[ExI] good news for a monday morning

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
ubject: Re: [ExI] good news for a monday morning

 

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

This is the CDC data for all US deaths from all causes.

 

The most recent bar is for the week ending 29 August.  They give 10 days before they put the bar on there.

 

That last week of August is lowest number of deaths in any week in the last 3.7 years. 

 



 

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm#dashboard

 

That big Sturgis rally apparently lowered it, but I wouldn’ta thought it would lower it this much: only one part in 700 can be explained that way.

 

European nations should have something analogous to this, ja?  What is happening over there?  We know of the nursing home catastrophe: perhaps covid slew the oldest and sickest, and now there are fewer left alive in those categories.  Or… normal flu deaths are down because of extra precautions?  Ideas?

 

spike

 

>…Presuming there aren't any updates that overturn this, might this not be because of reduced activities overall (things like lethal accidents that happen at work didn't happen because people were either not working, working less, or working from home) and because of overall lower pathogen transmission rates (precautions for COVID-19 almost certainly lower the transmission of most pathogens). The latter fits with your last idea.

 

>…If your idea is that COVID has already done its worst -- killed off the vulnerable (maybe not all of them but a good chunk) -- we should see lower rates going forward regardless of precautions, no? 

 

Regards,  Dan

 

 

 

Hi Dan, 

 

>From what I understand, they report the results ten days after the week finishes, so we are looking at the week ending Saturday 29 August.  End days after that would be about 4 October.  I don’t know for sure which day they posted that data, but it didn’t change since yesterday, staying with the 46,079.

 

A new predicted bar for the week ending Saturday 5 September should be going up soon, being as that 10 day period ends today.  Tomorrow they will post it perhaps?

 

Regarding the notion of reduced activities, one of the activities more reduced than anything is going to the doctor.  Another reduced activity is will to live.  Last week my neighbor’s brother in law decided to call it day.  His sister is here now.  Nothing to say really, just sit with them and cry.  He was my friend too: retired fireman, rode motorcycles, hell of a good guy.  Sigh.

 

I hafta wonder if constantly focusing on the bad in our times is really driving a lot of excess mortality.  If so, well, I will do what I have always done best: look for the positive in any bad situation.  Feel free to join in.

 

And while you are doing that… note that the Sturgis bikers continue to not die.  The epidemiology community had all those shrieky warning articles beforehand, well OK then, those are the safest kind of articles to write.  But what if… those grim predictions are wrong?  I feel it is their moral obligation to do a bit more than harrumph, OK on to other matters now, ignore the new data.  The new data is telling us something important, and the epidemiology community is such a herd of crickets the economists step up and offer us absurd theories to fill the vacuum.

 

SHEESH, this is GOOD news these bikers keep not dying.  Have we grown afraid of good news now?  Why?  I’m not afraid of good news!  I like good news.  Good news is good for us: it improves our collective morale, and in this case just might point out a way to reduce our vulnerability to the virus.  Sooo… where are the epidemiologists please?

 

spike

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