Coronavirus – Page 2 – Unconstrained Points

The Real Reason the Media Denied the Truth About the Origins of Covid

Coronavirus, Current Events, Media, Politics / By Matt / June 1, 2021 June 1, 2021

It’s becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 was not created by nature as we’ve been told for over a year. The evidence that it was created in a Chinese bio-lab and then escaped (or intentionally released) into the public is becoming overwhelming. China flat out lied about it from the beginning. And sniveling crap-weasel Anthony Fauci almost certainly was aware of this from the get-go.

Frankly, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the whole wet market story was a bunch of BS. The fact a new and extra-deadly coronavirus just happened to naturally “evolve” a stone’s throw away from one of the only laboratories in the world artificially creating new deadlier coronavirus variants was one hell of a coincidence, to put it mildly. And people within the US government already knew that the 1st victims of COVID-19 weren’t wet market bat-eaters, but family members of the Wuhan bio-lab staff. Of course, the fact that Fauci and his merry band of idiots was funding this ridiculously dangerous research in a country notorious for half-assed safety measures ensured they weren’t going to be very eager to make the obvious connection.

Yet plenty of people did make the connection. Senator Tom Cotton was one of the 1st, and he was attacked mercilessly by the leftstream media while being denounced as a dangerous kook. Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, and others connected the dots, too. It wasn’t all that hard.

President Donald Trump also strongly hinted it might have come from the Wuhan lab, and of course the media immediately pounced on him for spreading “debunked” conspiracy theories. (Hint: remember this the next time the garbage media describe something as “debunked.”) But was it really debunked? Did the media even bother to look into it? The answer is a resounding no. They took Fauci’s denial the virus could be man-made (sprinkled with enough caveat weasel-words to leave himself an out later on) as gospel. No further digging required.

And now the media is left looking really incompetent. They are kinda/sorta implying the reason they didn’t believe the plain facts in front of their face was because it was Donald Trump espousing them, and Trump (they say) lies about everything. But is that really the reason the media once again failed us so badly? I don’t think so.

Our garbage media loves narratives. In fact, they love narratives almost as much as they hate Donald Trump. And they knew the narrative they wanted to spin from the very beginning of the pandemic. Even as early as last February, the talking-head douche bags on the cable channels were giddily predicting the COVID pandemic would be “Trump’s Katrina.” And they were hell bent on making that narrative stick. However, there is only room for one villain in any narrative. And the US media had already decided it had to be Trump. The last thing they wanted was the public to find out China created a deadly super-virus in a lab, unleashed it on the world, and didn’t tell anyone about it. They knew they couldn’t tell that story and still paint Trump as the bad guy. And getting Trump out of office was the most important thing in the world to them. Even more important than telling the public the truth about a virus that has wreaked so much havoc on our country and caused so much death, suffering, and misery. So they buried the story and called Trump a racist for even pointing out that the virus came from China.

At this point I can’t even verbalize my level of contempt for the US media. This is one of the biggest catastrophes of our lifetimes. Understanding the root cause is one of the most important factors in preventing it from happening again. The government is involved up to it’s eyeballs…. they have a huge incentive to lie and obfuscate. This is a time when we desperately need independent journalists to put in the work, do the investigating, and ask the hard questions. But we don’t have an independent media in this country anymore. We don’t have anyone speaking truth to power. All we have is the propaganda arm of one of the major political parties. Half the so-called “journalists” today are former fucking political operatives. Journalism is good and truly dead in this country. Actual journalists don’t even exist anymore. All we have are partisan political hacks spinning “narratives.” They can all rot.

Still think it was worth it, asshole??? The left wants to give arrogant technocrats like Fauci even more control over your life.

Today Show’s Covid Conundrum

Coronavirus, Media, Politics / By Matt / April 10, 2021 April 10, 2021

The Today Show is dumbfounded as to why heavily locked down Blue States are currently fairing much worse than recently re-opened Red States.

