300,000 Dead from COVID-19
Another grim milestone
My home state of Virginia is set to join many other states and countries in beginning the re-opening process tomorrow, although the DC exurbs of Northern Virginia, where I live, are delayed another two weeks.
While re-opening at some point is necessary and inevitable, the death toll continues to hit hard.
We’ve passed 300,000 deaths worldwide:
The 100,000 milestone, the last I posted, was April 10–barely a month ago.
The United States is faring the worst, of course, with large numbers added to the toll on a daily basis. We’re over 86,000 now:
The last US milestone I posted was when the death toll exceeded that of the Vietnam War. That was just over two weeks ago, on April 28. We’ve lost almost a Korean War’s worth in that time.
So much winning.
It was speculated the other day that US deaths could exceed those of the North during the Civil War ~350,000, that doesn’t seem unreasonable with the reopening of the country being treated as the virus has been vanquished in many places.
Shall we go for another 100,000 deaths in June?
@Sleeping Dog:
Remember, if the death toll is any lower than 2.4 million, Trump will brag about all the lives he saved.
@CSK:
Even if the death toll reaches 2.4 million, he’ll still brag about all the lives he saved. He’ll brag about it even if it’s 10 million. He’ll brag about it if it’s 100 million. There is literally nothing, nothing at all that would stop him from claiming he’s doing an awesome job. The facts are absolutely irrelevant, he’ll just continue to raise the bar for what constitutes a “job well done” indefinitely. It doesn’t matter how often he does it, or how he’s constantly contradicting what he said 5 minutes earlier, or how absurd it sounds to anyone with an IQ above single digits. He’ll just continue saying it ad infinitum. Because he doesn’t have the faintest idea how to do anything else, and to him the idea of admitting for a second that he’s got anything short of godlike perfection in everything would be like asking him to stop breathing. He isn’t deluded. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions about him. He knows just as well as you and I that he’s a piece of human garbage, and that there’s nothing he can do to change that. So he just does what he’s done his entire life: try to erase that reality in the minds of others by simply declaring he’s the greatest at everything, over and over and over again, like a Jedi mind trick on the entire world. And it does indeed have a strong influence on the weak-minded.
I don’t want to depress you more but I have been looking at things a little different. I use worldometers.com for my data. They break down numbers of cases into recovered, deaths and ongoing. Today the US has 309,000 recovered and 86,000 deaths. Add them together and divide to get percentage of deaths. 21.5%. Now multiply 1 million active cases by 21.5% equals 215,000 + 86000 equals 300,000 deaths once all current cases have resolved.
Obviously the daily new cases have to be multiplied in to give a final figure and see if I am right.
As I’ve said (ad nauseam) the national Republicans have essentially become the Party of Mississippi. What are they doing in response to the greatest immediate crisis in two generations? Retroactively impeaching Obama.
What really worries me is thinking about how Mississippi has been governed for the past two centuries and what that means for the next steps of these Mississippi-ish Republicans. In the Trump states, government leaders are chosen for their ability to keep the poors down and to protect the rich. Not only are they not chosen for any ability to advance the public good, but that would actually be considered a negative, since if the poors get comfortable they may start to question their betters. And what has been the centuries long go-to in Mississippi when the powerful have allowed things to degenerate into an unmitigated disaster? Why select some scapegoats, gin up a mob, and go out and lynch some blacks or Catholics, Jews or Indians.
Here we have the racist Republican Party ginning up the AK47 crowd to go after Chinese, Doctors and Democrats, not necessarily in that order.
@Kylopod:
Actually, you’re right. Even if the U.S. loses 50% of its population, Trump will stand amid the metaphorically smoking ruins of the country alternately boasting about what a great job he did and whining that no one’s giving him credit for having done a great job.
Trump knows no past and no future. He lives in a continuing present, in which only what he says and does in the moment matters or counts, even if it contradicts what he said or did five minutes ago.
So, if we say that Deaths + Recoveries = Resolutions and we then calculate the fatal resolution rate as Deaths/Resolutions, we get about 15% worldwide and 25% nationally.
Yikes!
The unresolved cases are then (Cases – Deaths – Recoveries) , comes to 2.5 million worldwide, and about a million for the US. So the US has about 40 percent of the unresolved cases in the world now. And we want some more because we’re all “bring it! It’s not that bad!”
More Yikes!
Now, I’m sure an epidemiologist can tell me why what I’ve just done isn’t the right way to count things, and I would surely like that feedback, since these number scare the (scatalogical reference) out of me.
Anyway, I really, really, REALLY, hope we are undercounting cases. I hope we are missing a lot of them.
Nice neat number. I wonder if you will track the deaths due to the lockdowns so closely. The suicides, late or non-treatment for cancers, heat attacks? Or the already seen expansion of diseases that were near eradicated around the world? The deaths due to the increase in those in starvation (>$5 a day).
