Biden is crushing Trump in Michigan in latest EPIC-MRA poll by 12 points +/-4

The bad news is exactly two weeks after Fri May 22, the kickoff to the Memorial Day holiday weekend, new daily COVID-19 cases are making records in 9 states and Puerto Rico

Michigan had an astounding 4,529 new daily cases added on Fri Jun 5, 2020.

US COVID-19 deaths now total 110,028 in the Johns Hopkins University data

So, 10 days after hitting 100,000 instead of 9 days going from 90k to 100k deaths. Stay-at-home orders slowed down the rate at which deaths piled up.

What in the SAM HELL is this? 4,529 new COVID-19 cases on Fri Jun 5 in Michigan, 250 new deaths!

Climate Update for KGRR May 2020

Climate Update for KGRR May 2020

Max temp 90, Mean 86

Min temp 26, Mean 32

Av temp 56.7, Mean 57.9

Rain 4.22, Mean 3.48

Snow trace, Mean 0.2

HDD 298, Mean 252, Season 6240, Mean 6651, anomaly -411, season to date 6.17% milder than mean and currently ranks only 18th in the list of mildest winters

CDD 50, Mean 39, Season 50, Mean 45

American Shit Show and Antifa

The right wing wants everything opened up right now, yesterday even, no masks, no restrictions.

They are fools.

The left wing wants gradual opening with social distancing, masks, etc., except in protests. By all means go ahead and protest, they say, because it is more important! Many in the medical community have made the mistake of taking this position.

They are hypocrites.

George W. Bush used to maintain, probably still does, that the Muslim fundamentalists who attacked us on 9/11 attacked us because of our freedoms. They never succeeded for the most part. They managed to make us a surveillance society, it is true, and increasingly a security state, but life has been pretty much normal because we took the battle over there, at enormous expense to ourselves and everyone involved. 

Islamic fundamentalism has been no match for freedom. It doesn't really know how to exploit freedom to destroy it, being at its root itself unfree. It has had to resort to a kind of Fabianism instead, exploiting Western openess to emigrate to Western countries and reproduce there in the hope of eventually outnumbering us. They risk assimilating in the process, however.

But really to destroy freedom outright you need freedom to the max . . . you need anarchy!

In other words, you need a virus! The virus is totally free! It spreads just like that, and you can hardly stop it. Just look at how we have tried.

The virus has been everything Antifa only wished it could be. And Antifa has nothing on it. One look at Antifa and people recoil. Hell, Antifa recoils at itself. It disguises itself and skulks around in packs, and runs home to mommy after its violent stunts.

But the virus is totally free. It's everywhere, it's invisible and it's everything Antifa only wishes it could be. For the virus there are already no borders, no walls, no USA at all. It goes wherever it likes, whenever it likes, and doesn't need a disguise, because it looks just like you, just like me.

The only thing more powerful than an anarchic virus is a self-ordered host, a person who chooses not to be a victim or a spreader, a person fully in control of himself, who can say no to himself.

Such a person is truly the most free person there is. The virus stops there, and only there.

Rush Limbaugh the idiot: Sweden Proves the Lockdown Was Unnecessary

"RUSH: This guy, Neil Ferguson's predictions at the outset said 90,000 people in Sweden would die because they weren't gonna lock down, and 4,000 people died."

Rush Limbaugh's standard of expert opinion is always the guy who gets it wrong the worst.

That's called cherry picking, which is what idiots do.

Let's try to do it the right way.

Sweden deaths to date (no lockdown): 4,542 (18th in the world).

Deaths among fellow Nordics to date (with lockdowns):

Norway: 237
Finland: 321
Denmark: 580.

Sweden also has nearly 41,000 cases and rising. Daily new cases there are near record highs. Sweden is still feeding the beast. The other Nordics have 75% fewer total cases and even fewer than that. The other Nordics are doing enormously better than Sweden.

19 times better, 14 times better, 8 times better.

Rush can pretend this is over all he wants. This isn't over by a longshot, there or anywhere else, until new cases come down and fall to zero.

Sweden's fatality rate is more than twice as high as America's at 11%+. Expect 4,000 more deaths in Sweden at the minimum.

