On Topic Discussion 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2)

[Kahaih]

This seems peculiar to me:

Deaths reported in the US:

July
28 - 1564
29 - 1025
30 - 1637
31 - 1008
August
1 - 515
2 - 532

Some pretty large steps, there.

 

[KaraBulut]

Iran : 312,035 (up from 309,437 / +2,598 / 0.8%) - 17,405 deaths (+215)

We knew that several countries have been misrepresenting their COVID-19 statistics based upon the obvious inconsistencies in mortality statistics. Russia's death numbers are under-reported. The UK's case numbers are under-reported.

The media hasn't been reporting on Iran's numbers. Once the pandemic reached Italy and it resulted in thousands of deaths, coverage of Iran's COVID-19 dropped off the radar of the media.

According to JHI, Iran has had 312,035 cases and 17,405 deaths. Based upon documents leaked to the BBC, Iran's true numbers are 451,024 cases and nearly 42,000 deaths. This also puts Iran's mortality rate near 10%- an indicator of the poor quality of Iran's healthcare system.


Coronavirus: Iran cover-up of deaths revealed by data leak [BBC]

The number of deaths from coronavirus in Iran is nearly triple what Iran's government claims, a BBC Persian service investigation has found.

The government's own records appear to show almost 42,000 people died with Covid-19 symptoms up to 20 July, versus 14,405 reported by its health ministry.

The number of people known to be infected is also almost double official figures: 451,024 as opposed to 278,827.

The official numbers still make Iran the worst-hit in the Middle East.

In recent weeks, it has suffered a second steep rise in the number of cases.

 

[belamyi]

We knew that several countries have been misrepresenting their COVID-19 statistics based upon the obvious inconsistencies in mortality statistics. Russia's death numbers are under-reported. The UK's case numbers are under-reported.

So are Spain's, so are every country's, to a bigger or lesser degree: the difference lies in the conscious watering-down of the disaster, and the mere impossibility to deal with "real time" up-to-date reckoning. In bigger Western European countries, it is some sort of mixture of both, since they prefer to be "cautious" about the magnitude of the mess: recall how the Spanish government had to slash down two thousand dead, because of duplicities in the counting systems in local and central authorities... while sometimes, for a similar reason, there is a sudden surge in the amount of total dead.

Since this sort of disaster had only been found in people-and-God-forgotten areas, nobody had cared to realize that you will not get a remotely accurate account of who actually died until months, even years after it is all over.

When the official count of dead in the UK was around 30,000, it was spoken of 50,000 real cases. Back then, there was a 40,000 count being opposed to the still under 30,000 official one. Spain's more accurate count must be right now between 45,000 and 50,000, and the UK's up to 70,000.

 

[belamyi]

We knew that several countries have been misrepresenting their COVID-19 statistics based upon the obvious inconsistencies in mortality statistics. Russia's death numbers are under-reported. The UK's case numbers are under-reported.

The media hasn't been reporting on Iran's numbers. Once the pandemic reached Italy and it resulted in thousands of deaths, coverage of Iran's COVID-19 dropped off the radar of the media.

According to JHI, Iran has had 312,035 cases and 17,405 deaths. Based upon documents leaked to the BBC, Iran's true numbers are 451,024 cases and nearly 42,000 deaths. This also puts Iran's mortality rate near 10%- an indicator of the poor quality of Iran's healthcare system.

Given that Iran's population almost doubles that of Spain, and that the latter's healthcare system is reasonably among the "good ones", the fact that th real acount of dead in Iran is so similar to that of Spain would depend on something else: just consider it a terrorist attack; the fact that France or Spain, UK or the USA have suffered attacks leading to hundreds of dead, does not mean that they are unsafer countries.

A virus may not target like a terrorist, but the spreading is manifested in the same way everywhere: through the density of interpresonal connections.
What might make a difference sense of those 40,000 dead in Iran, when compared to those in any Western European country, is that most of them would have been in poorer rural areas: that could account for the quality of the healthcare system. But if in Spain and Sweden their loved elders have received the biggest share of the tack of the virus, and that paradise of technological and human development that is Germany has revealed the "developing, third-world" side of it all in their meat industry, what can you expect from a country with, other considerations aside, like being ruled by "priests", has been suffering international sanctions for years and years.

 

[rareboy]

This seems peculiar to me:

Deaths reported in the US:

July
28 - 1564
29 - 1025
30 - 1637
31 - 1008
August
1 - 515
2 - 532

Some pretty large steps, there.

