PhineasC

I think there will be way more of them, and more than half of COVID deaths (far more in some places) are very old, very sick people who would likely die within six months. The economic impact deaths will be much stronger amongst young people here, and especially in the developing world.

What if we took the flu season and just compressed it into a couple of months? That change your analysis at all?

Wow 30k people caught COVID-19 today. Imagine that.

Crazy that humans created both of these disasters.

I don’t get hung up on individual stories when looking at these stats. It’s not relevant.

From what I saw, the problems with COVID really explode at BMIs 40+. I think some people need to see deaths for certain groups at zero for them to agree the risk is low. There will always be healthy people who die suddenly from diseases with seemingly no explanation. If you are between 0-20 years of age, the risk of serious illness from COVID-19 is vanishingly low. I'm sure someone will now find a story of a healthy 18 year old dying from the disease.

It has moved into a higher spot after hitting the US. But there is still an overwhelming signal for age. 300 lbs and 75 is still way deadlier than 300 lbs and 25.

Yes, no parades, concerts, packed movie theaters, etc.

Many people are going to die in the coming years due to the economic toll of the shutdowns. Many others will drop into poverty and food scarcity situations.

But for COVID it has outsized importance. COVID targets those 70+ with underlying diseases and would cause great fear of catching the disease in that cohort (for good reason). This group is also much more likely to need to go to the hospital for heart attacks and strokes. I can definitely see there could be an effect here. Sure, there is always the 40 year old lean marathoner who drops dead from a heart attack while sipping his morning coffee one Sunday. But that's an outlier.

Not getting treatment. If anything, the last 45 days have been more stressful for those over 65 than less. I get the argument we are more sedentary, but this unprecedented global lockdown has to be causing more stress and anxiety that outweighs that.

You must not know many old timers. They usually don't want to go to the hospital in the best of times. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming sometimes.

I think it is telling that ER admits for things like stroke and heart failure are way down. These ailments did not suddenly go away. There is a very strong fear response keeping people away from the ER that makes hospital overrun less likely. Was this generated by the government or the media is the question. Either way, people need to stop looking at Lombardy. Turns out they have this crisis every year around this time due to flu we just never paid attention to it before. The flu death numbers in Lombardy are crazy high every year for their population size.

I haven't pumped gas in at least 40 days.

Probably more testing or adding older deaths.

Does the notion that the states could be very bad at accurately tallying these numbers play into this at all? There are numerous ways these numbers could be pretty inaccurate. The weekend thing is evidence of that. COVID doesn't kill less often on Saturdays.

If you dig into excess mortality analyses you very clearly find that COVID basically takes someone that had a very high risk of dying within 6 months and just kills them right away.

Here is an example (excuse the simplistic crude numbers) Daily deaths 100 120 130 140 145 147 Rate of change in daily deaths 20 10 10 5 2 Rate of change of the rate of change 10 0 -5 -3 Yes, total deaths are still climbing, but the overall rate is headed downwards. When you are dealing with big numbers this view helps understand the overall trend. If you take an extra 20 older deaths and toss them into the 147 figure, it screws up this analysis completely and makes it appear the death rate is skyrocketing again (now you are plus 17 that last day). Hope this helps some understand my point. I have seen Cuomo make this error on live TV several times.

If I go into the hospital with COVID and chest pains and die, did I die of a heart attack or "COVID-19 complications"? It's a real dilemma for health stats.

Some people can't handle having their prevailing narrative challenged even a little. It shows me you don't really have much faith in your own stance on this, so you'd rather just run away.

If they take deaths from the beginning of April and add them to the count from today, how is that a "correct interpretation" or "properly accounted for"? It makes it impossible to accurately determine the rate of change of the rate of change which is basically the only value from death counts, if there is one.

The focus people have on the stock market itself or mocking those who care about the stock market has caused them to ignore the millions of average Americans who will end up far poorer and vulnerable due to this lockdown. But yeah, 401k and all that.

There are some very odd things happening in NYC ERs with classification of patients. It looks like they are over-counting COVID hospitalizations. Basically, out of an abundance of caution or simply ease of processing, they assume most people who show up to the ER have COVID no matter what. Then maybe they fix the numbers if there is a test done and it comes back negative. The hospitalization numbers Cuomo had were always really suspect. Oh, and if you look at the stats in a vacuum, COVID-19 apparently is a cure for heart attack and stroke! Those numbers are way down.

European schools looking to reopen soon as it becomes clearer kids have low viral loads and are not "super-spreaders." They are also almost functionally immune to serious infections with this disease, the opposite of the flu. Still think the timing is such that we stay closed here.

I used the term "death stats" for a reason. You are free and clear to continue melting down over every daily update even if the numbers are totally gummed up now. Maybe stay home instead of heading out for booze, however...