Shortcut to the full report for Saturday:

The USA’s national indicators are still looking much better than they were before this week:

  • New cases are down about 8% from last Saturday. That is the fourteenth consecutive day of declines, and the 17th decline in the past 20 days.
  • Fatalities are also down, about 13% less than last Saturday. That’s the fifth decline in the past six days.
  • The first decline in new cases began twenty days ago, and the first decline in new deaths began six days ago, precisely 14 days later.
  • Hospitalizations dropped again, and are at the lowest point since July 9.

It is important to note that these current declines are not happening because we ARE doing so well, but because we WERE doing do poorly. Even after that short-term improvement, the USA is still one of only four countries in the world in the red zone for both its new case rate and its new death rate. The four countries are Peru, Colombia, Brazil and the USA. This is not a list we want to be on. We have to do better.

There is also a major negative to consider, America’s testing rate. Positive tests are now more than 8% of all results. Ten states in the USA were above 12% on Saturday.

Note further than five states in the USA are in deep trouble because ALL of the following are true: (1) their new cases rate is higher than any country in the world; (2) their new fatality rate is higher than any country in the world; (3) their rate of positive tests is above 12%. Those states are Mississippi, Florida, Nevada, Georgia and South Carolina.

106 thoughts on “COVID update

  1. College sports are close to being cancelled for the fall season apparently. This has been picking up steam over the course of the day with the MAC conference the first to do it in FBS, the Big Ten pulling back on practice, PAC 12 group of players demands, and Syracuse players refusing to even start practice.

    Schools are worried about liability. All it takes is that one outlier athletes who was in great condition to get the illness and pass for the world to be turned upside down.

  2. This is good news for sure, but I worry that it’s all going to be erased once colleges and schools are back in session — I’m personally of the opinion that that’s going to be a disaster.

    1. Your point seems correct. Every time we have tried to ease up: Memorial Day, 4th of July … we have had to deal with a runaway train about two weeks later.

      One good thing – well, not good, but edifying – some districts will open, some will be all-virtual, some will be mixed, and we will know which are which. We have good “before” numbers, and we will have good “after” numbers for each group, so we should be able to evaluate the consequences of each decision and make future decisions based on reason.

      (As long as Trump isn’t making them.)

      1. yeah, unfortunately many people will die obtaining that info…but it seems human life doesn’t count for all that much in the US these days.

  3. The U of W model is currently predicting 300k casualties by the end of the year…I wouldn’t call that a reason to be optimistic. California has a software issue that caused undercounts in new cases and Florida closed down number of testing locations because of the hurricane…

    1. The numbers are bad, and it will be a long time before they are not, but “down” is good. The fact that both cases and fatalities are dropping is a reason to hope.

  4. Welp, Hawaii seems to be shutting down. Interisland quarantine is back up. Beaches are off limits, but you can still go swimming. Still trying to figure that one out.

    1. That is an odd one. They seemed to have it whipped. I haven’t read up to see how they screwed up. Have you?

      1. Yeah, too many beach parties. BIG beach parties. With no masks or anything. People just got too relaxed. And the quarantine is still up so you can’t really blame it on tourists or visitors. We pretty much screwed that up ourselves.

        The numbers are still relatively low though; maybe 57 deaths total? But the daily infection rate is close to 200 new cases a day, and at least one hospital supposedly is out of ICU beds. So that’s enough to panic people out. And today, they announced that public school will be online for the first 4 weeks.

        We’ll probably go back to stay-at-home orders soon.

  5. My condolences for your sister. Best wishes for peaceful moments over the next several days

  6. First things first. Remember your sister, take care of business, we’ll be here.

  7. Sorry to hear about your sister, scoop. My condolences as you help settle her affairs. Take care

  8. Sad to hear about your sister. Hope you get the time to be able to do the needful.
    Take care.

  9. “Florida reported one of its biggest one-day jumps in Covid-19 fatalities on record, but the rise in new infections remained relatively subdued in the wake of recent weather-related shutdowns of testing sites.

    A further 247 Florida residents and non-residents died from coronavirus, the state’s health department revealed on Tuesday morning, up from 73 yesterday.”

    1. That should only affect hospitalization data, as reported to the Feds. It shouldn’t have any bearing on the data that comes from the state departments of health.

