What an interesting standard the “experts” are setting up. If the numbers go up after Thanksgiving, then it is evidence of the irresponsibility of Americans and we need to lock down for Christmas. If the numbers don’t go up, then it’s evidence of poor testing not revealing that the numbers actually did go up and we need to lock down for Christmas.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — The coronavirus testing numbers that have guided much of the nation’s response to the pandemic are likely to be erratic over the next week or so, experts said Friday, as fewer people get tested during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and testing sites observe shorter hours.
The result could be potential dips in reported infections that offer the illusion that the spread of the virus is easing when, in fact, the numbers say little about where the nation stands in fighting COVID-19. The number of Americans who have tested positive passed 13 million Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“I just hope that people don’t misinterpret the numbers and think that there wasn’t a major surge as a result of Thanksgiving, and then end up making Christmas and Hanukkah and other travel plans,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a professor at George Washington University and an emergency physician.
As for me, I don’t think the government has the legitimate power to restrict me from engaging in legal behavior with other people of our own free will. I will continue to take reasonable precautions and go about living my life. And I will vote against all of the would-be tyrants.
The totalitarian state will be sent reeling when Trump is affirmed by the E.C. It will be a psychological blow (pie-kolgbueirty in Biden) from which it may not recover.
These experts have taken notes from the Climate Change experts.
For example:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ny-gym-owner-rips-15000-lockdown-fine-live-tv-we-will-not-comply
NY State gym owner held a meeting of 50 small-biz owners in his gym. “Health police” showed up, he told them to GFY and GFO. They mailed a ticket, he ripped it up on FoxNews….live.
A Toronto restaurant owner was arrested for opening his place, collected $30K on GoFundMe inside of 2 days.
Holes in the dyke.
I think Jason is on to something.
I am starting to think that the left’s response to this is related to the hoax of climate change.
No travel.
Minimal cooking.
No gatherings.
Scaring people needlessly.
Making things up as they go along.
Forcing people to be compliant.
It just shows that liberals like to control people and treat them like children or worse.
Liberalism is a mental illness.
Absolutely correct!
However, liberals see it as opportunity to flaunt political power.
@daddio:
And in other small towns: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/havens-garden-defies-shutdown-order.php
Yup. In France, there are demonstrations in 70++ towns over the Gummint’s closing churches. Three weeks in a row, and growing.
In the county I live in, we basically said screw you to the politicians who ordered mask mandates and lockdowns. The sheriff refused to enforce the orders and the local police pretty much ignored it.
We also started to recall politicians.
And we ignored the mask orders, if we wanted to, and if you wore a mask, great.
And our number of deaths have gone down or at a minimum, stabilized. And our hospitals are doing just fine.
This is what conservatism looks like.
Interesting official numbers from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner:
https://mobile.twitter.com/mkemedexamine/status/1330948226590117888
Only 2.5% of all Chinese virus deaths in Milwaukee County had no underlying conditions.
The state will keep everybody locked up until May Day.
Certain groups will be locked up for far longer.
Perhaps you’ve all heard/read about John Hopkins pulling down within hours of it being published their News Letter on it’s site which reported finding no “excessive deaths” due to CCPvirus., yes?
Don’t try to Google it; you will find no mention of the report or of JH pulling it there. OTOH, type “john hopkins pulls death report” into DuckDuckGo and you’ll see pages of links.
For the original newsletter, you have to go to the Wayback Machine
A VERY interesting read. It’s the reverse of infamous “Hide The Decline” tactic used by e-wackos.
Yah….mentioned it in a blogpost mid-last week. But a reliable statistician (who does health stats) downplayed it. See: https://wmbriggs.com/post/33680/
He’s working on election stats, too.
@daddio. I have heard/read arguments like those of Mr. Briggs before, and the one issue I always find sticky is this:
“Two important words of caution. CDC and everybody else counts deaths “involving” coronadoom as fast as possible, but ordinary deaths can take weeks before they’re fully tallied. ”
First part is true, no doubt because it’s the big news, if it bleeds it leads, and all that. Second part is, I suggest, not true.
