May 3, 2020

In the Trout Lily Forest...

IMG_4994

... you can talk all night.

121 comments:

Maillard Reactionary said...

One of your most sophisticated compositions yet, and very pleasing. Well done, AA.

It's impressive what can be done with a cell-phone camera.

TickTock said...

How brainwashed ca Rachel Maddox views get. It has become clear that I can't have a discussion with my wife that comes any close to touching on politics, including the response to the virus. Sorry to rant.

reader said...

My favorite to date.

Howard said...

Mic drop

JackWayne said...

There’s a brewery near me in Iowa. All bars are closed, take-out only. So you go to the brewery, and ask for a beer to sample their product. And after a couple of hours, you leave. Maybe without any take-out. Fuck you, governor!

J. Farmer said...

This photo is exquisite. I wish I had taken it.

D. said...

What better way to cover up your attempted coup? Side with the Chicomms to introduce a pandemic.

Wa St Blogger said...

The photography is becoming one of my favorite parts of Althouse, especially since the debates are so tedious.

Mark said...

Now showing: One of the best ever movies and accurate depictions of human behavior.

Herb: When are the other boys gonna get here? We gotta make plans.
Kane: The other boys? There aren't any other boys, Herb. It's just you and me.
Herb: [nervously smiles and chuckles] You're jokin'.
Kane: No, I couldn't get anybody.
Herb: I don't believe it. This town ain't that low.
Kane: I couldn't get anybody.
Herb: Then it's just you and me.
Kane: I guess so.
Herb: You and me against Miller and all the rest of them?
Kane: That's right. Do you want out, Herb?
Herb: Well, it isn't that I want out, no. You see. Look, I'll tell ya the truth. I didn't figure on anything like this, Will.
Kane: Neither did I.
Herb: I volunteered. You know I did. You didn't have to come to me. I was ready. Sure, I'm ready now - but this is different, Will. This ain't like what you said it was gonna be. This is just plain committing suicide and for what? Why me? I'm no lawman. I just live here. I got nothin' personal against nobody. I got no stake in this.
Kane: I guess not.
Herb: There's a limit how much you can ask a man. I got a wife and kids. What about my kids?
Kane: Go on home to your kids, Herb.

bagoh20 said...

"Professor Michael Levitt, who teaches structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

And according to Levitt, coronavirus data show that sweeping lockdown measures were an overreaction that may actually backfire.

Levitt has been analyzing the COVID-19 outbreak from a statistical perspective since January and has been remarkably accurate in his predication."

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor," Levitt predicted."

"His observation is a simple one: that in outbreak after outbreak of this disease, a similar mathematical pattern is observable regardless of government interventions. After around a two week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes "sub-exponential".

"This may seem like a technical distinction, but its implications are profound. The 'unmitigated' scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth — that with a consistent R number of significantly above 1 and a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and huge numbers of deaths would be recorded. But Professor Levitt's point is that that hasn't actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their responses."

"There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor," Levitt predicted."

https://youtu.be/bl-sZdfLcEk

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Deprivation of Rights Under The Color of Law

stephen cooper said...

And that movie was completely misunderstood by the Herbs of the world.

chickelit said...

@bagoh20: You do know that the Swedes hand out the Chemistry Nobels. The Norges hand out only the Peace Prizes and they botch it year after year.

YoungHegelian said...

@Mark,

Now showing: One of the best ever movies and accurate depictions of human behavior.

My ability to watch "High Noon" was ruined by the knowledge that it is a not too cleverly hidden allegory of the Hollywood Blacklisting. It's amazing how a group of people who supported a regime that murdered tens of millions of its own people in the creation of a Workers' Paradise could be so self-righteous about their own trivial suffering. But, they were.

It's my own pet theory that the line from the theme song 'Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling":

He made a vow while in state prison
Now it'll be my life or his'n

is so awful that I consider it a Straussian contradiction, one that is deliberately introduced to the author to notify the attentive reader that an esoteric meaning is getting slipped in. In this case, the esoteric message is that this is pompous & self-righteous bullshit.

Howard Hawks did "Rio Bravo" as a refutation of "High Noon". It's a much more entertaining movie, and without the pompous moralizing.

AZ Bob said...

How brainwashed ca Rachel Maddox views get. It has become clear that I can't have a discussion with my wife that comes any close to touching on politics, including the response to the virus. Sorry to rant. TickTock

Here in a suburb outside of downtown LA, I complained about Mayor Garcetti's ourright begging that snitches call his hotline on people who are refusing his order to social distance.

I was told: "You're barking up the wrong tree."

I am surprised how many people here in California are absolutely in support of the clamp down. You can't even question what the purpose is or how long it should last.

I figure it will last until November.

narciso said...

Didnt they have a cholera epidemic last year in city hall, what did they do about it?

Jon Ericson said...

Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice
He makes his livin' off of the people's taxes

Mark said...

The numbers everywhere you look are consistent. About 75 percent of all deaths are disproportionately age 70 and up. Close to 90 percent are age 60 and above.

The numbers are also clear that plenty of people age 25 and above have tested positive.