It doesn't pass the smell test. It could be just about the reporting and recording over the weekend....but that kind of drop suggests manipulation of case numbers.

Eventually, TrumpCo. will be looking to discount any deaths that aren't solely recorded as COVID...so any death where COVID is listed as contributing factor but is not listed as primary cause of death will not be reported.

It has happened before though where thereseems to be a steep decline for a few days before the next wave shows up.

When you see the people whooping it up at the 'White Trash Bash' or packing together at 'Butte des mortes' Sand Bash...just be patient....the death count will be back up in no time.

 

[rareboy]

I see that the Atlantic is posing the question that has been asked in this thread at least once over the last 6 months....

...always the reminder that the US has 4% of the world's population but 24% of the cases.

 

[KaraBulut]

This seems peculiar to me:

Deaths reported in the US:

July
28 - 1564
29 - 1025
30 - 1637
31 - 1008
August
1 - 515
2 - 532

Some pretty large steps, there

It doesn't pass the smell test. It could be just about the reporting and recording over the weekend....but that kind of drop suggests manipulation of case numbers.

.

The variability is caused by delays in death certificate filings. In some cases, it's because of the weekend- when physicians and health department staff are likely to be off work. In most states, even though the death certificate is filed electronically, it requires the physician to certify and sign the certificate before it's filed. It then has to be entered into the electronic filing system (although some smaller States may still have manual filing systems) within a particular number of days (usually between 5 to 14 days).

Below are the US daily death numbers- I bolded the Saturdays and Sundays. Notice that the counts drop typically are lower on Sunday through Tuesday. This is because of the weekend plus the 1-2 day filing delays. There also seems to be a rush to get death certificates filed by the end of the week, so the counts tend to increase on Fridays.

• 12-Jul +484
• 13-Jul +475
• 14-Jul +555
• 15-Jul +765
• 16-Jul +721
• 17-Jul +1,123
  [*] 18-Jul +989
  [*] 19-Jul +723
• 20-Jul +286
• 21-Jul +373
• 22-Jul +1,181
• 23-Jul +1,109
• 24-Jul +1,530
  [*] 25-Jul +1,316
  [*] 26-Jul +672
• 27-Jul +531
• 28-Jul +1,832
• 29-Jul +1,564
• 30-Jul +1,025
• 31-Jul +1,637
  [*] 01-Aug +1,008
  [*] 02-Aug +514
• 03-Aug +498

There were also some changes that occurred in July at the State level.

Several States have been updating their systems, so there were outages that occurred on Fridays that caused counts to be delayed by a day or two.

 

[KaraBulut]

Given that Iran's population almost doubles that of Spain, and that the latter's healthcare system is reasonably among the "good ones", the fact that th real acount of dead in Iran is so similar to that of Spain would depend on something else: just consider it a terrorist attack; the fact that France or Spain, UK or the USA have suffered attacks leading to hundreds of dead, does not mean that they are unsafer countries.

A virus may not target like a terrorist, but the spreading is manifested in the same way everywhere: through the density of interpresonal connections...

The general pattern with COVID-19 is that it burns through high density population centers before it gets into the rural areas. This is probably caused by people who work in the cities returning home when cities lockdown and also by people who have second homes in rural areas fleeing the cities when the case counts go up. This is what we saw with New York City.

In the article I linked, there's a mention of the city of Qom:

The city of Qom, the initial epicentre of the virus in Iran, is worst hit proportionally, with 1,419 deaths - that is one death with Covid-19 for every 1,000 people.

A factor that is unique to Iran is the role of the city of Qom in the pandemic. There are two Shi'a pilgrimage sites in Qom where thousands of Muslims gather and spend money at local businesses. Some of the more religious Muslims believe that attending a pilgrimage to the Fatima Masumeh Shrine will guarantee that they go to heaven. There's been a big battle between the religious forces in Qom and the government over keeping the mosques and shrines in Qom open for tourism.

Not so different from other tourism areas in Europe and the US.

