Pixel Scroll 5/3/20 NCIS: Ringworld

(1) B.C.V. / A.C.V. Kim Stanley Robinson argues “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations” in an article for The New Yorker.

…On a personal level, most of us have accepted that we live in a scientific age. If you feel sick, you go to a doctor, who is really a scientist; that scientist tests you, then sometimes tells you to take a poison so that you can heal—and you take the poison. It’s on a societal level that we’ve been lagging. Today, in theory, everyone knows everything. We know that our accidental alteration of the atmosphere is leading us into a mass-extinction event, and that we need to move fast to dodge it. But we don’t act on what we know. We don’t want to change our habits. This knowing-but-not-acting is part of the old structure of feeling.

Now comes this disease that can kill anyone on the planet. It’s invisible; it spreads because of the way we move and congregate. Instantly, we’ve changed. As a society, we’re watching the statistics, following the recommendations, listening to the scientists. Do we believe in science?  Go outside and you’ll see the proof that we do everywhere you look. We’re learning to trust our science as a society. That’s another part of the new structure of feeling.

(2) SOMETIMES IT DOES TAKE A ROCKET SCIENTIST. Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me on NPR: “Who’s Bill This Time”

SAGAL: Yes. And what do you do there when you’re allowed out of your house?

TIBERI: I am an electrical test engineer for the spacecraft Orion, which is the world’s only deep space human exploration spacecraft.

JOEL KIM BOOSTER: Whoa.

SAGAL: No kidding. So, wait a minute. You’re helping to build the Orion, which is supposed to take us to Mars, right?

TIBERI: Yes, that is correct. So I work as a test engineer. I do software and electrical integration. And next year, we are launching for the moon.

(3) A VISIT WITH MANAGEMENT. “The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation” – video of a 2019 event.

The Baker Institute Space Policy Program hosts a conversation with senior space policy fellow George W.S. Abbey and author Michael Cassutt, whose new biography “The Astronaut Maker” chronicles Abbey’s rise from Air Force pilot to NASA power broker.

(4) YOU WOULDN’T GUESS THIS. CinemaBlend writer Adam Holmes, in “John Belushi’s Last Day On Earth Was Apparently Spent On The Set Of Star Trek II”, quotes Star Trek historian Mark A. Altman saying that John Belushi’s last activity before dying of a drug overdose was visiting the set of Star Trek II, because he “wanted to perfect his Shatner impersonation” and spent time watching William Shatner at work.

(5) RESISTING THE TEMPTATION. Roger Wolfson has “Advice for a Science Fiction Writer During the Time of Covid” – and where else but at ScienceFiction.com?

…Also like many writers, I have several projects in active development.  But all my projects require answering the same question.

“How much or how little Covid do I put into this project?”

This is particularly important in the realm of Science Fiction, which is at heart, social commentary.  And some of the best Science Fiction tries to take current social issues and expand them into the future in order to comment on them most effectively.

For me, when it comes to my projects, I want to talk about this pandemic. I want to talk about the social implications. The governmental implications. Personal implications.

Especially since I had Covid myself. I have a lot to say.

The problem is, any project I write won’t be on air – – if I’m lucky – for another year, or more…..  

(6) BREAKING IN AND REMAKING. “NK Jemisin: ‘It’s easier to get a book set in black Africa published if you’re white'” – so the author told Guardian interviewer Alison Flood

…She wrote another, The Killing Moon, which got her an agent. Set in a world based on ancient Egypt, it had an almost exclusively black cast – and didn’t find her a publisher. “It was the mid 2000s, and at that time science fiction and fantasy publishers were not super interested in stories with black casts by black writers. They had done some stories with black casts by white writers, but they were not interested in those stories coming from people who actually were black.” Rejection letters would say things like, “we like this, but we’re not sure how to market it. We like this but we’re not sure who its audience would be”– the implication from publishers being “that fantasy readers don’t want to read about black people. Black people don’t want to read fantasy. So what do we do?”

Jemisin decided to rewrite The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, making nearly the entire cast white. “All of them were horrible people. They’d shank each other for, like, nothing. And I wrote this angry story about this lone brown girl going into this place full of mean white people,” she says. It went to auction, with three different publishers fighting over it. “And I’m like, this is what you want?” she says. “I was pretty bitter … I’d taken such care in [The Killing Moon] to include sympathetic white people, but that wasn’t what they wanted.” …

(7) MAY 8 DEADLINE IF YOU WANT IN. The UC San Diego Library is producing a new edition of Short Tales From the Mothership, time coming in a more futuristic/modern event format — via Zoom! The event is scheduled for May 19, 2020 from 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

In the 1970s, sci-fi magazine editor George Hay encouraged authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, the namesake of UC San Diego’s Clarke Center, to write short postcard stories. Taking inspiration from Hay, this annual sci-fi micro fiction event allows participants to submit short stories inspired by UC San Diego’s iconic Geisel Library building, designed by famed architect William Pereira.

You have a chance to participate. Submit a science fiction or fantasy story (250 words or less) to Exhibit and Events Coordinator Scott Paulson at [email protected] by May 8. Participants will be invited to read their works at our virtual event on Zoom on May 19. This virtual event is free and open to the public. Registration details are forthcoming.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 3, 1996 Barb Wire premiered.  Brad Wyman produced the film, and It was directed by David Hogan from a screenplay by Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken. The story was by Ilene Chaiken based on Chris Warner’s Barb Wire comic series. It stars Pamela Anderson in the titular role with the additional cast of Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier and Steve Railsback. It received overwhelmingly negative reactions by critics and was a box office bomb. It holds a fourteen percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes among audience reviewers.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 3, 1896 Dodie Smith. English children’s novelist and playwright, best remembered for The Hundred and One Dalmatians which of course became the animated film of the same name and thirty years later was remade by Disney as a live action film.(Saw the first a long time ago, never saw the latter.) Though The Starlight Barking, the sequel, was optioned, by Disney, neither sequel film (101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure and 102 Dalmatians) is based on it. Elizabeth Hand in her review column in F&SF praised it as one of the very best fantasies (“… Dodie Smith’s sophisticated canine society in The Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking…”) she read. (Died 1990.)
  • Born May 3, 1928 Jeanne Bal. In Trek’s “The Man Trap” episode, she played Nancy Crater, in reality a lethal shape-shifting alien. This was the episode that replaced “The Cage” which the Network didn’t like. She also had one-offs in Thriller and I-Spy. (Died 1996.)
  • Born May 3, 1939 Dennis O’Neil, 81. Writer and editor, mostly for Marvel Comics and DC Comics from the Sixties through the Nineties, and was the Group Editor for the Batman family of titles until his retirement which makes him there when Ed Brubaker’s amazing Gotham Central came out. He himself has written Wonder Woman and Green Arrow in both cases introducing some rather controversial storytelling ideas. He also did a rather brilliant DC Comics Shadow series with Michael Kaluta as the artist.
  • Born May 3, 1951 W. H. Pugmire. S. T. Joshi has described Pugmire as “perhaps the leading Lovecraftian author writing today.” Let the debate begin. I don’t have a dog in this fight as I’ve never even heard of him. I will note that he shows up in most of the digital Cthulhu anthologies from the usual suspects and of course he’s in all of the Joshi Cthulhu anthologies that I looked at. (Died 2019.)
  • Born May 3, 1962 Stephan Martinière, 58. French artist who was the winner of the Best Professional Artist Hugo at Devention 3. He’s done both genre covers such as Ken MacLeod‘s Newton’s Wake: A Space Opera, and conceptual work for such films as The Fifth ElementRed Planet, and, errr, Battlefield Earth.
  • Born May 3, 1969 Daryl Mallett, 51. By now you know that I’ve a deep fascination with the non-fiction documentation of our community. Mallett is the author of a number of works doing just that including several I’d love to see including Reginald’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards: A Comprehensive Guide to the Awards and Their Winners written with Robert Reginald. He’s also written some short fiction including one story with Forrest J. Ackerman that bears the charming title of “A Typical Terran’s Thought When Spoken to by an Alien from the Planet Quarn in Its Native Language“.  He’s even been an actor, appearing in several Next Gen episodes (“Encounter at Farpoint” and “Hide and Q”) and The Undiscovered Country as well, all uncredited. He also appeared in Doctor Who and The Legends Of Time, a fan film which you can see here.
  • Born May 3, 1982 Rebecca Hall, 38. Lots of genre work — her first role was as Sarah Borden in The Prestige followed by being Emily Wotton in Dorian Gray and then as Florence Cathcart in The Awakening which in turn led to her being Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3. Next up? Mary in Roald Dahl’s The BFG. Is she done yet? No as next up is the English dub of the voice of Mother of Mirai no Mirai. (She might’ve wanted to have stopped there as her most recent role was Dr. Grace Hart in Holmes & Watson which won an appalling four Golden Raspberries!) 
  • Born May 3, 1985 Becky Chambers, 35. Her Wayfarers series won the Best Series Hugo at Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon. A Closed and Common Orbit was a finalist at WorldCon 75 for Best Novel but lost out to another exemplary novel, N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk GateRecord of a Spaceborn Few would be on the ballot at Dublin 2019 but lost out to yet another exemplary novel, Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Calculating Stars. (A digression: The Wayfarers are the best series I’ve listened to in a long time.) “To Be Taught, if Fortunate” is a finalist this year at ConZealand in the Best Novella category and I’ve got in my short list to be listened to. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • What might other planets be like? Here’s Garfield’s idea.
  • Free Range shows what happens when someone opens the wrong door.

