico.com], even after the guy died [nbcnews.com], including saying he, the con artist, wasn't thanked for the great job he did on the funeral [nytimes.com].
Funny how the con artist always has kind words for criminals and dictators but routinely attacks his own countrymen.
Re:The Streets will flow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out where Texas SARS-CoV2 deaths are happening [texas.gov]. They're happening in Hidalgo County, down on the Mexican border. Population of 870,000 people. It's mainly infected illegal immigrants. Hidalgo county is experiencing more deaths than Dallas County (2.6 million people - Dallas city) and Harris County (4.7 million people, Houston). That's not from "lack of masks", that's from sick/infected people crossing the border and being treated in Hidalgo County hospitals - and then counted as Texan fatalities.
I see no evidence of that. Stop making shit up. The reason why we are in this mess is because of Trump's incompetence and conservatives refusal to accept facts and reality.
I know, blame the illegal immigrants and the poor. You people are adding to the problem and I wish you would keep your bullshit opinions to yourselves.
Grabs popcorn (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just here to see what all the trolls have to say about this. I can hear the excuses now.
"What about how many people are being tested compared to other countries? If we test more we find more."
"These charts are meaningless, just like the 150,000+ dead. What we need are statistics to lean against like a drunk uses a light pole."
"This is just that lefty New York Times wanting to make the con artist look bad."
"Anyone can put up a chart. We need to see the numbers behind this."
"States are deliberately overcounting positive cases except in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Iowa, and Texas where they're deliberately undercounting so we can't trust anything."
"I saw on Facebook from my brother's wife's second cousin who reads Qanon stories that this isn't a big deal, that's it's made up."
"People believe what the mainstream media says? They've been discredited time and again. The con artist said so."
Did I miss any?
P.S. Florida is reporting more daily positive cases than South Korea has reported for its entire country. South Korea also has twice the population of Florida.
Re:Grabs popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the fundamental issue. The virus will continue to circulate in the human population and in many animals including house pets and farm animals. It will come back in places where it is "under control" now unless working vaccine distributed. Pointless to take this point in time and harp about anything. T
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At the end of the day, protect the fragile, it will spread, maybe we'll get lucky with a vaccine, but otherwise a controlled spread ideally not overwhelming hospitals will happen, whether we like it or not.
It's happening anyway, which is the elephant in the room. "Look, that country has a much better train engineer because only the engine, tender, and first three cars have gone over the cliff so far!"
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
If we did what we were supposed to it wouldn't be an issue. But to do that would require massive changes to our society of a more socialistic...y(?) bent. Our ruling class doesn't like that, because they don't like socialism. They leverage their control of limited resources and the threat of homelessness and starvation to make us do as they say, and if we start building Star Trek style systems where basic needs are met they become powerless. Can't let that happen.
Re: Not really (Score:2)
Either that or lock down the borders until an antivirus is created. No one in or out. In the US, that would never happen. Both sides of the political spectrum would fight against that.
The problem with your solution, is that as soon as restrictions are relaxed, someone outside the area is going to re-introduce the virus to that population and we start over. The genie is out of the bottle.
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Think you got it pretty much covered.
Here's a beer, pass the popcorn.
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You missed, "Something something, Murka bad, France!!!"
Well, read the comments and you know why (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that Slashdot is... well, supposedly, at least it used to be... populated by people who are on average a wee bit more capable than the average idiot out there, and even here you see the same shit going down as everywhere: Instead of trying to figure out what to do, people are busy shifting blame. And the creativity on what HAS TO be guilty of spreading the plague knows no bounds. I come here every day for the latest Covid stories because I know for a fact that I'll be treated with even more creative excuses why SOMEONE ELSE is to blame.
I wonder how many people have to die before they start to notice that shifting blame about does not solve problems. Anyone got a betting pool going?
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You worry about who is on Slashdot, you worry about people dying, you rather want to worry about how to save the world, you call others idiots and probably consider yourself smarter than them, but what is it you are actually doing? You're blaming others for not thinking like you do. It makes you the idiot.