Some states with stricter rules are now seeing surges in COVID-19 cases, while many others that rushed to reopen are experiencing sizable drops. The numbers have experts scratching their heads. @SamBrockNBC has the details. pic.twitter.com/2uTTgb3dxG
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) April 8, 2021

They go on to hypothesize several reasons that could explain this puzzling contradiction…

But one rather obvious explanation was left unexplored. Maybe the “experts” don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Maybe Fauci and the CDC were right 12 months ago when they said putting a piece of cloth over your face would do next to nothing to stop the spread of a virus like covid. Maybe it’s damn near impossible to isolate people enough to stop a virus from spreading. Maybe there is no government agency that can spare us from the effects of this plague. No ritual we can perform that will save us.

Faith in government to have the competency to solve any and every problem is an unspoken assumption of the modern left. It never even occurs to them that a career bureaucrat like Fauci might not have all the answers when it comes to how to best navigate through this pandemic. Or a sleazy dullard like Joe Biden who never created a thing of value in half a century of political life might not be the one to blindly follow. As the evidence continues to mount that the virus ebbs and flows in random ways despite what we do to stop it, the cognitive dissonance of the members of the Church of Big Government keeps growing.

No, Total Deaths in the US are Not Down in 2020

Coronavirus, Current Events / By Matt / December 18, 2020 December 18, 2020

A quickly-retracted article published in the Johns Hopkins news-letter last month has spawned a spate of internet posts. Theses posts claim that the total death rate in 2020 is no higher than previous years. The implication usually made is that COVID-19 really isn’t that dangerous, and the pandemic is just a hoax concocted to control us. The data does not support this assertion, at all. The CDC posts data for total deaths on their website here. The data is broken down by week. If you plot the data for 2020, and compare it to previous years, it looks like this.

The CDC’s website states that it can take up to 8 weeks for death certificates to be recorded. So everything after week 42 is likely to be revised up significantly for 2020. Plus, we still have a couple of weeks to go this year. Even so, the total number of deaths recorded in the United States for 2020 is already significantly higher than previous years. And the difference will only look worse after all of the data comes in. If anything, the number of total deaths recorded so far this year suggests we might be undercounting COVID-related mortalities.

To be clear, I’m totally against lockdowns and other draconian government measures used to combat this virus. I believe that informed adults should be able to weigh the risks themselves and make their own choices about how to live their lives. Pushing fake data is antithetical to this cause.

Sweden was Widely Condemned for It’s Measured Response to the COVID Pandemic. Were the Critics Right?

Coronavirus / By Matt / August 17, 2020 August 17, 2020

The western world was aghast that Sweden didn’t shut down it’s economy and lock down it’s population in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sweden was subjected to withering criticism from it’s EU neighbors. Many experts predicted a complete disaster and all but accused the Swedes of committing genocide against their own citizens. But were the critics right?

First of all, it is worth noting that Sweden appears to be pretty much done with the coronavirus. While much of the western world is still struggling with lock downs and economies on life support, Sweden has by and large returned to normal. New cases and deaths in Sweden have slowed to a trickle. And since there was no lock down in the first place, there is little worry about a “second wave” in Sweden due to reopening.

A Stockholm doctor’s perspective on COVID

The critics point to the higher death rate in Sweden compared to Norway and Finland as vindication they were right all along. And it is true that Sweden’s death rate is significantly higher than it’s Nordic neighbors. However, Sweden has a lower death rate than several other European countries such as the UK, Belgium, Spain, and Italy. Countries which enacted strict lock downs and experienced severe economic contractions. Sweden also has a lower death rate than many US States.

My home State of Michigan makes for an interesting comparison. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has used her emergency executive powers to enact very strict, broad, and aggressive lock down measures. While the economy of Michigan is in shambles and some lock down measures will likely continue on for months, many people credit her heavy-handed actions for saving lives. The populations of Michigan and Sweden are very close in size at right around 10 million people. However, the number of COVID deaths in Michigan to date is 6,592, while the number of fatalities in Sweden is only 5,787. So despite the lock down efforts, the death rate in Michigan is actually 15% higher than in Sweden.

Is this conclusive proof that the lock downs didn’t work? No, not any more than comparing Sweden to Finland proves they did. There are many other variables that affect the death rate besides lock down status. Population density, age demographics, comorbidity rates, and many other factors all come into play. But the comparison certainly raises some interesting questions. Questions the proponents of giving sweeping power to healthcare technocrats probably aren’t going to be too eager to entertain.