(11) TIME TO REFILL YOUR LID. Alasdair Stuart’s “The Full Lid 1st May 2020” takes a look at newly announced Doctor Who transmedia story “Time Lord Victorious” and what it tells about the show and its relationship with fans and the world it exists in. 

Also, this week, Stuart looks at Lorcan Finnegan’s chilling suburban horror Vivarium and Jules Scheeles’ wonderful comics work. Interstitials are some of the best bits of week one of DC Comics’ daily digital offerings.  

The Full Lid publishes weekly at 5 p.m. GMT on Fridays. Signup is free and the last six months are archived here.  

Earlier this week, Time Lord Victorious was announced. It’s Doctor Who‘s first (as far as I can tell) trans-media project, telling one story from multiple perspectives across audio drama, books, comics, escape rooms (!!) and collectibles. It’s Crisis on infinite Gallifreys, it’s X-Men vs UNIT, it’s a crossover. A big ‘we fill the stage with goldfish and angst!’ crossover that will tell a massive flotilla of new stories forming one unified narrative. Oh and it features three of the Doctor’s best loved faces.

So of course a lot of people have decided this is a bad thing.

Let’s talk about the crossover, about why some folks feel that way, and why I don’t.

(12) SUPERMARIONATION REVIVED. Two episodes so far. Be sure to watch the “Making Of” at the end of the first episode – begins at 10:35.

‘Nebula-75’ is a new puppet lockdown drama made entirely during confinement in 2020 using only existing puppets and materials. Filmed in Supermarionation, it follows in the tradition of ‘Thunderbirds’, ‘Stingray’ and ‘Fireball-XL5’ while at the same time also being filmed in SuperIsolation and Lo-Budget! ‘Nebula-75’ charts the exploits of Commander Ray Neptune and the crew of the spaceship NEBULA-75 as they make their way across the stars, encountering strange worlds and forms of life hitherto unknown by mankind. It has been created and produced by a small group of filmmakers during the British lockdown on 2020. Although team members from around the world contributed remotely to pre and post production, the entirety of the filming for NEBULA-75 was undertaken by a crew of three who happened to already live together in a small flat in London. Their living room was transformed into a makeshift movie studio – with bookshelves, cardboard boxes and other household objects becoming the interior of the show’s hero spacecraft. This flat was also fortunately home to many of the puppets, props, and costumes that have been accumulated over the course of different productions.

(13) NOT MORE SPARKLY VAMPIRES! J-14 tries to interpret the cryptic clues — “OMG: Author Stephenie Meyer Drops Major Hint She’s Releasing New ‘Twilight’ Book”.

Get ready, people, because it looks like Bella Swan and Edward Cullen’s story may not be over just yet! Yep, that’s right. Almost 15 years after the first Twilight came out, the author of the book series, Stephenie Meyer, just dropped a major hint that she’s got a new book in the works, and fans are seriously freaking out over it!

Get this, you guys — Stephenie has upgraded her website with a very mysterious countdown that has everyone convinced she’s dropping another part of the series.

…The countdown is set to stop at midnight on May 4, 2020.

For those who forgot, back in 2008, rumors spread that the author was working on a new Twilight book, called Midnight Sun, which was going to be the same story but told from Edward’s point of view instead. The first twelve chapters were seemingly leaked online at the time, which in the end, caused Stephenie to shut down the book….

(14)NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Stanley Johnson Pushes For New Release of His 40-Year-Old Virus Novel” in The Guardian, Mark Brown says the British prime minister Boris Johnson’s father, technothriller author Stanley Johnson, is trying to get British publishers to reissue his 1982 novel The Marburg Virus, saying it’s topical and that copies of the paperback are currently selling for 57 pounds on Amazon.

The SF Encyclopedia says this novel is sf (I looked it up!)

…In Johnson’s story, the equivalent of Wuhan is New York, the virus breaks out at the Bronx zoo. Soon the rest of the world bans planes travelling from the US. The main characters are involved in a desperate attempt to track down a rare breed of green monkey, which was the source of the virus.

Some subplots are more improbable than others. One involves the Brazilian head of the World Health Organization and his deputy, a sinister, monocle-wearing Russian with an upper-class English accent, travelling to the Congo to personally oversee the destruction of monkeys responsible for the virus … or so they thought….

(15) RETIRE TO A SAFE DISTANCE. “Coronavirus Fears Have NASA Urging Space Fans To Stay Away From Historic Launch” – NPR has the story.

Because of the coronavirus, NASA’s top official is asking space fans not to travel to Florida later this month to watch astronauts blast off from American soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.

“When we look back to the space shuttle launches, we had hundreds of thousands of people that would descend on the Kennedy Space Center,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a pre-flight briefing. But, he noted, now is unfortunately not a good time for people to gather in large crowds.

“We’re asking people not to travel to Kennedy, but to watch online or watch on your television at home,” said Bridenstine, who confessed that it made him feel “sad” to have to say this.

The upcoming test flight is historic because the two astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, won’t be flying in a NASA vehicle. Instead, they’ll go up inside a capsule created by SpaceX, the rocket firm founded by wealthy entrepreneur Elon Musk.

