Yeah, NY definitely got hit hard by our two weeks of dithering (counting from NBA shutdown day, which is sort of what I think of as "when this got obviously serious in the US, to the NYS shelter in place order was a little over two weeks.) Anyone going all gooey over Governor Cuomo (who also threatened to shut down the Health Department if the legislature didn't pass his budget with the multi-billion dollar Medicaid cuts) should remember that.
But yes, if what I'm reading about the current results is right, social distancing looks to be having exactly the hoped-for effect.
I was already mad about the Eisconsin election but Robert Reich's twitter thread distilled the issues do clearly and succinctly, that I felt the full force of my rage.
Photos of a black nurse who got off of her shift and was turned awAy from the polls at 8:03pm are beyond horrible.
In my darker moments, I despair that people are just total shits and activism has little use. Nobody cares what lefties think.
I would be grateful for lists of organizations I could volunteer for in small amounts and ways to help.
One of the nurse managers a colleague of mine knew was a big Trump person, going on about how she already had kids and would not need paid family and medical leave do she didn't want to have to pay for it. I don't know how you change that. I mean if what's going on with the Republican attacks in voting isn't enough to make someone vote Democratic, then what kind of soul do they have and how can they be swayed?
De Blasio completely fucked up in delaying shutting down the schools. He was very upset at NYPL, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library when they shut early because it put more pressure on him to shut the schools. I also saw a story the other day about how Bloomberg had a stockpile of ventilators and PPE in preparation for a pandemic and De Blasio auctioned them off a year or so ago. Cuomo is also way overrated especially compared with Newsom and Inslee.
Rory Stewart has been tactfully not reminding everyone that he was calling for schools to close in London, and getting ridiculed for it, a month ago.
Mildew is an aid to social distancing.
I spend a lot of time saying de Blasio gets an unfairly bad rap, but he did fuck up hard by not closing schools earlier and particularly bars before St Patrick's day. I bet if I knew the whole story it'd be Cuomo's fault somehow, but that may be just because I hate him.
I hate that I look at these peaks with an eye to the political fallout of which states are needing help.
Me too. But I do. And of course last night everyone on Fox News was in lockstep on a using these projections and other glimmers of hope to bash "killing the economy over it", disparage expertise, lament the "false attacks" on the administration's response and engage in a lot of Covid death trutherism. Britt Hume has continued his personal descent into evil buffoon by leading the charge*.
*He went to Fox from ABC as sort of their gravitas** loss leader but has increasingly revealed himself as yet another of their sneering bigoted liars.
**But he was in fact a dreadful sneering piece of shit at ABC (during the Whitewater coverage in particular) but considered a "respectable" member of the mainstream political media.
7: I watched Chris Wallace's show last Sunday. It made me think that a glimmer of sanity was appearing, but then I heard Brit Hume. He challenged the surgeon general on the inaptness of comparing this to the Opioid epidemic or tobacco. It was unfair to say that opioids were completely a choice, but clearly the rapidity of an infectious disease calls for somewhat different type of aggressive policy actions.
It looks like the model assumes that any state that hasn't yet had a significant outbreak, won't have one. If iheisturns out to be accurate, then the states that still haven't closed things down made the right call, and the states that shut down early crashed their economies for no good purpose. E.g. Mississippi ends with 5% of the deaths of similar-size Connecticut; Florida ends with less than half of New York's deaths, and Texas deaths are one-third of Florida.
It will also, of course, demonstrate that the most effective preventative action a state could take was voting for Trump. And the nationwide distribution of deaths will be remarkably similar to the
Presuming a vaccine and/or cure is invented, at some point outbreaks will end. I'm skeptical we're there yet.
It will also, of course, demonstrate that the most effective preventative action a state could take was voting for Trump.
Then I wasn't just imagining things - this is a really partisan prediction?
The glimmers are a good sign, but I think we tend to then forget that most measures are still increasing and in particular deaths are a lagging indicator.
And of course the paradox of preparation looms over everything. In conservative media world it is impossible for California to have done it right; turns out the virus was nothing much*.