    2. We also don’t know if the new hospitalization reporting mechanism is purposefully inaccurate. Since the Trump Administration mandated the switch to it from the traditional system of going through the CDC, I’m inclined to believe that it is, in order to help his re-election chances.

      This is, after all, the same party that purposefully designed the unemployment system in Florida to fail in order to prop up Rick Scott’s claims to have reduced unemployment in the state. Not to mention, of course, Trump’s myriad of lies, corrupt acts, and ongoing attempts to undermine democracy.

      Morals to do not constrain them — they’re capable of anything in their naked pursuit of authoritarian power.

  10. Hurricane warning skewed the results in Florida. Many testing locations etc. closed. So not comparable to last Sunday.

    1. Some impact, but not enough create any meaningful change in the national data, although it would be a significant percentage within Florida itself. That factor probably meant 2,000 fewer reported cases (10,000 fewer tests at 20% positivity), which would knock Florida’s new cases down 20%-30%, but have little impact in the grand scheme of things in the country. Add two thousand cases to the national numbers, and the USA is still well behind last Sunday.

      As for fatalities, I’m not sure whether that stat was affected. Given that Florida’s fatalities have been running ahead of last week, Sunday should not be slightly lower than last Sunday unless there was some noise in the data. I suppose there must be an impact from the storm, but I couldn’t locate a source to support that supposition with facts.

  11. This feels like a ridiculous yo-yo effect that keeps going back and forth.

    We have new cases, but deaths are down, good news! Then, we’ll we have deaths but new cases are down, good news! Then get lax, repeat the cycle. Its pathetic most of this country be trusted to see beyond what effects them personally in the last ten minutes to screw everything up.

    Nonessential high risk luxuries just need to be shut down, period, until a vaccine is produced. Chances are we’re going to do this song and dance up until it gets colder, the seasonal flu gets introduced into the equation, and things really blow up.

    1. I’d say the odds of surviving the flu and Covid-19 at the same time or roughly the same time aren’t good.

  12. You’ll remember that two weeks ago the Trump administration mandated that hospitals report their COVID data to an HHS webpage sourced by a private contractor rather than directly to the CDC.

    In a surprise to no one, NPR this morning reported that the new system is fucked up. Data is a week behind, and rehab facilities and VA hospitals are not included in the database.

    What, you mean they implemented something that’s incompetent and opaque? How could the mastermind behind Trump University allow such a thing to happen?

    1. I’ll bet that explains why hospitalizations seem to be going down while fatalities are exploding. That’s a situation that seems paradoxical.

      1. Not necessarily…it typically takes quite a while in the hospital to die from Covid-19. So a decline in new cases can result in a decline in hospitalizations. Remember dying in a hospital reduces hospitalization numbers.

        1. Very true. In a hypothetical world with no new cases, fatalities and hospitalizations would be inversely correlated, that is to say that any fatality in a hospital would actually cause the number of hospitalizations to decrease.

          But with the Trumpites in charge of the hospitalization data, ya gotta be suspicious.

  13. “More than 1,400 coronavirus-related deaths were reported nationwide Wednesday — roughly one fatality for every minute of the day, and the worst day for covid-19 deaths in more than two months.“

  14. At this point, I’m hard-pressed to think of a way that SC could be handling the pandemic in a worse way.

    McMaster, the Trump cult member masquerading as a governor, is completely in over his head, and unable to put aside his obsequious toadying to Trump to save the lives of the people he supposedly represents. In a tragically backwards and proudly ignorant state, he somehow manages to stand out as even stupider than the average bear. That, in a perverse and depressing way, is a stunning accomplishment, given the low bar the state’s population presents.

  15. Headline in WaPo: Can you get coronavirus twice? Doctors are unsure even as anecdotal reports mount.

    That Swedish strategy looks worse and worse,

    1. Tom Hanks was on one of the talk shows the other day, and he said that he and his wife are now showing no antibodies when tested.

      “Does that mean you can get it again?” asked Colbert.

      “Maybe, but we just don’t know.”

      And then there are all those infected sailors from the Roosevelt with a re-infection after two or more negative tests since their previous positive.

      What makes these facts truly terrifying is the impact they may have on the efficacy of a vaccine. We not only have to worry that it works, but also that even if it works it may not work very long.

