Underestimating Coronavirus Deaths

The New York Times writes that America is still unable to test for the virus and because of that, some deaths from coronavirus are not being counted. Maybe that is why the president has been sabotaging efforts to get large scale testing capacity up and running. Or, maybe it is just normal Trump administration incompetence. The NYT writes:

“WASHINGTON — A coroner in Indiana wanted to know if the coronavirus had killed a man in early March, but said that her health department denied a test. Paramedics in New York City say that many patients who died at home were never tested for the coronavirus, even if they showed telltale signs of infection. 

In Virginia, a funeral director prepared the remains of three people after health workers cautioned her that they each had tested positive for the coronavirus. But only one of the three had the virus noted on the death certificate. 

Across the United States, even as coronavirus deaths are being recorded in terrifying numbers — many hundreds each day — the true death toll is likely much higher. 

More than 9,400 people with the coronavirus have been reported to have died in this country as of this weekend, but hospital officials, doctors, public health experts and medical examiners say that official counts have failed to capture the true number of Americans dying in this pandemic. The undercount is a result of inconsistent protocols, limited resources and a patchwork of decision making from one state or county to the next.”

The article goes on to describe how a salesman in California got sick, was taken to an urgent care clinic several days later. By then he was so weak he was in a wheelchair. In that sad incident, doctors prescribed antibiotics and a cough syrup and they gave him a chest X-ray. The doctors did not test for coronavirus. A day or two later, his wife found him dead in bed. His wife had repeatedly asked for him to be tested, and the answer was no, no, no. His wife pleaded with the CDC for a test and she hired a company to do an autopsy. Finally, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health tested the body and, 19 days after he died, they reported that he rested positive for coronavirus.

If his wife had not kept pushing for a test, that death would not have been reported as due to coronavirus.

The US response to this has been incompetent right from the get go and now months later still is incompetent. We still cannot test in the US, despite repeated lies about if from our chronic pathological liar president. This is what Trump Party ideology wants and gets from government, corruption, smug arrogance, incompetence and failure.

Try to look competent: Hide the data

In a related episode of Trump Party arrogance and incompetence, the government is not releasing ethnicity data for coronavirus deaths. Since this data is routinely collected, it is not a matter that the data doesn't exist. The Washington Post writes: “A civil rights group and hundreds of doctors are calling on the federal government to release race and ethnicity data on coronavirus infections and deaths from covid-19, citing reports that the pandemic is affecting African Americans at a disproportionate rate.”

The most obvious reason that death data isn't being released is that someone in government, probably the president, thinks that the data might make the president look bad. Several sources are reporting that African Americans have Contracted and died of coronavirus at a higher rate than other groups. ProPublica writes: “As public health officials watched cases rise in March, too many in the community shrugged off warnings. Rumors and conspiracy theories proliferated on social media, pushing the bogus idea that black people are somehow immune to the disease. And much of the initial focus was on international travel, so those who knew no one returning from Asia or Europe were quick to dismiss the risk.”

Climate Change: A Review of the Evidence

Moonrise before sunrise

A 2 hour video that NOVA produced summarizes the data that shows humans are responsible for climate change. It first aired January 5, 2020. Before viewing this documentary, my analysis and belief about the situation was this:

Chance that climate change is real and mostly caused by humans: ~65%
Chance that the current estimate of the problem is not as bad as experts project: ~15%
Chance that the current estimate of the problem is worse than experts project: ~20%


After viewing this and being Bayesian, my analysis and belief is now this:

Chance that climate change is real and mostly caused by humans: ~77%
Chance that the current estimate of the problem is not as bad as experts project: ~3%
Chance that the current estimate of the problem is worse than experts project: ~20%

The data is presented for a lay audience. The data comes from decades of geology, study of fossils, the environmental record and other sources of information. The evidence this video lays out evidence that cannot be denied. What will be endlessly debated is the interpretation of the data.

Most climate science deniers (~99.9%) will continue to flatly deny expert consensus opinion. But maybe, just maybe one in a thousand will at least start to doubt their own certain knowledge.

Conclusion

Climate science deniers do not have any reasonable shield to defend their beliefs. Those that do cannot rationally defend their positions, unless and only unless they want to take the risk and play Russian Roulette with civilization and maybe human survival. In my opinion, they play the civilization and maybe human survival game with a 3% chance they are right.

As usual, that's just my facts- and logic-based opinion and I am not infallible.

Sunrise after the 2003 Cedar Fire

Another Republican Wakes Up and Smells the Stink Cabbage

“Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true.” 
-- prominent libertarian Michael Shermer writing in 2013 on his epiphany about how his rigid ideology blinded him to ideologically inconvenient facts and logic


This is a fascinating 17-minute interview with the influential republican strategist Stuart Stevens. Mr. Steven has awakened from the mental stranglehold his rigid partisanship and ideology had on him. He now regrets what has has done. Unfortunately, his awakening has come far too late.

In the video, Stevens comments that listening to Trump or Hannity about Coronavirus drugs is a short walk to Jim Jones. That is just a little part of the rage and hate-driven republican ideological-tribal fantasy that he no longer believes in.

