Wednesday, March 25, 2020
For anyone looking for the diversion of competition I recommend Rocket League and the sublime Sandrock Gaming team. Watching Rocket League takes some getting used to but when you watch a great team like Sandrock you quickly see their talent and the beauty of the game.One inside Rocket League tip when watching Sandrock, notice the number next to the green bars next to each player's name at the end of the match. Those numbers are the "ping" rate and the higher the number the slower the connection and the greater the disadvantage. Sandrock is a Saudi-based team. The servers are in Europe. The connection is slower for Sandrock and they are always a split second behind the competition. Sandrock always plays at a ping disadvantage. In the series linked to above they are playing RCD Espanyol. Sandrock's players ping rates are 76, 88, and 88. Espanyol's are 44, 56, and 40. No matter, Sandrock's plays and players are still faster than Espanyol's. They are the fastest team in Rocket League.
Trump Epidemic March 25, 10:30 a.m.: MORTALITY RATE RISES TO 1.45%
This season's flu, referred to in the L.A. Times article cited in the previous post, infected 36,000,000 people. Twenty-two thousand died for a mortality rate of .061%. Trump Virus is 24 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. 55,243 have so far been infected and 802 have died. If as many Americans became infected with Trump Virus as contracted the flu deaths would be 522,000.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
“We’re going to be fine”
Trump, if you’re still awake and still deciding between swallowing your gun and being hung dead upside down, look at this article before you announce your Decision.
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, [Nobel Prize Winner and Stanford biophysicist Michael] Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.
“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”
...
But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported.
...
Levitt fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down.
...
While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is, quite simply put, “not the end of the world.”
“The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,” he said.
Now the guy in the ex-Quasis, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, even I queried his credentials but didn’t mention them because the New York Times published him! Presumably vetted his credentials, which are: “vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania.” So, not an epidemiologist either, am I right? What the fuck is “global initiatives”? Do they award Nobel Prizes for “global initiatives”? And he’s not even PROVOST of that...thing, he’s VICE provost. And he’s at PENN. Penn is NOT Stanford, okay? They let Shit-for-Brains into Penn. Ex-Quasis, did you vet that motherfucker? Does he have any expertise that qualifies him to write in your Gray pages on epidemics? Not that is apparent in your description of his credentials. The VICE provost’s conclusions are based on math that seems a little funny even on first read, no? I mean, how are we going to get to 100,000 DEATHS at a mortality rate of 1.3% when we “only” have 54,000 cases and 700 deaths. Fucking Covid-19 isn’t a fucking gene you know. It’s not permanent. It burns hot and then flames out in about three-four months, isn’t that kinda sorta the Chinese experience? That seems an impossibly short shelf life to get to the number of total infections needed. I don’t see how you can reasonably get to the number of confirmed cases required for 100,000 deaths at 1.3% mortality in four months. China, where this whole fucking thing started, is topping out at about 81,000 total cases. Italy has got 70,000 or something. I ain’t no ‘rithmetic scholar my own self but 100,000 deaths at the current rate of 1.3% would require, correct my math PLEASE if this is wrong, (.013 X= 100,000; X=100,000/.013; X=7,692,307, no? Did I do that right?) 7,692,207 total confirmed Covid-19 cases in the U.S. So let me get this straight Mr VICE provost of “Global Initiatives”: Your cheery 100,000 deaths prediction is predicated on the U.S. getting NINETY FIVE TIMES the total number of Covid-19 cases as China currently has in like four months? Get the fuck out of town.
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, [Nobel Prize Winner and Stanford biophysicist Michael] Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.
“What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”
...
But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported.
...
Levitt fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down.
...
While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is, quite simply put, “not the end of the world.”
“The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be,” he said.
Isn’t this the goddamnedest thing? How are we supposed to know? One thing I noted in this article and the cheery Doomsday piece in the NYT, neither of these guys is an epidemiologist. Does that matter? I DON’T KNOW! This guy, Levitt, is a biophysicist. Now he won a goddamned Nobel in that but, I guess, he’s not an epidemiologist so...Now he did uncannily predict both the number of total cases and the number of total deaths in China. But notice the precision of Mr Nobel Nostradamus on the U.S.: “We’re going to be fine.” Thank you for your time, sir. Should we only be paying attention to epidemiologists? See above bolded.