This first launch of people in a company-owned spacecraft, currently scheduled for 4:32 p.m. EDT on May 27, will be a milestone for both NASA and commercial spaceflight.

(16) REMEMBER THAT MAN-MADE VIRUS? “Love Bug’s creator tracked down to repair shop in Manila”.

The man behind the world’s first major computer virus outbreak has admitted his guilt, 20 years after his software infected millions of machines worldwide.

Filipino Onel de Guzman, now 44, says he unleashed the Love Bug computer worm to steal passwords so he could access the internet without paying.

He claims he never intended it to spread globally.

And he says he regrets the damage his code caused.

“I didn’t expect it would get to the US and Europe. I was surprised,” he said in an interview for Crime Dot Com, a forthcoming book on cyber-crime.

The Love Bug pandemic began on 4 May, 2000.

Victims received an email attachment entitled LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU. It contained malicious code that would overwrite files, steal passwords, and automatically send copies of itself to all contacts in the victim’s Microsoft Outlook address book.

Within 24 hours, it was causing major problems across the globe, reportedly infecting 45 million machines. It also overwhelmed organisations’ email systems, and some IT managers disconnected parts of their infrastructure to prevent infection.

(17) FROST ON THE PUMPKIN. Bob Burns’ Hollywood Halloween shows a unique haunted house put together in 2002 by some well-known special effects creators.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Lise Andreasen, Michael Toman, Contrarius, Mike Kennedy, Cliff Ramshaw, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

184 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/3/20 NCIS: Ringworld

  1. John A Arkansawyer: My primary reason for discouraging people from calling other people stupid isn’t about the targets. It’s about the interests of the person who says it. It is almost always bad for you to underestimate your opponents. Calling people currently kicking your ass “stupid” misses the point and distracts you from useful action. It’s greed and cruelty driving people back to work, not stupidity.

    Once again, you are mischaracterizing my words. I have repeatedly pointed out that it’s not about calling people stupid.

    But yes, there are acts which are stupid, and it’s okay to point out that they are stupid, unwise, and self-destructive.

    Your pizza proprietor, for instance. In the short term, I’m sure he thinks that his choice not to do anything to protect his employees is smart. But in the long term, it’s a stupid, self-destructive choice, because it will eventually come back to bite him and undermine his business.

    Seriously, please work on this thing you do where you alter what people have said in your arguments. It does not help your cause. It’s a behavior which undermines your credibility. It says “I don’t have a valid rebuttal, so I have to set up a strawman that I can rebut instead”.

    If it’s an issue of you not being able to distinguish between words and actions versus personal identity, then it’s a perception problem that you should work on fixing, because it will ultimately cause you to perceive any criticism of what you say and do as a personal indictment of who you are as a person — rather than of something you have done that you are able to change — and that’s not emotionally healthy.

  2. @JJ: When you call a person’s idea stupid, the clear implication is that you were smart enough to see that and they weren’t. You can dance around this with logic all you want. I have the letter of apology I willingly wrote nearly a decade ago when I called a person’s idea stupid to remind me I had actually called that person stupid.

    I really regret the “no-brainer” way I presented what I said, because it’s a distraction.

    But in the long term, it’s a stupid, self-destructive choice, because it will eventually come back to bite him and undermine his business.

    I hope you’re right; I bet you aren’t. I think it’s a callous choice to attempt to power through a crisis by destroying other people and evading the consequences. The federal government and our state government are helping him out with bad policy. If they give him enough help, the destruction will be shifted to other people.

    You underestimate him, just as upper class southerners underestimated the Snopes.

  3. John A Arkansawyer: When you call a person’s idea stupid, the clear implication is that you were smart enough to see that and they weren’t. You can dance around this with logic all you want.

    When someone chooses to personalize criticism of something they have said or done as a criticism of their personal identity, they are failing to take the opportunity to learn and grow as a human being, and are instead retreating to irrational defensiveness to avoid confronting their own poor choices.

    I can’t force them to behave rationally, but I’m not going to baby and coddle them by refraining from criticism just because they’re not adult enough to handle it rationally.

    Again, this boils down to you arguing that one can not criticize something that a person has said or done, because it might hurt their feelings.

  4. @Camestros

    There is an interesting mechanic at play in the complaints about bureaucracy.

    That dynamic obviously exists. It isn’t the only dynamic in play. Boiling things down to a binary choice frequently misses other important factors.

    I believe it was the mayor of Chicago that went out to get her hair done while telling the city that their barber/beauty shops had to remain closed. Her justification is that, as the “face of the city”, she has to look good.

    Nothing fosters unity better than rules for thee but not for me.

    (note, she’s not the only politician that I’ve heard that was caught in such hypocrisy)

    @John A Arkansawyer

    It’s greed and cruelty driving people back to work, not stupidity.

    Those dynamics also exist. They aren’t the only ones in play either.

    Another factor driving people back to work is the desire to live.

    No government has enough money to pay everyone to stay home for a year waiting for the virus to die out (not likely) or to get a vaccine (possible). Our food supply chains (while current wonky at worst) will break if they aren’t maintained. Hungry people will engage in activities that are far less enlightened than ordering/delivering pizza.

    That doesn’t include the probability of increased suicide due to economic stress, isolation, etc.

    The purpose of the shut down was to bend the proverbial curve and keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. Excepting New York, the US has done a pretty good job of that.

    Figuring out how to conduct ourselves in a reasonably safe way is the next step. It’s not a binary choice between full lock-down and full “normal”.

    In Hugo news, Tor is batting 0.500 for me right now. Super excited by Gideon. Disappointed by City.

    Regards,
    Dann
    No way, I took call waiting of!@#$!(!@ ) #$! NO CARRIER

  5. @JJ: That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that you have found a way to tell people they’re stupid without actually saying “You’re stupid.”

    Again, this boils down to you arguing that one can not criticize something that a person has said or done, because it might hurt their feelings.

    I don’t know how calling cruelty cruel instead of stupid can fail to be a criticism.

  6. John A Arkansawyer: I don’t know how calling cruelty cruel instead of stupid can fail to be a criticism.

    So it’s okay to criticize some things, but not others?

    Who decides which things can be criticized? You?

  7. @JJ: Thank you for acknowledging I’m not arguing against criticism.

    I’ve argued against gratuitous and inappropriate use of “stupid” and related concepts in political arguments. You get to decide what to do about it.

  8. John A Arkansawyer: Thank you for acknowledging I’m not arguing against criticism.

    No, you’re just arguing against criticism which doesn’t adhere to your standards for “acceptable criticism”.

     
    John A Arkansawyer: I’ve argued against gratuitous and inappropriate use of “stupid” and related concepts in political arguments. You get to decide what to do about it.

    No, you’ve argued against the use of the word “stupid” in any sort of criticism. And yet, things people say or do can be stupid and/or ignorant. And it’s okay for someone to point that out, even if it doesn’t adhere to your “standards”.

  9. @JJ: I don’t know where to draw a bright line between gratuitous and appropriate use of “stupid”. I wish I did. I’d call things stupid a lot more often. It’s a struggle not to.

    It’s rarely the only thing wrong with something worth fighting, and rarely the most salient feature of that thing, so I get along pretty well without it. It also benefits me to see the capabilities of those who want to kill me or mine as clearly as I can, and I’m better off over-estimating them than underestimating them.

