7 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    The comments are really funny. All kinds of attempts to explain this other than the obvious, Republicans dont wear masks, dont social distance and go to big group meetings with each other. Yes, some Democrats have cheated and the right wing media has great fun with that, but by and large the Democrats are wearing masks and following the guidance. (I do love the Qanon theory that this was a liberal plot to get conservativessick with Covid. Those people are so creative with their crazy conspiracy theories.)

    And again, because this is what I do for a living I dont find this at all surprising. We wear masks. We arent always wearing N 95s. When we wear any kind of mask and so does everyone else not many of us get Covid. When we do get Covid it is usually from family or when people get careless and socialize with each other at work and ignore precautions.

    Also, I dont usually watch the morning shows on Sunday but caught the end of the Birx interview when I realized she was on. Pretty amazing. According to her the only people in the White House to regularly wear a mask were her and her assistant. Lots of people in the WH thought it was a hoax. I ended pop with mixed feelings about her. She clearly knew that a to fo the stuff that the Trump group was doing was wrong and maybe she should have resigned in protest. OTOH, someone had to do stuff to help protect Americans. She had to go behind Trump’s back when talking with state officials. I did end up with a tiny bit more respect for Pence as she said that Pence at least knew some of that she was doing and did not try tot stop her or inform Trump so that he would interfere.

    Steve

  • The comments are really funny.

    I thought you’d find them amusing.

  • Drew Link

    “The comments are really funny.”

    Heh. Your convenient abandonment of controlled, double blind, peer reviewed, great googly moogly “science.”

    Yes, funny.

  • steve Link

    There is a whole body of literature on RCTs and their problems. They are expensive, sometimes they take too long, sometimes you dont really need one (or cant do one) and sometimes people put too much faith in them. So look at Hydroxychloroquine. The early “studies”that claimed it worked were just awful, but we were desperate and there was at least some lab data that said it might help so we went ahead and used it while we did the studies later. The studies showed it didnt work so we have pretty much stopped using it. Of course back then you and your ilk didnt care about “controlled, double blind, peer reviewed” studies. Your cult leader said it worked so you all got in line behind it.

    So no one is saying that the charts above are finished, well done science, but we arent really going to get a randomized study out of this. However, we dont really have a study showing that decapitation will kill you either. Sometimes stuff is just kind of obvious.

    Steve

  • and there was at least some lab data that said it might help so we went ahead and used it while we did the studies later.

    There was also the South Korean experience. They had used it regularly and found it to be effective.

  • Drew Link

    Here’s some real live data from the CDC.

    As reported 12/26:

    Increase in all cause deaths from 2019 to 2020: 60,000
    Supposed increase in covid deaths 2019 to 2020: 315,000
    This implies a miraculous decrease in 2020 non-covid deaths of 255,000. (I guess Trump cured cancer and heart disease. Stand by for the Post and NYTimes glowing articles.)
    Yet over the past 10 years all cause deaths tick up on average 45,000.
    per year.

    How on earth could this happen? Simply arithmetically you would have to be short in your all cause count some, what, 250,000 to 300,000? And why would that happen? Ahem. Well what do you know, they dropped 270,000 all cause deaths into the last week of reporting.

    Now, some might say delays in reporting were the cause, yet the 12/26 data were substantially complete. Some might say the December covid death spike caused all death estimates they were using to be too low. Well, when one looks at the excess deaths over expected run rate deaths you are hard pressed to convince yourself that such an error could possibly exceed 30-50,000, and that’s if they didn’t adjust after seeing the covid spike start in early to mid-November. Not quite the 270,000 you need for an explanation.

    Of course there are two obvious explanations: classification fraud, er, errors……….or some genius figured out the original logic problem so they simply manufactured an all death number. Of course that couldn’t happen. That would be like waking up one November morning and finding out that over night Joe Biden had gotten 500,000 votes in PA compared to Trump’s 5,000. No way.

    Oh, wait…………

  • steve Link

    Deaths are reported over a pretty long period.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/report001.pdf

    Steve

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