Does anything these guys say matter? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!
Trump Epidemic, March 24, 8:51 p.m.
A full 24 hours now.
53,740 total confirmed cases. That's the population of Burlington, North Carolina.
9,893 new cases in the last 24 hours.
706 total deaths.
1.31 mortality rate.
100,000 or more deaths to come?
If we go on a Wuhan-like lockdown right now maybe we can have “only” two Burlingtons worth of dead.
When Trump wants to ease all restrictions by Easter, April 12, nineteen days from now?
Trump: These are your two options.
1) Now
2) Later
And why would you want to have everybody see Melania like that? Think about it Trump. Have a nice night.
53,740 total confirmed cases. That's the population of Burlington, North Carolina.
9,893 new cases in the last 24 hours.
706 total deaths.
1.31 mortality rate.
100,000 or more deaths to come?
If we go on a Wuhan-like lockdown right now maybe we can have “only” two Burlingtons worth of dead.
When Trump wants to ease all restrictions by Easter, April 12, nineteen days from now?
Trump: These are your two options.
1) Now
2) Later
The window to win this war is about seven to 14 days.
If the United States intervenes immediately on the scale that China did, our death toll could be under 100,000. Within three to four months we might be able to begin a return to more normal lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/contributors/us-coronavirus-response.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
If the United States intervenes immediately on the scale that China did, our death toll could be under 100,000. Within three to four months we might be able to begin a return to more normal lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/contributors/us-coronavirus-response.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Trump Epidemic
Holy crap. 53,660 cases now, 9,813 since 8:51 last night, 703 deaths, the mortality rate has jumped to 1.31%. This is making me sick.
Trump Epidemic 4:30 p.m.
Brother. A bull market here too. The number of cases has now hit 51,542, +7,695 over last night at 8:51. Casualties now 674. Oh lord, the mortality rate has jumped a full tenth of a percent back up to 1.30%. Eh, Trump.
And that's it! A banner day on Wall Street. The DJIA closed up a whopping 2,112.98 points (+11.37). :o The broader S&P 500 was up 9.385. The NASDAQ +8.12. The ex-Quasis said this morning that the Bulls were running, prodded along by optimism that the Senate would pass the stimulus bill. That did not happen, although it is close. Whatever. Who knows. If, as looks almost certain, Trump lifts restrictions on life, is the stimulus bill ($1.8 trillion) necessary?
Trump Epidemic, 3:25 p.m.
The Johnnies have been busy as beavers. 50,206 U.S. cases right now, 6,000+ newbies since 8:51 last night. 606 casualties, 1.20%. Having passed Hackensack last night we are moving down the alphabet in New Jersey and can report, now doubt we are first with this, that the Trump Epidemic has overtaken Hoboken, N.J., pop 50,005. Hoboken, here's looking at you.
Trump Epidemic, March 24, 2:00 p.m.
The Johns Hopkins statisticians are back at their stations. 3,400 new confirmed cases in U.S. in last five hours. Fortunately, deaths of risen only by 7 to an even 600. Mortality is fallen to 1.20, the lowest level it has been since I have been tracking.
Surely we have the hospital capacity if needed, or can have it if necessary, to handle the 50,000 or even 100,000 ill with the knowledge that such a small percentage are mortally ill. This is not the goddamned plague. Why even test for this virus? It's mortality rate in the U.S. is no higher than it has been in the past for the common flu.
Release the hounds, they should never have been pent up. In. My. Opinion.
Surely we have the hospital capacity if needed, or can have it if necessary, to handle the 50,000 or even 100,000 ill with the knowledge that such a small percentage are mortally ill. This is not the goddamned plague. Why even test for this virus? It's mortality rate in the U.S. is no higher than it has been in the past for the common flu.
Release the hounds, they should never have been pent up. In. My. Opinion.
DOW ROARS PAST 20,000
What a day so far on Wall Street. At this moment the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 20,090.50, up 1498.57 points, 8:06%. It has wiped out (so far) a week's worth of losses...And now zooms past 20,100! A spectacular day on Wall Street.
Trump Epidemic, March 24, 8:35 a.m.