  10. John A Arkansawyer: It also benefits me to see the capabilities of those who want to kill me or mine as clearly as I can, and I’m better off over-estimating them than underestimating them.

    That’s the advantage of being able to separate what someone says/does from who someone is.

    It’s a lot easier to make assessments of character and situation when you’re able to evaluate actions and words as discrete items which are separate from the person saying or doing them.

    I encourage you to give it a try.

  11. @JJ: I understand now, I think, a fundamental difference in how we see the world:

    That’s the advantage of being able to separate what someone says/does from who someone is.

    I don’t believe that’s entirely possible. We are what we do.

    You can isolate individual acts of a person and evaluate them independently from that person, but it doesn’t work so well the other way around.

  12. @Dann —

    Nothing fosters unity better than rules for thee but not for me.

    Which reminds me once again of Pence and Trump, They Who Must Not Wear Masks.

    Incidentally, I read this morning that one of Trump’s personal valets has been diagnosed with Covid. Who’s wishing he’d enforced mask policies now, ehhh?

    The purpose of the shut down was to bend the proverbial curve and keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. Excepting New York, the US has done a pretty good job of that.

    Yeah, no. For instance, see Texas, where daily cases spiked to a new high on the very day the state opened back up for business. A “pretty good job” would be waiting until we reached the DOWN side of the curve.

    In Hugo news, Tor is batting 0.500 for me right now. Super excited by Gideon. Disappointed by City.

    Fortunately I’ve read all the novel nominees except for the Anders — of the five I’ve read, I don’t think there’s a single dud, though McGuire and Martine may have to duke it out for first place on my ballot and Gideon will be no higher than third — and I’ve been working on the Astounding nominees, both rereads (first books in the various series) and new reads (second books). My only real surprise so far has been down-voting the Kuang; I hope lots of people get to read at least the first Lyons book before the end of voting!

  13. @Contrarius

    Which reminds me once again of Pence and Trump, They Who Must Not Wear Masks.

    I agree.

    Yeah, no. For instance, see Texas, where daily cases spiked to a new high on the very day the state opened back up for business. A “pretty good job” would be waiting until we reached the DOWN side of the curve.

    The virus simply doesn’t react that fast. We need at least 3-4 days to judge the impact of any change in policy. It takes that long for people to figure out if they are sick. Media reports focusing on new “records” the day after a policy change are bereft of science.

    Also, our testing capacity is increasing every day. Even without a change in policy, we should expect to see record new cases of infection identified simply due to the increased level of testing.

    I don’t think there’s a single dud,

    Hopefully that means I can look forward with great anticipation!

    Regards,
    Dann
    We adore chaos because we love to produce order. – M.C. Escher

  14. Which reminds me once again of Pence and Trump, They Who Must Not Wear Masks.

    To be fair, that’s not just Trump and Pence. Hardly any politicians no matter where wear masks during public appearances, even as they force them on the population. I think Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz briefly wore one, as he walked up to the lectern to hold a press conference and Markus Söder, minister president of Bavaria, has been photographed wearing a mask with the Bavarian flag pattern (Ugh). German secretary of defence Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was heavily criticised because she was photographed accepting a shipment of masks closely surrounded by several high-ranking military officers, none of them wearing masks. And German secretary of health Jens Spahn was photographed getting into a crowded glass elevator with neither nor anybody else wearing a mask, just minutes after he had urged people to keep their distance and wear masks in a press conference.

    Though visiting a hospital without a mask like Mike Pence did does take the cherry, because hospitals are full of vulnerable people and one of the places where masks make sense. Whereas holding a press conference without a mask is not a problem, as long as everybody keeps their distance.

  15. @Dann665-

    The virus simply doesn’t react that fast. We need at least 3-4 days to judge the impact of any change in policy. It takes that long for people to figure out if they are sick. Media reports focusing on new “records” the day after a policy change are bereft of science.

    It’s not “bereft of science.” It’s very science-aware. To even begin to safely reopen, fourteen days of continuous decline in new cases is needed.

    Texas didn’t suddenly do a whole bunch of new testing in high-risk populations, with the results coming back the day they “reopened.” This wasn’t a random statistical fluke. This was a sign that COVID-19 cases were still rising exponentially in Texas, and it was nowhere near time to reopen.

    My older sister, and my nephew and his family, are reporting the same thing news stories are reporting: “Open” or not, most people have no desire to go into places where the risk of infection is high. More people than with the shutdown still officially in place, yes, which means the rate of new cases will continue its exponential increase in Texas, but not remotely enough to enable small businesses to stay open, and so the economic boom the Trumpublicans are counting on isn’t going to happen.

    Just as it isn’t happening in Georgia, either. Nor is Florida going to get whatever benefit DeSantis is imagining will come from preventing county coroners from reporting the real COVID-19 death numbers. People are still going to notice, and the attempt to suppress the numbers won’t increase confidence.

  16. John A Arkansawyer: I don’t believe [being able to separate what someone says/does from who someone is] is entirely possible. We are what we do.

    I believe you when you say you are unable to do that. I don’t think you’re an inherently dishonest person. But you have chronically made dishonest arguments here over the past few years, as you have done in this thread, because you are unable to distinguish the difference between what a person says or does and who they are. To you they’re the same thing, and you can’t imagine anyone else being able to distinguish between them, either.

    But a lot of people, including me, are able to separate the two. And that’s why I can criticize your dishonest arguing techniques without also believing that you are an inherently dishonest person.

    But that doesn’t mean that you get a pass on it. As long as you continue to conflate the two in discussions here, I will continue to call you out on it. You do not get to fundamentally change my words to create a strawman argument and then pretend that isn’t what you have done.

  17. @Dann —

    The virus simply doesn’t react that fast.

    Which is another reason why we need to wait until the curve is FALLING, not open up while it’s still rising.

    I’m not claiming that the spike was caused by the opening-up. It obviously wasn’t. The point is that we’re opening up at the wrong point in the pandemic’s cycle. Your claim that we have “done a pretty good job” of flattening the curve is hogwash until the curve actually becomes flat.

    @Cora —

    To be fair, that’s not just Trump and Pence. Hardly any politicians no matter where wear masks during public appearances

    I’m not talking about sitting at a lectern giving a speech — I’m talking about walking around in crowds. Including at a mask factory, fercrissake.

    And German secretary of health Jens Spahn was photographed getting into a crowded glass elevator with neither nor anybody else wearing a mask, just minutes after he had urged people to keep their distance and wear masks in a press conference.

    Good one!

  18. @JJ: Here is the quotation for which you call me chronically dishonest:

    Your roommate is unfortunately having to deliver to idiots. If his boss was on-the-ball, they’d have arranged for contactless advance payment (with option to tip) and contactless delivery (i.e., your roommate sets the pizzas down at the door, stands way back, and calls the customer to tell them their delivery has arrived).

    Why his employer is not already doing that is a mystery to me. It seems like a no-brainer.

    The buyers of those pizzas are no more idiotic than average and the employer’s behavior is anything but a no-brainer.

    As you can see, I carefully bolded the exact places where I’d taken your words from. If I had intended to misquote you, then I would not have put your own words directly next to mine where the could easily be checked. I did it that way to point out the places where you insult people, directly or indirectly.

