@birdguy - Sorry, Noel, most of their coronavirus coverage is free but apparently that one isn't, at least not yet

That's basically the story - deaths from all causes are running way ahead of normal and a significant number may be related to coronavirus.

If and when the article becomes free, I'll repost the link.  In the meantime, here are just a few lead paragraphs from a very long article, which should be OK to quote under fair use:

 

Quote

 

In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.

The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.

But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease.

The Yale analysis for the first time estimates excess deaths, both nationally and in each state, in those five weeks. Relying on data that the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released Friday, the analysis paints a picture of unusually high mortality that will come into sharper view as more data becomes available.

The analysis calculates excess deaths by using a model to estimate how many people probably would have died absent the pandemic, and then subtracting that number from the overall deaths reported by the NCHS.

The analysis suggests that the deaths announced in the weeks leading up to April 4, based on reports from state public health departments, failed to capture the full impact of the pandemic... The analysis also suggests that the death toll from the pandemic is significantly higher than has been reported, said Daniel Weinberger, a Yale professor of epidemiology and the leader of the research team.

 

There's a lot more to the article, including detailed breakdowns of several states, and a story about a man on Long Island who developed symptoms which led his physician to diagnose covid-19, died at home, and had the cause of death recorded as congestive heart failure, so he wasn't included in the official totals. There's also an account of 911 response calls in several cities that are running well ahead of normal.  A northern New Jersey EMT says he's seeing cardiac arrests and/or performing 2-3 CPRs a day, up from the normal one every two to three weeks. The Chicago Fire Department reports four times the normal number of calls where the patient is beyond resuscitation and is pronounced dead at the scene.

While there's more work to be done to refine the findings, the study is thorough and well thought out. 

Again, I'll try to come back to it once it's fully accessible, probably in a day or two.

Edited April 27, 20206 yr by Alan_A

Meanwhile, science is getting done, courtesy of XKCD...

Edited April 27, 20206 yr by Alan_A

6 hours ago, SteveFx said:

And even more on the drones ( this is a flight simulation forum)https://issuu.com/university_of_southampton/docs/reaction_magazine_winter_2019

see page 20.  It would appear to have a wingspan of about 20 feet? it’s a UAV being designed as a low cost humanitarian aid project.

Well... Zipline already has a mature system in place, and have been doing this with some success in Rwanda and other places
https://flyzipline.com/

I guess the pandemic environment is fertile ground to peddle pet projects, be they "new" drones, dubious "masks" or simply misinformation. Just follow the money trail...  

 

Bleah...... 😕

I was looking into doing some volunteer work during the crisis, and my family is having an absolute cow.

I can handle the risk, but my family yelling at me...... not so much. 😿

Oh, wonderful.

After the toilet paper wars, the great pasta shortage, the 2020 butter scare, and the scramble of the royal mask hunts, now we might have to bludgeon people for the last Perdue oven stuffer roasters........

Good luck out there, guys!

Groceries could see meat shortages by end of week amid plant closings

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by HiFlyer

Over the past few months I've bought a lot of beef, chicken and pork and put it in my chest freezer for just this reason. I saw it coming and took action. I didn't grab everything in reach in any one visit, but if I spotted something on end-of-date sale, I did grab many of the sale items...

Right now I estimate that I've enough stocked up to feed a platoon of starving Marines for at least two months.

On 4/26/2020 at 6:14 PM, Murmur said:

Frankly, I see self-righteousness and a sense of intellectual superiority to others, equally distributed among people, whatever their political and ideological leanings.

Are people bringing guns to Covid19  rallies in Italy?

 

the system wont let me delete this so i will have to post it.

 

what i really want to say is that my local news keeps interviewing protesters. They wave flags and talk about freedom, government over-reach and how covid19 is not near as bad as other things that may happen to you.  Its obvious where they get their 'news'.

Oh dear.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/lufthansa-mulls-bankruptcy-as-bailout-talks-stall/ar-BB13jUEP?li=AAwnS0s

BA planning 12,000 job loses.

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by G-RFRY

EXACTLY why I don't watch ANY TV news Dave.  Take any issue and each side will take to demonstrations, social media, any other media, including this forum, to tell the readers why they should follow their example and be interested in it.

The issue du jure is coronavirus and lives.  All of sudden the lives taken by the virus are more valuable than lives taken any other way.  The media has made it so.

Ya know, human lives are the most valuable and precious things on the planet while at the same time they are the least valuable and precious things on the planet.  It depends on where they are and how close to you they are and how much they are hyped by the media and what kind of a connection you have to them.

We don't think much about the lives lost in Africa to Ebola and malaria.  Or the lives lost to revolutions and civil wars in Darfur or Somalia or Iraq or Iran unless they are, of course, American lives.  Or in Britain, British lives, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

People who are close to the action think more about it than those of us who are not.

