Georgia's Covid death rate declines

Here's an explanation you're unlikely to get from the hand-wringing set on CNN or NBC or FOX or even WSB.  The news readers don't understand the news.  All numbers are from the Georgia Department of Public Health's website.

First, even though case numbers are bullshit for many reasons, let's set that aside and look at case numbers graphically over time:

 

Looks pretty scary where it begins to tail upwards in early June, doesn't it?

 

Okay, then let's graph Georgia's deaths over that same time period and see how those look:

We see the same trend near the end, with gross numbers rising after a long flat period earlier in the year, then a dip in June before climbing a lot near the end of July.

If you've seen any analysis at all on your TV news, that's about all you're getting - a simplistic trend analysis with an emphasis on the numbers at the end going up.  So we can say that both case numbers and deaths are up in Georgia, right?  Fair enough, but that's not the whole story.

What's the actual RATE of deaths?  Has anyone mentioned that lately?  Probably not, because it's going down, going down dramatically.  The simplest way to calculate that rate is the obvious one: divide the daily deaths reported by the daily case numbers.  That'll give you a daily death rate.  That graph looks like this:

 

Well, bless your heart!  The death rate is going down to nothing.  Why?  Because while deaths are indeed up, the case numbers are up a heck of a lot more.  The percentage of people dying from Covid in Georgia is a very, very small fraction of the number of people who get it. 

But deaths lag cases, right?  That is, people who die on March 10th aren't the same as the people who are reported sick on March 10th.  They're more likely to be part of the group reported in the case numbers back on March 1st.  So let's offset the deaths and cases by ten days to assume a lag time between the case report and the subsequent death.  That graph looks like this:

 

 

The actual percentages are different and probably more realistic, but the trend is the same - down, down, down.  

You aren't seeing this reported because it doesn't work to scare you, but it's the truth, because...math.

https://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Cancer-Mountain-Drew-Boswell/dp/1798482118/

The Biden Mask

 I've come to very much enjoy wearing my Covid mask when I go out grocery shopping or running into the bank for a little personal business.  I like it not for any real or imagined efficacy in reducing viral spread.  Rather, I like the delicious feeling of anonymity it conveys. My inner policy wonk is pleased to note that privacy advocates are reporting that Covid masks render nearly useless the facial recognition software algorithms sneaking glances at us in public spaces.  Like a Shakespearean character at a masked ball, I can operate in public with little fear of discovery. Only when I remove my mask am I revealed as who I really am.

Progressive Democrats like their masks too.  They are especially fond of their Joe Biden mask.  Biden is not a candidate for president so much as he is a mask the progressives in the party are wearing until after the election, when he will be discarded.  

People who consider themselves moderate Democrats or possibly Independents look at the Biden mask and convince themselves it's the real man.  Good old avuncular Uncle Joe will move into the White House and tone down mean Mr. Trump's rhetoric.  Biden's a known quantity, been around the block a time or two, and has given most of his adult life to public service.  Sure, he might be a little threadbare, but he's an affable guy who smiles a lot.

Only he's not, not really.  Behind the Biden mask hide the progressives, and not all that effectively if you're paying attention.  In early August  Bernie Sanders said "As progressives, we will do everything we can to make the Biden administration the most progressive administration that it can become."  Back in July he proclaimed that the Biden mask would be "the most progressive president since FDR." MoveOn.org, hardly a centrist group, is emailing and texting its members urging them to vote for the Biden mask.  The Black Lives Matter corporation, in between riots, has added a donation button to their website at blacklivesmatter.com.  Contributions there go, not to BLM, but to ActBlue, a group whose political contributions this year go to, guess who?  Democrats running for president, including Uncle Joe.

The biggest difference between my Covid face covering and the Joe Biden mask is that when I'm wearing a mask it's obvious that I'm doing so.  You can look at me and know something is hidden.  It's a bit tougher to make that distinction with the Biden mask, but when you look at it, know this: the progressive face hiding underneath seethes in discontent, waiting only for November's election to fully reveal itself.

Vote for whoever you want to, but understand the difference between the mask and the movement that hides behind it.

Comments section from Marginal Revolution blog

Sometimes I read something that's just so good, so perfect, so right, that nothing needs to be added to it.  Nonetheless, I'll add this introduction to encourage you to read it.  The author is anonymous, else I'd give credit.  Link to the original article is below.

Cross-posted from marginalrevolution.com

We have another globe spanning epidemic that we tried to contain through behavior modification. It is called HIV.

HIV has the advantages for us that it spreads only through frank fluid exchange (largely sex and IV access), has immaculate antibody testing that has a very narrow window of false positives (and has had such immaculate testing for decades), and was heavily concentrated in identifiable populations (e.g. MSM, prostitutes, IVDU).

In order to stop the spread of HIV, we had one exceedingly simple social change: Not have sex outside of committed, long term monogamous relationship. We could work, recreate, travel and all the rest to our hearts' content as long as we limited our sexual adventures to one person. But if that was too onerous we could adopt serial monogamy with sufficient time between partners to use antibody testing. Failing that we could dramatically lessen the spread by consistently using condoms or other barriers.

At present HIV has killed 507,351 Americans to date according to Google.

Why on earth would we expect the sorts methods to control the spread of HIV would somehow be successful in the more trying circumstance of Covid?

If you cannot expect Americans to embrace even serial monogamy with regular testing, why exactly would we expect social distancing to work? If you cannot close down even the bathhouses to prevent pandemic spread, why would we expect people to give up bars, parties, and family gatherings?

And masks? Well about 33 million some Americans used condoms last year according to survey data. Even if we assume that all the elderly, children, married couples, folks on PrEP, and long term cohabiters both use no condoms and do not need to, we are still looking at around 50 million Americans courting some level of HIV risk by eschewing condoms. And lest we forget about 14% of condom users cannot even manage to prevent pregnancy because they are using them ineffectively. We expect the population to adopt effective mask quickly why?

Add onto this the fact that we have politicized this, used all the forms of coercion and hectoring that delegitimated HIV prevention decades ago, and prefer to spend our time calling out fault and blame … I am just not seeing how this works long haul.

I can certainly see buying time for a vaccine or better treatments.

But our failure to stop HIV transmission (particularly at a global level) bespeaks poor odds for Covid. Certainly the measures suggested thus far have every reason for us to believe they will eventually fail.

**and note I do recommend masks, social distancing, and the rest as the best way to reduce risk of catching Covid. I am less certain on lockdowns being effective and certainly haphazard lockdowns like virtually all I work with seem to be close to useless. But the long run is either a vaccine or herd immunity at this point.

Comment written by username "sure" can be found in the comments section here:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/08/the-hawaii-bastion-has-fallen.html