I have the following from a friend in New Jersey. pl
"As regards those cases of COVID-19 in Florida, here's an interesting stat: Just two counties here in New Jersey, Bergen and Essex, had about 4,000 deaths. That's 4,000 deaths among 1.5 million people vs. 4,000 deaths among 22 million people.
Another stat: Both New Jersey and Texas have residents dying at the rate of about 35 per day. In Texas that's among 32 million people. In Jersey, about 9 million.
Yet our governor lectures them on how to handle the virus.
BTW, Texans are dying from CV-19 at the daily rate of one per million.
Literally a one-in-a-million chance of dying on a given day." NJ Friend
My risk of getting hit by lightning is worse than my risk of dying from this.
And those stats assume the risk of a relatively healthy person contracting the virus and dying. The truth is that those dying are elderly and not healthy. The risk of a healthy younger person dying is miniscule. Far more dangerous to drive a car. This whole thing, IMO, is a political scam; part of the plot to destroy western civ.
Location, location, location! Even where a person lives in Essex County makes a difference. Newark or Irvington – apples; Shorthills – Oranges. Henny Penny and Marshall McLuhan predicted the moment. The electronic village is a place given to terror. In fact, McLuhan underestimated how bad it would be because no one could predict how absolutely dumbed down our political and media class would become. Henny Penny is out there all day and all night bellowing through a bull horn ‘run for your lives”.
In the blizzard of cherry picked data and contradictory information, the prudent man disregards screen talk and considers the risks in the light of the circumstances of his own and his family’s situation and moves on. If the other animals stampeding down the street glare at him because he isn’t wearing a mask, too bad.
It would be such a good exam question for 11th grade calculus (or frosh Statistics 101) to ask students why using total population as a denominator cannot express a meaningful rate of occurrence.
Obviously the death rate for young people is low and they are the bulk of new cases; it is low for older folks in good shape without comorbidities (I’m just back from my 15 mile cycling circuit).
We also know that care expertise has improved considerably since the dark days of March and April. And dumb things like Cuomo sending infected elders back to nursing homes isn’t going to happen again anywhere (he graciously removed liabilities from hospitals and nursing homes in his budget).
With respect to Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, etc., we also know deaths are a lagging indicator of cases or hospitalizations. If the death rates remain low at the end of the month, that would be great news. But it isn’t fake news that many hospitals are close to maxing out ICU capacity and elective procedures are on hold.
And Fred, an average 26 people are killed by lightning each year. So go to a restaurant without a mask.
I don’t think DeSantis, Abbott or Ducey are closing some businesses because of chicken little screaming the sky is falling. They did it because they had no choice.
Border state death and incident reporting is skewed, since so many cases come in from illegal border crossings- Texas, Arizona, California, New Mexico. We only have covid porn; not covid reporting.
dr. puck
to do that you would need to have a firm idea of what the incidence of infection is across the whole population. We do not have that datum anywhere. What we have is REVEALED incidence through testing which will never extend to the whole population.
upstater,
I do. And how many of those 26 were inside a nursing home? How many were struck during snowstorms?
“it isn’t fake news that many hospitals are close to maxing out ICU capacity and elective procedures are on hold.”
Which hospitals in which cities are those? The Tampa NBC affiliate tried that non-fake news, which I call an outright lie, a week ago. They quoted yet another ‘expert’ who reported the fact that 70% of the ICU Bed were filled with patients for non-Covid reasons, and of the reamining capacity one third of the beds had been taken up by Covid19 patients. That of course left 67% of the surge capacity, or 20% of the total existing ICU bed capacity, available.
Left unsaid was 1) the ability to convert other beds for use by Covid 19 patients, 2) the ability to transfer patients to other facilities with open capacity, 3) the ability to build additional surge capacity 4) the complete lack of requests by any of the hospital administrators for 1, 2, or even 3. It’s just manipulation of information packaged as news to drive up fear and ratings. I will also note that none of the local politicians want to eliminate the regualtory requirement for a ‘certificate of need’ to build any additional ICU capacity. One might ask why that is, other than that 1/3 of the current ICU specific capacity sits idle the majority of the time and that cost is born by everthing else the hospital does. That math is hard to understand for those whose paycheck depends upon their not understanding, or reporting, that fact.
Fred, your reply still begs the question why 3 conservative Republican governors are rolling back their openings. Isn’t that admission of a new reality in their states? It costs those states dearly in lost revenue and costs the governors political capital.
They certainly are not doing it to please Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. Or pander to Rachel Maddow’s audience.
I wish COVID would pass. I can’t visit my 92 Year old mom out of state in a nursing home or see my new grandson overseas. Or just take a trip or dine out.
Point being Xi, Putin, Johnson, Trump, Cuomo or the Republican governors are not doing this for the heck of it.