 

[KaraBulut]

4-Aug-2020:

Global COVID-19 Mortality/Morbidity
- Global Cases reported: 18,466,594 (up from 18,185,015 / 1.5%) - *‬*281,579 new cases yesterday
- Global Deaths: 699,134 (up from 691,111) - **8,023 people died yesterday

US COVID-19 Mortality/Morbidity
- Cases reported in the US - 4,768,083 cases (up from 4,711,323 / 1.2% yesterday), ‬**56,760 new cases, % of world's new cases were in the US
- Yesterday's cases in NJ/NY - 1,102 (1.9%), outside NJ/NY - 56,699 (98.1%)
- Deaths reported in the US - 156,753 deaths, 1,387 deaths yesterday , % of the world's deaths yesterday were in the US
- Yesterday's Deaths in NJ/NY - 17 (1.2%), outside NJ/NY - 1,405 (98.8%)
- Testing: - 58,239,438 tests (up from 57,543,852 yesterday, +695,586
tests), 17.6% of the US population has been tested, 8.2% positive rate

Coronavirus cases/deaths in active countries (preference to countries with JUB members):

• US: 4,768,083 (up from 4,711,323 / +56,760 / 1.2%) - 156,753 deaths (+1,387)
• Brazil: 2,801,921 (up from 2,733,677 / +68,244 / 2.5%) - 95,819 deaths (+1,715)
• India: 1,855,745 (up from 1,803,695 / +52,050 / 2.9%) - 38,938 deaths (+803)
• Russia: 859,762 (up from 854,641 / +5,121 / 0.6%) - 14,327 deaths (+144)
• Mexico: 443,813 (up from 439,046 / +4,767 / 1.1%) - 48,012 deaths (+266)
• Iran : 314,786 (up from 312,035 / +2,751 / 0.9%) - 17,617 deaths (+212)
• Spain : 302,814 (up from 297,054 / +5,760 / 1.9%) - 28,498 deaths (+26)
• Japan: 41,312 (up from 40,073 / +1,239 / 3.1%) - 1,023 deaths (+5)
• Australia : 18,733 (up from 18,318 / +415 / 2.3%) - 232 deaths (+11)

Coronavirus cases/deaths in recovering countries:

• UK : 307,256 (up from 307,251 / +5 / 0.0%) - 46,295 deaths (+0)
• Italy : 248,419 (up from 248,229 / +190 / 0.1%) - 35,171 deaths (+5)
• Turkey: 234,934 (up from 233,851 / +1,083 / 0.5%) - 5,765 deaths (+18)
• France : 228,574 (up from 225,198 / +3,376 / 1.5%) - 30,297 deaths (+29) - 2 days
• Germany : 212,828 (up from 212,111 / +717 / 0.3%) - 9,163 deaths (+9)
• Canada : 119,659 (up from 118,973 / +686 / 0.6%) - 9,005 deaths (+10)
• China: 88,181 (up from 88,065 / +116 / 0.1%) - 4,675 deaths (+3)
• Sweden: 81,181 (up from 81,012 / +169 / 0.2%) - 5,747 deaths (+3)
• Belgium: 70,314 (up from 69,849 / +465 / 0.7%) - 9,850 deaths (+5)
• Netherlands : 56,279 (up from 55,782 / +497 / 0.9%) - 6,170 deaths (+1)
• Switzerland : 35,746 (up from 35,616 / +130 / 0.4%) - 1,981 deaths (+0)
• Ireland: 26,253 (up from 26,208 / +45 / 0.2%) - 1,763 deaths (+0)
• South Korea : 14,423 (up from 14,389 / +34 / 0.2%) - 301 deaths (+0)
• New Zealand: 1,567 (up from 1,567 / +0 / 0.0%) - 22 deaths (+0)

 

[frankfrank]

Eventually, TrumpCo. will be looking to discount any deaths that aren't solely recorded as COVID...so any death where COVID is listed as contributing factor but is not listed as primary cause of death will not be reported.

Hmmmm..."PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS," anybody?

They could do the same thing the insurance companies were doing before Obamacare: they were denying coverage even to middle-aged people who may have had bad acne as teenagers.

So will they count a death as something else than COVID, if some old person dies from it, and they had a case of runaway acne decades ago, or are known to be smokers?

Well, "It is what it is." Grrr...disgusting.

 

[rareboy]

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, with more than 200,000 people attending the event in South Dakota, will likely be the unmaking of COVID containment in many states as people from all over the US (and no doubt, some from Canada who are allowed to cross the border) will spread out across North America after 10 days of no social distancing or masking and expose millions of others.

Given that most bikers seem to be overweight and older....you'd think they would be smarter. But they won't be.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-...ng-250000-people-for-sturgis-motorcycle-rally

This is of course, the perfect lab experiment for mass gatherings and it will be interesting to see whether next year's rally has as many bikers attending.

Keep your eyes open for lots of bikes for sale by surviving families over the next months.