Let people cast blame. It shows that they know who is responsible. They then already know what to do. Let them be disobedient, let them cast away their worries and fears, let them have their protests. Thei
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Because sadly, I do care. And I wish that we would finally get our act together and DO something. Preferably without resorting to what was done in Europe. Because it saddens me that this seems to be how you can get people to do what's necessary for survival.
I live in a country that dealt with the whole mess in a pretty "good" way. We have a fairly low body count despite being hit early with the virus and despite sitting right next to a country that was hit VERY severely and the whole mess sloshed across our
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What's unambiguously bad and sad about it is that humans are apparently not capable of acting rationally and sensibly without being forced to.
Every slave overseer who ever lived shares your pain. They're applauding you from their graves.
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No. It's what you imagine rage looks like. You've probably never seen rage.
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Third verse, same as the first. (Score:2, Insightful)
What did you expect? You always knew where this was headed, between corporate greed and Republican pearl-clutching.
Die for the economy. Sacrifice the weak. [bandcamp.com]
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Well, he can hide in the bushes all weekend, wearing a mask and covered in deer piss, a flag diaper wouldn't even surprise me.
Flag diaper and no mask, sounds like a typical afternoon at the BBQ, hoping somebody brought enough Freedum Fries to scare away the virus.
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Now let's look at where those covid deaths have happened.
Top 10 death rates by state [statista.com], per 100K population:
New Jersey 177
New York 168
Connecticut 124
Massachusetts 123
Rhode Island 94
DC 82
Louisiana 77
Michigan 64
Illinois 60
Maryland 56
Funny, of the states mentioned, only Louisiana is on that list, so let's compare where those 10 states are in terms of deaths per 100K population:
Florida 26
*Louisiana 77
Mississippi 48
Ne
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The timing isn't everything. For example, in Florida DeSantis [floridaphoenix.com] followed the science and expert recommendations and put state efforts into isolating the most vulnerable, resulting in a much lower death rate, despite an older population. "In mid-March, he issued an executive order cutting off visitation for the nursing home residents. He also prohibited transferring patients who had tested positive for coronavirus into a long-term care facility."
Just after that [propublica.org], Cuomo in NY, saying he feared that an onslaught
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And Brazil has been trying so hard...
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A mandatory curfew was also issued from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. for anyone over 18 years and from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for residents 17 years and under unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez issued a new shelter-at-home order Monday night
Three weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott required Texans to wear masks, epidemiologists and disease modelers say they are cautiously optimistic that the mandate is helping the state turn a corner in its efforts to contain an outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 Texans.
Leveling off Lynnwood. Don't get too carried away yet. And it's because of measures taken to slow the spread. Not whatever magic you are claiming.
Oregon daily deaths are at an average of 4. The same as back in April. Texas has gone from 30 in April-May to 140 now. Why didn't the riots have an effect? Or do you think Texas' riots were so much worse...
Texas is at 170/million deaths, Orego is at 67 [worldometers.info]
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Lots of protests where I am, case load has gone slightly up, due to parties with too large groups of young people. Seems standing outside with social distancing is pretty safe compared to being inside drinking alcohol.
Re:black lives matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, it's not -- because instead of doing actual science and statistical comparisons, you just shoot words like "the left claims" and pretend like any cherry-picked statistics that match your worldview represent the truth.
Re: black lives matter (Score:2)
If course meeting both at a protest and in the store increase the risk of virus spread.
Re:black lives matter (Score:5, Insightful)
If that where true, then the states with the biggest and most frequent protests would be the states that subsequently had (have) the most COVID cases.
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People take several weeks to die after being infected. Don't worry, soon death will come for Trump country too.
Statistics are clear the US is now doing worse than Italy, Belgium, and even Sweden. Viruses don't care about your politics and your weasel words like "lefty p
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Your statistics is inherently flawed -- you're counting the whole massive United States and comparing it to a small area like Belgium. ...nearly twice the rate than Belgium's.