      1. I think infection is inevitable. The focus should be on how to effectively treat it once infected and avoid the ICU. There has never been a vaccine for any coronavirus (I think).

        1. Yes, there’s reason to worry & I’m worried. But there’s a lot we don’t know & it can be both bad & good. There’s more to immunity than just having the right antibodies. They can’t get at the virus at its most dangerous point: within a cell. But killer T-cells can hunt & kill the infected cells. There are other immune cells that remember the virus & when a familiar enemy shows up again, they can quickly react by producing those right antibodies. State of the art is that we don’t know for a particular virus how many victims have each of these defenses except after the fact. That’s why a vaccine needs to be so thoroughly tested. So that we can learn how effective it will be in practice as well as discover the possible risks posed by the vaccine itself. The main point of a vaccine is to stimulate all of the immune responses whatever they may be & it’s not all antibodies. For one thing, in any vaccination or herd immunity scenario testing only for antibodies will become increasingly less informative. And a person can be immune even with 0 antibodies at the moment. On top of that, evidence is starting to mount that there’s reason to be optimistic about the prospect of effective vaccination. And the more we do what’s been shown to work to control outbreaks & contain the spread — testing of multiple kinds, tracing, isolation, masks, social distance, IOW just be serious — the more effective any vaccine program can be even if it’s well below 100% efficacious.

          1. It’s worth mentioning, there’s evidence some of the lasting damage post-illness is caused by over-zealous T-cells… eg, the lung scarring & permanent increased risk of heart attacks, etc. There’s probably a right amount of T-cell response, but maybe not the same amount is right for everybody. So despite some good signs, the prospects for the 150 or so vaccines in development right now, remain dicey.

          2. Also, Fallen, CoVid-19 stands for CoronaVirus Infectious Disease 2019, the virus itself is SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-1 is aka SARS & some of the vaccine candidates being pursued now are directly derived from known existing SARS vaccines & the related MERS. Right there, 2 recent coronaviruses that we DO have vaccines for. Not to say that what you think doesn’t matter, but sometimes “I think” may not be a perfect substitute for knowing something. It’s true there’s no vaccine for “the common cold”.

            “Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses being the most common.”
            (Wikipedia.)

            Though you could develop pneumonia & die of it, most often, a cold doesn’t tend to be fatal. So the reasons we haven’t put in the effort to be able to vaccinate against colds is the difficulty, since it’s more a cluster of symptoms than a particular virus, & most kinds of colds pose only a relatively low death risk. CoVid-19 isn’t the most deadly nor the most readily spread, but its combo of the 2 has made it a serious public health problem. Our own combo of being unprepared — it caught us flat-footed — and our hesitation — we didn’t react nearly as quickly as some countries who wound up with 0 deaths — has kept us in its grip like a Chinese finger trap. CoVid-19 isn’t child’s play, but we can get out of it. It’s interesting that our playbook for CoVid-19 right now is pretty much textbook for the common cold. Starting at washing hands & right on down the line to wearing masks.

        2. My wife is an infectious disease expert and she’s very concerned about Covid-19. One issue is that previously infected/vaccinated people without lasting antibodies may have protection from getting seriously ill but may be very efficient spreaders of the virus. Additionally, requiring multiple vaccinations is a logistical nightmare. Additionally, the mRNA vaccines currently being touted In the media have a very short shelf life after production. The vaccine is intrinsically unstable and prone to degradation by nucleases,

          1. That’s not exactly good news she’s putting out. My girlfriend is a pediatrician but majored in viral biology for three years before switching to pre-med. She’s not really optimistic about this stuff either.

          2. Yeah. I think that’s exactly the right takeaway. Our main line of defense was probably always going to be our containment measures, and not absolute protection. Because as Tanner’s wife says, while our immune system may be able to make antibodies fast enough to limit the damage to us, in the meantime, we’re carriers. But much less of a danger to others if we’re distancing & wearing a mask. And this may be a more or less permanent state of affairs. I reckon that’s reason enough for Scoops to be terrified.

      2. I’m certainly no epidemiologist, but hopefully if that’s the case it’s something where periodic boosters will provide ongoing immunity. While no one is excited about quarterly (or whatever) shots, it beats the hell out of contracting the virus — especially if you’re part of the higher risk population or have a family member who is.