 

[KaraBulut]

Here are the top 10 states with increasing cases for the week ending 1-Aug:

1. California +66,032 total new cases for the week / +9,433 avg/day
2. Florida +65,517 / +9,360
3. Texas +64,184 / +9,169
4. Georgia +28,611 / +4,087
5. Tennessee +19,106 / +2,729
6. Arizona +16,953 / +2,422
7. North Carolina +14,278 / +2,040
8. Louisiana +12,546 / +1,792
9. Missouri +11,629 / +1,661
10. Alabama +11,219 / +1,603

Only two States are not in the South- California and Arizona.

When you adjust for the population of the States and look at the increase on a per capita basis, the picture changes slightly:

1. Florida
2. Mississippi
3. Tennessee
4. Louisiana
5. Georgia
6. Nevada
7. Arizona
8. Alabama
9. Texas
10. South Carolina

This gives you an idea of where the virus is not being controlled- North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana have the most cases but also have epidemics that are impacting more of their populations when compared to more populous States like Missouri, California and Texas.

 

[KaraBulut]

5-Aug-2020:

Global COVID-19 Mortality/Morbidity
- Global Cases reported: 18,727,530 (up from 18,466,594 / 1.4%) - *‬*260,936 new cases yesterday
- Global Deaths: 706,041 (up from 699,134) - **6,907 people died yesterday

US COVID-19 Mortality/Morbidity
- Cases reported in the US - 4,818,328 cases (up from 4,768,083 / 1.1% yesterday), ‬**50,245 new cases, 19.3% of world's new cases were in the US
- Yesterday's cases in NJ/NY - 993 (1.9%), outside NJ/NY - 52,211 (98.1%)
- Deaths reported in the US - 158,171 deaths, 1,418 deaths yesterday , 20.5% of the world's deaths yesterday were in the US
- Yesterday's Deaths in NJ/NY - 14 (1.0%), outside NJ/NY - 1,404 (99.0%)
- Testing: - 58,903,657 tests (up from 58,239,438 yesterday, +664,219 tests), 17.8% of the US population has been tested, 8.2% positive rate

Coronavirus cases/deaths in active countries (preference to countries with JUB members):

• US: 4,818,328 (up from 4,768,083 / +50,245 / 1.1%) - 158,171 deaths (+1,418)
• Brazil: 2,859,073 (up from 2,801,921 / +57,152 / 2.0%) - 97,256 deaths (+1,437)
• India: 1,908,254 (up from 1,855,745 / +52,509 / 2.8%) - 39,795 deaths (+857)
• Russia: 864,948 (up from 859,762 / +5,186 / 0.6%) - 14,465 deaths (+138)
• Mexico: 449,961 (up from 443,813 / +6,148 / 1.4%) - 49,698 deaths (+1,686)
• Iran : 317,483 (up from 314,786 / +2,697 / 0.9%) - 17,802 deaths (+185)
• Spain : 305,767 (up from 302,814 / +2,953 / 1.0%) - 28,499 deaths (+1)
• Japan: 42,663 (up from 41,312 / +1,351 / 3.3%) - 1,028 deaths (+5)
• Australia : 19,444 (up from 18,733 / +711 / 3.8%) - 247 deaths (+15)

Coronavirus cases/deaths in recovering countries:

• UK : 307,258 (up from 307,256 / +2 / 0.0%) - 46,295 deaths (+0)
• Italy : 248,803 (up from 248,419 / +384 / 0.2%) - 35,181 deaths (+10)
• Turkey: 236,112 (up from 234,934 / +1,178 / 0.5%) - 5,784 deaths (+19)
• France : 228,576 (up from 228,574 / +2 / 0.0%) - 30,297 deaths (+0)
• Germany : 214,113 (up from 212,828 / +1,285 / 0.6%) - 9,179 deaths (+16)
• Canada : 119,986 (up from 119,659 / +327 / 0.3%) - 9,010 deaths (+5)
• China: 88,291 (up from 88,181 / +110 / 0.1%) - 4,677 deaths (+2)
• Sweden: 81,540 (up from 81,181 / +359 / 0.4%) - 5,760 deaths (+13)
• Belgium: 70,648 (up from 70,314 / +334 / 0.5%) - 9,852 deaths (+2)
• Netherlands : 56,750 (up from 56,279 / +471 / 0.8%) - 6,173 deaths (+3)
• Switzerland : 35,927 (up from 35,746 / +181 / 0.5%) - 1,984 deaths (+3)
• Ireland: 26,303 (up from 26,253 / +50 / 0.2%) - 1,763 deaths (+0)
• South Korea : 14,456 (up from 14,423 / +33 / 0.2%) - 302 deaths (+1)
• New Zealand: 1,569 (up from 1,567 / +2 / 0.1%) - 22 deaths (+0)

 

[belamyi]

R0 under 1 for the past few days...

