SDSU epidemiologist Dr. Bonny Specker posts some disturbing graphs of South Dakota’s overall fatality rates in this dreadful year. According to Dr. Specker’s graphing of Department of Health stats, South Dakota started the year pre-covid with death rates higher than recent years. But in the last few months, coronavirus has kicked our death rate up to its highest level in a decade, a third worse than usual:
Our death rate is usually a little higher in the winter and a little lower in the summer. This year, we caught up with past winter fatality highs in September and shot through the previously untouched roof of 100 deaths per 100K in October. With hundreds more coronavirus deaths in November, that grim yellow line should point even higher when Dr. Specker adds official November numbers.
Come on Cory, Kristi is allowing the younger generation to inherit their wealth early and it’s saving the state from nursing home care and the feds from more social security. Its a win, win, win for Kristi. I know thats a harsh determination, but what else can it be, sheer stupidity or just a narcissistic Trumpian sociopathic personality?
Well, Mark, it does ease up the bed shortage at the nursing homes.
Us just passed 18 million confirmed cases of hoax and 322k deaths.
One of the more foolish arguments I heard at the Rapid City Municipal Council meeting from anti-maskers was that 99% of people recover from COVID and that the pandemic was therefore being overblown.
Recent publications indicate that genetic factors of the patient contribute to the observed diversified disease severity of COVID on individual patients, as well as complicate COVID therapy. These genetic factors are the result markers on a variety of genes including those coding for interferon, meaning that individuals who have such mutations lack specific interferons and are therefore more susceptible to infectious diseases. (Don’t run to 23andMe yet as the totality of genetic markers has yet to be determined and extensive gene-wide association studies have yet to be performed).
So, when I hear someone say that 99% of people recover, I ask them if they themselves know whether or not they have such genetic markers that would allow them to know whether they themselves will be in the 99% who recover, or in the 1% who don’t. No answers so far.
Hydroxychloroquine advocates are yet everywhere and downplay cardiotoxicity, a known side-effect of hydroxychloroquine. There can be little doubt that genetics also lead to susceptibility to cardiotoxicity in the case of HCQ. Same question: Do you know what you genetic susceptibility to HCQ is? Do you fall into the group that will see cardiotoxicity or the group that will see no benefit? Of course, no one can answer the question—the genetic markers which dictate HCQ response are as yet unknown. A physician who would prescribe HCQ for COVID is playing Russian roulette with his/her patients, as far as I’m concerned.
Population statistics tell you the individual absolutely nothing about how you will be individually affected by either COVID nor hydroxychloroquine.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6515/eabd4570
99%, Dave? So even by their own count, those anti-maskers want 3.3 million Americans to sacrifice their lives for the anti-maskers’ preferences.
drumpf/noem body count for a busy Saturday….
Last updated: December 20, 2020, 00:46 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
18,063,206
Deaths:
323,342
Recovered:
10,527,852
Projections
CLOSED CASES
10,851,194
Cases which had an outcome:
10,527,852 (97%)
Recovered / Discharged
323,342 (3%)
Deaths
You got it, Corey. A vast swath of the population is not only scientifically illiterate but not good with numbers, either.
My point, however, is focused on the individual who foolishly uses population stats as gage of their personal risk. Mendel could predict what percentage of peas from a hybrid cross would be wrinkled or smooth, but could never predict the outcome of a single plant beforehand.
We are just beginning to understand the human genetic risk factors lurking behind COVID susceptibility and disease progression —in addition to multiple macroscopic pre-existing health determinants often mentioned. If the SD DOH has their way they will likely exclude from their stats anyone on their COVID death list anyone who was genetically predisposed if they can find a way to do so. And that, I wager to say, is an enormous number.
I’m sure this is the same DOH, Mr. DaveFN, who is excluding the deaths from the 5 Gs from their data too.
Noem’s Cancel Christmas wish realized in the UK.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55379220
Notwithstanding the complications from the Wuhan, China man-made mutation Covid-19 (Francis Boyle), the Boomers are coming of age and passing away. We are far from the peak of this sad and difficult transition.
The situation surrounding the virus – adjustable PCR tests, pivot from Covid-19 to coronavirus in the media, unscientifically adjusting causes of death, misreporting comorbidity, and now potentially seeing a shift from flu related deaths to covid (need better, or no testing) – could be a power grift to take advantage of the passing of the baby boomer generation.
I predict wearing masks will not prolong the inevitable.
Dave, that point has hit me time and time again this year: pandemics require statistical thinking. Individual thinking, fundamentally selfish and inescapably ignorant thinking, leads to a worse outbreak. People fail to realize that the fact that they went to the store without a mask and didn’t get sick doesn’t prove that they won’t get a mask; it only means that they are part of a lucky numerator that don’t get sick, even while their actions, multiplied by tens of millions, mean millions more people will get sick and hundreds of thousands more people will die.
John:
John, all of our deaths are inevitable (though I’m still watching for robot legs and brain uploads). Nonetheless, if my grandma is crossing the street and a truck is aiming to mow her down, I’d appreciate it if you’d try to pull her to safety on the sidewalk, or at least shout, “Look out!”
Gawd, I agree once with Johnny Five Gee, a mask will not protect you from being run over by a truck.
Qboy Johnny continues to amaze.
drumpf/noem body count…
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
18,258,517
Deaths:
324,840
At least 1500 bodies on an unusually busy Sunday with another hour and some to go.
Corey—-It gets even better as you no doubt know: People see populations mask while cases yet grow and thereby come to the miraculous conclusion that masks don’t work. No control group for comparison, of course: therefore no idea how much more the cases would have grown had there been no masking whatsoever. (Several of the anti-maskers at the RC Municipal Council promulgated this mask-causes-COVID nonsense).
It’s difficult for myself to think that people come up with such nutty ideas on their own. I suspect some Russian-planted memes on extreme Facebook groups are the origin of such ‘stinkin’ thinkin.’ And people fall for them hook, line, and sinker and build an entire edifice of idiocy.
Stupid ideas seem to infect groups of people no less than does a virus, and stupid ideas can be every bit as deadly.