Losses due to George Floyd riots and looting to cost insurers over $1 billion, more than all the losses from riots and looting since 1965 combined

Walgreens among the first to report its losses from looters as Philly’s business insurance costs jump:

'Insurers have paid an estimated $1 billion in all for “riot” damages in local protests since 1965, according to Property Claims Services, an industry group. Insurers are bracing for new claims across the U.S. that they expect could total at least that much. Still, the group expects “manageable” losses compared to major hurricanes, which have cost tens of billions'.

How many looted cities will it take to re-elect Trump?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The compound daily growth rate for US COVID-19 deaths bottomed on July 4th

Apart from the first week from the first death in the New York Times data at us-covid-tracker.com, Feb 29-Mar 7, the peak rate was achieved on Sat Mar 28 at 30.3%. The compound daily growth rate had dropped to just 3.2% by May 2.

This chart shows rates only after falling below 1% in order to show the current scale and the clear bottoming on Jul 4.

COVID-19 related hospitalization metrics in the four worst US states today are . . . NOT ALARMING

California is in blue in the graphs, Texas is in pink, Florida is in green and Georgia is in brown. Every one, though in the top four for current hospitalizations, has peaked and turned lower. Texas and Florida, the worst states for the outbreak currently, have turned sharply lower.

The sum of deaths from COVID-19 in the worst hit US states since the beginning of the pandemic has hit a new low, the same measurement in the second tier states continues to rise modestly

Johns Hopkins today shows 160k US COVID deaths nine days after hitting 150k

 

At least one American writer, Curtis Yarvin, was aware of Dr. Leung's warnings at the time, and stated what needed to be done even though he realized it wouldn't be

The self-described "foreign service brat" wrote for The American Mind, 2/1/20:

RIP Globalism, Dead of Coronavirus:

"The obvious solution to an emerging pandemic killer cold is cutting off flights to China, then all air travel across the Pacific, then across the Atlantic—depending on the virus’s progress . . ."

Dr. Gabriel Leung of Hong Kong University advocated for limiting mobility because he had worked out by Jan 27 how the coronavirus had already spread in China by rail

He was already warning of a global epidemic on Jan 27.

He was specifically worried on Jan 27 that flights out of China would seed the infection globally.

He was already aware of and demonstrated on Jan 27 how the novel coronavirus had spread in China by rail.

He was already stating there was clear evidence of human to human spread on Jan 27.

He was already advocating for "substantial, draconian measures limiting population mobility" on Jan 27.

He was already advocating for ending mass gatherings, for closing schools, and for requiring work from home arrangements on Jan 27.

And what were we doing?

The US Senate was finally hearing the House's impeachment case after Nancy Pelosi sat on it for weeks.

A country full of fools, run by fools.

The earliest example of someone advocating for a global flight stoppage was Hong Kong University's Dr. Gabriel Leung on Jan 27: "Substantial draconian measures limiting population mobility should be taken immediately"

The sum of average daily new deaths in the worst states appears to have bottomed, but it's still too soon to say for sure

I measure this weekly through Saturdays, and using Saturday 7/25 we did bottom, as the latest chart shows.

However, on Monday 7/26 the sum fell to 778, and 778 was just re-tested on Sunday 8/2.

So . . . we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Clearly though the trend lower has slowed dramatically and is skipping along sideways for a week.

Drudge implies the woman shown is the woman named in the article, but that's not her

The 102 year old woman mentioned in the Drudge headline, story here, turned 102 in January and came down with COVID-19 in May, in the US. She was born in Massachusetts.

The woman pictured above the Drudge headline is 101. Found her. Here's another story about her. She contracted the illness in late March, also in the US. She is Italian. Her mother died giving birth to her on the ship bringing them to the US.  

Another story is here about a yet different woman, 102 years old, who contracted the illness in Italy in early March and survived.

The Drudge headline originally brought to my mind a story from early April, about still one more woman, 103 years old, in Italy who beat the disease, which I have finally located here.

There are many examples giving reason for hope, even for old people.

Real Clear Politics has moved Minnesota into "toss-up" status because of Trafalgar Group poll

The poll has Biden beating Trump by only five points in liberal Minnesota.

"A five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustain[ing] extraordinary damage" recently, per the New York Times, probably had something to do with it.

