Trump has been net positive in the Rasmussen Reports Trump Approval Index for just two days in 2020 so far

+1 on Feb 25

+1 on Jan 16

Here.

England is paying a heavy price for the seven weeks it wasted at the beginning of the outbreak as it unwisely flirted with herd immunity, which is what numbskulls like Rush Limbaugh want in the US

65,077 confirmed cases

7,978 deaths

Mortality rate 12.26%, nearly 3.5x worse than in the US

We'd have over 57,000 dead already at that rate.

LOL: It's been "wuhan virus numbers" in Singapore at the Straits Times since the beginning of this outbreak, but the Brits gotta apologize

https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2020/02/wuhan-virus-numbers/index.html?shell

British scientific journal Nature has apologised for associating Covid-19 with China in its reporting, saying that early coverage of the global health crisis by itself and other media had led to racist attacks on people of Asian descent around the world.

More here.

South Koreans remain the safest from coronavirus, followed by the Germans, Americans . . . not so much

Just as Trump said in 2016, George W. Bush didn't keep us safe on 9/11, but now the tables are turned with 14,809 dead and counting because Trump let a deadly virus in on aircraft

Michigan is now third for cases and deaths from China novel coronavirus 2019

China's phony case/death counts recede into the rear view mirror as free and open Western societies' case/death counts reveal the true virulence and danger of China novel coronavirus 2019

Here's the 2020 herd immunity paraprosdokian I thought I would never hear but did

We have to infect the entire population with the coronavirus in order to save it from the COVID-19 disease.

A few voices are actually saying this right now, mostly on "conservative" talk radio. You know who I mean.

England was going to pursue this policy until they realized just how many people would have to die.

Consider what this would mean in the US.

Let's take the South Korean mortality rate, which right now is 1.7% after 6 weeks with no new cases reported today (the US is currently at 2.7% after 4 weeks). Say half the population gets exposed because we give up, go back to work and carry on: 165 million get exposed @ 1.7% means 2.8 million deaths.

Mark Levin was poo-poohing such a catastrophe on his show tonight, like it's not even a possibility, as he rattled off the deaths annually from our wars, heart disease, cancer, etc.

He's wrong. They're all wrong. America is a wide open sitting duck for this disease, which spreads like a cold but kills like the flu. We have the most cases in the world already, by far, 276,965. Flu doesn't spread the way coronavirus does. Not everyone gets the flu. 30 million flu cases is typical, with 30,000 deaths, that's it, in a completely free and open society. But everyone gets a cold. Everyone. And that's the problem. A high morbidity rate.

Fortunately 3/4 of those surveyed think stopping this coronavirus is job one, not saving the economy.

Yes, this will be catastrophic for the economy. It already is. But we've had economic catastrophe before and we know how to rebuild.

The important thing right now is for the government to rescue people, not companies, and buy us some time so that the people actually saving us in the hospitals aren't overwhelmed and succumb. Without Americans there will be no America.

Conserve that. 

Remember George Bush in 2008?

Yeah, George Bush: We have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Good times 2008 are here again in 2020. Not.

The S&P 500 closed tonight at 2,488.65

That's down only 23% year to date.

Pretty remarkable, that. I mean, look at these first time claims for unemployment over the last two weeks: 8.7 million not-seasonally-adjusted, 9.9 million seasonally-adjusted.

The market in the past has often risen on bad jobs numbers, but this is ridiculous. It's a total disconnect. These are apocalyptic numbers, yet the market is holding on just 23% down.

There's trillion$ of aid in the pipeline to bail out businesses and individuals, but how long can that last? And to what effect? At some point the laws of supply and demand and inflation will have their say, and it isn't going to be pretty, especially if a 4th bill is passed in the Congress, which now seems likely. Had economics ever been susceptible of replacement by passing bills, we would have done it long ago and enjoyed prosperity without work all this time!

Yeah, right.  

The coronavirus infection is a momentous turning point for America. 

Bank Failure Friday: Second bank failure of 2020

The First State Bank, based in Barboursville, West Virginia, failed today, costing the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund $46.8 million.

The FDIC insures deposits at the nation's banks and savings associations, 5,177 as of December 31, 2019.

An anniversary of sorts, more of a milestone I guess

Real GDP growth since 2007 lags the Great Depression era by 42% and the post-war by 52%

And Trump thinks this is the greatest economy ever.

Climate update for KGRR February 2020

Climate Update for KGRR February 2020

Max Temp 51, Mean 50

Min Temp 4, Mean -2

Av Temp 27.5, Mean 24.5

Rain 1.2, Mean 1.79

Snow 15.9, Mean 13.2

HDD 1081, Mean 1136

HDD to date 4517, Mean to date 4892

By heating degree days the winter has been milder than the mean winter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by 7.7%.

  

How Wuhan/Hubei deaths from coronavirus might have been 27,000 or 33,000 not 3,177

From the story here:

Urns are reportedly being distributed at a rate of 500 a day at the mortuary until the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, which falls on April 4 this year.

Wuhan has seven other mortuaries. If they are all sticking to the same schedule, this adds up to more than 40,000 urns being distributed in the city over the next 10 days.

Already on Jan 26 there was evidence, quickly removed, that China deaths from coronavirus had reached 81% of the official figure as of Mar 28. Remember that the closing of Hubei Province didn't occur until Jan 23, so on Jan 26 there was still chaos in China as authorities scrambled to secure the actual as well as the information environments.

Based on widely discussed figures, if one assumes Wuhan's 11 million population normally experiences a death rate of 0.7%, then 77,000 residents die annually from all causes under normal conditions. This yields 211 deaths per day on average and 6,417 deaths per month, or 12,833 over the two-month epidemic. Call it 13,000. 40k-13k = 27k dead from COVID-19.

The problem is that it was asserted that as many as 5 million residents of Wuhan had already departed the city for Chinese New Year of the Rat celebrations ahead of the Jan 23 closing of the city. These remained outside Wuhan during the epidemic because they were not permitted to return. If you leave 6 million in the city, the normal mortality rate of 0.7% yields 42,000 deaths annualized, or 3,500 a month. So there would have been just 7,000 deaths normally over the two-month period of the epidemic from non-epidemic causes. 40k-7k = 33k dead from COVID-19.  

But we'll probably never really know.

China drops to third in world coronavirus cases behind US and Italy: China's numbers look less credible by the day

MI moves up to 4th in COVID-19 rankings thanks to high-density Detroit metro, but no place compares with NY

I am so sick of all this winning, Donald Trump

Welcome to hell, courtesy of "just a cold"

Hospitals across U.S. consider universal do-not-resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients:

The conversations are driven by the realization that the risk to staff amid dwindling stores of protective equipment - such as masks, gowns and gloves - may be too great to justify the conventional response when a patient "codes," and their heart or breathing stops.

Trump The Libertarian to America: We have to get back to work and infect the whole country in order to save it

“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down. This is not a country that was built for this".

“America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting.”

'Trump very strongly hinted that he planned to ease federal guidance on social distancing at the end of his administration’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” initiative, which ends next Monday, despite an expected explosion of reported cases as tests for coronavirus become more widely available.'

'Trump began broadcasting his growing impatience with public health measures meant to combat the pandemic — even as public health officials have offered contradictory forecasts — on Twitter over the weekend, a shift that continued throughout the day on Monday.'

Read the whole thing here.