  16. At this point, it’s difficult to imagine how this Administration could’ve handled the situation any more poorly. This has been a masterclass in incompetence.

    The biggest winner in all of this is George W. Bush — he’s gone from a legacy of being a completely incompetent buffoon to practically being a shining example of a statesman compared to this unprecedented train wreck.

      1. True, but Obama didn’t have the massive hole to dig himself out of like GWB. In fact, I’d argue the opposite — he has been the best president of my lifetime. Clinton would’ve been a strong contender without the moral failings.

    1. This is a real shame actually.

      Trump is a wretched excuse for a human being but this crisis wasn’t of his own making. He wouldn’t have been up to the task for a variety of reasons. Even a capable president wouldn’t have delivered a performance like Vietnam’s since the US is full of wingnuts who would cheerfully ignore federal, state or local guidelines.

      Dubya on the other hand is a real piece of shit. Every problem with his presidency was manufactured by his policies. He started two unnecessary wars and finished his presidency by driving the economy off the cliff.

  17. Over 1000 deaths today…Trump says things will probably get worse before they get better. Time for Brobonk to tell the world what a genius Trump is…

  18. “In all major advanced economies the pace of recovery has flattened as some countries approach their pre-crisis levels of activity, according to Bloomberg Economics’ daily gauges. Within that overarching trend, the gap between leading euro-area countries and the lagging U.K., U.S. and Canada has widened in the past week. Sweden, which has followed a different containment strategy, has further lost ground, and in Japan, the recovery appears to be stalling.”

  19. The thing about Louisiana is the spike in April was New Orleans, now New Orleans is sorta ok but the rest of the state is a shitshow

  20. “The US # of hospitalizations declined slightly for a 2nd straight day after 20 consecutive days of increases. The fraction of positive tests also declined for the 2nd day in a row. Those facts are not a bright light at the end of the tunnel, but may be a sunbeam poking thru the darkness.”

    Y’know what, Scoops? The latter grasping at straws over minutiae is a bit like those daily “explanations” of why the stock market did whatever it did today. If these clues do portend an end to our moment of darkness, we’ll see that light clear as day someday soon. If not, then we’ll have been just flapping our jaws like turkeys gobble, over flat out nuthin.

  21. Trump in an interview with Fox said that public health experts and the World Health Organization “got a lot wrong” in the early days of the pandemic, including a theory that the virus would abate as the weather warmed, and then reiterated his earlier claim, unsupported by science, that the virus would suddenly cease one day. “It’s going to disappear and I’ll be right,” Mr. Trump said. “Because I’ve been right probably more than anybody else.”

  22. Kemp wouldn’t recuse from counting votes for his own election. This jiggery-pokery should be expected. The real question is: what else? Have “pneumonia” death gone up a la Florida? Not entirely happy at the time to move out of GA, but now glad I did.

  23. Georgia’s presentation of its coronavirus data is again under scrutiny, with a viral tweet pointing out how the color-coding of a government map has evolved. At the beginning of the month, for instance, a county needed at least 5,959 coronavirus cases to be colored red in the state’s map of the outbreak. Now, a county needs at least 9,597 — with the result that no other county has newly joined the four that have been colored red since July 1, even as the state’s cases have jumped by more than 37 percent in that period.

  24. Trump administration pushing to block new money for testing, tracing, and CDC in upcoming coronavirus relief bill. Yup, that will take care of the pandemic.

      1. Yep, Nature Mom. And the thing is, the more stupendous his assholery becomes, the more the people who support him have to deny it to themselves and others, because it increases how bad they would be for supporting him if they admitted it was true.

  25. This sums up the US Covid-19 response:

    One of these advisers said the president is “not really working this anymore. He doesn’t want to be distracted by it. He’s not calling and asking about data. He’s not worried about cases.”

      1. Do you mean glowing cherry red, or glowing as in radioactive, Tanner? In either case, from all the lies.

        1. Remember that he said the number of cases would be 0….
          Well, this is one way to do it..

  26. Late to the party, but you guys better hope Trump doesn’t read this thread. Or rephrasing better hope Trump does read this thread. ok, ok, Trump doesn’t read!

