USA hits 70,115 COVID-19 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data just six days after hitting 60,000, mortality rate rises to 5.88%

Donald Trump's 15-cases-going-to-zero now total:

1,192,119

COVID-19 in Australia: How did they succeed?

COVID-19 in Australia

cases 6801

deaths 95

case-fatality rate 1.4%

tests 633,107

test-case rate 1.07%

WHO indicates that it is essential to get the test-case rate below 10% in order to control any epidemic. Australia's rate of 1.07% shows that they've done that admirably well. By contrast, the USA's rate is still in the double digits at 16.5%. America didn't test for weeks and weeks at the critical beginning of the pandemic because of a faulty test, and still isn't testing nearly enough. Losing that early jump on the outbreak has put America way behind.

Australia has already tested 2.5% of its population. The US is still at 2.1%.

But other things need to be done, too, to control the virus and Australia has done them, whereas America looks ready to give up on most of them:

Australia’s response to the pandemic has largely centred on shutting its borders, limiting public gatherings and conducting large-scale testing and contact tracing.

Travelling overseas is banned, foreigners aren’t allowed to enter the country, and Australians who return from other countries are kept in mandatory quarantine at specially designated hotels for two weeks.

Social gatherings of more than two people are also forbidden and leaving the house is permitted only for essential reasons like buying food and exercising. ...

When someone tests positive, their close contacts are tracked down and ordered to self-isolate for two weeks.

The main reason for Australia’s success is probably its strict travel restrictions, says Adam Kamradt-Scott at the University of Sydney. About 70 per cent of Australians who have tested positive for covid-19 picked it up while they were overseas, making it important to stem this flow, he says, and being an island nation has made it easier for Australia to rapidly shut its borders.

Social distancing, testing and contact tracing have added to the success of travel bans, says Kamradt-Scott. Plus, there may be cultural factors that have limited the spread of the virus, like the fact that most Australians choose to live in separate dwellings rather than apartment buildings and older people who require care tend to live in care homes rather than with their families, he says.

Unlike many other countries, Australia has kept schools open, but they don’t appear to have been drivers of virus spread so far, says Kathryn Snow at the University of Melbourne.

Despite these successes, Australia has also committed some major blunders. For example, it allowed 2700 passengers to disembark from the Ruby Princess cruise ship on 19 March, even though many were showing covid-19-like symptoms. More than 600 cases have now been linked back to the ship. Some Australians have also ignored social distancing recommendations and crammed into beaches and parks. 

Australia has taken a big hit to GDP just like the US because it basically shut down business to help cope with the spread.

But Australia is in much better shape than we are in America because it is controlling the virus whereas in America the virus is still controlling us.

South Korea today has 0.0002 confirmed coronavirus cases per million population, America has 0.0033, 16.5x as many

South Korea's first coronavirus infection was reported on the same day as America's first infection, but South Korea practiced strict quarantine of infected people, contact tracing, widespread testing, mask-wearing and social distancing, without locking down its economy.

America did only the social distancing part after it was already too late, and then a hodge-podge of lockdowns with that.

As a result, South Korea has almost 11,000 confirmed cases today, but America has almost 1.1 million, 100x as many.

As for deaths, South Korea has 0.0000047 per million, the US 0.0001935 per million, 41x as many.

Year over year in 1Q2020, South Korean GDP actually grew by 1.3% vs. just 0.3% for GDP in the United States (BEA Table 6), 4.3x better.

South Korea has had far fewer cases of the disease, far fewer deaths and a much better economic outcome than in the United States because it wisely understood that what it had to do wasn't an existential threat to liberty.

We're not going to have 100,000 dead of COVID-19 in the US "by the end of summer": It'll be by the end of May

Here's the latest US data from The Straits Times in Singapore:

+2,810 new cases

1,067,382 confirmed cases

147,480 recovered

61,849 deaths

The mortality rate is 5.79%.

The active cases is 858,053.

So, an additional 49,681 deaths within the next four weeks or so, or about 1,602 per day for the 31 days of May.

That's 111,530 total deaths by then.

And after that, who knows?

But probably a lot more deaths than 111,530 because our fools insist on opening up the country instead of quarantining the infected and tracing their contacts and testing, testing, testing.

It's the only way.

And Americans need N95 masks by the billions to get back to anything like normal work and school.

USA hits 60,853 COVID-19 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data, mortality rate rises to 5.86%

That's double what flu kills on an average basis in one season, but in just three months. The mortality rate is nearly 59x worse than for flu, and that but for stay-at-home orders.

