TrickstaPriest

She's entirely too good at what she does to be safely ignored, IMO. She's the best propagandist press secretary the administration has had.
 
Watch this carefully:
 
 

And I just had my first coronavirus nightmare. I received word that a family member had died and I had no0t been there for them. I hadn't even known. Nobody had told me.
 
It was so startling that I did not sleep again the rest of the night. I am having some health issues today and am seeing a practitioner this afternoon. But when I get there, I'm going to put a couple of emergency contacts on my file so that doesn't happen to me, because the thought of dying silent, alone, and friendless breaks my heart.

Sigma Xi's collection of COVID-19 information
 
Full disclosure: I'm a member of Sigma Xi.

This is the action of a small fringe of the Michigan populace -- polls show the majority support Whitmer's lockdown measures. But the current political climate is tolerating this kind of activity, and Donald Trump is actually fueling it with his "Liberate Michigan" tweets. Four years ago every level and branch of government would have condemned such expressed sentiments in the harshest terms, and the people running the websites encouraging such violence would have had their asses dragged into court for inciting hatred and armed insurrection.

I suppose I've passed a milestone -- my first Coronoavirus nightmare. I was awakened by a dream in which I found out a family member had passed from it, without my being there or even knowing they were sick. Which is entirely in the realm of possible events.
 
I did not get back to sleep, so if at some point today I mention fluorescent-orange four-winged penguins carrying four-inch-long dachshunds on their heads and playing the kazoo, you'll know why.

This is what I find scariest about the "well, rural areas can reopen" theory.  One case in a town of 3,200 can be spread to a significant portion of the population before the problem is identified.  Then we have a hundred or more cases, and local heath care is overwhelmed.  Serious cases need to be transported a significant distance for treatment.
 
In Canada, the northern Territories are doing pretty well, but mainly because they closed down all travel with heavy, mandatory quarantine for those who absolutely HAD to travel, very early on.

That's why I was referencing deaths -- infections have too many variables. Deaths caused by COVID-19 are (sadly) more straightforward. 

Dude.  Your project is cooler than mine   I need to do more fun stuff...
 
I somehow got enrolled in the Stanford Coursera class on machine learning.  Been putting 3 hrs a night into it, then will start a cert soon after I get that done.
 
I have a recently built server that was for my brother that I want to start crunching some detection on, so I'm back to searching for evil code on github XD

Dude.  Your project is cooler than mine   I need to do more fun stuff...
 
I somehow got enrolled in the Stanford Coursera class on machine learning.  Been putting 3 hrs a night into it, then will start a cert soon after I get that done.
 
I have a recently built server that was for my brother that I want to start crunching some detection on, so I'm back to searching for evil code on github XD

I’d take a cue from the CDC on that - you want to see it trending down for two weeks before -starting- to reopen

It's also not that clear the data's been flattened.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
 
Scroll down about halfway, below the state by state numbers, and you'll get to the graphs.  The last 3 weeks in particular...the graphs for daily new deaths show a consistent pattern.  Those particularly short bars?  Sunday.  (May 10, May 3, April 26, April 19...all MUCH shorter.)  Several of the Monday bars are also short.  I seriously doubt there's that much variability in the actual death rates...but it's quite possible there's distinctive delays in reporting.  So, the daily death rates are gonna be very noisy data.  You need to do some longer term work, like moving averages.  

The CDC has some week-aggregated numbers, but they acknowledge pretty significant lag in reporting.  Turns out that COVID deaths have to be coded manually and that takes, they say, an average of 7 days.  (I can believe it.  A nasty side effect of automation can be that when you are forced off the automated process, the manual one takes MUCH longer than it would have.)  THey're showing drops...but it remains to be seen whether they're real or not.
 
So...yeah.  250K deaths doesn't seem outlandish.

Quoting my own post...in a post-necro attempt.  Odd.

I see a lot of folks debating the validity of reporting out of various areas.  I haven't seen anyone postulating that deaths or cases are being over reported, more under-reported for various political reasons. Which got me to thinking about what we can determine from the numbers that we do have...and they're not good.