    “Look, we underestimated this disease. That ‘we’ includes me.” Trump has never in his life admitted a mistake/error/wrong doing. Born with a silver spoon notwithstanding always having daddy and his handlers/fixers to bail him out. Indeed, (4) bankruptcies after Tony Schwartz wrote Art of the Deal. You can’t make this shit up lol. And just how does one lose $100 million in the Clinton boom yrs of the ’90s ?!? Digressing …

    Finally when this fool started running for potus my 1st thought was Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) in Apocalypse Now! ie he could stand in the middle of a battlefield and not get touched as Martin Sheen mentioned. Truly one of a kind. 😛

    Apologies to Colonel Kilgore who at least knew what the hell he was trying to do …

  27. Southern states drive huge jump in Sunday tally of new US infections

    The US hit a new record for new infections reported on Sunday with the south of the country accounting for 65 per cent of cases in the country, according to Covid Tracking Project.

    There were 60,978 cases reported, almost 50 per cent more than the 42,602 recorded on the previous Sunday and nearly 200 per cent higher than the 21,373 cases reported on Sunday June 14. The huge jump in infections is particularly concerning because numbers reported on the weekend tend to be much lower than in the middle of the week, due to delays in reporting the data.
    Florida was partly responsible for the huge jump in Sunday’s reported infections, reporting 15,000 new cases, more than reported in any other state since the pandemic began.

    “Florida didn’t just break the record for reported cases. It also shattered the mark for cases per million population,” Covid Tracking Project researchers said on Twitter, noting that Florida reported 712 cases per million, while New York, at its peak, hit 595.

    In Texas, there have been more than 10,000 patients hospitalised with Covid-19 for the past three days, Covid Tracking Project scientists noted, though they added that this was still far lower than the 18,800 people being cared for in hospital in New York state at its peak.

  28. In fairness, how many people was NY testing when they hit 12k v. how many Florida tested to hit 15k?

    1. NY tested 27,000 on a day when they had 11,571 positives.

      Florida tested 143,000 people to get their 15,000 cases.

      1. I’d venture to say that the situation in NYC was likely a good deal worse at the time than FL although for a better comparison it would be good to know the test rate in the counties contributing the majority of the positives.

    1. As far as I can see there is no ceiling to it. There is no national leadership, and the governors of the most troubled states are reality-denying dimbulbs. The identity of a given governor doesn’t matter much when life is “business as usual,” but a crisis requires somebody who recognizes reality and takes steps to deal with it, and several key states have half-wits in the governor’s mansion.

      Months after this crisis began, after the nation bought the government about two months to get PPE and testing way ahead of the curve, we still have parts of the countries failing in those respects. We are so fucking entitled, demonstrating the sybaritic habits that lead and have led to the fall of empires, that we can’t even get people to make small sacrifices like always wearing masks indoors and avoiding gatherings.

      The saddest part of this is that Trump could have a massive impact on the spread of this disease if he would just go on TV in a mask, address the nation, and say, “Look, we underestimated this disease. That ‘we’ includes me. We now have to change. We all have to wear masks for all indoor activities. We all have to stay six feet from those we do not live with. We must avoid all indoor gatherings. All of them. Period. Even for church. God will understand. We must avoid all gatherings, even outdoor assemblies, that bring people together in large groups, and we must listen to the health professionals in the country and in our areas. We may even have to shelter in place again in some hard-hit areas. We have to think of this as we thought of World War Two. There will be hardship, but I will work with the congress to get people protected from poverty and ruin. We know we can rein in this disease because Europe has pulled back on those very reins, but we can’t do it unless everyone is a true patriot and does his or her part for the country so we can truly ‘make America great again.'”

      If he did that, almost all of the nutbags would fall in line because they respect him. Unfortunately, he is incapable of proper leadership. His whole thing is to deny all responsibility, deny he ever made errors, say it will go away, and find somebody else to blame for everything.

      And if he did give that speech, showing himself capable of unselfish leadership, he might even (shudder) get re-elected.

      It saddens me to think that I, an amoral pornographer and general misanthrope, could do this job better than the guy America chose to lead us. If the most powerful man in the world is a bigger fuck-up than me, we truly are, as the young’uns say, majorly fucked.