All of which is to say that, with respect to reopening, if you are of working age, you may very well catch the virus -- but there is very low risk of you needing hospitalization and even lower risk of you dying. Particularly if you do not have any of a few pre-existing conditions.

Of course, this was known early on from just the Wuhan cases, to the extent that they were being reported on.

Whatever was the right strategy in the past, going forward there is no need to lockdown the entire society. While the older generation may need to remain in stay-at-home status, people of working age can and should go back to work, church, recreation, etc. in short order.

narciso said...

I think the pods have been harvested at this point

n.n said...

The Catholic Church and BSA will be planned as early adoptees of political congruence ("="). Although, notably, the lawyers' advertisement for services does not mention the trans/homo male connection. Perhaps they will add it later as they did with talc and asbestos, and similar lawsuits. They think they can abort the baby and mitigate progress of excess deaths, too. Perhaps they can.

Mark said...

Frank Miller is dead.

No thanks to the townspeople who turned their backs and were all too willing to see Will Kane shot and killed in the street.

narciso said...

That assumes the real purpose which is overwhelm the economic system as opposed to the ostensible purpose.

Mark said...

My ability to watch "High Noon" was ruined by the knowledge that it is a not too cleverly hidden allegory of the Hollywood Blacklisting.

(shrugs) A lot of directors and producers have had no clue as to what their own movies were about.

narciso said...

Rank and file communists manned the stasi the securitatae the avh and the stb, that s east german, romanian hungarian and cezech secret police.

Mark said...

Meh. Meh I say. To Rio Bravo or its remake.

Mark said...

Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is
He ain't gonna let those two escape justice


Don't know about Billy Mack, but Billy Jack is entertaining to watch, if only for the 70s hippie nostalgia.

YoungHegelian said...

@Mark,

A lot of directors and producers have had no clue as to what their own movies were about.

The director, Fred Zinnemann, knew that the writer Carl Foreman intended it as an allegory of the Black Listing, as did Stanley Kramer, the producer. Zinnemann just thought that the themes had more universal application and appeal.

It still comes across as preachy & self-righteous, especially as compared with Rio Bravo, which deals with many of the same themes.

Ray - SoCal said...

Newsom as Cartman - Poster by Sabo, seen at Protest

Cartman respect my authoritah YouTube video from SouthPark

Link has picture of poster at a protest

Narr said...

That's glorious, Prof. Words fail.

Most Westerns are idealized nonsense IMHO, double for High Noon. I recall (no really) back in the cretaceous, when 60 Minutes was new and fresh, Louis L'Amour was interviewed and got in a great corrective about the image of the pusillanimous townsman-- a lot of those guys had fought in the Civil War, and were no strangers to guns if they hadn't.

A handful of dudes with attitude were not awe-inspiring--look at Northfield MN.

Narr
Leave aside the pinko subtext and HN is still not credible.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Pretty Good Trump Impersonation

J. Farmer said...

but Billy Jack is entertaining to watch, if only for the 70s hippie nostalgia.

I miss the outlaw biker gang genre. Sons of Anarchy is the most contemporary iteration. Steven Segal did a riff on the Billy Jack movie with On Deadly Ground. It’s the only action movie I know of that ends with an environmental pep talk to a state legislature.

Ray - SoCal said...

The problem with a lot of reporting on Coronavirus, is it focuses on the surface. Quick analysis based on data from covidtracking and I add a couple of columns. What is nice about this site is it gives test information.

1. Positives are down for the US overall from around 20% to 16%.
2. US is doing around 230,000 tests per day (no idea on turn around).
3. Deaths are going down. Peak was 2700, now down to 1158. What matters is the trend. Yes, I understand about games being played.
4. California is doing around 28,000 tests per day, with a postive rate around 8%. And has 5% of the US infected, and around 3% of the US dead. Daily around 90 dead per day.

YoungHegelian said...

My favorite memory of Billy Jack was me making my father laugh out loud with my characterization of the movie as "I'm a pacifist, goddammit, and if you don't believe me I'm gonna beat the shit out of you!".

Mark said...

Save the school, Billy.
https://youtu.be/ZqXvqaBw_iA

narciso said...

Oh that was quite tedious after he blew up the oil platform, hard to kill was good in its limited way, he got his first gig as michael ovitz karate instructor

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stephen cooper said...

Louis L'Amour was right about the average townsman of the day.
One big problem with American WWII movies has always been that the audience tends to have more former enlisted than former officers, so the plots always highlight officer stupidity rather than enlisted stupidity. I sincerely doubt Russian WWII movies have that problem.

FullMoon said...

I miss the outlaw biker gang genre. Sons of Anarchy is the most contemporary iteration.

Seriously incompetent gang. Could have made more easy money expanding their auto repair business. Maybe even get their own reality show flipping cars

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J. Farmer said...

My favorite memory of Billy Jack was me making my father laugh out loud with my characterization of the movie as "I'm a pacifist, goddammit, and if you don't believe me I'm gonna beat the shit out of you!".

Sort of like the Karate Kid films. Miyagi is always going on about how violence isn't the solution, yet every conflict gets resolved by kicking the shit out of somebody.

Mark said...