*It is amazing** to watch their whiplash on this. Limbaugh went from "it's sniffles" to it's "10 times pneumonia" in a day when toddler-in-chief had a sad for a small portion of one briefing after seeing and hearing about some bad stuff in Queens***. And then to whatever the position of the day is. (It can be grimly amusing to watch them after events take an unexpected turn or Trump says something utterly off-the-wall; they are briefly disorganized and then you see them coalesce around some WH spin in a matter of hours.)
**I know, I know, the time for amazement is well past. I actually watch with a grim despondent fatalism.
**Which sad led a number of our esteemed media betters to opine on how Trump now gets it etc.
12: Or what 9 said more pithily.
I'm now noticing that this model claims that Delaware, Colorado, Montana, and DC all peaked in March. How?!
Stormcrow, I do not understand how you can stomach watching any of that shit, but I do like getting the second-hand reports.
In the end I stand by the ironclad First Law of Kakametrics which is that the only thing that is not irreversibly smeared during a shitstorm is a pile for shit*.
*The intricacies of determining whether the relationship between a shitstorm and any particular pile of shit is accretive or decrescent is beyond the scope of this brief note.
It is the sacred duty of retired people to watch broadcast TV.
15: Actually. I generally do not immerse myself in it live in the interests of health (my wife does at times) , I just selectively sample based on reports of others* (including my wife).
*So, yes there is certainly selection bias, and I am somewhat guilty of outrage theater. Probably best to assume that the rest of what they say is sober, even-handed and criticizes the President when it is appropriate to do so.
Here the new projections are fueling the speculation that it's all just a media plot. I don't know how anyone in public health isn't drinking heavily.
The error bands on the IHME data are really interesting.
If you look at deaths, for instance, they are saying we counted 1,900 yesterday and can expect another 1,900 today. But the error band on today's projection puts an upward limit just under 3,800.
I wish they had shown their previous projections compared to what actually took place. I wish they were clearer about the assumptions underlying their model. (I believe I have read elsewhere that they are assuming strict compliance with people sequestering themselves.)
I'm not a stats person. I've barely got any kind of grip on this stuff. But almost everything I see seems to have massive unacknowledged flaws associated with it.
The model predicts that NH would have two deaths per day at its peak, and there were four yesterday.
And boy was the little Wisconsin two-step* by the Supremes disheartening to watch.
Minority rule now, minority rule tomorrow, minority rule forever! - John Roberts**
*First step was the gerrymandering decision form last(?) year.
**I think he makes the top of the list for most effective destruction of his branch of government.
Congress: Newt/McConnell, Supreme Court: Roberts, Presidency: Trump.***
***Of course it's all a journey with fresh horrors to come. And precedents of course such as Rehnquist/Scalia, and Reagan/GWB.
I think Kavanaugh actually wrote the (incredibly condescending and trollish) opinion. But Roberts is the key when the chips are down.
**I think he makes the top of the list for most effective destruction of his branch of government.
I've seen other sentiments like this on Twitter ("the world would have been so much better if John Roberts had never been born") and I'm puzzled. Isn't Roberts just a specialized movement soldier who happened to get into a prominent position? Does he have significant VORP? It's not like his folksy balls-and-strikes deflections uniquely qualified him to get confirmed; Bush got Alito on too. His prominence is down to the power and numbers behind him, not extra-special skill, or so I've always gathered.
Heebie, I never really understand what you mean by 'worry'. To me, worry is being afraid that a possible bad outcome will happen instead of the possible good outcomes. But I see no uncertainty. So long as Trump as in charge, he'll just do the worst outcome, every time, in ways I couldn't even have imagined until some fuck-up from his administration actually does the worst outcome. There's no worry involved. There's regret and fury and disbelief and outrage. But I'm never worried up front because there are no alternative good scenarios until his administration ends in January, if it does.
VORP
Value Over Replacement Prick?
I'm now noticing that this model claims that Delaware, Colorado, Montana, and DC all peaked in March. How?!