46.450 total confirmed cases; 593 dead; mortality rate, 1.27%.
Now watch, this is going to fucking take off in a few hours. It's like Johns Hopkins doesn't have a night shift. Pisses me off.
Now watch, this is going to fucking take off in a few hours. It's like Johns Hopkins doesn't have a night shift. Pisses me off.
This is how I feel.
“No one reached out to me and said, ‘as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. That doesn’t make me noble or brave or anything like that...I want to live smart and see through this, but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed. My message is that let's get back to work, let's get back to living. Let's be smart about it and those of us who are 70+, we'll take care of ourselves. But don't sacrifice the country."
-Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, 70 years old.
I wish I had the option. I would not mandate it for others. I am not (yet) 70 years old. I am asymptomatic. I have no pre-existing medical condition that makes me vulnerable other than insanity. Yet, I must stay at home, too. I want to live. This is surviving. I want to live.
I wish I had the option. I would not mandate it for others. I am not (yet) 70 years old. I am asymptomatic. I have no pre-existing medical condition that makes me vulnerable other than insanity. Yet, I must stay at home, too. I want to live. This is surviving. I want to live.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Trump is itching to lift the social distancing recommendations and requirements to get Americans back to work to forestall immense unemployment claims and to get the economy moving again. "The cure must not be worse than the problem," he has said, and "We can do two things at once."
This page has long argued the first. It seems to me we can do both contain the virus and not tank the economy into recession but I am convinced both by common sense and the data that the virus must be contained and then eliminated as a precondition to relaxing the shutdown and restarting the economy. In that meaningful sense, the two, contain and restart, cannot be done together literally "at once." My half agreement with Trump comes with personal deficiencies. I am an idiot blogger and Trump is an idiot president and the scientists and medical professionals are not and they are arguing for tighter and prolonged social and economic activity restrictions to contain the virus first and the economy be damned.
It has seemed to me that a total clampdown on all non-essential social and economic intercourse for fourteen days must come first and is needed to contain the virus where it is; to, in that fortnight, test everyone who has the cardinal symptoms, fever and dry cough, and for positives, isolate them at home and all their cluster of contacts.
The standard for success has to be clear, otherwise the restrictions will continue or will be relaxed on insufficient data. The standard should be a flattening of the curve of new cases, no daily near exponential growth. If the latter obtains then the total lockdown has to continue until the incidence of virus flattens. If, which I think is extraordinarily unlikely (Tom Bossert predicted in "approximately 1 week" the U.S. would be the number one country hit by the virus in the world, surpassing the only two with a worse infestation, China and Italy), and The Surgeon General has said the number of cases and deaths are going to keep increasing, but if, against all evidence and learned scientific and medical expectations a flattening does occur then the restrictions should be lifted. Only then.
Trump's concern that he personally is prescribing an economic recession as a cure for a virus, is a concern that a president should have. I completely disagree with the New York Times writer yesterday whose rule one was that in medico-scientific matters such as this only medico-scientific experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci should be at the microphone. Not non compos mentis boobs. We are a Republic of non compos mentis boobs. We are not a technocracy. The New York Times writer’s ancestor Walter Lippmann argued that we should be a technocracy but he didn’t get enough votes. With the valuable assistance of the Russian Federation we elected this non compos mentis boob (albeit at a 3,000,000 vote deficit) and he should be the one at the microphone. To prove Lippmann right. It has never made sense to me that 372,000,000 people should suffer recession, economic dislocation, and job loss, that small and marginal businesses should shutter and may have to close permanently; that trillions of dollars must be lost from the stock market—in order to keep an infected cohort the size of Hackensack, New Jersey from having 1.27% of its people, 560 total, die of Trump virus. Makes. No. Sense. But that is what the health technocrats urge upon the boob.
The infected cohort is going to increase. Period there. If the infected population increases ten-fold to 439,630, 5,583 virus related deaths will result at the 1.27% mortality rate. We don't want that; we don't want 560 dead of the virus much less 5,583 dead, but we are going to get more than 560 no matter what we do and the question that Trump has to answer is what price 372,000,000 pay—and, be frank, his chances for reelection are on the line also, for 5,583 dead.