    That is an appropriate ad hominem attack on you, because what is in question for me is the weakness in your character that causes you to look down on, condescend to, and generally hold in contempt people with whom you have disagreements and who don’t back down to you and, most especially, to find that sorry snotty attitude a virtue.

    That’s why these two paragraphs were at the end:

    And this is why I think Stephen Colbert is counterproductive. People whose primary characteristic isn’t being smart, but being smarter than those people, aren’t.

    The business is doing great! They’re offering significant hourly bonuses–so they don’t increase salaries or rack up more overtime, of course–and hiring new people every day. They’re raking in the money hand over fist. They don’t have any fear of liability. And did I mention the hand over fist part? Pretty good for no-brainers.

    Again bolded to call back to your exact words. I didn’t match them exactly; the exact match was not the point. The point was how your condescension blinds you to how horrible the people I was sarcastically (which didn’t communicate, perhaps because you didn’t want it to) praising truly are in their unstupid evil.

    I should’ve said this instead of granting your complaint about dishonesty in the first place, because (like a fool) I keep thinking that you might be discussing to think about things instead of to tell people what they should think about them, and that we could talk about important things if I could get you past the silly prideful crap about a word.

    But you would rather nurse a rather pointless complaint about how no-brainer has no relation to brains and I’m dishonest for suggesting it might.

  19. John A Arkansawyer: Here is the quotation for which you call me chronically dishonest

    No, John, it’s your long history of dishonest arguing on File 770 which I’m calling chronic (and notice that you’ve altered my words once again, seriously, how damn hard is it for you to pay attention and quote people accurately???).

    And you didn’t quote me. You took selected words from my comment and put them in altered context.

    I absolutely believe that you have some cognitive issue which makes it impossible for you to recognize that you’re doing this. If you choose not to acknowledge that problem as something you need to work on fixing, that’s your choice — but it doesn’t make you immune to having the dishonest things you say pointed out, and I will continue to point them out.

  20. @JJ: I wish you would decide whether to psychologize me or medicalize me. Am I passive-aggressive or am I just cognitively deficient?

    I have no qualms about how I’ve used your words. You can go right ahead and poke at me any time you think I’m dishonest. I now know how you judge that, and since you are wrong in how you do it, I don’t much care. And I will go on pointing out whenever you decide to be Snotty McSneerster, because it’s bad for everyone.

    But–and I say this to both of us–perhaps not at such length?

  21. John A Arkansawyer: Am I passive-aggressive or am I just cognitively deficient?

    You tell me. Are you being deliberately dishonest, or are you genuinely unable to recognize the difference between what people say and what you claim they say?

    I have to admit that for a long time I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you really didn’t understand how you were altering peoples’ words, but I’m pretty much done. I don’t think you’re that cognitively impaired. It seems to me that what you’re doing is deliberate when you alter peoples’ words to set up your bogus strawman arguments which you then smugly, snottily shoot down, pretending that you’ve actually made a valid argument.

  22. @Lis Carey

    It’s not “bereft of science.” It’s very science-aware. To even begin to safely reopen, fourteen days of continuous decline in new cases is needed.

    I agree that a declining trend in new cases is the right benchmark.

    Where I disagree is that a person cannot take the coincidence of a single day’s worth of data with the day that a state opens up and think that there is any causation from the latter to the former. Even in a period of declining cases, there will be single-day data points that are high, just as there will be single-day data points that are low. Public policy based on cherry-picking of data is a bad practice.

    News stories that highlight such a coincidence are journalistic malpractice at best and bereft of science regardless.

    Note – ’cause it’s sadly needed – Michigan is largely closed through the end of May. I think that is largely the correct choice. Closing through mid-May is entirely justified.

    I have a secondary concern that there are some folks – not saying you in particular – that will look at a 14-day decline trend and still say that it isn’t enough and we should stay closed. The objective of the closures was to keep the hospitals from being swamped. We did that. We did it pretty well.

    Now it is time to plan to re-open states on a gradual and sane basis. Some states are in a position to re-open more quickly than others and so they will. Others aren’t and won’t. That’s federalism.

    @Contrarius

    I’m not claiming that the spike was caused by the opening-up. It obviously wasn’t. The point is that we’re opening up at the wrong point in the pandemic’s cycle. Your claim that we have “done a pretty good job” of flattening the curve is hogwash until the curve actually becomes flat.

    I accept that you were not intending to claim a causal relationship. I’ve apparently read far too many new stories that are trying to infer a relationship. See my comments above about using a single point of data outside of the context of a larger trend.

    The US, on average, has done at least as well as Europe, again on average. If you exclude New York City and Russia as outliers, then we have….again on average…done marginally better than Europe. At least based on the data from sometime last week.

    Regards,
    Dann
    TANSTAAFL/TINSTAAFL/TNSTAAFL – Truth no matter how you slice it.

  23. @JJ: I had reason to talk to my favorite copyeditor this morning, who (upon my asking) tells me that you are right and I am wrong about my use of the word ‘no-brainer’. To which I replied, “I asked you because I wanted you to tell me I was right, but since I take your opinion seriously, I’m going to eat some dirt instead.”

    I apologize for that usage and for standing on it for as long as I did.

    If I try to make the point I was making again–and I am disturbed enough to be told convincingly I was wrong about this to hesitate in doing so–I’ll do a better job of it.

    Again, my apologies for that. I was wrong.

  24. @Dann —

    Where I disagree is that a person cannot take the coincidence of a single day’s worth of data with the day that a state opens up and think that there is any causation from the latter to the former.

    And, again, that is not the claim that is being made here.

    Even in a period of declining cases, there will be single-day data points that are high, just as there will be single-day data points that are low.

    But, of course, that is not what is currently going on.

    The US, on average, has done at least as well as Europe, again on average.

    Again, hogwash. I read this morning that the US has now had 1/3 of the entire world’s diagnosed cases and about 1/4 of the world’s deaths. And these are numbers from Fox News (All Praise Be Unto Them), not some evil Lame Stream Media (We Spit Upon Their Blasphemous Fake News). We have around 4% of the world’s population, yet 33% of the coronavirus cases and 28% of the deaths?? That isn’t anything like “doing well”. And it would take one helluva lot of difference in testing and reporting rates to make up that difference.

  25. @Dann again —

    The US, on average, has done at least as well as Europe, again on average.

    I looked at your numbers, and they don’t actually say what you seem to think they do.

    In reality, they say that the US has a 0.34% infection rate, compared to the European average of 0.18% — and that the US has a 0.02% death rate, compared to a European average of 0.017%.

    Please try to not misrepresent your own evidence. That would be a swell start to a productive conversation.

  26. @Contrarius

    My point is that when viewed on a per capita basis, the average US experience is not significantly different from the average experience in Europe. I look at these values in the context of all of the nations listed and I do not see a huge difference. I think it is important to point out that New York City is a significant outlier. I also think it depends on how one defines “Europe”. Is Russia part of Europe or are should they be counted as being a part of Asia?

    You apparently see a large difference in outcomes.

    I disagree with your perspective. To be clear, we differ in perspective. I have accurately presented the data as well as my perspective.

    Thank you for having a look.

    Regards,
    Dann
    There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery. -Calvin Coolidge

  27. …..and now a member of Pence’s staff has tested positive. As he’s on his way to a conference to encourage religious gatherings.