      1. Uncle Scoopy said “…we truly are, as the young’uns say, majorly fucked.”

        That “we” includes the people who voted for him, and who would STILL vote for him. Brobonk, anyone? And that guy who said he would vote for Trump if it was good for his personal wealth. Unless they are Russian trolls. But that’s probably wishful thinking.

        No, the American public, which is bearing the burden of Trump’s disastrous presidency, is majorly complicit in Trump’s election. Too lazy to vote? Don’t give a rat’s ass about politics, because all politicians are the same? Can’t be bothered to learn anything, or to tell reality from the lies you like better? Hilary Clinton not good enough for you because she has no people skills? Or. like me, too lazy to write checks to political organizations or parties or politicians who support what you say you believe in.

        Nope, to a large extent, the American people are reaping what they have sown. The Republican Party proved itself thoroughly rotten during the travesty of the Clinton impeachment, but people did not WANT to see it. Instead, they elected Bush the Younger – Alfred E. Neuman made flesh – a couple of times, and failed to even try to impeach him when he lied us into a bloody, pointless war.

        And just like during the Civil War, where those who paid the heaviest price were the working class people who were lied to enough that they believed that seceding from the Union to preserve slavery was a good idea, and fought and died or saw their homes destroyed for it, those paying the heaviest price are the working class people who support Trump. I ought to pity them. But like a Union supporter during the Civil War, I don’t. Yes, they have been lied to, systematically, for decades. But the truth was there, and they chose lies and hate instead. I pity only their innocent children.

        It is late, and this is a rant, not a well thought out argument. But this has been coming for a long time, and too many people did not want to believe it, because believing it would be inconvenient, or unpopular, or might cost them money. We have sown the wind, and many of us are reaping the whirlwind.

        1. America is to blame. Donald Trump is not our aberration. He is our reflection.

          • He was well known to be a racist before he was elected. (Birther movement, n-word on the set of The Apprentice.)
          • He was well known to be a misogynist when he was elected. (Grab ’em by the pussy.)
          • He was well known to be a fraud before he was elected. (His fake charity and his fake university.)
          • He was well known to be a scofflaw before he was elected. (Years of destroying court-ordered documents.)
          • He was well known to be a liar before he was elected. (If I run for the Presidency, I will release my tax returns.)
          • He was well known to be an incompetent businessman before the election. (Multiple bankruptcies. Losing money in the casino industry.)
          • He was well known to be dishonest before the election. (Failure to pay suppliers and subcontractors.)
          • He was well known to be a mental defective before the election. (Stern show. 17×6=”eleven twelve”)

          All the evidence was there. We elected him anyway. He was not elected In SPITE OF his racism. He was elected BECAUSE of it.

      2. Eloquently put, and much better written than my dribbling.

        Quite some time back, I referenced the fall of the Roman empire in terms of where your country was headed, and still believe it because of “I’m alright Jack, you can look after yourself” mentality that pervades your society.

        It probably won’t affect old stagers like myself, but my kids and their kids better learn Chinese, cause they will be the world’s puppet masters in a generation.

        Sad thing is, we, collectively, have handed it to them on a silver platter because we outsourced our hard labour jobs to them for a cheaper widget so some millionaire could become a billionaire and you could have 70 inch TV that you don’t need.

        Now, when you want to rebuild your society after a pandemic, you don’t have the manufacturing base and have to hand more sheckles to them to provide the goods needed to do so.

        My concern with this is that we have given the kingdom for a few pieces of gold, to a place that does not accept the notion of equality or freedom, but is about conforming and repression.

        The genie is out of the bottle, good luck getting him back in.

        To quote an old pornographer I know, we is “majorly fucked”

        1. Greg Mc said: “Quite some time back, I referenced the fall of the Roman empire in terms of where your country was headed….”

          There are parallels with the US in 2020 and the decline of Rome. Particularly the way in which the small landowning farmers that were the backbone of the Republican Roman state were ruined as a class by the conquest of Egypt and the subsequent importation of cheap Egyptian grain. This caused the farmers to go broke and mainly become either serfs on the great estates formed out of the small farms, or city slum dwellers. Neither made good soldiers, so the Roman state become more and more dependent on mercenaries with no real loyalty to the Republic or the state, just the highest bidder. (That is off the top of my head. Maybe an actual historian would laugh his head off too it.) The American manufacturing-based middle class has been similarly devastated by the importation, without limit, of cheap Chinese products.