The bikers were in Born Losers, which introduced the character.
https://youtu.be/vdvz1RM2678

D. said...

Here's some propaganda from someone who makes excess of $1000000/yr with top notch company paid health benefits "giving her covid 19 story". Network: cBS>

Lies, damn lies and msm:

Lesley Stahl shares her personal battle with coronavirus

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lesley-stahl-shares-her-personal-battle-with-coronavirus/ar-BB13y8Iq

narciso said...

Surely you understand the difference between cobra kai and miyagis style, one is aggressive arrogant the other is defendive reluctant to engage.

Ray - SoCal said...

California CoronaVirus Analysis:

Why Can't I find data on how people are being infected in California?

My gut feeling is most infections are health care workers, including nursing home staff, relatives, and people in nursing homes.

And I still have problems buying hand sanitizer!

Much less a mask from any hardware store I would use for painting.

And traffic is increasing. People are silently disobeying the governors orders.

LA Times Info:
https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak/

1. 10% of infected are health care workers.
2. Half of patients treated are in LA County.
3. 152 Nursing homes in LA county have Coronavirus cases. 457 nursing homes in LA Metropolitan Area (which is different than LA County. My guess is at least 50% of nursing homes have a case in LA.
4. California, like NY and NJ, require nursing homes to admit patients with Coronavirus.
5. A lot of effort to look at race statistics in LA County, but nothing on how people being infected.
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/docs/RacialEthnicSocioeconomicDataCOVID19.pdf
6. 425 residents as of April 27 have died in institutional settings. 45% of death toll from CoronaVirus:
https://covid19.lacounty.gov/covid19-news/enhancing-protections-for-skilled-nursing-homes-2/

Craig said...

Rediscovered this gem today:

Clarence Clemons and Jackson Browne, "You're a Friend of Mine"

https://youtu.be/087mi1e46us

Darryl Hannah looks so pretty in this video.

From the comments there: Why do the people in this video look so happy together? Millennials haven't even finished saving us from misogyny and racism yet in the 21st Century. This video is much older, so how is it they are getting along?

Insightful, funny and sad.

J. Farmer said...

Surely you understand the difference between cobra kai and miyagis style, one is aggressive arrogant the other is defendive reluctant to engage.

Daniel still deserved to get his ass beat for pulling that prank at the dance. Also, there's a strange anti-WASP undercurrent to Karate Kid. The scene where Daniel is spying on Ali and Johnny and accidentally runs into a waiter, the whole room erupts in laughter in a bizarrely implausible way.

Michael K said...


Howard Hawks did "Rio Bravo" as a refutation of "High Noon". It's a much more entertaining movie, and without the pompous moralizing.


Almost everything Howard Hawks did was terrific. In "To Have and Have Not" Betty Bacall was called "Slim "because that was Hawks' wife's name and Hawks was annoyed that Bogart got into her pants and not him.

Hawks made all kinds of movies and all good.

William said...

There might have been a political subtext to High Noon, but it was muted. I guess people in the know knew it, but when I first saw the movie I didn't see it as a parable of McCarthyism or whatever....Gary Cooper gives a fine performance. There's a couple of scenes where he actually looks scared. I'm pretty sure that was a first. Western heroes never looked scared. It lent authenticity to his performance. When three killers are coming to town and you have to face them all alone, the proper response is fear.....Shakespeare occasionally tied himself into knots in order to stay on the right side of Tudor politics, but nowadays who cares. The play's the thing. I'm more sympathetic to the subtext of On the Waterfront than to High Noon, but bother are excellent movies. I will say that Elia Kazan had more of a High Noon moment than any of those Hollywood Commies.....The Coen film, Hail Caesar, did a number on them. They weren't dangerous radicals so much as they were fatuous assholes. I hope that's how history remembers them.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I was never sure why Billy Mack was introduced, as despite his vows to bring those two to justice, he doesn't. There isn't even an encounter as far as I can tell.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Hot dog! Restaurants open tomorrow! If I can find one with outdoor seating. And I think I can. No more PB&J!

Lurker21 said...

I have to ransack the house to see if there is any toilet paper here, so I won't be free to participate in any theological discussions tonight.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Don't know if it's national, but word is that Ruby Tuesday has opened a "pantry" in some of their locations. This lets them connect the janitorial pipeline for TP to retail. I've seen the same in at least one hardware store.

walter said...

MILWAUKEE, WI — Four Milwaukee-area restaurants are reopening in Downtown Milwaukee on April 30 after they voluntarily closed down earlier this year amid the coronavirus public health emergency in Wisconsin.

According to the owners of AJ Bombers, Blue Bat Kitchen & Tequilaria, Onesto and Smoke Shack, they will open on Thursday, April 30.
--
Their bat soup is to die for.

Big Mike said...

A handful of dudes with attitude were not awe-inspiring--look at Northfield MN.

Or what happened to the Dalton gang when it rode into Coffeyville, Kansas, on October 5, 1892.

Ken B said...

A little bit of Steve Martland's music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5RXKG2Z7Zw

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Here is Mad's Hah! Noon!, the version I read many years before seeing the actual movie and which stuck in my mind, particularly for Ramona...

Ken B said...