I am persuaded to a standard of more probable than not that if the most draconian cessation of social and economic life reasonably attainable were instituted for a brief, say two weeks additional, period that the virus would be stopped and the economy could restart. But the goal must be met: a flattening of the curve. If not, Trump, see ya, wouldn't want to be ya, and the rest of us are going to have to have a recession. But if the horse of public health is put before the cart of economic revival as it must if it is to be sane and as it must if it is to be efficacious, then I, Proud Idiot, foresee a quick as reasonably possible return to both health and prosperity. The only downside is some increased chance of Four More Years of government of the idiot, by the idiots, for the idiots.
This page has long argued the first. It seems to me we can do both contain the virus and not tank the economy into recession but I am convinced both by common sense and the data that the virus must be contained and then eliminated as a precondition to relaxing the shutdown and restarting the economy. In that meaningful sense, the two, contain and restart, cannot be done together literally "at once." My half agreement with Trump comes with personal deficiencies. I am an idiot blogger and Trump is an idiot president and the scientists and medical professionals are not and they are arguing for tighter and prolonged social and economic activity restrictions to contain the virus first and the economy be damned.
It has seemed to me that a total clampdown on all non-essential social and economic intercourse for fourteen days must come first and is needed to contain the virus where it is; to, in that fortnight, test everyone who has the cardinal symptoms, fever and dry cough, and for positives, isolate them at home and all their cluster of contacts.
The standard for success has to be clear, otherwise the restrictions will continue or will be relaxed on insufficient data. The standard should be a flattening of the curve of new cases, no daily near exponential growth. If the latter obtains then the total lockdown has to continue until the incidence of virus flattens. If, which I think is extraordinarily unlikely (Tom Bossert predicted in "approximately 1 week" the U.S. would be the number one country hit by the virus in the world, surpassing the only two with a worse infestation, China and Italy), and The Surgeon General has said the number of cases and deaths are going to keep increasing, but if, against all evidence and learned scientific and medical expectations a flattening does occur then the restrictions should be lifted. Only then.
Trump's concern that he personally is prescribing an economic recession as a cure for a virus, is a concern that a president should have. I completely disagree with the New York Times writer yesterday whose rule one was that in medico-scientific matters such as this only medico-scientific experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci should be at the microphone. Not non compos mentis boobs. We are a Republic of non compos mentis boobs. We are not a technocracy. The New York Times writer’s ancestor Walter Lippmann argued that we should be a technocracy but he didn’t get enough votes. With the valuable assistance of the Russian Federation we elected this non compos mentis boob (albeit at a 3,000,000 vote deficit) and he should be the one at the microphone. To prove Lippmann right. It has never made sense to me that 372,000,000 people should suffer recession, economic dislocation, and job loss, that small and marginal businesses should shutter and may have to close permanently; that trillions of dollars must be lost from the stock market—in order to keep an infected cohort the size of Hackensack, New Jersey from having 1.27% of its people, 560 total, die of Trump virus. Makes. No. Sense. But that is what the health technocrats urge upon the boob.
The infected cohort is going to increase. Period there. If the infected population increases ten-fold to 439,630, 5,583 virus related deaths will result at the 1.27% mortality rate. We don't want that; we don't want 560 dead of the virus much less 5,583 dead, but we are going to get more than 560 no matter what we do and the question that Trump has to answer is what price 372,000,000 pay—and, be frank, his chances for reelection are on the line also, for 5,583 dead.
I am persuaded to a standard of more probable than not that if the most draconian cessation of social and economic life reasonably attainable were instituted for a brief, say two weeks additional, period that the virus would be stopped and the economy could restart. But the goal must be met: a flattening of the curve. If not, Trump, see ya, wouldn't want to be ya, and the rest of us are going to have to have a recession. But if the horse of public health is put before the cart of economic revival as it must if it is to be sane and as it must if it is to be efficacious, then I, Proud Idiot, foresee a quick as reasonably possible return to both health and prosperity. The only downside is some increased chance of Four More Years of government of the idiot, by the idiots, for the idiots.
%20President%20Herbert%20Hoover%20fishing%20in%20Miami.jpg)
HERBERT HOOVER! HERBERT HOOVER! HERBERT HOOVER!
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 582 points today, 3.04% off Friday's close.
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