This is all nonsense. Montana's current stats are 320 cases, 6 deaths, 57 recoveries. It clearly hasn't peaked in DC and Maryland yet.
I guess it lays bare the flaws of optimistic projections. If you can project that the "peak" has happened somewhere with a total of 2% of people having been infected, then why not say that some other place won't have an outbreak at all? Until the outbreak happens later on because there is no herd immunity. But that would be a different peak, not included in this model.
Hmm. Maybe I'm working through the process of denial? Perhaps I'm slow to accept that we live within the world where the worst outcome is a fait accompli, and that transition to dread/acceptance feels like worry.
I guess it lays bare the flaws of optimistic projections.
It's not even an optimistic projection. It's fantasy. It makes the whole thing feel like it's pushing an agenda, and I don't understand why it's so hard to find any other models of peak times besides this one.
11: It's more of a partisan virus. Per the New York Times today, the top 7 states in deaths, and 9 of the top 12, have Democratic governors (three of them, Pennsylvamia, Michigan and Lousiiana, voted for Trump). These nine states represent 80% of total deaths. Coincidence or conspiracy? You decide.
24: Some have evil thrust upon them. This is not about some SABERmetrics Supreme Court ranking, this about what is going on.
And his superpower is in the realm of normalizing and semi-concealing the destruction of his institution. John Roberts synecdochic audience of one is Chuck Todd.
Alito is certainly more racist, openly partisan and certainly more of an all-around dick. (As was Scalia especially in the latter part of his career.) What's her fucking name...Harriet Miers woulsd have been far, far better (and make no mistake she would have been dreadful).
Can Trump win the rejection without both Michigan and Pennsylvania? Because there's been no federal help here that I've heard of like in Florida.
Looking again at the page I linked in 20, I see that in fact, they do say upfront: "COVID-19 projections assuming full social distancing through May 2020." That's quite an assumption.
Here is the page that discusses underlying assumptions and methods. See the section: "How are social distancing measures used in the model?" Turns out, data from Wuhan has been an important factor, and assumptions are made regarding future commencement of full social distancing for places that haven't instituted it yet.
And of course nowhere in the States has done the full Wuhan.
I've been confused over the peak predictions, too. NYC is supposed to hit peak resource use today, but that doesn't seem possible. Whitmer is saying peak in late April/early May based on UMich's School of Public Health, but IHME says on Saturday. Hospitals in town on this side of the state are opening another 400 beds in anticipation of future cases (official caseload in the county is about 60). I have been wondering what difference it makes to have higher or lower numbers of essential workers who can't stay home and whether that is driving some of the disparity.
Can Trump win the rejection
I'm doing my part.
Vermont is supposed to have 35 deaths in the model, it already has 23. NPR is claiming the peak was April 1, but the number of cases is still growing.
Can Trump win the election without both Michigan and Pennsylvania?
At present there are seven too-close-to-calls; FL, AZ, NC, WI, NE-2, PA, MI.
Trump, if he doesn't get MI or PA, needs to take all the others - FL AZ NC WI NE-2 - plus all the states where he's currently ahead, to get 270. All the other routes to victory for him require winning at least four too-close-to-call states including either MI or PA, and if he doesn't get FL then he needs five too-close-to-call states including both PA and MI.
Biden can win with just two toss-up states as long as one of them is FL. He can win with three toss-up states as long as one of them is PA or MI and he gets the right other two.
De Blasio completely fucked up in delaying shutting down the schools.
It was a much harder call than in many other places, though, wasn't it? It looks that way from the outside because of the sheer scale, the massive social support services that happen through schools, the number of parents who would have to keep working without childcare arrangements, etc. Like, maybe in hindsight he should have closed them sooner but it was a legitimately tough call. Or I am just buying the company line?
He clearly fucked up other things, like not closing bars.
The Wisconsin thing is so overwhelmingly awful that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it.
43: There aren't a lot of situations where I'd judge someone too harshly for being slow to do the right thing, where slow is less than a couple of weeks, and there were genuinely difficult issues. But here, the consequences were just so big.