More Martland! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnK__qtMfRc

Sebastian said...

bagoh20 above refers to a good interview with Michael Levitt. Another leader in the pro-sanity faction.

Calls BS, as he did at the outset, on the all the phony models and projections and panicked interventions.

Notes how newspapers and media wouldn't have him because he didn't support the panic rhetoric.

Predicts there will be a reckoning about the overreaction.

Where have I heard that word before?

Now, do global warming and the possibility of overreaction to it . . .

TobyTucker said...

When 'Billy Jack' gets mentioned this scene always comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLN8-buqDIs

narciso said...

https://newsthud.com/watch-pink-floyds-roger-waters-says-biden-a-f-ing-slimeballand-has-no-appeal-to-anybody/

Ken B said...

Some Nyman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFlXbvwK9R8

narciso said...



One of these days theyll get it right:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1257094706384777216

stephen cooper said...

C LF --- Good for Ruby Tuesday.

Sebastian - of course there will be a reckoning, and people are going to lie for the rest of their lives to avoid that reckoning, just the way men and women who participated in abortions when they were young are the most vocal proponents of partial birth abortion, even though they know it is wrong - they are lying when they say they think there are actual reasons it should be allowed. Even if they are too morally lost to know that first term abortion is wrong, they have to know partial birth abortion is wrong, and yet they lie about saying they think it is ok.

Back to the Sars v2, China and Russia are going to promote liars on both sides for a long long time.
There is a little bit of a sociopath in most people (not all, but probably more than half). Lots of sociopaths are leveraging fear right now. That works smoothly for a while but usually not for long.

narciso said...

There will come a great judgement, for a country founded explicitly on faith, cannnot walk away from its mission.

In the near term, the eloi klaxons are dialed up to eleventy. Namcy pelosi is finishing her waffles i mean haagen daz. So there will be another box of chocolates in our future.

narciso said...

The discussion about belief in good or lack there off, was very good. Why is a strictly materialist world seem so logical if it is so limiting.

J. Farmer said...

The discussion about belief in good or lack there off, was very good. Why is a strictly materialist world seem so logical if it is so limiting.

Seems to presume that the purpose of the universe must be about us in some way.

Mark said...

Now Showing: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

The scene just completed was the one when the troop is traveling and there is a lightening storm off in the distance.

Mark said...

Fort Apache was on the other day. Only caught the last 15 minutes though. Just in time to see Henry Fonda arrogantly get his command massacred.

chickelit said...

walter said...Their bat soup is to die for.

The widespread appearance of gallows humor* regarding covid19 is a good sign. 1950's Wisconsinites were shocked by Ed Gein and his crimes. But historians noted the phenomenon of Gein jokes shortly afterwards. It's a human way of coping.

Birkel said...

Did anybody notice in the CDC numbers that I posted a few threads down that overall nationwide death rates are running at 97% of normal?

Can anybody explain why this pandemic is causing fewer than expected overall deaths nationwide?

chickelit said...

*Also called black humor without any racial connotations.

Jon Ericson said...

Found on the 'net.

It's not that the left can't meme per se, it's that their viewpoints rely on a carefully constructed denial of reality, to a far greater extent than any of the cults or religions they seek to supplant.
This doesn't lend itself to simple, easily conveyed messages, because if you rely on your viewers to see things as they are, without providing several layers of carefully selected context, they'll interpret it the wrong way.
The left can't meme because memes are the antithesis of how they communicate.

Yancey Ward said...

"Did anybody notice in the CDC numbers that I posted a few threads down that overall nationwide death rates are running at 97% of normal?"

Fewer car accidents, fewer medical procedures that result in death. This isn't to say that the medical procedures aren't necessary, it is just that they come with some risk of death.

If we run at 97% for the entire year, that is 90,000 people saved, which leads to this question- why don't we stay shut down so that we can save 90,000 people next year? The logic used for this shut down is based on the same idea.

Mark said...

They appear to be down week-by-week for the entire year, including before the covid outbreak.

Yancey Ward said...

"How brainwashed ca Rachel Maddox views get. It has become clear that I can't have a discussion with my wife that comes any close to touching on politics, including the response to the virus. Sorry to rant."

I know what you mean. I tried discussing this with a close female relative on Saturday afternoon- she started off reasonable, but then quickly began with all the lefty media talking points about how Trump was blame for everything. I gave up pretty quickly, but still was the bad guy for not agreeing meekly with everything she said.

Mark said...

Some of it could be an over-estimation of expected deaths.

Yancey Ward said...

Mark,

There was a bad flu season in 2017-2018, if I remember correctly- that may well be reflected in the following two years- people who died in 2017-2018 can't die this year from something else. We will probably see something similar next year.

stephen cooper said...

"the purpose of the universe must be about us in some way"

not presuming to answer that, but the Mormons have an unusual approach to that question, which almost convinces even me ...
then there is my personal approach, I think you all are important to the universe because inter alia you provide jobs to your guardian angels, who basically run the place,
and then there is a good quote from a French author, who said there is no such thing as tragedy in this world, except that it is a tragedy not to become a saint.

chickelit said...

Silver linings from covid19 or too soon?

1) We got to see what jumping off an economic cliff feels like without actually voting for it. Hopefully people connect the dots.