Almost all of the EU countries decided a very strong and intrusive government intervention was the best way to deal with the pandemic. And many of the US States followed suit. They claimed the economic devastation, millions of lives put on hold, loss of civil liberties, and general misery of the lock downs was worth the lives that could be saved. In hindsight, the data suggest that it might have been one of the worst public policy decisions of all time.

Nursing Home Fail

Coronavirus, Current Events / By Matt / May 29, 2020 May 29, 2020

Of all the things we woulda / coulda / shoulda done differently with the coronavirus, protecting nursing homes is the one that didn’t require 20/20 hindsight to see. This article from Forbes is heartbreaking because it truly was avoidable.

Colorado Coronavirus Stats

Coronavirus / By Matt / May 19, 2020 May 19, 2020

Offficial Death Toll in Colorado Lowered by 24%

So the controversy around the official coronavirus death toll deepens. Skeptics of the official count got a huge boost when the State of Colorado recently lowered their official numbers from 1,150 to 878. A 24% reduction is a pretty significant revision, and even the States’s Governor appeared to throw shade at the official stats.

What Do Total Deaths Look Like in Colorado?

I recently looked at total death statistics in several US States to see if I could detect any evidence that coronavirus deaths were being overcounted. However, Colorado was not one of the States I looked at. Given this big revision in the official record, I was curious to see what the total death statistics in Colorado would show.

In the case of Colorado, it looks like the delta with previous years is not a good estimator for coronavirus deaths. The first coronavirus death in Colorado wasn’t recorded until March 9 which corresponds to week 11. For whatever reason, total deaths in Colorado were trending well above the previous 5 years long before the coronavirus started hitting.

Instead of using previous years, I decided to take the average number of deaths from the first 10 weeks (avg = 829 per week), and use that number as the expected number of deaths for weeks 11-17. I then took the difference between actual and expected values as a rough estimate for the number of coronavirus deaths. It’s easier to show visually than describe:

The shaded area in the graph above leads to an estimated 778 deaths from coronavirus. The official coronavirus death toll thru week 17 (i.e. April 25th) is 881 [source]. Note that the official count is before the revision down. I wasn’t able to locate daily statistics with the newly revised numbers. The total death data appears to support a downward revision. However, there is far too much uncertainty in the total deaths data set to draw any rock solid conclusions.

Conclusions

Caveat on Provisional Data

As mentioned in the previous post, the total death statistics for 2020 are provisional. The CDC has been updating the data set once a week (on Fridays around noon.) One of the criteria I used to select States in the original post was that the data didn’t change too much in the previous couple weeks. In the case of Colorado, the data for the most recent weeks analyzed was still being revised up pretty significantly. If the data continues to be revised up in the continuing weeks, the conclusions reached could be different.

NYC Coronavirus Debacle

Coronavirus / By Matt / May 18, 2020 May 20, 2020

Why has NYC fared So Poorly in the Pandemic?

Is it too soon to start asking WTF went wrong in New York City? Per capita deaths in NYC are almost 15X the rest of the country, and are even over 4X greater than Italy and Spain. Is it population density? The subway system? The international airports? Cuomo packing sick patients into nursing homes? DeBlasio telling New Yorkers that they should go on like business as usual? A combination of everything? Washington loves creating special committees. One of the most advanced cities on the planet just had a public health response that would embarrass most 3rd world countries. It seems like getting to the bottom of why that happened would be a worthwhile thing to do.

Print CSV Copy

Are US Coronavirus Deaths Exaggerated?

Coronavirus / By Matt / May 15, 2020 May 17, 2020

There has been rampant internet speculation lately that the death statistics being reported for COVID-19 are being inflated. The skepticism is fueled in part by the large numbers of deaths being assumed to be due to COVID without a laboratory test to confirm. And also by numerous anecdotal stories of people who died from other causes while infected with the virus being included in the count. See here and here for examples. The topic is so prevalent, our wonderful Washington press corps even tried to goad President Trump into giving them a damning soundbite at Friday’s press conference. (He didn’t bite.)