That makes sense. Still, I'm glad as hell I've never been in a position of that much responsibility.
It was a much harder call than in many other places, though, wasn't it?
It was a tough call everywhere. Trump is rightly catching shit for (among other things) not making the tough call until long after it became clear it was the right call.
Sure, I'm more sympathetic to De Blasio's concerns (human beings) than Trump's (stock prices), but De Blasio, like Trump, was a dope significantly longer than was acceptable.
46: I am also very big on second-guessing football quarterbacks, though in my more reflective moments, I have considered the possibility that they feel pressures that I do not.
Unlikely, considering the kind of gees they put you through.
He's not Bloomberg and he's not Guiliani. That's not nothing.
Two not nothings don't make a something.
Aspiring to mediocrity, what an unsurprising place to end up.
50: Reading the thread backward, I assumed you were looking on the bright side of Biden as presumptive nominee.
22 Shelby County and Citizens United count as steps.
If you want to look at Replacement Value, you have to compare to Al Gore's likely nominees. A difference I would say is worth way more than a dime.
The lesson of course is that never ever should Republicans be allowed in power. Not ever. For any reason. At all. Whether we're actually doomed to relearn this in 2021 is still open. I think Sen Sanders dropping out now is a pretty good sign but, as Ygl and others say, some in pro-Sanders media still think knocking Biden down would be some kind of victory.
I find a projection like this far more useful since it runs the scenarios with different levels of physical distancing. (Updated but still evolving.)
I had so much doom to post but because my heart is full of love, I'll replace it with this tweet: "CHOOSE YOUR QUARANTINE HOUSE: U.S. Presidents Edition. (Yes, I did try to make these houses as chaotic as possible)"
Consensus seems to be around 1 as the best, but which is the worst? 6 is the stuff of nightmares.
Montana did a surprisingly good job of jumping on things early- we had statewide closures of schools, bars, restaurants at like 4 or 5 confirmed cases, and a shelter-in-place order at the first death.
But there's no way we peaked already. The state's been averaging 20 new cases per day for almost 2 weeks, and it's just now getting into the rapid-doubling part of the chart (as compared with all the other charts).
("Montana" probably isn't really a very useful unit here. There are ~4 areas with more quickly increasing numbers and deaths and community spread and whatnot, but they are all pretty far apart from each other. I'm guessing it would make more sense to treat them as four individual outbreaks than as a single statewide event.)
Yes, I'm not saying Roberts hasn't done major impactful evil, just quibbling that I don't get the point of singling him out. Feels like the flip side of Mueller- or Fauci-worship - this man saves us, that man dooms us. For our purposes, the GOP are all one Borgy collective.
Is it worth being quarantined with William Henry Harrison to see Trump quarantined with William Henry Harrison? Reasonable people may differ.
I think house 4 wins - Clinton and FDR would be good company and the others are harmless enough. House 1 would be least likely to turn murderous because it contains Ike who could restrain the others.
Hard to measure but lots of bay area employers started distancing before the official orders came through. My workplace started canceling travel and large events in the first week of March, and some meetings that would be in a large room shifted to small groups in different rooms. This may have had an early impact.
I'd go with House 1, but Lincoln is the president I'd most like to have a beer with.
I think as soon as the outbreak in Seattle hit, everyone in the Bay Area felt sure we would be next, so it was on the radar as an imminent threat in a way that it apparently wasn't on the East Coast and elsewhere. Is that anyone else's understanding/recollection? I have no evidence that this drove decision-making, but I do think the Pacific coast has a much higher baseline sense of connectedness with Asia. So yes, there may have been more voluntary actions before the timely official actions. I still have a gut feeling that our numbers must be low -- not wildly off, but still off.
I see the argument for 4, especially if the first ladies are included. I would probably be okay hanging out with both Hillary and Eleanor. Bill... less so. I can't decide between 5 and 6 as worst. Or 2. Those three keep shifting.
63: Yes, many companies stepped up early. The national organization my wife is an officer of had their annual meeting the first week of March, and the last few days were big announcements of sponsors canceling their attendance ahead of the various state and local lockdowns. (Only Wizards, headquartered in Seattle, was in the middle of a notable outbreak at the time.)