 

[Araucaria]

Here are the top 10 states with increasing cases for the week ending 1-Aug:

1. California +66,032 total new cases for the week / +9,433 avg/day
2. Florida +65,517 / +9,360
3. Texas +64,184 / +9,169
4. Georgia +28,611 / +4,087
5. Tennessee +19,106 / +2,729
6. Arizona +16,953 / +2,422
7. North Carolina +14,278 / +2,040
8. Louisiana +12,546 / +1,792
9. Missouri +11,629 / +1,661
10. Alabama +11,219 / +1,603

Only two States are not in the South- California and Arizona.

When you adjust for the population of the States and look at the increase on a per capita basis, the picture changes slightly:

1. North Carolina
2. Florida
3. Mississippi
4. Tennessee
5. Louisiana
6. Georgia
7. Nevada
8. Arizona
9. Alabama
10. Texas

This gives you an idea of where the virus is not being controlled- North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana have the most cases but also have epidemics that are impacting more of their populations when compared to more populous States like Missouri, California and Texas.

KaraBulut, I appreciate your daily reports on compiling, calculating, and typing up the US and world COVID statistics, grim as they may be. They give us a quantitative view of what is happening and where, which you don't get from just listening to the headlines.

That being said, I noticed a possible error in these numbers. You report a larger number of cases for Tennessee than for North Carolina, yet you list North Carolina as being the top on per capita cases. North Carolina has a larger population than Tennessee, so wouldn't Tennessee have a greater number of per capita cases than North Carolina?

 

[KaraBulut]

...That being said, I noticed a possible error in these numbers. You report a larger number of cases for Tennessee than for North Carolina, yet you list North Carolina as being the top on per capita cases. North Carolina has a larger population than Tennessee, so wouldn't Tennessee have a greater number of per capita cases than North Carolina?

You are correct! The population estimate had that I used for North Carolina had a typo. Thanks for catching that!

Using correct population estimates from the census bureau- NC with population est of 10.4 million and Tennessee with 6.8 million- NC moves to position #17. I will also correct the earlier post to show the correction.

1. Florida
2. Mississippi
3. Tennessee
4. Louisiana
5. Georgia
6. Nevada
7. Arizona
8. Alabama
9. Texas
10. South Carolina
11. Nebraska
12. Arkansas
13. Idaho
14. Oklahoma
15. Missouri
16. California
17. North Carolina

Connecting this to a discussion in the politics thread, it's worth considering the differences in the first couple of States - Florida and Mississippi- as symptoms of why per capita calculations are important.

The governors of Mississippi or Florida have been slow to respond to the crisis. Mississippi resisted doing a statewide shutdown in April and the governor finally put in a statewide mask order this week.

Florida has 502,739 total cases- they added 65,517 new cases last week. Their population is around 21.5 million.

Mississippi has 63,444 total cases - they added 8,900 new cases last week. Their population is about 3 million.

Mississippi has 1 academic medical center (U of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson) that serves as the major referral center for the entire state. UMMC is the ONLY level 1 trauma center located in the state of Mississippi and the only hospital with 24 hour staffing of physicians and nurses trained to handle critically ill patients with COVID-19. There are 3 level 2 trauma centers that can be used to divert less critically ill patients. UMMC is over capacity and is having to send patients to hospitals in Memphis, TN and Mobile, AL.

Florida has 9 Level 1 trauma centers and 20 level 2 trauma centers. Even though the Florida health system is under stress, they have enough capacity- especially in South Florida- to handle their COVID-19 cases.

Mississippi is screwed. Because they didn't do a proper shutdown and because they didn't mandate masks until 6 months into the pandemic, it's going to get bad- really bad- in Mississippi. The don't have a healthcare system in the State that is prepared to handle what is coming in the next few weeks.

Mississippi On Track To Become No. 1 State For New Coronavirus Cases Per Capita [NPR]

 

[rareboy]

This is so sad for the people trapped living in Mississippi.

 

[belamyi]

^ They might well be used to living trapped in a sad place well before the corona crisis: about two seconds into realizing in what sort of place they were dropped.

 

[Alistair]

Ohio governor Mike Dewine has tested positive for Covid-19 ahead of a visit with trump in Cleveland.

 

[Kahaih]

Ohio governor Mike Dewine has tested positive for Covid-19 ahead of a visit with trump in Cleveland.

I wonder if they asked Mike which one he'd prefer.

Anyway, I hope the date is still on.