Nothing captures the ridiculous character of the present exaggerated age better than this celebration over a 3-meter helicopter flight on Mars

 

                                                                                                         Dare Mighty Things!

US COVID-19 update Mar 20 - Apr 17, 2021

Hospitalized Mar 20: 33164

                     Apr 17: 39090

                     +18%

Case positivity rate Mar 20: 4.5%

                                Apr 13: 7.6%

                                +69%

Daily new deaths per million Mar 20: 3.13

                                               Apr 17:  2.17

                                               -31%

Daily new deaths Mar 20: 1038

                             Apr 17:   719

                             -31%

But . . .

The bi-weekly change in confirmed deaths was dropping much faster on Mar 23, 37.15%, than it is on Apr 17, 7.4%. Indeed, the Mar 23 low was a retest of the 2020 low from last June 2 at 33.6%, after the initial outbreak of the pandemic subsided. It is itself the new low in the series.

There's been a dramatic slow down in the drop of bi-weekly change. The measure has itself been consistently rising since the advent of spring.

 

That doesn't make any sense in an environment in which increased vaccination, which is supposed to reduce severity of illness and therefore hospitalization and death, is occurring.

Share fully vaccinated Mar 20: 12.9%

                                     Apr 17: 24.7%

                                     +91%

Hospitalizations are clearly up, and deaths are falling but at a much slower rate than they were falling when there was much less vaccination, and colder weather, in the country.

Warmer weather is supposed to mean improving conditions. People get outside and get fresh air and Vitamin D, reducing spread of the infection. That's the theory anyway.

But the data say otherwise.

Daily new confirmed cases per million hit an interim low of 162.17 on Mar 14, and retested that on Mar 23 at 162.12. As of Apr 16 the figure is 211.77, up 31%. Those levels are nothing to write home about. ~100 per million, as in September 2020, would be.

This virus has a mind of its own. 

Homo proponit, sed SARS-CoV-2 disponit.

LOL, US C19 case positivity has risen to 7.6% from 7.0% in a week, but now some experts are moving the goalposts saying positivity doesn't matter anymore, hospitalizations do

 

All righty then!

C19 hospitalizations are up 2.5k over the period.

It still amazes me that I actually thought in March 2020 that the US and South Korea would travel similar pandemic trajectories

South Korea is an open society. It's not a lie like China.

Just look at this outcome. 

We are so pathetic.

LOL, Drudge is still running the show after all

"His clients, many Jews like Madoff and Jewish charities, said they didn’t know."

Seasonality: It's uncanny how C19 daily new cases seem to have bottomed around astronomical spring, March 20th

 

Hospitalizations, currently at 37,933, also seem to have done the same thing.

The National Weather Service predicts Ice-Out for the Tanana River at Nenana will be at the usual time, with river ice normal depth after big cold snap in February and March into April

 

C19 case growth in South America and Asia is out of control, still on the rise in North America with the US case positivity rate soaring

 

The US case positivity rate should concern everyone. It's up over 60% since mid March to 7%. Epidemics are considered out of control at 10%.

The irony is full vaccination in the US is up a nearly identical percentage since mid March.

We continue to hear this is a race against cases, which came down by themselves dramatically without vaccinations, and now are rising quite smartly with them.

This should not be happening if the vaccines work.

The Israelis have released preliminary results of a study showing outsized C19 breakthrough cases of the South African variant in patients who received the Pfizer vaccine, calling into question Pfizer's own claims about this. 

Michigan has rapidly turned into a COVID-19 basket case

Michigan is increasingly failing to cope with COVID-19.

It's now Number One for daily new cases per 100k of population in the 7, 14, and 30 day measures.

And in the last 7 days Michigan now ranks Number One for daily new cases period, beating out New York.

Amazingly, Michigan is now Number Two in the nation for C19 hospitalizations.

A month ago, on Mar 9, it wasn't even in the top 14 for hospitalizations.

As recently as Mar 22 it was ninth.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths reach 560k, big backfill in Oklahoma this week added momentum

 

Ice-Out for The Nenana Ice Classic is going to be delayed, but it's too late to buy your ticket anyway

All-time April low could fall in Alaskan city :

"A cold snap this extreme in April hasn’t been experienced in the Fairbanks area since 1911, when three consecutive record lows were set from April 9-11," Duff said. Two of these record lows are likely to be challenged during the latest cold wave, including Thursday night’s record of minus 16 F and Friday night’s record of minus 32 F.

Nenana Ice Classic 2021 

Hey! Where's the rope on that thing?

Earliest Ice-Out ever since 1917 was April 14 (2019).

Meanwhile my basic thesis is that this C19 epidemic continues to spread because 62% of men and 40% of women don't wash after using the loo

The data come from the largest study ever done on hand-washing years ago. You will find similar results in other smaller studies.

Do YOU always wash your hands after going to the loo? 62% of men and 40% of women admit they don't bother 

So that's roughly 51% of the population walking around NOT doing the most basic thing they should be doing under normal circumstances.

That agrees remarkably well with the Nature study on mask-wearing, which found that there is only 49% compliance.

Modeling COVID-19 scenarios for the United States: 

"the national average for self-reported mask wearing was 49% as of 21 September 2020"

I'm assuming it's much less than 49% however, because this data is from self-reporting, not observation.

Be that as it may, the main point is that with nearly half of a given population failing on basic hygiene, it's ridiculous to assume that those same people during a pandemic are going to comply with the litany of things which need to be done to stop the spread of the disease. 