    Yeah, can’t make this shit up.

  28. @Dann665–

    I agree that a declining trend in new cases is the right benchmark.

    Where I disagree is that a person cannot take the coincidence of a single day’s worth of data with the day that a state opens up and think that there is any causation from the latter to the former. Even in a period of declining cases, there will be single-day data points that are high, just as there will be single-day data points that are low. Public policy based on cherry-picking of data is a bad practice.

    Except, that’s not what’s happening in this case, as you damned well know. Texas has been on an increasing trend, and it hasn’t even slowed down a tiny bit. They’re in no position to be reopening now.

    And that sharply higher number of new cases that day was a painful reminder of that to people more concerned about public health impact than about scoring rhetorical points.

    News stories that highlight such a coincidence are journalistic malpractice at best and bereft of science regardless.

    Nope. As noted, for most people, the fact that the number for that day was not just higher but sharply higher was a painful reminder of just how stupid and devoid of science or concern for public health and safety the Texas decision to reopen really is.

    Note – ’cause it’s sadly needed – Michigan is largely closed through the end of May. I think that is largely the correct choice. Closing through mid-May is entirely justified.

    Gee, how nice that you approve. Got any words of criticism for the armed yahoos who went into the Michigan state house and tried to demand access to the legislative chambers? Who were demanding that the governor resign? Who were shouting “Lock her up!”? Any criticism for them? Or are they just Americans exercising their Constitutional right to wave guns in the faces of people whom they want to change their policies?

    I have a secondary concern that there are some folks – not saying you in particular – that will look at a 14-day decline trend and still say that it isn’t enough and we should stay closed. The objective of the closures was to keep the hospitals from being swamped. We did that. We did it pretty well.

    Cute attempted twofer, there. Pretend, based on zero evidence, that people arguing for fourteen days of decline are doing so in bad faith, and in will find another argument for staying closed when it’s reached–and add in some weasel words to pretend you’re not claiming that I (at least, “in particular”) am one of those bad faith people. Except you make sure the idea is there in the reader’s mind–in a form that’s supposed to make it impossible for me or anyone else to call you on your flimflam–and it’s not the first time in this discussion that you’ve said or implied that I’m arguing in bad faith.

    No, Dann. You are.

    Now it is time to plan to re-open states on a gradual and sane basis. Some states are in a position to re-open more quickly than others and so they will. Others aren’t and won’t. That’s federalism.

    That’s what Washington state and California are doing. It’s what New York is gearing up for. In all those cases, focusing first on reopening lower-risk parts of their states, and lower-risk activities. And they will be looking hard at the numbers, to see if they’ve moved too fast, or if it’s going well and they can continue.

    Massachusetts isn’t that far along yet, but again, the plans are being prepared for that hopefully not too distant date when we are in a position to start reopening. And I just heard on the news that Pennsylvania is also starting a phased reopening.

    The places that are ignoring the science are the blood-red states with governors more concerned about buffing their hard-right credentials and sucking up to Trump.

    My sister, and my nephew and his family, are in one of those states. They are being very careful, but I’m very worried, and so are they.

  29. @Lis
    They’re also ignoring that most people aren’t planning to go to restaurants, or travel more than necessary, or be in other situations with lots of people, even if their state “opens”. I’m in L.A., and we’re still closed and masked until further notice.

  30. @Lis Carey

    Except, that’s not what’s happening in this case, as you damned well know.

    What I know is that presenting a single value out of a series is not useful information. I know that there is zero causal relationship indicated by data from the same day when a state announces a change in public health policy.

    I have read many pieces in other places where that is exactly what is going on. The way the data is presented is identical to the way Contrarius phrased their initial response.

    Contrarius has said that this was not their intention. I have accepted that as fact and moved on.

    However, I took the time to look at the Texas time series. It is currently trending upwards.

    Modestly. They are currently adding roughly 1000 cases on average per day over the last few weeks. That value is not unique in the Texas data set. I would hesitate to describe it as “sharply higher” based on the other data in recent weeks.

    Got any words of criticism for the armed yahoos who went into the Michigan state house and tried to demand access to the legislative chambers?

    What you do not get to see is the number of times I have responded to the “Plandemic” nonsense, the “I ain’t gonna get the Bill Gates vaccine”, and a whole laundry list of related garbage in other places.

    I have criticized those protesters in other places as well.

    My sister, and my nephew and his family, are in one of those states. They are being very careful, but I’m very worried, and so are they.

    I wish you and your family well. Stay safe.

    We’re doing what we can as well.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Delay is preferable to error. – Thomas Jefferson

  31. @Dann —

    My point is that when viewed on a per capita basis, the average US experience is not significantly different from the average experience in Europe.

    Dann, 0.34 is nearly TWICE 0.18 . That’s pretty damned significant.

    I think it is important to point out that New York City is a significant outlier.

    So f*cking what? I’m sure London would also be an outlier, if we had its specific numbers. So would Paris, or any other large congested city with lots of international traffic. Stop trying to weasel out of reality.

    You apparently see a large difference in outcomes.

    0.34, Dan. 0.18 . I can do the math — can you?

    I have accurately presented the data as well as my perspective.

    Bullshit. You said the US “has done at least as well as Europe” on average. That was 100% false. You were caught claiming something that wasn’t true. Maybe don’t do that next time.

    I know that there is zero causal relationship indicated by data from the same day when a state announces a change in public health policy.

    Dan, would you PLEASE stop repeating this straw man? You have already been corrected on it multiple times, by multiple people. It’s really not a good look.

    The way the data is presented is identical to the way Contrarius phrased their initial response.

    My phrasing was a simple presentation of fact, Dann. Please stop trying to twist it into something it was not. Again — not a good look for you.

    The facts we have right now:

    No, the curve is not flat. It’s still rising.
    No, the US is not doing either as well as, or better than, Europe on average.
    No, there is no state in the US that has so far reached any significant criteria for a sudden reopening.

    However, I took the time to look at the Texas time series. It is currently trending upwards.

    Which is what we’ve been telling you all along. This is no time for a “safe” reopening.

    What you do not get to see is the number of times I have responded to the “Plandemic” nonsense, the “I ain’t gonna get the Bill Gates vaccine”, and a whole laundry list of related garbage in other places.

    But we did see you comparing them to people “cosplaying as genitalia”, which is just ludicrous.

  32. From 4/7 – 4/12, Texas had a run of daily new case numbers of 988, 1092, 877, 1441, 890, 923 for a mean of 1035. For 5/3 – 5/8, the mean was 1015. The curve may not be flat, but it is certainly flattish.

    The day that had the highest # of new cases was 4/10, with 1441 new cases. It took 9784 tests to get that many new cases. 5/8 had 1219 new cases, but it took 21596 tests to find them. If the number of tests in May had been the same as the number in Apr, with the test positivity rate held constant, there would have been 543 new cases found. So maybe the curve has flattened, and is declining.

  33. Germany has about as many new cases daily as Texas and is only now cautiously reopening and there are quite a few people who think it’s too early. However, Germany has 83 million people, while Texas has 29 million. Germany also has a better health system and more ICU beds than pretty much anywhere in the US, plus paid sick leave. In general, we also test more, though I don’t know how much Texas tests compared to other US states.