2) There really are fewer commercial flights, or flying changes back to something like it was. My most recent experience in coach (Jan of this year) was miserable.

3) Some of the "non-essentials" now working from home actually transition to working more from home. Think of the traffic congestion saved in places like L.A.

Yancey Ward said...

For those confused about the noise in the bar graphs for deaths, here is a useful bar graph that smooths out the data so that you can see the underlying trend. The data set is simply cumulatives deaths from coronavirus in US, the metric is called 7DDRR. All it is the ratio of cumulative deaths on Day N to cumulative deaths on Day N-7. It smooths out the weekend and daily effects that are the cause of a great deal of the variance day to day. As new deaths decline, the ratio should slowly converge to 1. Right now we are in the long tail of declining deaths.

J. Farmer said...

@stephen cooper:

Léon Bloy. I am reminded of Noam Chomsky's contempt for the provincial Parisian nature of French intellectual culture.

chickelit said...

I second ticktock at 8:21. Some women are in a real quandary. I get it. Doesn't change my opinion of anything.

I can't even talk politics at work. I just don't talk politics in real life. That's why post here. I'm not on FaceBook and I don't use Twitter much. In chemical terms, I'd say that my politics went in silico.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"If it saves just one life, then it's all worth it"

"...it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish.”" Jn 11:50

Mark said...

About 69,000 covid deaths have been listed in the U.S.

It's a tragedy.

And what to say about the other half-million people who have died of other causes in that time?

chickelit said...

Seems like there's an unfilled potential for men and women to actually communicate across No Person's Land on politics.

Forget it. Ain't gonna happen.

Ray - SoCal said...

Lots of information on the Wuhan Flu lacks Context.

And it frustrates me! I feel like a Mushroom.

What I would like to see:

1. When showing deaths by Coronavirus, show usual deaths in that period from a year ago. % would be nice.

2. Breakdown down to a county level, of where the Wuhan Flu infections are coming from. Pie chart would be nice, and trends for top 5 vectors.

My guess is Institutions will be a huge part of this.

3. On any historical graphs, note when stay at home order started, and masks were required. I am curious if there is an impact.

4. On all data showing growths in infections, show number of tests done. Show the % positive. NY was at 40% positives, couple of days ago it fell to 34%. With around 26,000 tests per day.

5. Running tally for deaths due to delayed non essential treatments. I am surprised there are not more deaths yet due to delayed non essential treatments.

This site is the best I have seen so far for the US for graphic displayed information down to a county level:
https://covid19.biglocalnews.org/county-maps/index.html#/

But for test data, this is the only one I have seen that goes down to a state level:
https://covidtracking.com/

J. Farmer said...

@Mark:

And what to say about the other half-million people who have died of other causes in that time?

Two points. One, a novel virus that has recently emerged and about which still is unknown is not that analogous to the more "routine" causes of death that we have come to be habituated to. Two, there is concern beyond just mortality. Some subset of those infected develop symptoms that necessitate hospitalization.

Ray - SoCal said...

Thanks Yancey Ward!

Are columns J & K switched? Or I am not just understanding it.

Sad thing is most people on ventilators will die.

I built my own spreadsheet using data from covidtracking.com and a column I added was % positives. It helps to see trends without graphing. Same for % change in tests and deaths. Something else I did, using something Steve Sailor did as a quick way to get an estimate of # infected in the US, is multiply the dead by 1,000. Seems to agree with more professional estimates (around 5% right now).

Be nice to see death rates per 1,000 by state, and rank them. And see what the difference is that causes this. With Florida it seems they did a better job with nursing homes. I am also curious on what states give out hydroxychloroquine and how long it takes to get test results, compared to death rates.

Mark said...

If someone is under 50 and healthy, beyond simply opening up, is it now time to even consider intentionally getting exposed to the virus?

Again, the stats show that, while it might (or might not) be a kick in the ass, it carries a very low risk of death for that demographic.

Or if not that, then mass volunteer for testing, which involves being intentionally exposed?

chickelit said...

How much of Covid19 was spread in ER waiting rooms early on?

Mark said...

Objection J.

Your answer is non-responsive to the actual question. The other 7800 who die EVERY DAY are rather invisible in all this drama, are they not?

Not Sure said...

There's a simple explanation for the apparent fact that there have been fewer than the expected number of deaths in the US until a few weeks ago. The explanation is the it's not a fact at all, but an artifact of how the CDC calculates "excess deaths."

For each jurisdiction, a model is used to generate a set of expected counts, and the upper bound of the 95% Confidence Intervals of these expected counts is used as a threshold to estimate excess deaths...This method is useful in detecting when jurisdictions may have higher than expected numbers of deaths, but cannot be used to determine whether a given jurisdiction has fewer deaths than expected.

Regarding the numbers reported as "percent of expected deaths," the CDC explains:

The percent excess was defined as the number of excess deaths divided by the threshold.

So if, for example, the mean number of expected deaths was 90 and the upper bound of the 95% confidence interval was 100, 97 deaths would be about 8% above the mean, but would be reported as 97% of "expected deaths." (Those are made-up numbers for simple illustration, since I don't know the actual standard errors.)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#techNotes

William said...