So, you're saying you don't want to use the statistics about what has happened so far, you just want to use the statistics from this month, because.... longerm data is inherently flawed compared to just using the raw, unadjusted short-term velocity? Because you can't use statistics when your sample size gets too large?
In any other year than 2020 you'd deserve a prize for being so stupid, but this year has a bumper crop.
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Re:More Lefty Propaganda (Score:4, Informative)
Lockdowns work by burning out the virus' infected clusters by giving time for people to recover. If done right, when ended, there are few infected people still unrecovered to spread the virus.
Re:More Lefty Propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
The US is better off than ... well, 10 countries in the death toll (normalized for population) ratings now that Peru and Chile have taken over. The problem here is that aside of the aforementioned Peru and Chile, all the other countries that have a higher per-capita death toll than the US have their infections under control and report around 0.1 death per day and million, while the US has currently about 3 deaths per day and million. In other words, the headcount-by-population is going up by 3 per day for the US, while it basically stays the same for most of the other first world countries that are "ahead" in the bodycount ratings.
At the current rate, the US will have more deaths per million than France before the month is over, more than Italy in September and before the year is over, unless Brazil really puts some effort into it, America is number 1.
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Re:Testing numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the comparison with total number of tests? Of course there will be more cases if more people are being tested. Many positives are asymptomatic.
Total number of tests isn't relevant here because this is looking at infection rates, not total infections. In this context, let's look at the percentage of tests turning out positive. Many of these states have positive test rates which are well over 10%, with some even higher. For example, Florida has a test positivity rate of around 18% right now https://testandtrace.com/state-data/ [testandtrace.com]. The test positivity rates in much of the rest of the world is much lower. While it is higher than that in a few countries (Brazil most notably) most countries have a test positivity rate of 5% or less https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/international-comparison [jhu.edu]. If the high US numbers were due to extensive testing we'd expect to have a lower, not higher test positivity rate. (There's some complications here: Some labs in Florida only reported positive cases, but that was a small set of labs and was essentially isolated. And in some other countries, including Brazil, this may have happened with some labs, so there's no reason to think the US data is any worse than anyone else's data in this regard.)
Also, in Louisiana the state is counting every positive test as a separate case. To be allowed to return to work someone who tested positive must show a negative test so of course they are being tested multiple times. Each one of those positive tests is being miscounted as a "new" case.
This claim keeps getting repeated for various states. I can't find evidence that it is accurate. The CDC doesn't seem to think this is happening https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/us-cases-deaths.html [cdc.gov]. There have been in some cases, instances where due to miscommunication and bad classifying, some double counting occurred. Louisiana is the state where this happened, but they've adjusted their numbers https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_134a23a8-b22e-11ea-9db9-6bf87f46daa6.html [nola.com] to account for this. This is getting repeated as a claim also many other states. Ohio is one where this keeps getting repeated as a claim even though there's no evidence for it happening. https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200717/fact-check-is-ohio-counting-multiple-coronavirus-tests-as-new-cases [dispatch.com]. The upshot is that there were some issues, but they are small, and have been largely taken into account.
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If the high US numbers were due to extensive testing we'd expect to have a lower, not higher test positivity rate.
There would also have to be extensive testing happening in the US, and there isn't. In fact, we're deliberately doing less testing than we could be so that our numbers stay lower.
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Perhaps should count hospitalizations, ICU cases or deaths. Here in BC for comparison, one death last week, 221 reported cases (5 per 100,000) as we slowly open up.
Re:Testing numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
When you see test counts and new cases rise in tandem, *any* of the following scenarios are possible:
(1) Diagnosed cases are going up because of more tests being administered.
(2) More tests are being administered because increased community transmission is creating demand.
(3) Some mix of the above.
It is literally *impossible* to know which of these scenarios is true just by looking at those two numbers. You have to look at the whole picture.
The TL;DR is that that we're looking mainly at increased community transmission, probably with a minor contribution from increased test availability. The strongest evidence for this is that hospitalizations are tracking new case numbers.