You can't get them to wash their hands after using the loo, let alone wear a mask, wear a mask properly, social distance, quarantine themselves when exposed, quarantine themselves when sick, and on and on.

Results have indeed varied from state to state.

Michigan is a great example. We locked down hard at the beginning, closed everything, wore masks, yada yada yada, and suppressed the epidemic quite well until we couldn't stand it anymore. It caught up with us anyway.

And now the UK variant is giving it to us good and hard this spring. 

People gonna people. Virus gonna virus.

Michigan's graph of new confirmed cases for the whole history of the C19 epidemic shows it is a seasonal phenomenon

 

Michigan's reaction to the initial outbreak was a freakout, a lockdown which suppressed the outbreak.

As the epidemic has evolved, however, along with the response, it is clear that a spring, fall, spring pattern has developed.

The fall outbreak subsided on its own, before the introduction of the mass vaccination effort.

And cases since then are rising dramatically now, despite the vaccines.

The hospitalization graph shows the same thing.

Michigan is into its third wave of hospitalizations for coronavirus infection and has moved up to fourth in the nation for current hospitalizations for the disease

 

The Chinese coronavirus vaccine CoronaVac by Sinovac doesn't appear to be worth very much: Chile as case study

Chile at 20.1% is now Number Two in the world for fully vaccinating its population against COVID-19. (1)

Chile overwhelmingly uses the Chinese Sinovac vaccine. (2)

The vaccination effort began from Feb 2, and by Feb 23 16% of the population had received one dose. (3)

Yet cases began to soar Feb 23, at which time 0.3% of the population was fully vaccinated. (4)

Deaths commenced their recent steep ascent beginning Mar 27 (5), about one month after cases began to soar, at which time 17.1% of the population was fully vaccinated (7) and 33.5% of the population partially vaccinated. (3)

Daily new cases per million on Apr 2 is breaking records in Chile. (6)

The point of vaccines is to prevent serious illness and death. The recent uptick in deaths after the uptick in cases despite the vaccines is very troubling.

(2)

(3)

(1)

(4)

(6)

(7)

(5)

Democrat Congressman Emanuel "Amen and Awoman" Cleaver of Missouri says just raise the gasoline tax, no one knows what it is anyways

That's the Democrat strategy on taxes from time immemorial in a nutshell. Multiply taxes and imbed them in everything so that there's so many of them you can't even list them all or realize that they've gone up.

The federal gasoline tax of $0.184 per gallon, however, is a universal tax, unlike state gasoline taxes which vary, obviously, and is displayed at every fuel station. It hasn't been raised since 1993. The tax started out at a penny in 1932. 

There is no excuse for not knowing what it is.

And there's no excuse for complaining the current tax doesn't take into account inflation since 1993. The inflation-adjusted tax from 1932 in 2019 is $0.19, so the current tax is just about on the money.

One problem with a fuel tax is that it is regressive, occupying a much larger place in the finances of hourly workers than it does in higher paid salaried workers. It's not fair.

Another is that since the early 1980s the fuel tax has been split between roads and "transit", as if the family vacation on the interstate system should fund the trains for the well-heeled commuters of America's metros.

Still another is . . . if deficits no longer matter, as is self-evident from the orgy of COVID relief spending, then why do taxes still matter?

They don't.

I say abolish the federal gas tax altogether.

Case positivity rates for COVID-19 are out of control in and around Detroit and Grand Rapids to kick off April 2021

WHO indicates epidemics are out of control when case positivity rates rise above 10%.

Michigan has fully vaccinated 20.8% of its population.

So CNN says it's not possible to know gender "identity" at birth: Cousin Itt doesn't disagree

 

COVID-19 vaccines and Bell's Palsy: Nothing to see here . . . so far

Normal rates of Bell's Palsy in the world range between 100-400 cases per million of population (1-4 per 10,000 / 10-40 per 100,000).

Hong Kong has been abuzz over some cases of Bell's Palsy after Sinovac injections. So far there have been 11 cases from 278,200 vaccinations with Sinovac, which is the equivalent of 40 cases per million of population. But the normal HKG rate is reportedly 230 cases/million.

Similarly in the UK recently the Pfizer vaccine was reportedly responsible for 9.8 cases per million vaccinations, again far lower than the minimum threshold of 100 cases/million.

VAERS data for the US so far shows 81 cases of Bell's Palsy and 420 cases of facial paralysis, for all types of COVID-19 vaccine. Given the vaccination totals in the US so far, you'd have to have 9,500 such cases reported to date just to match the minimum normal rate of 100 cases/million. The US typically has 40,000 cases a year anyway, which is a rate of 122/million assuming population of 328 million.

So . . . nothing unusual is going on anywhere as far as I can tell.

VAERS is rumored to be overwhelmed by a reporting backlog, and there is a relatively small discrepancy between CDC statements of deaths and VAERS data from week to week, but I can't imagine how there would be tens of thousands of Bell's Palsy cases unaccounted for in the reports, which, it must be remembered, can be filed by anyone.

If there were that many they'd be all over the tabloids by now, accusing the government of injury.

Given that the official cause of Bell's Palsy is still debated, it's not implausible that the stress associated with the pandemic in combination with vaccination has been a trigger for cases, just as for other reported adverse effects. People faint, shit their pants, any number of things after they get a jab. Stress is also a trigger for death in some instances.

Most cases of BP resolve, but it is important for sufferers to seek immediate medical attention and get treated with a steroid like Prednisone, which seems to speed recovery from the inflammation affecting the nerve in the face involved in the condition.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit 550k, case fatality rate is 1.81% vs. ex-USA at 2.30%