It doesn't follow that rigorous measures against coronavirus fail to produce low new daily cases, unless you are an asshat who thinks 10x more cases or 22x more deaths on the way there is preferable

Finland: 7,443 cases; 329 deaths from COVID; 4.4% case fatality rate

Norway: 9,249 cases; 255 deaths from COVID; 2.75% case fatality rate

Sweden: 80,422 cases; 5,743 deaths from COVID; 7.1% case fatality rate

Sweden remains among the very worst states for deaths per million of population from COVID-19

Today's coronavirus hospitalization snapshot for California, Arizona, Texas and Florida shows all states turning the corner or flattening

California is in blue, Arizona is in orange, Texas is in pink, and Florida is in green in the graphs. None have experienced anything as dire as experienced in New York (gray) at the extreme.

Johns Hopkins University today shows US COVID-19 deaths hitting 150,034

The progression by 10k since hitting 50k on 4/24 slowed down until 6/22 at which point it had taken 15 days to get to 120k from 110k instead of the five, six and seven days for 10k jumps at the beginning.

Since 6/22, however, the pace has quickened again, taking 14, then 12, and now 11 days to add 10k deaths to bring us as of today to 150k.

This is due in large measure to "backfilling" of death totals by various states since 6/22, combined with big death increases in CA, AZ, TX and FL.

See the following, which represent not quite 4k deaths since 6/22, many of which are backfills, previous deaths from who knows when which required investigation or were in abeyance for one reason or another.

There have also been policy changes, as in Texas, where death certificates attributing deaths to COVID-19 are now added to the total despite not having laboratory proof. Completed death investigations of coronavirus deaths languish well below 1,000 in Texas where there have been over 6,500 COVID deaths according to the NYT data. Texas is clearly responsible for closing the latest gap to 11 days with its recent data dump.

As I've indicated elsewhere, the sum of the average daily deaths since the beginning in the 15 worst states has been falling for a month. These recent death data dumps and the death increases in the south are producing a bottoming effect this week. We'll see on Sunday where we are.  

The federal government could have read the news wires in Jan and Feb like the rest of us and learned that the coronavirus spread asymptomatically, but no, that was too hard

As coronavirus threatened invasion, a new 'Red Dawn' team tried to save America:

'In some cases, government officials appeared to be learning about developments for first time from the Red Dawn emails. In one exchange, Eva Lee, the director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare at Georgia Tech, flagged a study showing a 20-year-old woman left Wuhan with no symptoms and had infected five family members.

'Dr. Robert Kadlec, the Trump administration’s Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, appeared surprised. “Eva is this true?!” Kadlec replied. “If so, we have a huge [hole] on our screening and quarantine effort.”'

Anyone carefully following the news about coronavirus knew there already were confirmed reports of asymptomatic spread by air travelers before the end of Jan: to Japan, Washington State, and Germany, but a week before Feb ended the Trump administration and many US health authorities were still clueless about them.

And then this curious story about the 20-yr old Wuhan woman came out on Feb 21/22, long after the fact refocusing attention on the issue of asymptomatic spread, curious mostly because she infected others far away from Wuhan around Jan 10 but a month later was herself still symptom-free.

But did it do anything to get the feds to move? Obviously not.

It took another almost four weeks from Feb 22 before the US instituted the half-hearted stay-at-home advisory, triggered mostly by community spread in Washington State. And air travelers didn't abandon flying until after Mar 15, when they finally realized the feds were taking the epidemic sort of seriously and the threat was real.

Meanwhile the disease is obviously still spreading asymptomatically in the United States like wildfire, and the feds are doing . . . what exactly to stop it? The weakness and incompetence the Trump administration has shown have only encouraged the nay-sayers to masks and social distancing.

The stay-at-home period should have been used to mobilize production of adequate masks for the population and to prepare schools to social distance, at a minimum, but now we're at war over both of those, too.

Sad!

Reuters had the Wuhan woman story on Feb 22 and it was picked up immediately by The Straits Times in Singapore:

Wuhan woman with no symptoms infected five relatives with coronavirus: Study:

"A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 675km north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday (Feb 21), offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically."

The SS United States' debt engine ran out of fuel in 1989 and rolled over, coasted until it hit the iceberg in 2007, and has been taking on water ever since

Stocks since the year 2000 continue to underperform the previous period of equal length by over 70% on an average per annum basis, inflation adjusted

Pretty shocking when you really think about it.

The coronavirus death trend is going the wrong way, however, in the "second tier" states

Mostly driven by AZ, but also by SC, and to a lesser extent by AL. Many of these states are treading water, which means current deaths are enough to keep the average from falling as time proceeds. We don't want to see that. We want to see deaths slow enough for the averages to fall naturally with the passing of time. For the period shown, only MN has dropped (-1).

Seeing that AZ averaged just 11 per day in mid-June but is now at 18 is bad news. 18 was the floor I used to incorporate TX in my list of worst 15 states back in late June. Otherwise it had been a list of 14 worst.