I think Biogen really screwed us in a Massachusetts as a super spreading event. It was definitely on the radar around here before that. My health system was cancelling meetings and forbidding conference attendance in February.
But I wish we looked more like Washington State or California and less like New York. I don't think we'll be as bad as NY or NJ, but we're not doing as well as I would have hoped.
You don't think LBJ would have Trump sobbing in a corner after about three minutes?
Bigger penis, killed way more people in Asia. Trump would be so jealous.
Our company was quite proactive. They took a hit in the media when they skipped a conference early on and people thought they were using it as an excuse to hide something but it turned out there was spreading at that event and they looked quite prescient a couple weeks later. We're also continuing to interview, make offers, and have people start jobs even while the office is mostly closed.
We're definitely underrated, both as a hotspot and a locus of fuckups. Baker did more or less the right things, two weeks late, for no good reason. As soon as the Biogen outbreak became clear, we knew what was coming. What benefit did ten extra days of school provide? I hope everyone enjoyed that extra weekend drinking.
63 &ff; Microsoft and Amazon sent everybody home in Seattle/Redmond on March 4. That caught some attention.
I still haven't heard what the news was that inspired that.
What about Millard Fillmore? WHAT ABOUT MILLARD FILLMORE!
I'd go with House 4, though House 3 (John Adams having a beer with Obama) might also be interesting. Both 5 and 6 would be nightmarish.
On De Blasio's messed-up COVID-19 response: I'll concede that closing the schools was a tougher call in NYC than in, say, suburban Westchester. But he stubbornly ignored the obvious for too long, until he was faced with the prospect of outright rebellion on the part of parents and teachers. And he didn't merely delay in shutting down bars and restaurants: he actively encouraged people to go out and have a good time while they still could, at a time when public health officials were urging social distancing. And even last week, he was still saying foolish things about coronavirus transmission...
75: I think you're trying to trick me into saying something indiscreet or inappropriate so you can tell other people about it.
Someone decided to personally troll me* with this article about (apparently) an actual medical research group studying COVID-19 transmission in California, which inexplicably interviews Victor Davis Hanson about the whole thing at great length. I am speechless and uncomprehending.
*not really
It's circling closer to me. I've now heard about 2 friend-of-a-friend coronavirus deaths.
Mass. still tolerates people congregating in public parks w/o masks and w/o maintaining the appropriate distance. And Boston was full of college student house parties on St. Patrick's day, even though the bars were closed. So our ranking of shame should not be too unexpected.
People in Idaho are gathering with guns and threatening violence if anybody tries to make them stay six feet with each others' butthole. So, you know, the curve is pretty steep as far as blame goes.
Also, aren't pandas endangered enough it shouldn't take a pandemic before somebody sees if maybe they won't fuck better without the watching crowd?
In Ohio they have a lot of religious services still even though the Governor has said he disapproves. We're allowed to have them in MA but only if fewer than 10 people show up, so my priest has been going in to do services. The organist has a couple of choir members who go in later, someone records a reading over zoom, but I don't think anyone is actually holding real services.
I get e-mails from my town and one said that too many people were congregating on the bike path and they were planning to address it. I suppose our ranking of shame is not too unexpected, but I am still embarrassed. Baker got too much credit for enlisting the help of Partners in Health.
The Palm Sunday service here was the full mass, celebrated over YouTube, with only four people actually there.
The organist, 4 choir members and a trumpet player (wanted 2 but could only get 1) will play Saturday for Easter. I think the priest goes in separately and maybe someone reads prayers at a different time. We usually read the Passion in parts, so that requires 6 or7 people. That was recorded over Zoom in advance.
House 1: 4 very clever men in there. 3 and 5 are majority toxic (bad luck, Obama and Truman). Only one person in 4 that I'd cross he street to meet, and I'm not going within 6 furlongs of Trump for anything. 2 might be interesting if you took the view that Nixon was an entertaining old bastard if he wasn't in high office.