In the 4/20 edition of The New Yorker, there's a lengthy profile of Fauci. Along the way, it takes the requisite swipes at Trump, but it's worth reading.....Whatever digs people here take at Fauci, they're nothing compared to the invective he was subjected to at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic by gay activists. Still, he found a way to listen to them and address their concerns...I think people have legitimate concerns regarding a protracted shutdown. Some states have taken steps to address those concerns, and I don't think Fauci stands as roadblock to re-opening. He does sound a cautionary note, and maybe he should....One hopeful thing I picked up from the article was that it's possible to bioengineer a "platform vaccine" that would apply to all viruses. Then, from this chassis you could add on specific thinggummies to stymie the latest virus. This would drastically cut the time needed to develop a specific vaccine. It will cost billions to develop such a universal proto-vaccine, but the guess here is that there won't be a great deal of opposition to undertaking such an endeavour.

Mark said...

The stats tend to indicate that a bit less than 90 percent of the deaths are of people age 60 and above.

Which means that of the 68,600 who have died, about 61,000 are that age or older. That leaves about 7,600 for people who are younger.

Which is to say, it's sad for the older population who have died, but that's rather negligible for everyone else.

J. Farmer said...

@Mark:

Your answer is non-responsive to the actual question. The other 7800 who die EVERY DAY are rather invisible in all this drama, are they not?

Yes, but what lesson are we supposed to draw from this? If a bomb killed a hundred people somewhere in the US, it wouldn't make much sense to say why are focusing on these hundred deaths and ignoring the deaths that occur otherwise.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

to what degree could this be categorized as a nursing home crisis?

Mark said...

What lesson?

Perspective.

Mark said...

"In the grand scheme of things," all this is but a blip. Something to be concerned about, yes. Something to prudently guard against, yes. Something to pull our hair out and set ourselves on fire, no.

I have enough other things to freak out about while also trying to live with my occasional low-grade anxiety disorder.

It is possible -- and proper -- to have a certain zen about all this.

Mark said...

Nursing homes were already in a state of crisis in their (neglectful and abusive) treatment of residents before any of this happened.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Of course The Karate Kid was anti-WASP, but there was nothing strange about that. It was a common trope in eighties movies. The writer was Jewish, and so was Daniel, but they turned him into Ralph Macchio for box office appeal.

What was strange was getting the American public, the largest segment of which was white, more or less Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, to also be anti-WASP, and enthusiastically so. Of course, the manor-born WASP was mostly a fantasy of Jews who believed that Thurston Emerson Cabot-Lodge was real, and in power, or maybe pretended to believe. You get little pushback disrespecting a group of people that almost nobody self-identifies as.

Consider Back to School, another eighties film featuring William Zabka. Rodney Dangerfield played the lovable slob, an ethnic Everyman underdog up against the collegiate WASP snobs, in a country where 3% of the general population inhabits 25% of the seats at elite universities. The same trope was used more or less in countless movies of the time, particularly SNL-derived comedies .

J. Farmer said...

The same trope was used more or less in countless movies of the time, particularly SNL-derived comedies .

True. John Landis' Trading Places was a particularly egregious example.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

covid vs typical ongoing

across the country, high numbers from nursing homes/long term facilities
eg MN- deaths:395 Death in long term care:317

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXDduBZWAAEqCxj?format=jpg&name=small

What are the death rates in nursing homes over the past 10 years?
How do they compare to 2020?
How is the cause of death in these nursing homes being ascertained in each case in 2020?

Gospace said...

This Italian article says:

"The Italian Society for Rheumatology studied 65,000 patients on longterm hydroxychloroquine for RA and Lupus.

Only 20 patients tested positive for COVID-19. No ICU, no deaths"


and

"Healthcare professionals who are in close contact with contagious patients take the drug in advance, precisely to decrease the probability of contracting the infection. For now, in support of this "prophylaxis" effect, there is a recent publication, involving 211 people. It was published on theInternational Journal of Antimicrobial Agents , the official body of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Of 211 people exposed to Covid positive 19 and undergoing hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis, none were infected.
Finally, further confirmation of this hypothesis is the data collected in the register of the SIR (Italian rheumatology society). To assess the possible correlations between chronic patients and Covid19, SIR interrogated 1,200 rheumatologists throughout Italy to collect statistics on infections. Out of an audience of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil / hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far."


We have patients here, in the USA, on long term hydroxychloroquine for RA and Lupus. It's a standard treatment. We have these really interesting numbers from Italy. Now, if the CDC and NIH really wanted to know if hydroxychloroquine was a good preventive measure- don't you think they could, within just a few days, have the covid19 numbers for patients here, in the USA, on long term hydroxychloroquine for RA and Lupus? It only makes absolutely perfect sense to look at those numbers.

Or maybe they have. But--- they make Trump look good. And therefore, we aren't being told what they are.

