May 5, 2020: U.S. Death Rate from COVID Rising

 

5/5/20: Where to begin? The COVID-19 death toll continues to rise and – good god – our president is crazy. 

You would think the most powerful narcissist in the world could have aides check his math. Or he could eyeball the same statistics this blogger sees and not tweet stupid sh*t. 

Yesterday, we got this:

 

 

 

We are, if fact, #1 in most tests performed of any country. We are still significantly behind if we adjust for population. The U.S. has done 22,612 tests per million. Germany has done more than 30,000. Germany, with a population one fourth of ours, has one tenth the loss of life. Many nations are testing higher percentages of people. That would include Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, and Switzerland. Just one border away, Canada is testing at higher rates than we are under the guiding hand of Donald J. Trump. 

Their death rate is half of ours. 

 

“I have a moral obligation.” 

Still, we can celebrate (a tiny bit) as the country begins to open back up. The real question: at what cost, and to whom? Dr. Fauci made it clear last night in a CNN interview that he feared we were relaxing social distancing rules too soon – and we’d only see the spread of the virus accelerate once more. “I have a moral obligation,” he said, to sound warning. 

(Add those words, “moral obligation” to the list of words, like “empathy,” you will never hear President Trump utter, not even if you listened to him talk in his sleep.) 

We find ourselves on an uncharted course – steered erratically by a president who compares himself to Captain Bligh. You know –  commander of the HMS Bounty, so hated by his crew that they mutinied and set him and a handful of loyalists adrift in a small boat.   

And we never know exactly who might be at risk. Consider the case of a Walmart store in Worcester, Massachusetts. On April 1, it was discovered that one employee was infected. By Wednesday last week a total of 23 had tested positive. Sunday, that number grew again, with news that 58 additional workers had COVID-19.

 

On an oddly positive note, Missouri health officials report that 373 workers at one meatpacking plant have been infected by the coronavirus, but all 373 were found to be asymptomatic. 

So: the question continues to boggle the minds of even the best scientists. How deadly is this strain? 

Missouri now has 8,386 cases and 352 patients have died. So, barring mass testing, the death rate, from what numbers we have, would be 4.2% in the “Show Me State.” 

 

Would red states lie about their own numbers? 

Lately, it has become Trump-fan gospel to insist health experts are lying about how many cases of the virus and how many deaths there have been. It’s part of some plot to bring the Orange God down. One right-wing media outlet trumpeted the news that deaths from the virus had gone down – dramatically – in the last two weeks. On Twitter, Tim Young, a right-wing personality, picked up the story and ran with it like an Olympic sprinter. “HOLY SHIT: Did I read this wrong or did the CDC just revised [sic] the national COVID-19 deaths to 37,308?!?!” he wondered. 

Then his right-wing fans took off in all directions, spreading the tall tale .... almost like a virus. 

Young garnered more than 12,000 retweets. The “RINO governor” of Massachusetts, one of Young’s followers warned, was in on the plot. Another suggested that inflating the threat meant “big money for hospitals.” “I guess democrats haven’t figured out a way to politicize pneumonia,” a third grumbled. Another said he or she had the whole scheme figured out. “Flu death numbers way down from normal,” this person said, “and way way down from a bad flu year. So, we essentially borrowed from the flu column, put it in the covid column.” 

Soon Trump fans were running a misinformation marathon with all the shocking numbers they could find. The CDC had been lying all along! Those bastard health officials!! 

So, this humble blogger kept checking. Would Republican-controlled states, for example, inflate their numbers? 

That would defy logic. 

 

In Texas, you have the centaur approach. 

We know red-state Texas was among the most reluctant jurisdictions to shut down and one of the first to open back up. Would they lie about their numbers? To make Trump look bad? On Monday, the Department of State Health Services reported there were 31,548 infections in Texas and 867 fatalities. Today, the numbers stand at 32,332 and 884. If you start clicking on counties, you learn Presidio, down on the Rio Grande, hasn’t had a single case. Briscoe, up in the Panhandle, has one. Harris County has nearly 7,000. 

(Texas officials are also reporting that as of today 1,577 people are hospitalized as a result of coronavirus infections.) 

Texas health officials aren’t faking numbers; but the nearly impossible tightrope walk all states face is clear. If Texas opens up Hudspeth County (0 cases) and people from El Paso County (998 cases) are allowed to travel to Hudspeth, which borders to the east, to come to cafes and bars and hair salons – do you kick off a new round of infection? There can be no doubt the economic pain is immense and growing. Still, no state wants to end up looking like New York. 

In Texas, you have the centaur approach. Half open, half closed. The governor has allowed retail stores, restaurants, and movie theaters to reopen. You can now go to museums and libraries. Occupancy will be limited to 25% of what had been listed pre-pandemic. Essential services remain open. That means, if you get infected at the theater, you can go cough on a grocery store clerk for practice. You still cannot go sweat at the gym or do laps in a public pool. You cannot get a tattoo or have body parts pierced. You cannot get a massage, no matter how tense this crisis makes you feel. You can’t get your hair done and you can’t go to a bowling alley. And, my lord, you can’t go to bars. 

(If ever we needed a drink, it would be now.)

 

Two states which moved to shut down quickly, Ohio and Washington, have fared well. Georgia – where the governor admitted he didn’t realize asymptomatic persons could transmit the disease – has, like Texas, moved up steadily on the list of states with the most infections and has not flattened any curve. Another 766 Georgians were found to have the coronavirus on May 4. 

Also climbing up the ladder of reported coronavirus cases: Florida, with 37,439 and 1,471 deaths. On March 14, the state reported only 38 new cases for the day. By April 1, the explosion had occurred – with 1,032 cases in just 24 hours. So, while there seems to be a slight downward trend of late, the spread is clearly unabated:

 

  

CDC is clear: 67,456 dead. 

As for CDC and those “revised” numbers Trump fans were trumpeting? As of May 4, the number given for COVID-19 deaths was clear: 67,456, including an increase of 1,719 from the day before. 

By Sunday night, even Trump was fudging his bets, admitting during a talk on Fox News, “We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person out of this.” 

According to tracking by CDC, we’re piling up 30,000 new cases per day, even as most states start opening back up.