I’m really disappointed in the homeopathy crowd. I’m not seeing corona remedies touted.
Isn’t homeopathy just molecules practicing social distancing?
You do not get this sort of high-quality comment elsewhere.
Noice!
The couple of cases of quack remedies that I have heard about got smacked down pretty quickly.
Those people were no Einstei–oh, wait…
South Dakota is an interesting case because of 1685 positive cases, 1405 are in just one county. Minnehaha county, where Sioux Falls is and it looks like much is connected to a meatpacking plant there. LINK
The governor ordered the plant closed. It happens to be one of the biggest employers in the city.
Indian reservations take up alot of land in the state and they have put up their own border restrictions.
Well this is scary…
I hope I can access the internet in hea…err…hell.
So that’s scary, in that there are tons of people out there in the wild, breathing all over everything. But isn’t it also somewhat reassuring that so many people may have gotten the disease with no or few symptoms? Am I thinking about that correctly?
On the other hand, I find the people dropping dead on the subway platform story that **Paul in Qatar **posted to be like something from a horror movie.
Thats a good point. After reading the above linked article I came across a study pointing to different strains of coronavirus and that the NYC strain was more deadly than the West Coast strain.
This is a very somber fact. Especially since many of the most seriously ill who do recover will suffer life-long damage to lungs (or other organs including liver or heart).
What is the comparable figure when ventilators are used in the treatment of other ailments? (I’m not blaming the ventilators, just trying to grasp the level of desperation to use ventilators at all.)
So, according to Worldometer, New York has now passed 1000 deaths per million residents, which is of course 1 death per 1000 residents. Not per 1000 people in New York City, not per known suspected or selected Covid-19 cases: everybody.
If I’m understanding the math correctly, that means .1% of the population of the State of New York has died from the Coronavirus in the past six weeks, and New Jersey’s stat is nearly half of that. That is truly shocking. If I’m missing something, please correct me, but wow.
Today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] Various cities and states are planning to gradually ease the lockdown rules for nursing homes. As a first step, relatives will be allowed to visit residents in special rooms partitioned by a plexiglass screen.[/li]
[li] The country’s Constitutional Court has before it 20 cases involving coronavirus-related measures. The Court is fast-tracking these cases, though it’s still unlikely that any of them will be heard before June.[/li]
[li] There are over 871,000 employees on furlough, with the government’s financial aid package mandating a lot of paperwork for their employers. Payroll processors and tax advisors report that they are overwhelmed with work. I have a somewhat complicated income tax situation myself (due to an international move last year and special Austrian tax rules for incoming scientists) and so had enlisted two tax advisors, one in Germany and one in Austria, to handle my returns for 2019. They were supposed to have begun work in mid-March, but both of them have put my assignment on hold indefinitely as they frantically work to help their other clients with financial aid issues.[/li]
[li] Reporters Without Borders has just dowgraded Austria two ranks on its 2020 Press Freedom Index, from 16th to 18th place. Some newspapers here are implying that this is a result of the government’s pandemic control measures, though this probably isn’t the case—the 2020 Index is supposed to reflect the situation in 2019, and most or all of the data it is based on was probably gathered before the pandemic took hold in Europe. It will be interesting to see what the rankings look like next year.[/li]
[li] Tomorrow Parliament’s lower chamber will decide upon a legal definition of coronavirus risk groups (i.e., what age groups and what pre-existing health conditions qualify someone as being particularly at risk). This definition can then be referenced by other laws and regulations for the purposes of determining financial aid, legal protections, etc.[/li]
[li] The federal and state governments are stepping up their support for psychological help, with new and better-funded hotlines offering free professional psychotherapy and similar services.[/li]
[li] With all the brouhaha over discussions to open up Austria’s border to German tourists, the EU Ministry of Tourism has stepped in calling for a coordinated, EU-wide plan for cross-border tourism.[/li]
[li] Current statistics: 14,810 confirmed infections, 491 deaths, 10,971 recovered. At least one state (Salzburg) has recorded no new infections in the last two days.[/li][/ul]
Nope, you got it.
The US as a whole is up to 44,752 deaths as I post this. In comparison, in 2019…
36,560 Americans died in automobile accidents
34,200 died of the flu
Only 13,468 to go before we match the number of Americans dead in the entire Vietnam conflict!
We’ve already blown past the Korean conflict total of around 40,000.
At this rate we’ll have around 350,000 dead of covid-19 within a year, that is, by the end of next February. Maybe a bit more, say 400,000. The only causes of death in 2019 that exceed that number were heart disease (around 647,000) and cancer (around 600,000). A death toll from covid-19 that high would outrank the other 8 of the top 10 leading causes of death: accidents, COPD, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, flu & pneumonia (combined), kidney disease, and suicide. In fact, it would be about the same as suicide, kidney disease, flu, pneumonia, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s combined. We’re currently on track (if I’ve done my math right) for covid-19, a disease that didn’t even exist before the end of last year, to be the cause of 13% of deaths in the US in 2020.
That’s assuming the death rate doesn’t increase from this day going forward… which if certain people keep insisting on congregating in large groups and playing pass-the-virus is not going to be the case.
More deaths, no benefit from malaria drug in VA virus study
Here is a direct link to the study.
The article notes:
Governor Lee says Tennessee will open up by April 30th.
God help us, it’s too soon.
Up to 45,172 as I type this. At the end of March, the (revised) total was just over 5000.
So >40,000 people have died of COVID-19 just this month. And it’s still only the 21st of the month.
So the coronavirus has killed the equivalent of a year’s worth of motor vehicle deaths, or the number of Korean War deaths, in less than three weeks.
Just a bad flu season. 
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus this winter will likely be worse
Director Redfield surely hope that this kind of warning will mobilize actions needed to prevent the warning (which isn’t quite as clear-cut as the headline makes out) from coming true.
But I’m not seeing much of what is needed to turn the U.S. onto the path of South Korea or Taiwan, where health is maintained without shutting down the economy
– Little to none of the massive increase in U.S. government spending is targeted at ramping up a virus testing industry
– No push to hire the army of contact tracers that would be needed to track down and quarantine those people in contact with anyone who tests positive
– Little in the way of free hotel accommodations needed to prevent the quarantined from infecting their family
– The public debate, with its focus on how long to lock down, barely acknowledges the safe alternative
– Americans may value privacy and eqality of treatment to much to accept strategies that single out a small percentage of the population for great inconvenience for the greater good
Robert Redfield is an asshole and a fucking idiot. From the link (bolding mine):
It’s not over, fuckface. It’s NOT OVER. We’re still right in the middle of it! This push to pretend that this is over is really pissing me off.
Aye; they prolly do BECAUSE IT ISN’T OVER YET.