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Mark Twain, stolen from Anonymous

This seems like an easy enough thing to check on. While “died from / died with” and “confirmed / assumed” might have some grey area to them, “dead / not dead” is pretty cut and dried. It makes sense (to me at least) that if non-COVID deaths are being incorrectly counted as COVID deaths on a large scale, than the number of total deaths should be increasing less than would otherwise be expected. One way to check this would be to look at the total number of deaths so far in 2020, subtract off the number of deaths you would expect if there was no COVID, and compare that number to the official COVID death count. If the official COVID count is significantly higher, that would indicate there might be some padding going on. If the official count is much lower, we may be actually under counting COVID deaths. If the numbers are close, the official statistics are probably pretty accurate. So what is an engineer with way too much State-mandated free time on his hands to do? Why, crunch some data of course!

Torture the data long enough, and it will confess to anything.
Ronald Coase

So, there are a couple of problems with my plan. The first problem is determining the number of total deaths that would have occurred without coronavirus. I decided to compare the 2020 total death values to the previous 5 years, and also to the average of those 5 years to get a rough estimate of the “normal” amount of total deaths. The second problem is actually getting the data to analyze. Given the intense interest and need for information, finding near real-time statistics for coronavirus deaths is pretty easy. Finding up-to-date statics on total deaths is much harder. The best source I could come up with is the CDC. They compile data from death certificates and post it here. The problem with this data set is there is a significant lag. CDC depends on the states to submit the death certificates, which typically takes anywhere from 1-8 weeks according to their disclaimer. Previous weeks are continuously updated as more death certificates come in. Upon examining the data, it quickly became obvious that I would not be able to analyze the whole county. The numbers for many of the States are just too incomplete. So I decided to focus on a handful of states which are coronavirus hotspots and also have usable data. I choose to limit the comparison to the first 17 weeks of the year. The end of that time period is recent enough to be well into the outbreak and also far enough in the past that the data are reasonably complete. Let’s start with my home state of Michigan:

The first thing that jumps out in the graph is the obvious 2020 spike starting around week 13, which corresponds to late March. The total number of deaths for the first 17 weeks are shown in the table for each year, along with the delta vs. 2020. For 2020, the 17th week ended on Saturday, April 25th. For comparison, the official number of coronavirus deaths in Michigan thru April 25th is 3,274 [source]. The official count is less than the delta for 4 out of the 5 previous years. The only exception is 2018, which was a particularly bad flu year. There is nothing in the Michigan data to suggest the coronavirus death toll is exaggerated.

New York has been the epicenter of the pandemic in the US. Unfortunately, the data for the State of New York is obviously incomplete. However, CDC does have data for NYC which appears usable. NYC is the only city the CDC breaks out separately.

The huge spike in the 2020 curve is a visual confirmation of the absolute horror NYC has been. The official number of coronavirus deaths in NYC thru April 25th is 17,154 [source]. That number includes 12,958 confirmed COVID deaths, and 4,196 probable deaths. The official count is less than the delta for all 5 of the previous years. Again, there is nothing in the data to suggest the death toll in NYC is being exaggerated. In fact, it looks like the numbers might even be a little low.

Table of Total Death in New Jersey by Year

New Jersey has obviously been hit very hard by the coronavirus. The official number of coronavirus deaths in New Jersey thru April 25th is 5,863 [source]. New Jersey lists their death count as lab confirmed COVID deaths. This official count is considerably less than the delta for all 5 of the previous years. This suggests the coronavirus death toll in New Jersey could be significantly underestimated.

Table of Total Deaths in Massachusetts by Year

The official number of coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts thru April 25th is 3,255 [source]. This official count is in line with the delta for the previous 5 years. The coronavirus death toll for Massachusetts does not appear to be exaggerated.

The official number of coronavirus deaths in Maryland thru April 25th is 959 [source]. This total includes 890 confirmed COVID deaths and 69 probable. This official count is less than the delta for all 5 of the previous years.

Conclusion

So, are COVID-19 deaths in the US being exaggerated? Sadly, there is nothing in the available data to suggest that is the case. Admittedly, this data set is incomplete and far from perfect. It will be interesting to see what the numbers look like in a few months when the numbers are finalized and the whole country can be included.

Postscript

One other thing that really jumped out while plotting the CDC data is how completely different the pandemic has affected the various States. The chart for NYC looks like something out of an apocalyptic horror movie. Looking at the charts for the States below, you would never even know there was anything unusual about 2020. This isn’t exactly news, but seeing it visually really drives the point home.