Donald Trump's 15-cases-going-to-zero now total:

Sad to listen to Mark Steyn give know-nothings the golden EIB microphone today to blanket the country with bilge

We had a lawyer call in from Michigan, where I live, to complain about the governor's tyranny, failing to mention the 1905 Supreme Court precedent her lawyer cites which permits her actions to protect the citizenry. The lawyer must have gone to the same school as convicted Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Then we had a caller from Georgia tell us coronavirus infections are much more widespread according to results from several states using antibody tests, never mentioning that all of these antibody tests are unreliable and NONE of them are approved by the FDA.

That caller also said everything was improving in Sweden when the truth is quite the opposite. Sweden embarked on herd immunity early and is now reaping the whirlwind with 2,355 deaths and a mortality rate of 12%, more than twice that of the United States.

But yeah, let Georgia be Sweden.

I guess the Rush Limbaugh supporters in Georgia must know coronavirus will ravage the black enclaves of Atlanta, decreasing the surplus population.

Massachusetts' coronavirus deaths are catching up to Michigan's deaths

How the US acquired so much gold in the first place

Immediately following passage of the [Gold Reserve] Act [of January 30, 1934], the President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35. This price change incentivized gold miners globally to expand production and foreigners to export their gold to the United States, while simultaneously by devaluing the U.S. dollar it reduced deflation. The increase in gold reserves due to the price change resulted in a large accumulation of gold in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, much of which was stored in the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The increase in gold reserves increased the money supply, lowering real interest rates which in turn increased investment in durable goods.

Coronavirus data update for Sun Apr 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins reports right now 5,184,635 tests completed in the US with 940,797 confirmed cases of infection.

That's an infection rate of 18.1%, after stay-at-home has been observed more or less nationwide since mid-March. Average flu infection in the US, without stay-at-home, is 8%. So imagine how bad this could have been, and still might be.

Reports of infection rates as high as 31.5% in Chelsea, MA, are problematic. These are antibody tests, and so far have high false positive rates, meaning all the positives could be false, test populations which are much too small, and test populations which are not representative. People on the streets right now and people in grocery stores right now are not representative of the whole population. What's more, the antibodies detected by these tests could well be for non-COVID-19 coronaviruses, which means you've learned nothing about exposure to SARS-CoV-2.

There have been 54,001 deaths according to Johns Hopkins data right now, for a mortality rate of 5.74%.

Flu mortality averages 0.1%.

Therefore we are dealing with something at least 2.3 times more infectious than flu, and 57 times more deadly.

Global data indicates as of 0730 hours a mortality rate of 6.98%. Test data is too uneven globally to draw firm general conclusions. Mortality data from places like Iran at 6.31%, China at 5.53% and Russia at 0.92% just looks like lies in comparison to open, free societies, as follows.

The European big five, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK have an average mortality rate of 11%, 1.9 times worse than for the US. Germany remains a standout with mortality of only 3.75%, however, which is 35% lower than in the US. Belgium has the most liberal counts of deaths, and so a very high mortality rate of 15.38%.

Norway is at 2.68%, Sweden 12.06% (oops, they followed herd immunity, and are now paying the price), Finland 4.15%, and Denmark 4.84%.

Switzerland 5.56% and Austria 3.56% really stand out relative to Hungary at 10.88%.

Canada reports in at 5.6% with Mexico at 9.43%.

Japan and South Korea come in at 2.72% and 2.26% respectively.

It's obvious to me right now that if America wants to return to some sense of normalcy after this debacle has been allowed to reach the stage that it has, the only plausible way forward is to ramp up testing for the disease massively, and provide masks to the general population which protect it while in public. Instead our president and lawmakers have been busy with other things, like bailing out businesses. They are not serious people, anymore than the people they represent, a minority of which is clamoring for herd immunity, and therefore massive casualties.

The pro-life anti-abortion party is infected with a pro-death coronavirus party. The real division in the Republican Party between the actual conservatives and the libertarian ideologues has been laid bare by SARS-CoV-2. The former want to save you, as do many liberals. The latter believe only in survival of the fittest.  

The idea that immunity will be built up for this disease in the US population so that this will be over once and for all strikes me as completely speculative at this point.

America has to prepare to live with this disease indefinitely.  

More winning from Trump: USA tops for coronavirus deaths and first to reach 50,000, twice as many as nearest competitor Italy

Whoopee!