If we go with the reported deaths in the US (even if under-counted), look at the graph of deaths by day (that one that shows the exponential growth).  The area beneath the curve is the total number of deaths.  The exponential growth gave a very sharp rise.  While we've managed to flatten that curve, we haven't reached a plateau yet, much less a decline.  When we do start declining, it's not going to decline at an exponential -- it's going to go down a LOT slower than that initial rise (barring the development of some miracle cure). That dramatically increases the area under the curve before we reach the end of this...and that area is the total number of deaths that we're looking at.
 
Taking nothing else into account (under-reporting, new variations/complications/etc), if we continue to keep the curve flattened so that we can start to trend downwards (i.e. continue the social distancing and other restrictions), we're likely looking at over 250k in deaths before this is done.

My brother says he's never liked guns, or the sort of people who fetishize them. But he now admits he has a better idea of why a sane and responsible person would want to own one.
 
My mother still owns the little farmhouse where she grew up. She hopes to pass it to my sisters when she dies. My brother visits every couple weeks to do mow the grass and do other maintenance, though sometimes it's not possible for more than a month. The house's neighbors know him by now.
 
Last September, we got a letter from one of those neighbors asking, "Someone's living in your house. He acts strange. He says he inherited it. Is this true?"
 
No, it wasn't. We had a squatter: a felon who'd been in jail for several years on several charges, including drug abuse, with mental issues as well. Turns out the sheriff's department knew him well. They said they'd actually been out to the house before, at the neighbor's request, but the man -- I'll just use his initials, J. P. -- gave a story about inheriting the property, with names of our relatives, and no obvious criminal activity was taking place, so they left him. With our assurance that no, J. P. did not have our permission to live there, the deputies eventually caught him on the premises and arrested him.
 
When my brother drove out, he found that J. P. had tossed the house, stolen a bunch of stuff, and ripped up floorboards and part of the attic. Items stolen included the LPs and record player he brought there. Realizing there was only one place nearby those could be sold, he went to the local antique store and, yup, there were his records and a bunch more of the stolen items. J. P. had invited the store owner in to buy whatever he wanted. Fortunately, my brother also knew the owner for many years from buying used records, so we were able to get most of the items back.
 
But the shop owner was able to explain why J. P. was tearing up floorboards. He thought there was Klondike gold hidden somewhere iun the house!
 
Still, J. P. was under arrest, caught red-handed. Problem solved, right?
 
Wrong. A judge released him the next day. Over the next few months he returned to the house to fish in the cesspit with a magnet, dig up flowerbeds, steal the chunks of opalized petrified wood my sister used to mark the graves of her dead cats, move the cross and statue of St. Francis, hack at one of the chimneys, and otherwise intrude. At least he can't get in the house anymore -- my niece and nephew-in-law changed the locks and installed an alarm system.
 
Despite the overwhelming evidence of J. P.'s continued trespass, though, the cops say there's no point in arresting him again. He'll just be out the next day because the charges aren't serious enough. J. P. was arraigned, but God only knows when the trial will be held. At the time, the county D.A. said, J. P. was already awaiting trial for other charges from 2018.
 
It's really discouraging when cops tell you, "The system is broken."
 
My brother still makes his visits to tend the property, but he does not feel safe doing so. It's hard to feel safe when you know there's a deranged drug addict who thinks that your house is his house, and reportedly boasted that he's going to take over the neighborhood with his weapons and live there with his girlfriend. And any cops are a half hour away.
 
And that's why my brother says he understands why people own guns.
 
Dean Shomshak

Yeah, I'm somewhere between cautiously optimistic and I hope we don't all die.
 
So far with the places that have been open for two weeks or longer (Texas, Georgia, Florida) things are looking pretty good.  I think Georgia had their lowest hospitalization and respirator rates for the last couple months though in my head having 900 people on respirators seems like a f*cking nightmare.
 
Texas overall is doing good and the area I'm in (suburbia) is doing fantastic.  Let's hope it stays that way.
 
Today's outing, again purely anecdotally observed, shows that virtually everyone has given up on masks.  They are vanishing quick.  I saw one person that wasn't me wearing a mask at the store.  Yikes!

Low traffic is good.
 
The real problem with tracking a pandemic is twofold - exponential growth is dangerous, because even during direct observation it will begin to tick up dramatically.  The problem with a pandemic (especially this one) is, as has been stated, the spread ability will happen almost two weeks before you'd see major indicators (such as hospitalization or death).  The doubling rate is estimated to be about 5 days (it was 3 for NYC). 
 