@CSK:
Kind of like a toddler…
@JKB: I’d be willing to count them if you are able to provide documentation. You know, instead of just irresponsibly spreading rumors.
There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Go ahead, it’s your neck, I mean lungs!” But it isn’t just you, many will become superspreaders of this highly, highly contagious disease.
I have relatives that live in some of the Covid-skeptical places in the US. I don’t want to go to their funerals.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Well, yes. Exactly like a toddler. And he’s a toddler who holds the nuclear launch codes.
@JKB: I think these are real concerns. However, when brought up like this it sounds more like an article of faith than anything else. It is a way to counter the empirical fact of Covid-19 deaths. Because you and your fellow travelers don’t want to deal with the obvious difficulties of the pandemic and want to simply open up and stop worrying about it, and so you conjure what you claim, without foundation,is an equal and opposite death toll sans actual data.
@CSK: Is is happy hour yet?
@Steven L. Taylor:
It is where I am. It’s 5:24 p.m., and I’m about to pour myself a vodka martini, rocks and olives. The olives are spectacular: giant green ones stuffed with bleu cheese.
Do join me, virtually.
@MarkedMan: There are a lot of people in the U.S. and elsewhere who are going to learn the hard way that Reality Exists and Nature Bats Last. No matter how much they might decide to fudge the data, dead bodies are dead bodies.
(And for those who want to just “let it open and let her rip!”, my response is the same: You first.)
@grumpy realist:
Sadly, I think that’s questionable. Remember how inept rulers have reacted to the plague and various other catastrophes throughout the ages. Rile up the mob against the Jews, then use the anger to put them to the stake and seize their lands. Kill the Catholics. Or the protestants. Or the Arabs or the Hutsis or, well let’s just say the playbook is very well established. These Missi-publicans are of that ilk, and the fact that they are immoral scumbags make them more, not less, likely to succeed in stoking the mob.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Except you know a toddler will grow out of it.
More expert advice from the greatest epidemiologist the world has ever seen:
What the fwwk!
@Steven L. Taylor: As the line from Stumptown (I think) goes, “a drink, sure, I mean it must be 9am somewhere in the world.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I’m telling you, he lives in his own reality. Or the reality he creates for others to believe in. If Trump says we have the best testing, then we have the best testing.
@CSK:
You and I would get along splendidly, I believe.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Cmon. Even Trump couldn’t have said that?
@MarkedMan: sadly, yeah, he did 🙁
@CSK: I am now enjoying a lovely Heretic “You Can’t Handle the Juice” hazy IPA.
Cheers!
@Jen:
I think we would. I’m just south of you.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Enjoy!
@JKB:
Let’s track those deaths and then subtract the number who didn’t die in traffic accidents due to less travel, didn’t die in industrial accidents due to lack of activity, didn’t die as a consequence of postponed surgeries, didn’t die from murder because fewer people are holding up closed 7-11’s.
Does that work for Cult Leader?
Have you had your daily tumbler of bleach?
@JKB:
Oh, and let’s not forget future deaths avoided because of lowered air pollution levels. Right?
Because I know you’re all about accuracy.
You also have to handicap how much economic damage was unavoidable because even without official government shutdowns, some people, in the face of a virus that’s possibly five or 10 times deadlier than the flu, would have stayed home, wouldn’t have bought that car, wouldn’t have gone to the coffee shop anyway. You can’t blame all that on government shutdowns.
@Jay L Gischer:
If they die from Covid, you won’t be able to go to their funeral. My aunt was buried in St, Pete’s Lincoln Cemetary in Florida last week, with no family there. She died alone. And she was buried with no family or friends there.
@EddieInCA:
You mentioned, I believe, your niece, who wanted to know when her grandma would come home from the hospital. I keep thinking of that. I grieve for you.
@CSK:
Thank you. She’s actually my cousin’s daughter. Her dad finally told her Grandma isn’t coming back. It’s been two weeks of difficult time for him and her. (He’s a single dad and grandma helped with raising her). It sucks.
@EddieInCA:
That is bad. She’s lost a mother figure as well.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Happy hour is a fluid concept.
I am retired. Happy hour is any time I want.
@CSK:
Not a vodka guy. Nor olives, and def hard pass on bleu cheese.
We disagree on the method. But we entirely agree on the goal.
I am a bourbon sipper myself. No ice, no mix, no water.
Clink!
@EddieInCA:
Best wishes to you and yours. Be well.
Stay angry.
@de stijl:
Bourbon is quite nice. Do you have a favorite?
@Steven L. Taylor: Rhinegeist Cloud Harvest 01 Juicy IPA here. Mmmm!
@Michael Reynolds: Also: no deaths from school shootings.
@Michael Reynolds: Also: no deaths from school shootings.