About Those Numbers

I've said before that it seems Cult45 is kinda softening us up to believe the numbers of dead Americans due to COVID-19 are coming down &/or "aren't really as high as the Fake News wants you to believe".

Golly gee - guess what.

WaPo

The fast-spreading novel coronavirus is almost certainly killing Americans who are not included in the nation’s growing death toll, according to public health experts and government officials involved in the tally.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.

A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.

Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.

Some points:

1. We're not testing enough
2. 45* needs us not to know we're not testing enough
3. Because 45* needs us to believe it's all good, and it's all good because he's doing such a great job

To be clear, this cause-of-death discrepancy happens. A lot.

Death certificates for cancer patients almost never make it obvious that they died of cancer. There's always something like "organ failure due to sepsis", and even though there's also generally something along the lines of "...complications due to a diagnosis of hepatic cancer" or whatever, you have to look past the "actual cause of death" for the underlying condition.

So if you haven't diagnosed COVID-19 in that patient, because you haven't tested that patient for COVID-19 - before or after they died - then you get some statistical results that are less than fully credible.

And again - we don't know where the fuck we're going because we don't now where the fuck we are.

COVID-19 Update

Growth Rates

Cases:
1.08 - World
1.08 - USA

Dead:
1.08 - World
1.13 - USA

Growth Rates are holding pretty steady again, as the spread really begins to shift to Chicago and Detroit and New Orleans etc.

The most troubling thing I've heard lately is that DumFux News has floated the idea that deaths are being inflated in order to hurt 45*.

To me, this is not just another bullshit attempt to deflect and to blame "the evil media" (although there's undoubtedly an element of that in it).

Daddy State Awareness - rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession.

I can't help but conclude Cult45 will be doing everything they can think of to ramp up their normal routines of smearing and punishing people who try to speak the truth about this thing, and that their energies will be concentrated on painting pretty pictures of blue sky and wildflowers - attributing lots of COVID-19 deaths to other causes.

45* signaled as much in the last coupla days by not just saying we're testing the shit out of it, but going on to assert that more testing is spending money where we don't need to spend it.

This is, of course, bullshit.

The countries that are starting to come out from under this thing are the ones who've tested extensively. We've tested less than 1% of our population, which puts us at #44 on the list, and we're still trying to unclog the testing process to clear the backlog.

We have no fucking idea where we are - who has it; who's showing antibodies; who's "in the clear" - nothing. We know nothing yet.

But he wants us up and running again by the middle on May.

Bye, Felicia

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Andy Borowitz

(The Borowitz Report)

In what he described as a “potentially major breakthrough,” Dr. Anthony Fauci has convinced Donald Trump to attack COVID-19 as if it were an inspector general.

Fauci, who has been frustrated in his efforts to get through to Trump, compared the global pandemic to an inspector general while in a closed-door meeting with the President on Wednesday.

“What do you hate more than anything, Mr. President?” Fauci asked.

“Jim Acosta,” Trump immediately replied.

“O.K., fine. But, besides Jim Acosta,” Fauci said, “it would be an inspector general, right?”

“You’re right, Tony,” Trump agreed. “I hate those losers.”

“Well, think of COVID-19 as the worst inspector general in the world,” Fauci continued. “It’s overseeing everything you do and making you follow the law. It’s keeping you from spending taxpayer money on anything you want. You wouldn’t stand for that, would you?”

Reportedly, Trump appeared shaken by Fauci’s analogy. “Damn it, Tony, when you put it that way, we’ve got to do something about COVID-19,” he said.

Speaking to reporters, Fauci said that he was “cautiously optimistic” that his inspector-general analogy would finally spur Trump to action, but added, “Jared could still screw this up.”

Today's Reminders

Listen up, "Christian conservatives"

BTW - we're gettin' real tired of having to do your fuckin' work for you.

Data Is Beautiful

Why We Fight

I am not going to let myself slip into full Cult45-like behavior by advocating the wholesale slaughter of these Wall Street assholes.

Not now. Not yet. But don't think for one fuckin' second I can't be persuaded.

Go ahead and push me some more, motherfuckers.

Reuters:

Exclusive: Wall Street firm dangled up to 175% returns to investors using U.S. aid programs

A New York investment firm pitched wealthy investors in recent days on a way to make returns of 22% to 175% using U.S. government programs designed to help Americans keep their jobs and boost the coronavirus-stricken economy, according to a marketing document seen by Reuters.

Following questions posed by Reuters, Arcadia Investment Partners LLC, which has about $1 billion under management, said it had put its plans on hold.

The idea was in “formative stages” and the firm was not “presently moving forward with this strategy given reasons that include uncertainty surrounding the regulations,” Dahlia Loeb, managing director at Arcadia, told Reuters in an email on Wednesday. She did not elaborate further.

The firm had sent the pitch as recently as this weekend to “a limited number of sophisticated investors,” according to the marketing materials, which are dated April 4 and marked confidential. In an email sent Sunday, and seen by Reuters, Loeb wrote it was a “highly time sensitive opportunity” and had offered to discuss it with investors that day or early in the week.

Arcadia’s pitch offers a glimpse into how some private investors are looking to quickly take advantage of the unprecedented government intervention after the novel coronavirus brought economic activity to a screeching halt.

There are reasons 45* keeps going out of his way to get rid of all the oversight processes and all the Inspectors General.

Crooks need the cops to stick to the donut shops.

COVID-19 Update

Growth Rates

Cases:
1.03 - World
1.08 - USA

Dead:
1.08 - World
1.15 - USA

Optimism about flattening the curve, or slowing the acceleration (or whatever terminology applies) may be a little premature.

When I look back over the last several days, I can see that the date on which we can expect to hit 100,00 dead Americans is not receding very quickly - it is receding, but it's taking its own sweet time about it.

On April 3rd, the projected date for 100K dead was April 20th. 6 days later, today's calculation puts that date at April 23rd.

I don't know what that means - or even if it means anything.

Today's Tweet

Never-Trumper Rick Wilson, one of the pimpiest of the pimps, continues to get in some great shots.

Follow the thread.

1/ Watching all this slow, grinding failure and the mounting death toll because of this low, dumb, corrupt man and his low, dumb, corrupt enablers and his low, dumb, corrupt failspawn doesn't shock me, and I'm sorry for that.

Part of his chaotic method is to...

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 8, 2020

Burying The Hoax

Drone video from Hart Island NYC. Mass burials as the bodies have to be quarantined - and the funeral homes can't keep up anyway.

The bodies will eventually be exhumed and the families will dispose of the remains "as usual".