So in two weeks you'll be three doublings behind while watching major indicators, with the knowledge you are observing something for signs of exponential/explosive growth.

There may be more high-quality doctors, hospitals, labs, etc. in a single German major city than in practically all of Brazil.  And hey, look at the backlogs that've been reported *here*.  
 
2 countries have been particularly highlighted as disasters waiting to happen, due to large populations and very poor medical infrastructure:  India and Brazil.
 
It could well be that you're right, mind.  WaPo suggests this is a radical right-wing *militarist* whackjob they've got.  The truth may well be at the intersection...the reporting is completely accurate, BUT this guy is *still* throwing up roadblock after roadblock.  Imagine if Trump had fired Fauci and Birx, and continued the whole "it's no worse than the flu" line even now.  Tests????   If they're never executed then no one has it right?
 
Ohhh...lemme quote one point, from dw.com, a German international broadcasting company:
 
And this with a country with a poor, city-concentrated healthcare system but a fairly spread-out population.  So I suspect the truth is very much the combination of factors.
 
Not gonna be pretty down there at all.  

I'm a liberal gun owner (yes, we exist) but I don't really like to associate with other gun owners because of this stuff. I don't understand why enjoying some dangerous toys has to come bundled with . . . all those problematic political views.

I guess it depends on if you see them as primarily guns rights advocates or  [insert fringe group or militia du jour here], with guns rights going along with some other primary agenda like white nationalism masquerading as originalism.  I think it's more of the latter, personally. The guns rights crowd has its fair share of goobers, but I don't think that's the primary focus of the groups mentioned in the article.

Yes.  And in some places that did shut down, the death rate per day is still higher than any event in the last century.
 
edit:  I don't disagree with the purpose of the point, that there are a lot of rural places that probably will stay very low.
 
 
"The population density in South Dakota is 11.3 people per square mile (52nd out of 56)."
 
"Texas has just 105.2 people per square mile and those figures are merely the 26th highest in the US."
 
Because of exponential growth rate, the difference in infected is going to result in cases much higher than merely x10 the existing rate in South Dakota.  There is a tipping point in terms of population density, but I can't speak to what that is.
 
That's an argument for opening Texas, especially the rural parts of it.  But don't use bad data to argue for it (2.7 death rate out of 100,000).  That's disengenuous, and I'm calling it out for your sake.  I don't want you or others spreading bad reasoning, even if it's quippy and quotable.
 
The same goes for the tired parachute analogy.  It's the assumption that there's a single totalular approach, when the workability of that was long behind us.
 
 
Homicide and accidents don't increase exponentially with availability/effect.  Please, stop using that as part of your argument as well.  Disease is one of the only problems that does.  We can argue that civilization breakdown/displacement could be another.
 
 
I'm interested in how this 100 million starving will relate to the US.  There are specific locations that are probably in danger of starving, and this is a good argument for reorganizing and making sure areas responsible for food production stay open.
 
 
I'm literally arguing with you for the sake of you spreading good arguments for what you want. 
 
I literally despise the memes being used in this argument, comparing disease to accidents and giving wholly bad numbers for your argument.  (edit2: to be clear, to my perspective these memes are simply being spread to you and then beyond you)
 
edit:  And I wanted to apologize for starting this as an argument to begin with.  I tried to be more polite and general in my response.

well, they did get visitation, split into 3 parts  (immediate family,  the niece's sisters-2, and my mother and her remaining sisters-effectively likely my mother only, since her 2 remaining sisters, one lives hundreds of miles away, and the other is 90, and in later stages of dementia.  I forget the 3rd part, I think husband's extended family).  Husband did apologize to my mother, that I couldn't visit.  But, I don't do funeral home visitations.  
 
I think they are having a graveside service for the immediate family  (husband, 2 grandchildren, 2 sisters, son).  I guess, for me, I want have to worry about being a pallbearer and dropping the casket (yeah, always my weird fear).   But, I would have preferred to have had the chance, out of family loyalty.

well, I am not mask-fearing.  I just require oxygen.  😁
 
I've kind of gotten used to the cloth mask, for stretches of time.  Though, if I were to have the need for  any real physical exertion of any type, the thing might be too thick.