While test volume is increasing everywhere, cases are not rising in every state -- in many states they're dropping. However in 9 out of the 10 states listed above test positive rates are rising, which you wouldn't expect if you're just testing more people. Also states with rising cases tend to have cell phone mobility data which shows the least public compliance with social distancing guidelines.
Re:Testing numbers (Score:5, Informative)
US is number 22 in number of tests per million population. US stands at 159,585 per million.
Monaco, Faeroe Islands, Luxembourg, Gibraltar, Falkland Islands, UAE, Bahrain, Cayman Islands, Iceland, Bermuda, Malta, Denmark, UK, Singapore, Lithuania, Russia, Channel Islands, Israel, San Marino, Qatar, Mauritius all test more per million than US.
Most of those countries are smaller, but the UK, Israel, UAE, Singapore, Denmark stands out.
Even *Russia* have performed more tests per citizen than US!
Granted, US needs to test more than most of those countries *now* because of the current level of outbreak, so that gap will probably change.
If the surge in infections was caused by more tests, you would expect the *test infection rate* to go down. In the US. A rate below 5% for two weeks indicate that you have a reliable estimate of how the pandemic spreads. Texas is 13%, Florida is 19%, US overall is 8,4%.
The US is not in control yet. Unlike most other western countries with a comparable standard of living.
On the bright side, New York seems to be in control with a 1.1% test infection rate.
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The UK stands out in another way - much like the US, our press is working hard to convince everyone here that we're massively behind the rest of the world in coronavirus testing, even though it's in no way, shape or form true and hasn't been remotely true in a long time.
(Also, I'm pretty sure that several US states would be a lot higher on the list than number 22 if they were counted individually - and it'd be a lot more of an apples-to-apples comparison, because they're much closer in size to the other cou
Re:Testing numbers (Score:4, Informative)
What are the countries numbered 1-21 and what are their relative populations?
Here you go: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
When Trump tell you that the US is testing more than any other country, he may *almost* be correct in absolute numbers, at this time.
Only China has performed more tests in absolute numbers (almost double that of US).
But that is grossly misleading. China has 4x the population of the US. So when you have widespread transmission you need to consider
* Tests performed per million capita
* Test positive rate
In tests performed per capita, US is at 22nd place. If we consider only the latest weeks, my suspicion is that US does better than that, simply because the US *need* to test more.
Which brings us to the second point: Test positive rate tells you if you are testing *enough* compared to how widespread the transmission is. If it is above 5% you are *not* testing enough. If you can test enough to keep the test positive rate below 5% (according to Johns Hopkins) for 2 weeks, you have enough information to gauge how widespread the transmission is.
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The post didn't say that.
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It did, by implication.
Learn yous sum Angles.
Re: I hope the US can get its act together (Score:2)
I think the leaders for it here in Sweden want to think they had the most evidence based approach to handling the virus.
Didn't worked well.
Re: I hope the US can get its act together (Score:4, Informative)
OK, now look up two words, "evidence," and "theory."
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Once you have a theory, you've got plenty of evidence. You're probably thinking of a hypothesis.
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You can't start them on fine details, they have to start by looking more deeply at the words they already think they know. If they won't question those, and weigh them against new ideas, they won't get any benefit from learning the other jargon.
Sure, if they already knew what the first two words mean, then the word hypothesis might come up. But here, we're talking about novel events. The words "evidence-based" don't lead to a hypothesis, they lead to be talked down to about the arrow of time and the natur
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Well, fortunately for him the Democrats decided to nominate someone with the charisma of a 60s staircase who I wouldn't trust to find his own ass with both hands, provided he still remembers that he's even looking for it.
Re:Go big or go home! (Score:4, Insightful)
provided he still remembers that he's even looking for it.
As opposed to someone who has to repeatedly show he can pass a test [9cache.com] designed to identify signs of dementia or cognitive impairment [usatoday.com] without showing his results.
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Do you HAVE to remind me that they're part of the country?
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Why the cherry picked group? California should clearly be in this list.
These are rates [statista.com], not numbers. California is the most populous state in the union by a wide margin. We can have a lot of cases, and still have a lower rate. This really isn't that complicated.