One afternoon I hitched a ride on a C-130 from Danang to Saigon on my back to Thailand.  There were only seven passengers in the cargo hold of that aircraft; myself and six body bags.  I spent nearly an hour with them and could think of nothing else but them for a long time.  I wondered who they were, how they died, what branch of service they were in, what kind of action they saw.

When I got back to my base in Thailand I told my buddies about it.  They said, "Oh, yeah." and that was it.  They were not close.

That's what it boils down to.  How close are you to the action?  That determines your interest and activism if you are so inclined.

Noel 

 

 

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by birdguy

This is all true Noel but a pandemic, by definition, is close to the action for everyone. Those who cannot see that, for whatever reason, stand a much greater chance of making things worse for others, as well as themselves. Those who do and for the sake of all, choose to conform, are a much better risk.

To borrow your short story, suppose the one living person in the hold of the aircraft had by accident dropped the grenade that killed the other six, would he still think that no one's conduct should depend on the potential fate of others?

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by Reader

Well, Reader, I'm sure that has happened more times than anyone would like to count in all the wars we've had in this century and the last.  Since the one who dropped the grenade would also be dead then he (or she these days) would not likely be thinking in those terms.  Anymore than a driver who hit another car headon and killed himself and a family of six.  I'm sure he would feel remorse if he lived through it.

Those of us who live in areas that have not, as of yet, been hit by the virus to the extent of places like Italy and New York do not see the urgency as we would if we lived in more hard hit areas.  It's too far away.

We have had 22 cases and 1 death in a country that has a population of over 60,000.  The counties that surround us are less hard hit, one having no cases or perhaps 3 or 4 with no deaths.  So most of us don't see the urgency or need to get as excited about it as New Yorkers do.  As I said it is still quite a distance from us.  

Noel

Sweden is one to watch, as they did not lock down the country but relied on the citizenry to be "sensible".

Their deaths/million just crossed the UK (now on a downward trend inside lockdown).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=NZL+SWE+GBR+USA+NOR+FIN+TWN+JPN

Presumably they are accepting the loss of life as an acceptable trade-off for emerging with a relatively intact economy? It’s an interesting choice, as Sweden is the most socialist of the western countries.

New Zealand has gone the other way: early and complete lockdown, with very low death rate. It must be said too, that our fatalities lie in the frail care sector so arguably artificially inflate the numbers. But our economy is seriously damaged and will take years to recover. Life is held in high regard in these isles, so we see this as a reasonable trade-off.

The virus has been deemed “eliminated” now, so we are carefully stepping out of the highest level of containment. The population’s overwhelming response?
McDonald’s is open!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52450978

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

We don't think much about the lives lost in Africa to Ebola and malaria.  Or the lives lost to revolutions and civil wars in Darfur or Somalia or Iraq or Iran unless they are, of course, American lives.  Or in Britain, British lives, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Speak for yourself please, I care about all of it.

The only modifier is; whats close enough to be within my power to personally affect

Your mileage may vary!

EDIT: One of the things I wanted almost more than anything as a teen was to join the Peace Corp. Its still one of my biggest regrets that right around that time volunteers started getting killed and kidnapped by crazy people and I hesitated. 😿

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by HiFlyer

@birdguy  Noel -  I see covid19 as a predator that has entered my community.  My community is the United States primarily and secondarily the world. Its hard to focus on too much at one time.

It isnt that lives lost to covid19 are worth more, its that we dont have any defense and we dont yet know how to deal with this new predator.  We're not used to it yet and I think its freaked most of us out a bit.  When you don't know what to do...you don't know what to do.

People who want to realx their gaurd and say say its no big deal, to me they threaten the lives of innocent people in my community (including me, people I know, and themselves).  Its like being at the beach and you know theres a man eating shark but some are saying "Shark? what shark?" while throwing chum in the water just to prove you're an word not allowed for being concerned about the predator.

We have 56,000 dead now in the past couple of months.  How does that compare with the flu so far this year?  and both of those numbers are with a good amount of lockdown I would say.

 

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

We don't think much about the lives lost in Africa to Ebola and malaria.

Epidemiologists do, though.  Pandemics prove that everyone is connected.  That's not moralistic - it's a simple description of the way pandemics work, because they don't respect boundaries.

The most effective way to contain a pandemic is at the point of origin.  Once it breaks out and gets into the community, then you're dealing with mitigation, which works much less well than containment.

The George W. Bush administration did an excellent job of addressing HIV in Africa.  Details here about how that program worked.

Here's a pretty readable 2018 textbook chapter on the value of addressing and containing pandemics overseas.

Edited April 28, 20206 yr by Alan_A