From February 16, 2021, Is it double-masking or Joe Biden’s presidency that has beaten coronavirus?, which contained the following chart:
I felt confident enough that this strong trend would continue that I wrote:
As promised, Joe Biden has shut down the coronavirus. And, not only has he shut down coronavirus in the U.S., he’s defeated this pathogen on a planetary scale.
How about the same New York Times page today? The global chart:
What if we look locally instead of globally? Cases have continued to fall in the U.S., but at a slower rate of decline than in mid-February.
Other than “Philip is stupid,” how do we explain the recent slight upward trend worldwide?
Slanted fiction writings and belletristic. Why not using real sources the at least pretend to be and at most are best available data. This shows handful of states reversing the trends, VT, NY, NJ, some others… So far FL and TX are not part of them. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states
And other useful statistics under https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/ .
It’s all about RT-PCR’s Ct and number if tests performed on healthy people, anyway.
The case numbers are pure fiction anyway.
averros: In general I would agree with you regarding the absurdity of using “cases” as a measure of disease. On the other hand, the testing policies aren’t changing, are they? So there is no new absurdity that should have caused “cases” to go up. The global death rate tagged to COVID-19 is not trending upward, but there is usually a lag of a few weeks, right?
@philg, relying on info graphic from NYT for making inferences is like measuring average temperature in the hospital. Many populous countries have experienced cases increase in January, Brazil is one example. US cases are still going downhill but at a lesser rate. It could be international travel, could be new border crossings. Some country slicing and dicing is at my source https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases. Mexico too achieved Maximum of new coronavirus cases in January, not December https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/mexico and now it is on downward spiral, but for how long? There is bound to be some delayed effect on US. By the way, other countries now have something they call New York City strain of coronavirus.
Philg, Alex,
I was curious, what’s the general perception of the general populace regarding corona in the US.
For example in India, or at least in my city – Hyderabad, People are no longer “afraid” or care about the corona. Schools have started (sort of), Multiplex/malls are open, restaurants are open (indoor also) etc.
In spite of the mask mandates, I notice ppl roaming around without masks … I think India (media?) has ‘moved on’ from the corona plague.
(there is a general narrative that the govt. has ‘handled it well’ – the western media was estimating Billions of death in the land of the snake charmers. )
Could you say something about the usage of Ivermectin and the so called Ziverdo kit in India?
https://twitter.com/SamBardo1/status/1339211043717980160
@viking –
I don’t remember seeing exactly this medicine being recommended. (Let me check with my doc. friends).
For the mild cases, what they have been given is paracetamol (for fever), zinc + vitamin c supplements for immunity , and home quarantine. Also, in general, there has been some home remedies being followed by many ppl (gargle with hot water + slat, hot karha two times a day etc. Cant prove its efficacy but is supposed to improve immunity in the long term).
It’s because Coronavirus responds to people’s intentions, not their actions per se. That is, it responds to the intentions that precede the physical action. It’s a bit of a metaphysical disease. The massive dip was caused by the vaccine. People may argue that not nearly enough people had been vaccinated in order to have any effect on cases, but that is where Coronavirus is responding to the intention of large scale vaccination and not the actual vaccines themselves.
The recent spike upwards and plateau at a high case rate was caused by Texas and Mississippi ending their mask mandates. Again people might say that the spike preceded the end of the mask mandate by several weeks, but here we see Coronavirus responding to the intention of state leaders to soon end the mask mandate. And just the consideration of ending the masks was enough to reenergize Coronavirus in its battle against us.
RS: I like your quantum-wave theory of coronavirus… the extension will be infinite corona-universes where all possible mutations already happened
Just in: I just learned that one of the towns near me, under pressure from a handful of angry activist Karens, was forced to hire a part-time contact tracer for the local school last year, who bills at the rate of $75 per hour. It appears that their full compensation for the entire year will be north of $45,000, which is greater than the town’s budget for the Board of Health.
This is in a town that has had a total of 109 cases since the pandemic began, most of them among the elderly.
The incentive to extend this pandemic and all of its accompanying paraphernalia is enormous.