On a related subject, seems to be only one study that shows a NEGATIVE effect of using hydroxychloroquine- the infamous VA study. With a whole total of 368 patients. All obese to severely obese, most with other serious health problems, with treatment started AFTER they were already in ICU, when all the doctors who say use hydroxychloroquine say use it early because using it the ICU is likely to be too late... it's almost as if the VA doctors designed the test deliberately to fail. I'm willing to bet if we look at the background of all the doctors who signed the study, they're all registered Democrats. Anyone willing to take me up on that? BTW, it's very easy to design a study to fail, on almost anything that you already know works. Failure is easy to achieve.

Another thing I've read is that another doctor tested Vitamin D blood levels on ICY and deceased patients. And the biggest predictive element of whether anyone ends up in ICU or dying from Covid19 is a low Vitamin D level. Most of the VA patients in the study were black. Well known fact- blacks, on average, have lower Vitamin D level. Why? Because- they're black. And blacks in the USA all over seem to be dying from Covid19 at greater numbers than their proportion in the population. Seems to me another easy check they could do is everyone in the ICU or who dies from it on the hospital- CHECK their Vitamin D level. Mine's 40 ng/ml as of 4 weeks ago. My VA practitioner found out I was taking 1000 IU a day and started warning me about Vitamin D intoxication and added the Vitamin D test to my routine tests. I've been doing further study on it. It's actually really hard to get your blood level up to the Vitamin D intoxication level. How many of you here know your Vitamin D level?

Drago said...

"Consider Back to School, another eighties film featuring William Zabka. Rodney Dangerfield played the lovable slob, an ethnic Everyman underdog up against the collegiate WASP snobs, in a country where 3% of the general population inhabits 25% of the seats at elite universities."

Not quite.

Dangerfield's "underdog" was a very wealthy businessman who was able to buy his way into the University on his own terms (a nice fat check to "Dean David Martin" LOL: "Well gee whiz Phil!"), reconfigure a series of dorm rooms into 1 super suite, and hire a bevy of brains to do all his work for him, until, of course, in the 3rd Act he comes thru on his own.

That is not your typical "underdog".

StephenFearby said...

WAPO 3:19 a.m.EST

Federal judge in Wisconsin rules that strip clubs should be eligible for coronavirus aid

'A federal judge in Wisconsin is siding with strip clubs who say they are entitled to emergency coronavirus relief from the government, allowing them to start applying for loans on Monday.

After the pandemic forced them to close, the owners of four Silk Exotic Gentleman’s Club locations applied for aid from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which would allow them to continue to pay their staff. But their banks informed them that their requests would be denied because SBA regulations prevent loans from being disbursed to businesses that “present live performances of a prurient sexual nature.”

While some strip clubs have pivoted to delivering food or offering drive-through shows, many are struggling to stay afloat and could shut down for good — which would also leave bartenders, security guards and other employees without work. In their lawsuit, the Wisconsin strip club owners argued that the SBA had discriminated against them and violated their First Amendment rights by barring them from receiving emergency funds that were made available to other businesses.

In a 33-page decision issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled in the strip clubs’ favor and declared the restriction unconstitutional, writing that the clubs had been singled out by the government “for unfavorable treatment based solely on the content of their speech.”

The preliminary injunction supersedes the restriction on “prurient” businesses and directs the SBA to start facilitating emergency loan applications from strip clubs on Monday.'

Content of their speech?

PJ said...

@Not Sure — thanks for that helpful explanation. If I understand correctly (adding a bit to your made up round numbers), supposing average past deaths in a jurisdiction for a particular time period were 90, and the CDC was trying to predict for the next year at a 95% confidence level, the prediction would be in the form of a range, say 80 to 100 deaths. After the actual results came in, the CDC would say there were “excess” deaths only if the number exceeded the high end of the predicted range. Likewise, presumably, they would say there were “fewer deaths than expected” only if the actual number came in lower than the low end of the predicted range.

J. Farmer said...

That is not your typical "underdog".

But his wealth and business acumen make him an underdog in the collegiate world, as exemplified by the Econ professor. Dangerfield basically plays the same role in Caddyshack, except this time it’s the WASP country club members who are the target. Anti-WASP resentments are a common theme in Jewish creative works. Matthew Weiner all but admitted it was the main impetus to his creation of Mad Men.

Michael K said...

Well known fact- blacks, on average, have lower Vitamin D level. Why? Because- they're black.

If you have read Greg Cochran's "The 10,000 Year Explosion," you know the explanation. Skin pigmentation decreases with northern latitude as an evolutionary effect. As humans moved out of Africa, they encountered two phenomena that affect vitamin D. One is that the father north, the more clothing is needed. The other is that seasons affect the amount of sunlight. Both reduce vitamin D synthesis in the skin. To compensate, the skin pigmentation declined.

Ricketts, due to vitamin D deficiency, was common in cities among children prior to the supplementation of milk with vitamin D. Dark pigmentation reduces the sun synthesis of vitamin D and would require more milk consumption among those children. Adults of all races tend to have reduced vitamin D levels and it is associated with a number of health problems, including myocardial infarction. There is even some concern about the effectiveness of oral vitamin D3 in improving the blood levels. I have taken vitamin D3 for years and do have my levels checked occasionally.

h said...