    I don’t know specifics such as whether the more than 1200 new cases in Texas are clustered in specific regions or institutions, but it looks too early to reopen the whole state to me and I’m one of the people who are in favour of loosening restrictions wherever possible.

  34. @Bill —

    Wow, ummm, Bill, no.

    From 4/7 – 4/12, Texas had a run of daily new case numbers of 988, 1092, 877, 1441, 890, 923 for a mean of 1035. For 5/3 – 5/8, the mean was 1015. The curve may not be flat, but it is certainly flattish.

    You seem to have gotten your numbers from a chat board for Texas Aggies. Ooooookaaaaayyyyy….

    Here’s a nice clear graph at the NYT website. As you’ll see, the daily new cases initially did flatten out for a while, but then they started rising again — just in time for TX to open up and provide wonderful new opportunities for infection:

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-coronavirus-cases.html

  35. I got my numbers from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

    Which aren’t behind a paywall, so I could discuss them if I was inclined to have a discussion with someone who leads with an insult. Which I’m not.

    What I will say generally is that no one knows how many cases of Coronavirus any geographic location has, or has had, since there are no comprehensive testing programs anywhere. That being the case, saying “X has more Coronavirus than Y” is not an accurate statement. Nor is saying “Z had more cases on Day B than it did on Day C.” And you can’t make accurate statements about deaths, either, because many people who died of CV were not counted as such, and there are reliable reports that people who have died of causes other than CV are being counted as CV deaths.

    What you can say is that “Hospitals in a particular place are/are not being overwhelmed.” And that was the driver for shutdowns. Shutdowns were not put in place to keep people from getting sick or dying; they were put in place to delay that from happening sufficiently to allow medical infrastructure to deal with it.. There are very few places where hospitals are overwhelmed (NYC, for esample, which not only kept subways open, but reduced the number of cars so that they stayed just as crowded — in some ways, they didn’t shut down at all). That being the case, and with knowledge that the cessation of economic activity has real, measurable deleterious effects on public health, there is a good and moral case to be made that some relief in some areas from the shutdown is appropriate.

  36. “Nearly a straight line up”? Do you understand math?
    The iink you posted matches what I said — the moving average now is less than it was a month ago.

  37. //Dann665 on May 8, 2020 at 10:00 am said:

    @Contrarius

    My point is that when viewed on a per capita basis, the average US experience is not significantly different from the average experience in Europe//

    eeek – nope. I mean there was a point where that was true and there was a point when things were worse in western European nations but currently (May 9) Spain and Belgium have a higher per capita running total than the US but Europe on average and countries like France, Germany and even Italy now have lower per capita totals than the US. Worse, the US is still going up sharply
    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-confirmed-cases-of-covid-19-per-million-people?tab=chart&year=2020-05-08&country=Europe+USA+BEL+FRA+GRC+ITA+NLD+DEU+ESP+GBR
    Don’t get me wrong, the UK looks appalling and I stare at those numbers with genuine horror. The situation in Europe is very far from good but the US is, on average, worse and getting more so.

  38. bill on May 8, 2020 at 9:31 pm said:

    What I will say generally is that no one knows how many cases of Coronavirus any geographic location has, or has had, since there are no comprehensive testing programs anywhere. That being the case, saying “X has more Coronavirus than Y” is not an accurate statement. Nor is saying “Z had more cases on Day B than it did on Day C.” And you can’t make accurate statements about deaths, either, because many people who died of CV were not counted as such, and there are reliable reports that people who have died of causes other than CV are being counted as CV deaths.

    Nobody knows for absolute certain but that is a general truth about medical statistics.

    What you can do is look at the number of tests per confirmed case. What that does is show the extent to which the testing regime is coping with the rate of infection. The more test done per confirmed case, the better. Canada, for example, is 15.5 (May 9) i.e. there’s one confirmed case for every 15+ tests. The USA is at 6.6 – and that sort of confirms your point in that it highlights that the official figure for the number of cases in the USA is probably not as accurate as it should be but it also points to the inaccuracy being in a particular direction. The number of cases (and probably the number of deaths) is a lot worse
    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-covid-19-tests-per-confirmed-case-bar-chart

    It’s an error to assume uncertainty is omnidirectional. Often it isn’t. We might not know the margin of error but we can observe that it may lean one way far more than another. The mortality spikes being recorded in multiple countries are all pointing to the number of covid-19 deaths as significant underestimates. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/03/covid-19s-death-toll-appears-higher-than-official-figures-suggest

  39. John A Arkansawyer: I apologize for that usage and for standing on it for as long as I did. If I try to make the point I was making again – and I am disturbed enough to be told convincingly I was wrong about this to hesitate in doing so – I’ll do a better job of it. Again, my apologies for that. I was wrong.

    Thank you for your apology, John. I appreciate it. In a spirit of generosity given the strain we are all under, I will take it as a blanket apology for all of the misquoting and leave it at that.

  40. @bill–

    What I will say generally is that no one knows how many cases of Coronavirus any geographic location has, or has had, since there are no comprehensive testing programs anywhere. That being the case, saying “X has more Coronavirus than Y” is not an accurate statement. Nor is saying “Z had more cases on Day B than it did on Day C.” And you can’t make accurate statements about deaths, either, because many people who died of CV were not counted as such, and there are reliable reports that people who have died of causes other than CV are being counted as CV deaths.

    No, there are not reliable reports that non-COVID-19 deaths are being reported as COVID-19 deaths.

    There are claims, some of them no doubt in good faith, from people who do notunderstand that COVID-19 in it’s late stages does not look anything like flu, and the autopsies of COVID-19 deaths, whether the persons death was attended or not, do not look like anything else. Other deaths can’t readily be mistaken for COVID-19 deaths. COVID-19 pneumonia damages the lungs more, and differently, than the pneumonia that often occurs in severe flu cases and can cause flu deaths. But in addition to that, COVID-19 also does damage to the heart, kidneys, and liver.

    There are also, of course, people making claims of flu deaths being counted as COVID-19 deaths who are not making those claims in good faith. Antivaxxers took the lead, and assorted antigovernment groups have joined in. Claims that the US government engineered the virus, claims that Bill Gates is working on a “vaccine” that would inject mind control chips into us, etc. And, of course, the claims that hospitals are mischaracterizing flu as COVID-19 in order to profit from higher Medicare payouts…

    No. With a confirmed diagnosis, Medicare will sometimes bundle payments. And COVID-19 is more expensive to treat than flu–but that bundled payment comes with a confirmed diagnosis. I.e., a positive COVID-19 test.

    We may well be misidentifying some deaths as COVID-19 that were not, but not in large numbers.

    And in some cases the undercounting is politically motivated. An autopsy can identify a COVID-19 death in someone who died unattended. In Florida, the governor has ordered county coroners to stop releasing their county numbers of COVID-19 deaths, which had been consistently added up to more than the state’s “official” count.

    Let’s just note the bleeding obvious here, that coroners have no motive to mischaracterize deaths as COVID-19. They don’t get paid more for COVID-19 deaths.

    The New York Times has made its COVID-19 coverage free to all, so no, Contrarius’s far more useful link should be accessible to everyone. Even if there’s a hiccup on that, a link to a Texas Aggies chat group is not at all useful.