Dumb ass Rush Limbaugh says "coronavirus has vanished as an issue"

New cases in the last week: 150,557

Average new cases daily in the last week: 21,508

Expected new cases in the next 30 days at current level of spread: 645,240

Total current active cases: 1.138 million

Deaths expected from current active cases at 5.7%: 64,866

Deaths expected from projected new cases added in next month: 36,778

In other words, add another 102,000 deaths to the current 105,000 . . . and then add some more, and some more, and some more. 

Rioting is just a temporary little diversion from this United States of Shit Show under Trump.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, you dumb ass, they will never prove the cop intended to kill Floyd, who died of cardiopulmonary arrest while under the influence of fentanyl

Maybe you've heard of it?

You are an irresponsible jerk trying to queer the jury so that cop can't get a fair trial.

You are not on the side of law and order.

 

Rush Limbaugh yesterday turned his program into a shit show, called for George Floyd cop to be charged with first degree murder

Mr. COVID IS JUST A COLD DON'T SHUT THE COUNTRY OVER IT intervenes in a local police case and uses his damn microphone to enlist the whole country in calling for the cop to be charged with first degree murder.

Mr. Virtue Signaling, I say. Mr. I'm gonna die soon better burnish my reputation.

Now the medical examiner says Floyd died of cardiopulmonary arrest and was intoxicated with fentanyl.

And during the program Rush said if what happened to Floyd had happened to a white man we probably never would have heard about it.

Well, it did happen to a white man, and we didn't hear about it until now, not because no one cared, but because the case was deliberately kept from the public.

But as usual Rush flaps those gums before looking into anything too deeply. He's a lazy ass. Always has been. Just like Trump.

 

Hillary in 1996 wanted to bring the superpredators to heel

Nine days after hitting the 90,000 threshold, Johns Hopkins shows over 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US

The addition of 10,000 deaths in nine days instead of seven, six and five previously shows how the stay-at-home policy in the US has slowed down the spread of infection and therefore the rate at which deaths have been adding to the total.

Using the convenient data shown at The Straits Times, there are still 1,153,566 active cases in the US after subtracting deaths and recoveries from total cases. At the case fatality rate of 5.8% we can expect 66,907 additional deaths within 4-6 weeks.

Adding more cases, however, will obviously mean adding more deaths beyond the current projection of about 167,000 deaths.

LOL, Michigan's rapacious utility Consumers Energy delays roll-out of new Summer Peak Rate program due to COVID-19

 

Due to COVID-19, Peak Pricing has Been Delayed Until 2021:

Given the economic challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are delaying the implementation of the summer peak pricing period until 2021.

While you will still see this rate code (1001) on your bill, we will not be moving forward with the peak pricing for this summer as initially communicated. You will instead have a flat rate for electricity throughout the remainder of 2020.

The Summer Peak Rate includes a peak period from June 1 through September 30. The peak period consists of “on-peak” and “off-peak” rate prices:

• “On-peak” rate price – From 2 to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, your electricity rate will cost about 1.5 times higher than the “off-peak” rate price.
• “Off-peak” rate price – customers will pay a lower rate price for electricity used outside of on-peak times. This is the same rate you would pay October through May.

Trump will lose because he is alienating millions of people like this guy with incessant calls to reopen before it is safe

"Lehner, who now considers himself an independent, says he is frightened by the president's lack of leadership and maturity amid the nation's health and economic crisis. Several people in his gated community in Delray Beach, Florida, have gotten sick; at least one has died. He worries about his own health - he has an autoimmune disease - and also about his adult children, including a daughter who has gone back to work and a son whose pay has been cut. He plans to vote for Joe Biden in November."

More.

Trump took a big hit in April, now again in May, in Rasmussen's Trump Approval Index, net negative in double digits

Polls by both PEW of nearly 11,000 adults at the beginning of May and AP-NORC of 1,000+ in mid May both indicate 48% to 54% consensus that restrictions imposed by state authorities to prevent spread of COVID-19 have been/are "about right". The balance of opinion is split between "too harsh" and "not harsh enough".

Trump signed on to federal stay-at-home recommendations in mid March but began to argue against them within a week and hasn't let up since.

Meanwhile PEW found that 68% of all adults worried that states would re-open too soon and religious whites expressing falling support for Trump's crisis response.