Short version:
The CCPvirus guy has to tic-tak at his keyboard until midnight. The Cancer guy goes home at 3:30.
Long version:
Said data is tallied on a daily basis. Its the dang law: you gotta notify/report. What doesn’t happen on a daily (or weekly) basis is pretty dissemination of that data because, ho hum, it’s just another bunch of heart attacks.
Consider that if the death stats from, say, Mequon, takes two/three weeks from today to get up into the national databases, Mequon’s stats from two/three weeks ago are being added in today. (Well, tomorrow. Even CCPvirus stats lag over weekends.) So, reasonable and logical comparisons can be made. It may not be real time, but it’s not like data collection of the non-CCPv stuff just stops for weeks at a time.
My second beef, specifically with Mr. Briggs, is this comment:
“For starters, stacked bar charts are a mortal sin. She uses one to show the number of attributed coronadoom deaths by age ”
Ok, so he doesn’t like stacked bars. Got it. But he is flat wrong, ridiculously so, about the purpose of Briand’s bar chart in the JHopkins article.
I mean, it’s there, in a big label, right in the middle of the chart: “Percentages of total deaths per age”. Not “coronadoom deaths by age“, TOTAL deaths by age. Briand’s point was to show that total death percentages by age have not changed since Pre-CCPv, and questioned the notion that geezers are dying at extreme rats.
Mr.Briggs then goes on to waste time creating a beautiful new chart, which he deems “more informative than the stacked bar chart“, but which has nothing to with Briand’s. Indeed, he states his new chart shows, “As we knew for months, those at the most risk [for death] are the oldest—and sickest.”. Briand’s point was that is true, _regardless_ of CCPv.
Sorry, but at that point I changed the channel.
Thanks.
Good to see this blog and its combox is back to being informative. Note the absence of LeeeeeeeeeeeeeeRoy and Jiffster (who is likely jiggering computer programs for Dominion these days.)
MjM & Dad29, thanks for the links. I have seen comparisons similar to Briand’s before, but mainly from links that many would consider suspect. Johns Hopkins using CDC information? I would hope that would pass muster for most people as a reputable source.
MjM, I do agree with you on your Briggs analysis, I saw the discrepancies, but not as well as you. In one small defense of his article I would like to point out that his final conclusion was the same as Briand’s if you boil it down:
That pretty much means there is no major death toll increase across all deaths due to COVID, doesn’t it? He just says it in a way that may not get censored, though I am not really sure why not. Panic is exactly what the medical field and the Gummint controlled media have been trying to cause for over half a year.
So less testing “creates less cases” and gives the illusion that the spread of the virus is easing.
If that is so, then it sounds like Trump was not so far off base in July. More testing “creates more cases.” (and gives the illusion that the spread of the disease is not easing.)
Trump said Covid-19 testing ‘creates more cases.’ We did the math – STAT (statnews.com)
Remember in the 3rd presidential debate when moderator Kristen Welker decided to fact check President Trump when Trump said the vaccine was only weeks away and she claimed it wasn’t.
Well,another liberal was wrong.
A lot of that going around.
@ Tuerquas: The problem is stated as title of this blog post. You just cannot trust the numbers being offered by anyone.
It was not my intention to portray Ms. Briand as the de facto word on CCPv death numbers. No one can be because the “base” numbers are so F’d up. (I was more fascinated by her finding consistent non-CCPv death cycles, and how they changed in 2020, and how JH yanked down so quickly an anti-narrative article)
Ms. Briand relied on the CDC for death stats. That means her results are skewed by the simple fact that the CDC admits all deaths reported to be related to CCPv are, “1Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1.”
“Presumed”?!? What the hell is that? How many of the total are “presumed”? Many? Most? One? How does any “scientist” or “doctor” even accept and put up with that asininity?
Yet those are they type of F’d up obfuscated numbers you hear every day spouted as God’s truth, and being used to kill off a lot more than old geezers.