Replying to Ray-So Cal at 12:20. Thanks for your posts on Covid numbers. Even though I am aware that case studies or individual stories are not giving the complete picture, I think they are giving us a better idea of what is going on. I'm not going to try to find a link, but I read that in Montgomery Co. MD outside of DC, 60%+ of Covid deaths are in nursing homes. And when we see day to day spikes it is usually because of a single place that gets reported all at once.

On the link Yancey Ward sent, there are two "sheets". I think Yancey Ward wanted us to the see the graph on the first sheet. Your question about columns J and K refers to the second sheet "COVID data" and you are right the titles on those columns must be reversed -- the smaller number is patients currently on a respirator and the larger number is the cumulative number of patients who are now or ever have been on a respirator because of Covid. At least, that's my interpretation. It would be easy and tempting in Excel to calculate a "cumulative" by just summing the daily numbers for all previous days. That approach raises the question I can't answer whether the "currently on" shows "newly put on" -- since a person could be on a respirator for days doing a sum like this would give a measure of "Patient-days" not cumulative patients. (Also thanks to Yancey Ward and others providing regional, state, and even anecdotal evidence which is helping me get a better view of the issue than anything I might read in the Washington Post.)

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

True, Dangerfield’s character was very rich, and in that way not typical, but he come from humble origins, so he had underdog cred. I loved Rodney’s comedy, in stand-up and movies. I simply noticed the anti-WASP sentiment in movies of that type. In Trading Places, the evil businessmen couldn’t be Jewish, of course, so they had to be WASPS. Maybe one exception was Gordon Gekko, but he was barely portrayed as Jewish — blink and you miss it.

Andy said...

via Instapundit
NY Daily Mail The instapundit link broke so I found this one.
Jeffrey Epstein kept an office at Harvard University and visited the storied school more than 40 times after pleading guilty to underage prostitution charges, according to a review released Friday.
Room 610 at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, located at Harvard Square, was informally known as “Jeffrey’s office,” according to the 27-page review of Harvard’s ties to the multimillionaire sex offender.

Epstein used the program to burnish his bogus image as a brilliant renaissance man.
“Epstein often invited scholars from other institutions to meet with him when he came to PED (indeed, Epstein met with faculty from other institutions at least as often as with Harvard faculty). On occasion, Epstein also invited political figures to PED’s office,” the report reads.

Of course he would be involved with something called PED at Harvard, why not. The Epstein Story is the gift that keeps on giving because if you just wait around long enough some new fact comes to light that makes you go, hmmmmm.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ray - SoCal said...

Thanks H for the kind words.

What would be very interesting is the R rate for each state. Basically how many people a person infects. The goal is an R below 1, so it’s shrinking. You can get a rough idea from the % Positive.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/swedens-covid-19-handling-failure-or-success

J. Farmer said...

Maybe one exception was Gordon Gekko, but he was barely portrayed as Jewish — blink and you miss it.

And Oliver Stone is considered suspect. Gekko spouts a few anti-WASP remarks, and his nemesis, Sir Lawrence Wildman, was based on James Goldsmith.

BUMBLE BEE said...

With regard to black Vitamin D levels. Most of the blacks I've known, and they are many, are lactose intolerant and have avoided dairy in all it's forms. Few Vitamin D reserves to be found.

grackle said...

Corona Blues 5(revised)

I was born in central Texas
With cousins up in Arkansas
I’ve arrived at that rare nexus
Where the lockdown lays down the law

A lofty sky lives way out there
I haven’t seen it for awhile
I really don’t know how I’d fare
If I took a stroll for a mile

Haven’t bought home a salary
And it slays the pundits’ best minds
There’s bird shit on my balcony
I can see it through the blinds

Near to an anonymous source
No traffic except for sirens
Menaced by a synthetic force
Native to sneaky environs

I have to take a trip downstairs
I’ll dangle in Hell for a spell
As quick as a sinner’s prayers
(My mail’s fate I cannot foretell)

Of free will I know this fable
Without it life will fall apart
We hijack what we are able
And are pursued back to the start

Yancey Ward said...

Ray, here is someone who has tried to calculate R for the different states.

Yancey Ward said...

As for the column on the second page of my first link- I had noticed the same problem, but I don't think they are necessarily switched- I think it is just that at some point they stopped updating cumulative numbers for respirator use- the first number looks right for present use- cumulative use would be much higher than 10,000 at this point.

Ray - SoCal said...

Thanks Yancy!

What a delightful site

Wisconsin has an R of 1.01. The problem is with the low level of infections, probably a lot of noise. And as noted, a lot of people infected are asymptomatic, may be as much as 95%.

Mn 2.03, Powerlineblog has been doing a deep dive on Mn.

Good news, CA has an R of .85 NY .83.

I'm comparing it to data from https://covid19.biglocalnews.org/county-maps/index.html#/

Looks like in another week or so, CA will have more daily cases than NY. Not good. And in CA, more than half the cases are in LA County. My guess is nursing homes are getting hit hard in LA. Broken Record - I wish I knew the infectee vectors are. LA does not have the subway problem of NY, but we have a HUGE homeless issue.

Ray - SoCal said...

Oops, meant 1.03 for MN

Iman said...

“Trout Lily Forest”... the under appreciated follow-up to “Trout Mask Replica” from Captain Beefheart.