Trump has a base of strong support at about a third of America.

Trump's greatest US economy ever suddenly has 25 million people on insured unemployment compensation

Somebody must have been asleep at the switch for something that bad to happen so quickly.

Who was that?

Projecting US deaths from COVID-19 to Nov 19, 2020 using optimistic assumptions

Daily US deaths from COVID-19 fell from 27,279 on 4/20 to 20,951 on 5/19, or 23.2% under circumstances of stay-at-home orders in many US states.

The following projection assumes, incorrectly but optimistically, that those orders would remain in place indefinitely, or at least the behaviors from them, and that case growth would continue to fall monthly at the same rate. 

Opening up the country as we are about to will eventually stop the decline trend and increase case counts and therefore death totals, but that's a problem for another day.

Assume that by 6/19 cases per day would fall to 16,090

by 7/19 to 12,357

by 8/19 to 9,490

by 9/19 to 7,288

by 10/19 to 5,597

Assume a simple average daily case addition per period of 18,520.5

14.223.5

10,923.5

8,389

6,442.5

each @30 days

Total cases added by 11/19: 1,754,970 @ 6% case fatality rate =  +105,298 deaths

plus 1.09 million existing cases @ 6% case fatality rate = +65,400 deaths

plus already existing deaths per Johns Hopkins = +92,149 deaths

Total deaths actual and baked in the cake by 11/19 = 262,847

Lots of variables could change the outcome, including improved treatment techniques in ICUs, ramped up use of new drugs like remdesivir, earlier diagnosis of patients through testing, earlier quarantining of the infected, stepped up contact tracing, more mask wearing in public, more social distancing, etc. The country seems quite divided about some of these, however, and many might throw caution to the wind while others do not. Much will depend on the character of local communities. In 1918 St. Louis turned out much differently than Philadelphia.

So as of right now, all things being equal, the much ridiculed original IHME estimate of 240,000 deaths looks more and more plausible with each passing day, even if the "by when" date isn't early August anymore.

USA hits 90,312 deaths from COVID-19 in John Hopkins University data, cases climb to 1,500,753

Here's the recent timeline of fatalities:

50k 4/24/20

60k 4/29

70k 5/5

80k 5/11

90k 5/18

We've gone from adding 10k dead every 5 days to every 6 days and to now 7 days. 

Safe to say we'll be at 100k dead in about a week, approximately May 25 or shortly thereafter.

If you subtract recoveries and fatalities from total cases, there remain roughly 1.09 million active cases as of right now. Keep that in mind for a moment in the context of stay-at-home orders more or less strictly applied around the country.

At the current case fatality rate of 5.95%, that means about 65k more deaths are baked in the cake as of right now, for a total of 155,000 deaths. This would be roughly by July 15.

I will be glad to be wrong and see the number fall, but I can't see why it should given the circumstances. Perhaps there will be improvement at the clinical care stage based on experiences to date. Hard to say.

One thing which might help is seeking help earlier. People have been afraid to go in to hospitals because they don't want to end up on a ventilator. There is evidence that seeking treatment earlier improves your odds.

That said, there is going to be disease spread picking up the pace as states re-open. The curve of infection has flattened precisely because of semi-quarantining of much of the population. Take that away and off we go again.

Ending stay-at-home will give new life to the epidemic in the US, and therefore to the death toll.

This isn't over by a long shot.

Meanwhile the secular bear market in stocks since August 2000 rolls on in April 2020

Return in the last 19.6 years lags the previous period of equal length by 75%, and lags long term return before that by 52%. 

April 2020 Climate Update for KGRR, Grand Rapids, Michigan

April 2020 Climate Update for KGRR

Max temp 75, Mean 79

Min temp 24, Mean 22

Av temp 44.2, Mean 46.5

Precip 4.09, Mean 3.31

Snow 2.2, Mean 2.4

HDD 617, Mean 553

HDD to date 5942, Mean to date 6399

Using Heating Degree Days, a deficit of 457 HDD from the mean to date indicates that this winter has been 7.14% milder through April than the mean winter through April.

May has already racked up enough HDD, however, to take this winter season out of the running to make the list of top ten warmest winters on record.