US COVID Update (5-14 to 5-15)

New York has finally admitted that they changed the way they counted rest home deaths as well as anyone who was transported 'alive' to a hospital and subsequently 'died' there (I take this to mean they were pronounced dead by a doctor) would not be counted as a rest home death. This means that up to another 1000+ deaths in NY are actually what most of us would consider a nursing home death but are not counted as one. Michigan and IL are likely doing the same.

VA is counting positive virus tests as well as positive anti-body tests as confirmed cases. This is certainly a misrepresentation of the facts and I believe this practice is wrong.

A guy online looked at the county by county reports of deaths and found that 44 counties within 100 miles of NYC have had 55% or so of all the US deaths.

After three weeks or so of opening up, both GA and FL have continued to see cases and deaths decline by ~10%. I haven't seen the media taking back the claims that the governors of those states have "blood on their hands" especially when compared to Gov. Cuomo of NY, who would seemed to have killed thousands of grandmas by forcing rest home to take confirmed cases when they weren't properly equipped.

In VA and NC, the county sheriffs have officially declared that they won't be enforcing "shelter in place" rules. Meanwhile, Mayor DeBlasio has also said that he will have the police renege on mask-wearing rules as well. What is apparent, is you don't need a majority to get the lockdown lifted, you only need a big enough minority to make governors and mayors reveal themselves as tyrants.

In CO, a man with blood alcohol content of 0.55 (>30 is generally considered lethal) was tested after death and was confirmed with COVID-19. Despite collapsing and dying of alcohol poisoning in a park, he was listed as a COVID death.

A county coroner in CA has said that only 6 of 150 so "COVID deaths" were really a result of the virus. The others died of comorbidities that were killing them pretty faster after contracting the virus.

Meanwhile, the media is continuing to report positive cases in meatpacking plants (95% of which are asymptomatic) while mostly ignoring the carnage in rest homes.

As the stats roll in, it's beginning to look like as much as 15% of the country has been infected but up to 70% of those infected only have slight symptoms or even none at all. The CFR looks to be around 0.4 or 0.5 and while that is above the seasonal flu rate, it's not as bleak as was predicted earlier on.

As I've mentioned many times before, the data is now pretty much useless for policy decisions because it is corrupted and/or misreported. Whether this was by accident or design, we'll probably never have conclusive evidence.

Speaking of data, over the last 3 days, the US data has seen an overall increase in new cases (plus the efforts in VA) and also a slight decline in new deaths. This is despite the misreporting in many states. IL is reporting more new cases and more new deaths but almost exclusively in Cook County.

The usual NY/NJ/MA/PA/CT reports are all that is keeping the entire US from being in the last part of the decline.

8 states reported no new deaths today. 13 reported single digits, most 3 or less. Meanwhile only NY/NJ/MA/IL/CA/PA reported 100 or more, and only NJ had 200. The other states rarely had as many as 50. Most were in low double digits. So 44 states don't really seem to be in much difficulty now.

New cases nationwide are up to 25K both today and yesterday, but new tests doubled since last week. Except in the NYC area the positive test ratio is below 10%, even in MI and IL, although Chicago and Detroit are still above that. The epidemic is sputtering out in most of the country.

The 7 day MA are still declining slowly, unless you exclude the NYC area, and then they are dropping rapidly. Outside of that area, Chicago, and Detroit, it looks like the R0 is now about 0.5.

If we had good data I would probably say it's over unless and until a second wave hits. That doesn't mean there is no danger out there or there won't be new cases and new deaths. Every year we have cases of the flu and deaths from the flu in the height of summer, we just quit reporting them when they get real low. COVID really shouldn't be much of a story in most of the US.

Do it right, but it's past time to loosen almost all restrictions on movement. Take care. Be good people.