In a Washington Post editorial, Stevens writes:

“Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me — and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better. 

But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way. 

Many of us heard a warning sound we chose to ignore, like that rattle in your car you hear but figure will go away. Now we’re broken down, with plenty of time to think about what should have been done. 

The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party. Here are a few: Government is bad. Establishment experts are overrated or just plain wrong. Science is suspect. And we can go it alone, the world be damned.  

All of these are wrong, of course. But we didn’t get here overnight. It took practice.

Long before Trump, the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad. We worked overtime to squeeze it and shrink it, to drown it in the bathtub, as anti-tax activist Grover Norquist liked to say. But somewhere along the way, it became, ‘all government is bad.’ Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention. That’s awkward.”

Yeah, it is awkward. And for some innocent people, it is lethal.

Thanks to 別對牛彈琴 (aka SIASD) for bringing Mr. Stevens and his epiphany to my attention.

"Déjà vu all over again?"

Donald Trump is pulling another fast one on the populace-at-large.  He’s getting the press to cover (on cable TV) his rambling White House briefings, regarding the Coronavirus.  My understanding is that yesterday, Sunday, he held an impromptu (unscheduled) presser, where he rambled on for an hour and a half.  I have stopped watching those ramblings myself, as I know how they work.  Trump takes a sentence and rephrases it three or more times to make it sound like an extended thought. His greatest hits of, “Never seen anything like this,” “No one saw this coming,” “We’re making tremendous progress…” etc., etc., and freakin' etc., are like ear worms that haunt us.  For crying out loud!  STOP IT!!

To me, these W.H. briefings are reminiscent of the 2016 election build-up, where, like the train “we can’t seem to turn away from it” wreck that he was and still is, Trump gets free press coverage. It’s like a “free rally,” and he doesn’t even have to go travel out into the nasty, possibly Coronavirus-laden crowds. Wow!  Talk about your “win-win!”

What do you think:

Should the press stop airing these W.H. briefings?  Maybe just let the press show up, with no national real-time coverage, and then just give us a succinct recap afterward, by a network of our choice? Has the press not learned any lessons from the 2016 election fiasco?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

QUESTION: SHOULD Joe Biden pick Andrew Cuomo as his running mate?

CONSIDER:

Andrew Cuomo supporters quietly angling him for 2020 vice president gig

For his part, the governor has strenuously denied any interest in the job. “I don’t want to be vice president,” he told Albany radio host Alan Chartock last week.

A former senior Cuomo staffer dismissed that, telling The Post the 62-year-old Cuomo “definitely” has national aspirations and would jump at being Biden’s running mate.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/04/andrew-cuomo-supporters-angling-for-2020-vice-president-gig/

HOWEVER:

Would picking Cuomo end up hurting Biden's credibility, as he has promised a female running mate?

OPINIONS?

An Early Coronavirus Post-Mortem

The Washington Post writes:

“President Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat, was slow to move and has delivered mixed messages to the nation. The federal bureaucracy bungled rapid production of tests for the virus. Stockpiles of crucial medical materials were limited and supply lines cumbersome. States and hospitals were plunged into life-and-death competition with one another. 

When the public looked to government for help, government sometimes looked helpless or frozen or contradictory — and not for the first time. 

The country and its leaders were caught off guard when terrorists on hijacked airplanes attacked the homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. The financial crisis of 2008, which turned into a deep recession, forced drastic, unprecedented action by a government struggling to keep pace with the economic wreckage. The devastation from Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 exposed serious gaps in the government’s disaster response and emergency management systems. 

‘We always wait for the crisis to happen,’ said Leon Panetta, who served in government as secretary of defense, director of the CIA, White House chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the House. ‘I know the human failings we’re dealing with, but the responsibility of people elected to these jobs is to make sure we are not caught unawares.’ 

In interviews over the past two weeks, senior officials from administrations of both parties, many with firsthand experience in dealing with major crises, suggest that the president and his administration have fallen short of nearly every standard a government should try to meet. 

Leadership is important, and President Trump will have on his record what he did and didn’t do in the early stages of this particular crisis. But the problems go far broader and deeper than what a president does. Lack of planning and preparation contribute, but so too does bureaucratic inertia as well as fear among career officials of taking risks. Turnover in personnel robs government of historical knowledge and expertise. The process of policymaking-on-the-fly is less robust than it once was. Politics, too, gets in the way. 

Long ago, this was far less the case, a time when the United States projected competence and confidence around the globe, said Philip Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia who served in five administrations and was executive director of the 9/11 Commission. 

‘America had the reputation of being non-ideological, super pragmatic, problem solvers, par excellence,’ he said. ‘This image of the United States was an earned image, of people seeing America do almost a wondrous series of things. . . . We became known as the can-do country. If you contrast that with the image of the U.S. today, it’s kind of depressing.’”

The article goes on at length to explain some key events the Bush and Obama administrations faced and how the handoff of power to the president was handled. One weakness of the current administration that WaPo discusses was its refusal to appoint personnel to key positions and indifference to professional competence. WaPo comments that there are “scores” of unfilled vacancies in critical positions. Those positions tend to operate independently of a president simply because of the size and complexity of operations needed for a competent federal response.