USA coronavirus mortality rate vs. South Korea and Taiwan 4/23/20

USA             5.66%
South Korea 2.24%
Taiwan         1.40%

Remember how on Feb 24 Rush Limbaugh said there was nothing unusual about the coronavirus?

Here.

But now on Apr 21 this virus has become the complete opposite of the common cold and is quite unusual in Rush's estimation, really bad even, and so bad in fact it's a Chicom conspiracy to destroy the rest of the world.

"All I believe, the theory is that they saw how bad it was and they decided, we’re not gonna suffer this alone". 

Rush Limbaugh is a complete joke.

LOL: Federal Reserve Board recession model today predicts odds of recession at 0.6%

Here.

Climate Update for KGRR March 2020

Climate Update for KGRR March 2020

Max Temp 63, Mean 66

Min Temp 17, Mean 7

Av Temp 38.6 Mean 34.1

Precip 3.27 Mean 2.46

Snow 2.8 Mean 9.0

HDD 808 Mean 954

HDD YTD 5325 Mean HDD YTD 5846

Using Heating Degree Days, the winter season in Grand Rapids, MI, year-to-date has been 8.9% milder than the mean.

As always, my mean data is from the beginning of the record, which in most cases means 1892. There are lacunae for some months in the earliest years.

COVID-19 has become the leading cause of death in the USA, ahead of heart disease and cancer

Why do Drudge's "bombshell" stories always seem to end up coming from titty-rags?

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/coronavirus-began-months-earlier-not-21882132

The referenced study isn't even peer-reviewed yet, either.

"Coronavirus began months earlier and not in Wuhan, bombshell UK report claims"

 

Different faces, same materialist evil

Announces "stay at home" Mar 16, "cure worse than the disease" by Mar 22

Closes Hubei Prov. Jan 23, "actions taken to contain the virus are harming the economy" Feb 3

Laugh of the Day: Limbaugh and Hannity in flames as advertiser Ruth's Chris Steak House gets $20 million bailout from Trump in four days while Main Street waits and waits and waits

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The company, which operates or franchises 159 restaurants, had a profit of $42 million on revenue of $468 million last year.

The owner of the high-end Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain is among the first public companies to disclose it has received a government-backed loan to keep people on its payroll.

Ruth’s Hospitality Group Inc., a company with more than 5,000 workers, received $20 million in forgivable loans on April 7, according to a securities filing. That is four days after the Small Business Administration opened the application window on its $350 billion Payroll Protection Program.

Many small-business owners are still waiting for their banks to process an application or hear back about whether they qualify or will receive financial assistance from the PPP fund. The SBA says 1.1 million applications have been approved for loans worth $263 billion as of Tuesday afternoon. The average loan size is about $239,000 so far, the SBA says. Banks say only small portions of approved loans have been disbursed to businesses. ...

The loans were intended for businesses with fewer than 500 employees, but language in the $2 trillion stimulus bill allows restaurants and hotel chains to participate regardless of how many people they employ.

The maximum PPP loan is $10 million. Ruth’s said two of its subsidiaries each received $10 million SBA loans from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and would use the proceeds primarily for payroll costs. ... As of Dec. 29, Ruth’s employed 5,740 people, of whom 5,216 were hourly staff.

"Hey Melania! Watch me drive this country right into the ditch!"

We now know from TSA data that an average of 2 million air passengers traveled daily in the first 10 days of March 2020 when they should have been grounded due to coronavirus

The average for the same days in 2019 was 2.3 million per day, so while air travel was indeed down, it wasn't down very significantly, only about 13%. Obviously only a minority of the population acted prudently by refraining from air travel.  

You can see from the graph how air passenger travel did not start to decline in earnest until after Mar 13 when Trump declared a national emergency. People simply abandoned air travel after that, out of fear.

Think what might have been had Trump only done it sooner.

Air passenger travel throughout February and March ensured that every corner of America would be deeply penetrated by China novel coronavirus 2019 because millions of people helped spread it everyday, everywhere.

We today have over 500,000 cases and over 20,000 dead in a matter of just weeks with the American economy also on its knees, all because Trump ignored pandemic warnings from his own administration as late as Jan 30.

So in exchange for letting a privileged minority of well-heeled jet-setters continue to travel at the beginning of the epidemic, the rest of us can't even go to church tomorrow for Easter services.

Let that sink in.

Sad doesn't even begin to describe it.