    We know that COVID-19 deaths are being undercounted. People who don’t get sick enough to be hospitalized are highly likely to get missed, because we have, even now that more testing is starting to be available, not nearly enough to test everyone who thinks they might need a test. You need to have a pretty clear set of symptoms to get tested, nearly everywhere in the US. A few places, Massachusetts first, then New York, and now, I think it’s part of California, not the whole state, but I could be wrong about that, are starting to do large-scale, organized contact tracing.

    But there isn’t good contact tracing in most of the US. We are missing not just most of the asymptomatic people, but also most of those whose symptoms don’t get severe enough to send them to the doctor.

    So we know we are badly undercounting COVID-19, especially, those people who never get sick enough that they would restrict their activities, but who are still contagious and can spread the virus to people who won’t be so fortunate.

    I have family in both Texas and Florida, and I find it absolutely enraging that their lives are being put at greater risk by politicians who are too whackadoodle to recognize that the economy won’t come bouncing back while people are at high risk of getting a potentially lethal disease by going to work, or going shopping. Some of those whackadoodle politicians, in Texas, are saying that grandparents should be perfectly okay with dying for the sake of the economy. Well, my sister is one of those Texas grandmothers. She’s not okay with it, her son is not okay with it, her grandchildren are not okay with it, and I’m not okay with it.

    Especially since, no, it would not contribute to bringing back the economy.

  41. As a contrasting example of the ‘excessive mortality” question, this New Zealand article suggests that New Zealand has enough testing coverage that very little COVID19 related deaths are being missed; not seeing an higher than average overall mortality.

    Israel, Norway, South Africa are also showing no excessive deaths reported. I am curious to see the numbers for Taiwan & South Korea, countries that have COVID19 under control.

  42. @Contrarius

    So the US case data was 0.34% and Europe was at 0.18%. The most extreme data in Europe was 1.74% with 9 nations with confirmed cases about 0.34%. I agree that the comparison isn’t great for the US. It isn’t bad either, IMO.

    Because the confirmed case rate is subject to testing, I think the deceased rate is more illustrative. In the US, the deceased rate was 0.0196% while in Europe it was 0.0168%. There were 10 nations with Covid death rates above the US. Not exactly a disaster for the US by comparison.

    I’m OK with agreeing to disagree. People will perceive data in different ways.

    @Camestros

    Thanks for the link. Per capita data is becoming more readily available as time goes on. A month ago it was nearly non-existent in news reports. I agree that the data at the link doesn’t look good.

    As above, I think the death rate is more illustrative.

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-deaths-days-since-per-million?country=BEL+DNK+FIN+FRA+DEU+IRL+ITA+NLD+POL+ESP+SWE+CHE+GBR+USA

    From that site, I somehow also found this visual graphic that shows the world and the US. I think it illustrates my point pretty well.

    http://covid19mapped.com/

    Regards,
    Dann
    “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, – go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” – Samuel Adams

  43. Because the confirmed case rate is subject to testing, I think the deceased rate is more illustrative.

    That statement doesn’t make sense. The confirmed deceased rate is also subject to testing and/or diagnostic criteria and, especially for this disease, how out of hospital deaths are handled in the numbers (especially deaths in aged care homes). I’m not saying those figures you posted are wrong, just that the flaw you mention in one is a necessary flaw in the other.

    Belgium is the poster-boy example here. They are using broad criteria for counting deaths https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52491210 but also there are factors such as the number of people in aged care homes that may mean they really do have disproportionate numbers of deaths.

    Finally of the two (cases and deaths), deaths is the one that is the least current as an indication of the current situation. There will be covid-19 deaths that happened this week that will be added to those figures weeks and months after.

  44. @Camestros

    My understanding is that there is a non-trivial number of asymptomatic cases. Add to that the people that don’t feel bad enough to warrant a visit to the doctor or worse a trip to the hospital. None of those people are being tested.

    Once someone encounters a health care professional, the odds of getting a test go way up. By the time someone dies of Covid, the odds of having been tested go up even higher. If they were never tested, then there is a reasonable expectation that they will be tested after they died.

    Will there be some deaths that get recorded as Covid later on? Will there be a time shift? Sure. Some.

    Will some Covid deaths get missed? Sure. Some.

    But ISTM that the percentage of delayed or missed Covid deaths will be smaller than the percentage of untested cases that recover without engaging the healthcare system.

    The problem is that we are all using imperfect rolling data. The hard numbers probably won’t be available until mid-2021 at the soonest.

    While I might be wrong, I think my position is reasonable based on what we know today about testing trends/patterns.

    Regards,
    Dann
    The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose. – Margaret Atwood

  45. But ISTM that the percentage of delayed or missed Covid deaths will be smaller than the percentage of untested cases that recover without engaging the healthcare system

    True but for the purposes of comparison between countries the asymptomatic cases are going to be relatively consistent. On the other hand, the impact on mortality figure on aged-care facility deaths is a current known issue with covid-19 stats. Add to that, among the people most likely to die from the disease the issues (eg pneumonia) can be due to multiple diseases. So an old person who dies at home or in an aged care facility may die untested and undiagnosed and may or may not be recorded in the stats.

    The data I’ve already linked to point to a definite increase in mortality beyond the recorded deaths from covid19. So it’s not a trivial distinction or quibble.

    But that takes me back to my earlier point. A decision-maker trying to set local policy on stay-at-home orders or relaxing restrictions will need to look at a range of indicators but the day-to-day mortality data is data that is really telling them about a situation weeks ago.

  46. Camestros Felapton: “But that takes me back to my earlier point. A decision-maker trying to set local policy on stay-at-home orders or relaxing restrictions will need to look at a range of indicators but the day-to-day mortality data is data that is really telling them about a situation weeks ago.”

    I have been surprised by the number of people who still haven’t grasped that the COVID19 virus has an incubation time of up to 2 weeks before symptoms show. Then there the lag between the time symptoms show & the time a person gets tested. Then the lag between the time a test is taken and the results are available. So the number of daily new cases being reported are actually reflective of the situation up 2 weeks or more in the past.

  47. Soon Lee: So the number of daily new cases being reported are actually reflective of the situation up 2 weeks or more in the past.

    And the daily mortality figures are generally a snapshot of how many highly-at-risk people were being infected a month ago — which is not really helpful to making decisions for current circumstances.

  48. Soon Lee on May 11, 2020 at 11:02 pm said:

    I have been surprised by the number of people who still haven’t grasped that the COVID19 virus has an incubation time of up to 2 weeks before symptoms show.

    Good point.

  49. @Camestros

    Perhaps this is just a matter of perspective? The US is still behind the curve on testing. So we expect the difference between the actual number of cases and the number of confirmed/tested cases to be significant. Places where testing is up to speed may have a different expectation.

    I realize that the criteria for inclusion in the death category does vary a bit from country to country and that nursing homes post a unique problem in some places.

    As I said, the difficulty is in trying to evaluate data midstream when it will be updated months/years down the road. I absolutely agree that today’s data really is describing conditions from a couple weeks ago. [I’ve had versions of that conversation with the same elderly person 4-5 times a week for the last 6 weeks. It still hasn’t sunk in.]

    This is why I reacted critically when I perceived a comment that tied the day of re-opening to new cases from the same day. Current public policy decisions aren’t going to show up in the data for a couple of weeks.

    In any case, I can’t perceive enough daylight between our perspectives to matter all that much.

    Regards,
    Dann
    TAGLINE ERROR! Report to tech support

Comments are closed.