          We may also be like France before the Revolution, where the aristocracy had gotten themselves made largely exempt from taxes – and anyone who was rich could buy a title, thus becoming richer in the long run. This left the state under-funded and tottering toward bankruptcy, while the working classes labored under heavy taxes. This eventually blew up on the aristocrats, but they refused to see it coming. (I hope I got this one right.)

          The Chinese economy now may be like the US economy from 1860 to 1960, but they probably have a LOT of issues that I, for one, no absolutely nothing about. The USA may never be the dominant superpower it was from 1945 to 1985 (my picks, very arguable), but we have advantages in natural resources and in the fact that people WANT to live here. That means our human resources keep getting refreshed with people who have energy and initiative. We need to NOT blow that.

          The Republican Party is on the wrong side of immigration and taxes, two issues that can make Greg Mc’s analogy with the fall of Rome come true. They are under the control, it seems to me, of the people with the “‘I’m alright Jack, you can look after yourself”” mentality, because it has made them billionaires, and that means they think are John Galt – they feel they run the world, and it would collapse without them.

          BTW, I thought “I’m all right, Jack” was a British expression from the 1950’s on. I think there was a British movie with that title, wasn’t there?

          1. I see I duplicated things Greg Mc already said in his post. I guess we have a similar view of the ills of the US and what caused them.

          2. Certainly the GOP Senate looks a lot like the Roman Senate when Caesar took over…

          3. The saying I’m alright Jack stems from GB, however it is/was a well used term down here in Aus. It was usually a derogatory term for people that only thought of themselves and were shunned.

            We are going down the same path as the US and it upsets me greatly.

            Egalitarianism has, by and large, gone by the wayside down under and we are just a mineral and primary resource supplier so that China can turn that into something that we buy back at manufactured prices.

            Like a lot of countries, we had no means of production of PPE and medical equipment, where not one generation ago, we had smelters, car manufacturing, oil and gas refineries etc etc, now, nothing, all to save a couple of bucks per unit for the shareholders to make more sheckles and the stock price to increase.

            My decision is to be not to be a part of this. I live on my boat, currently turning it into fully electric so that I can live the balance of my life on my terms.

            Yes, this is my version of, I am alright jack, and I am aware of the irony of this, but it is what I can control from here.

            You guys have the ability to change the direction of your country, which is the still the biggest economy and military presence in the world, compared to us who have no choice but to follow where you go.

            So, again, please don’t fuck this up for us who don’t have a lot of say in your affairs, but look on afar with dispair.

            Cheers

  29. I find it amazing that apparently the BLM protests did NOT have a significant effect on infection rates, but everything else did including Memorial Day weekend and 4th of July. Does that mean wearing the masks and staying outdoors works? That should mean that sporting events and outdoor venues should be okay. We can have Naked Shakespeare in the Park again!

    Or maybe it’s the tear gas that kills the virus.

    1. I have no quarrel with the ideals of the protesters, but my guess is that any mass gatherings, even outdoors and wearing masks, have to have an impact.

      I don’t really think the evidence is clear about the protests. Can we fairly say they had little impact on transmission?

      1. That’s the narrative I’m seeing. That the protests had no impact on the infection rates. Of course, it could be fake news.

        Even Hawaii is saying that the small infection spike we’re having is due to Memorial Day family get-togethers and not the 10,000+ people that massed on the capital a few weeks ago to protest. But that would mean that the masks and social distancing rules really do work.

        So it doesn’t make sense. Unless the news media is holding that back so they don’t gather the ire of the protestors and face boycotts or something.

        1. Maybe. I haven’t heard any news about significant case numbers among people who participated in the protests. Not so far, anyway. No hard evidence. Not even any anecdotes. At this point the impact of the protests can’t really be quantified. But the correlation to Memorial Day weekend, while not certain, seems pretty clear from some of those tables I have posted.

    1. More regarding rapidly disappearing antibodies and the herd immunity Issue. Memory T-cells for Covid are found after the antibodies have disappeared even in the mild cases. What’s unclear is whether the T-cells prevent someone who is reinfected from spreading the disease. If not, herd immunity is not possible. See here.