For those desiring statistical details, the following may be of interest:
For the covid deaths in NJ by county, see
https://www.nj.gov/health/cd/topics/covid2019_dashboard.shtml
For the New Jersey population by country, see
https://www.newjersey-demographics.com/counties_by_population
Confirmed covid deaths as % of total population:
Bergen 1758/932202 = .19%
Essex 1828/798975 = .23%
Arlington County, Virginia 134/236842 = .06%
New Jersey 13613/8882190 = .15%
Virginia 1968/8535519 = .02%
Virginia and Arlington were added just for comparison.
One may wonder about the reasons for the differences.
Some additional info:
“The largest concentration of Jews [in New Jersey] is in Bergen County (83,700), Essex County (76,200)…”
Source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-jersey-jewish-history
upstater,
“political capital.” Desantis certainly isn’t pandering to Pelosi, but he is pandering to panicy old people who watch too much tv. His last EO isn’t closing the state, it shut bars that did not serve food and cut capacity of restaurants; the other crap is being done by local governments, and yes he is losing that capital, but he won’t face re-election for three more years, unlike lots of city council and county commission members. They’ll enjoy November tremendously.
Thanks for brining up the foreign governments. Xi’s government is responsible for spreading this virus all over the world. Trump should get Putin and Johnson on the phone together to talk about holding the Chinese accountable. Cuomo? He’s the one who killed thousands in nursing homes with his executive order. None of which changes the ‘science’ that this disease is so deadly most people have to get a test to know they even had it. The fraudulent medical expert bureaucrats are simply further discrediting themselves as elitists with a political axe to grind to ensure their sinecures.
You can’t see your grandmother, your grandson, take a trip or dine out? We used to be the land of the free, now – your rights have been Quarantined by Cuomo. For that you can thank the President Xi, the Democratic Party, and the experts who advise them.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/africa-trust-stamp-covid-19-vaccine-record-payment-system/269346/
“The program, which was first launched in late 2018, will see Trust Stamp’s digital identity platform integrated into the GAVI-Mastercard “Wellness Pass,” a digital vaccination record and identity system that is also linked to Mastercard’s click-to-play system that powered by its AI and machine learning technology called NuData. Mastercard, in addition to professing its commitment to promoting “centralized record keeping of childhood immunization” also describes itself as a leader toward a “World Beyond Cash,” and its partnership with GAVI marks a novel approach towards linking a biometric digital identity system, vaccination records, and a payment system into a single cohesive platform. The effort, since its launch nearly two years ago, has been funded via $3.8 million in GAVI donor funds in addition to a matched donation of the same amount by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”…
Trust Stamp’s biometric identity system, largely funded by Mastercard’s massive investment in the company in February, utilizes a technology it calls Evergreen Hash that creates an AI-generated “3D mask” based on a single photo of a person’s face, palm or fingerprint. Once this “mask” is created, much of the original data is discarded and encryption keys are created in place of a person’s name or other more traditional identifiers.
“Only a small percentage of the data that originally existed is in the hash,” Trust Stamp CEO Gareth Genner has stated. “What you have is something safer for storing because it can’t be used to directly identify you. No one would recognize you in this huge jumble of numbers.” The result, according to Genner, is an “irreversible non-personally identifiable information” system that “protects privacy, reduces potential for misuse and allows effective inclusion when there is no other form of legal record.”
All masks matter
Two Good Articles
http://johnhelmer.net/no-second-wave-pandemic-in-russia-pavel-volchkov-russian-leader-in-genomic-engineering-he-rejected-harvard-for-moscow-explains-why/
And that’s fine. They ought to be lost. This always happens. There is a half-life of IgG, IgM, IgA antibodies. Their volume in the blood begins to fall six months to a year after meeting with the infection. There are so few of them that their number is impossible to detect by any test. What is the purpose of antibodies? Here the virus flew into the respiratory tract, infected a group of cells, created a small local focus (with a mild course of the disease). The immune system recognized these cells and localized them – it is like the city of Wuhan that was closed in China. It turns out that a large number of antibodies do not seem to exist, but the immunity has formed and worked. However, it is concentrated in T- and B-memory cells. When the infection again occurs to a person, the immune system recognizes it, and the cells will begin to produce antibodies.
In any case, it does not mutate very quickly. Even the seasonal flu virus needs several years to re-infect you. And then in the event that part of its segments — and the flu has eight of them — will be re-sequenced, that is, replaced by parts from another influenza virus. Coronavirus is single-segment – it cannot change in that way.
https://www.unz.com/article/the-great-covid-19-deception-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-survive/
Terrence,
“biometric identity system”
That’s an electronic slave collar, so much better than a number stencilled on one’s arm. Any government can then have the credit card services cancel the utilization of your money as a way to enforce a shutdown order or a business closure. Just forbid MasterCard and the rest from processessing payments for goods and services from businesses declared “non-essential” or transactions on a card from outside the registered homes of “non-essential” people or those on government ordered quarantine.
Latest report on development trials of vaccine from NEJM:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
and
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2025111