    1. I’m pretty sure that’s a reporting issue caused by catch-up on the holiday weekend, when Saturday’s fatality total was half of last week. If you add up Saturday through Tuesday last week, it comes to 1908 deaths. If you do the same with this week, it is 1907.

      At least I HOPE that is the explanation. We’ll know tomorrow. If fatalities are around 1000 again tomorrow, we’ll suspect it is a new level. If the number is somewhere in the 700-800 range, we’ll know the sudden jump was just a bounce-back from the weekend, especially from the presumed underreporting on Saturday.

        1. It appears that the days of declining deaths are gone, alas, like our youth, too soon. It also seems that I was wrong about Tuesday’s big increase being merely a bounce back from an under-reported weekend. I don’t usually mind being wrong about something, but in this case I wish I had been right because Wednesday’s numbers are terrifying.

          I’ve been expecting the fatality numbers to rise, and have been quite surprised that it did not happen sooner, given 28 consecutive days of increase in the 7-day rolling average of case numbers.

      1. ROFLMAO!!! Oh, Brobonk, you are such a comedian! Hope you’re drinking lots of bleach! (Really. Drink bleach.)

        1. I think Brobonk needs to stick a UV light up his… remember Trump said light was effective: “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Mr. Trump said.

  30. Yet another conflicting study. The study done in (I believe) Alameda county earlier in the pandemic showed 60% of the population with antibodies.

    The antibody testing has been all over the map. I’ve seen estimates that current tests can be wrong up to 60% of the time. Many researchers think they can fade away within 2 to 6 months…which is A HUGE amount of time if you think about it. If it’s 6 months that’s time to get herd immunity and kill it. If it’s 2 we’re fucked and everyone will be getting it again and again. One wonders why a vaccine would even be effective with that number if you’ve gotta get a booster every 2 months.

    At this point in personally ignoring anything regarding antibodies. I think it’s too early, I think the science is still very very shaky, and I think too much of the research is hell bent on a vaccine. (so so so much money and power worldwide betting on the vaccine race)

    1. I wouldn’t bet on herd immunity then. I don’t think you correctly understand the concept of the antibodies fading within 2 to 6 months. It’s not either 2 months or 6 months, it’s from 2-6 months (in most cases) different for every individual. This is some kind of bell-curve. If the curve skews to 6 months, then herd immunity may be possible and if it skews towards 2 months, then it almost certainly isn’t possible.

      If it is, however, a normal bell curve without a skew (symmetrical), then the average would be 4 months, with (just under) half the people having anti bodies fade at 2-4 months. Looking at a normal bell curve, you can see that most people would have their anti bodies fade at 3-5 months.

      It is just under half, because there are always a few outliers. In this case, people who lose their antibodies at between 0-2 months.

      I doubt very much herd immunity can be achieved with somewhere around 40% of the population having their antibodies fade between 3-4 months.

      1. It’s not just antibodies that matter. There are other elements of the immune system that come into play such as T-cells “trained” to recognize the virus. Those outlast the antibodies’ presence.

        Accurate antibody tests are useful for determining recent exposure to the virus. The key word here is “accurate.”

    2. The antibody tests used have been shown to be mostly unreliable. They can’t be relied on. But neither can your numbers about those exposed.

      I believe there was Santa Clara County study and the numbers from that flawed Stanford study were far, far lower.

      LA County had a study that estimated around 6% not 60% of the population there with antibodies.

  31. Scoopy, a new line you can add into the chart, this site has the total number of accumulated hospitalizations listed going back to May 18 (though there is an oddity on June 3-4 when the total number of accumulated hospitalizations somehow decreased.)

    Simply subtracting the latest number from the previous day obviously results in the new daily hospitalizations.

    I assume this site has accurate numbers:

    1. I’ll trust it for now. Without footnotes it’s difficult to determine the causes, but I assume the weird numbers on May 26 and June 3 are corrections of a previous error or omission.

  32. The United States will probably see 60,000 new infections this week and revert to 700,000 new coronavirus cases a day, according to former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
    “The CDC says we’re diagnosing 1 in 10 now. We’re probably more like 1 in 12 because these states are getting pressed and we’re falling behind,” Gottlieb said in a Monday interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’re going to hit 60,000 cases this week for certain. So we’re back to 700,000 infections a day.”

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