"Why Some Covid 19 Numbers Are Improving".

[Stuart G]

Source: CNN

You must scroll down to this heading....


WHERE THE US STANDS NOW..

The seven-day average of daily new cases is now 90,416 -- down from a peak of about 250,000 in early January, according to Johns Hopkins University.

As of Sunday, 67,023 people were hospitalized with Covid-19 -- about half the record-high of 132,447 set on January 6, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

But Covid-19 deaths are still painfully high. More than 42,500 Americans have died from Covid-19 in just the past two weeks. That's an average of more than 3,000 lives lost every day.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/15/health/us-coronavirus-monday/index.html

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I DON'T AGREE....3000 DEATHS A DAY IS NOT "IMPROVING". THIS HEADLINE IS A LIE IN MY
OPINION.......

Think about this..

This is the equivalent of 150 dead in a plane crash...... times 20 every Day...
so instead of 40 crashes a day, we are down to 20 crashes a day...

[Irish_Dem]

1. We have become desensitized to high daily death rates.

3000 deaths a day seems like good news?

[Stuart G]

3. THANK YOU for your comment. Not good news to me..Less Deaths is that "Good News?

...Think about this....I started studying auto deaths in the U.S.A. a long, long, time ago....

In the late 70s (I think 78 & 79) there were ...55,000 deaths on the highway

Last Year.2020....................................35,000 deaths on the highway

Is that ......................GOOD NEWS,? NOT to the families that lost someone.!!!!

[Irish_Dem]

5. I don't think 35,000 deaths a year is good news.

It's a terrible statistic.
We become inured to bad news.

[Salviati]

17. Compared to 128,000 deaths a year it is.

That's the rate we'd be looking at if fatalities continued at the rate that they were in the 70's. One should not be so dour that one cannot appreciate real progress against a difficult problem. This is good news for the 90,000+ people who are not killed each year. It is a tragedy for the family and loved ones of the 35,000 who still die in auto crashes each year, but the fact that we know who is in this group, and we do not know who is in the group who are not killed each year doesn't mean that the improvement is not good news, it just means we still have more work to do.

[Irish_Dem]

19. It still is a lot of people per year killed on the road.

[Salviati]

21. It is. But we've made progress, and that progress is good news.

[Shermann]

2. There still is no plausible explanation for why cases are coming down so dramatically nt

[Stuart G]

4. Of course there is a plausible explanation...people who are well, are not getting close to..ANYONE!!

....not anyone at all.... (except people that we live with, and that doesn't work well all the time.

[lagomorph777]

41. Those of us who have stayed well, have done so by taking action.

(We like to think so, anyway).

Many of the easy targets have been picked off already.

[Turin_C3PO]

11. Vaccinated people

may be keeping the numbers somewhat down. But I’m not sure.

[Scruffy1]

20. My explanation is a little bit brutal.

I think the ones who wouldn't or couldn't mask and socially distance themselves have either already had it or got smart. I'm sure that there are other reasons, too.

[Lucky Luciano]

26. The peak was a couple weeks after Christmas. Holiday get togethers were a killer.

It’s really that simple.

[BigmanPigman]

27. Bingo!

[Shermann]

31. Not really...exponential growth started in September and actually slowed during the holidays nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. Really. The new cases declined from Nov 25th to Dec 1st

then the Thanksgiving infections kicked in, and they increased until Dec 18th. Then they started to decline again, until Dec 28th, and then they increased until Jan 8th.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

There's a lag of a few days, as you'd expect; the holiday effect is clear.

[Shermann]

37. I didn't say there was no holiday effect

What I am saying is that it is a very poor singular explanation when you look at all the data starting in September

[Lucky Luciano]

39. ...and the cold weather uptick starting in the fall was expected.

Last edited Tue Feb 16, 2021, 01:07 PM - Edit history (1)

I think that we have clearly mean reverted back towards the infection rate expected without a holiday effect.

[roamer65]

43. In my area of Michigan, people are really being good about mask wearing and distancing.

It has to be making a dent in the infection rate.

[Maxheader]

6. CDC came on and gave this explanation of the declining corona cases..

Winding down from the thanksgiving and xmas mass infections certainly helps but..

Wearing masks and social distancing are the real reason...

[Stuart G]

7. Just 4 words: "Masks" and " Social Distancing" ...Not complicated.? Is it?

[Maxheader]

8. If only we had had Joe around when this all started..

Thousands of lives could have been saved....

[Stuart G]

9. K and R...post 8...Please read "POST 8"

[electric_blue68]

30. So true. :''''(

[JudyM]

12. Wondering if there is now a lower proportion of antimaskers.

I would so love to see research on the political demographics/distribution of those who have died (exclusive of congregate care facilities and health care workers, since both populations have peculiar exposure characteristics). Betting that higher and likely repeated dose exposures had an impact.

[Steelrolled]

13. I'm not convinced there has been a big change in use of masks and social distances

recently. And the sharp downward trend started before Thanksgiving in the upper mid-west and other states followed.

I feel this pandemic is like the weather, in that it is nearly impossible to predict, and often hard to explain, even after the fact.

[Shermann]

32. I agree 100%

The MSM has been quick to cheer the sharp downturn in cases. States are quickly relaxing restrictions. It all seems very foolish when we don't actually know what is going on.

[frazzled]

10. One thing to point out

I don’t know what the national statistics are at the moment, but I check the stats for my state almost every day. I assume they are similar to other states. Of all the Covid deaths, 89.1% of them have been people over 60, even though they account for only 20.4% of the cases.

Please let seniors get the vaccine first if we want to bring the death count down.

[KarenS]

14. on MSNBC this afternoon a man named Peter Hotez

(he's a scientist that I've seen before) was saying they don't know exactly why the numbers are coming down some. He stated it definitely is not due to vaccines because not enough folks have been vaccinated yet,,,, But he said this is almost like the eye of the hurricane because they are expecting the numbers to surge because of the variants,,,, The right thing is to do is hunker down & continue wearing masks,,,, He said "Beware the Ides of March" I was just waking up from a nap and went back to replay the interview,,,, Not the news I wanted to hear.

[BigmanPigman]

28. A doctor I have seen a lot on MSNBC said the same thing.

He said that we are still not seeing the mutated virus yet and the next 14 weeks are going to be crucial. He said to think of England and their high numbers a few weeks ago since it is coming here next.

[TheFarseer]

15. A lot of people that were

doing high risk activities already got it. The weather turned cold and people stayed in more. People are not so jumpy about getting tested for exposure so fewer tests means fewer positives. I haven’t researched any of this. Just some ideas.

[greenjar_01]

16. I think the "A lot of people have had it already" is a little discussed factor

The real number of cases is far higher than the Johns Hopkins number. We're probably starting to be near a tipping point where people have had it already and are not reinfected/respreading. Basically, the virus is hitting a transmission wall. We're currently roughly at 28 million infections on record. It's probably three to five times that. Case numbers are diving because a shit ton of people have had it already.

[TheFarseer]

22. I have heard that also

That many more people have had it than was reported. I think it’s highly possible but have not seen reliable evidence that this is in fact the case. Of course nor have I searched for such evidence. . . .

[LisaL]

23. It's common sense.

It was pretty difficult to get a covid test early on. Many people are asymptomatic, or have mild symptoms, so a lot of them were not tested.
Official infection numbers are likely at ~25% of actual infection numbers.

[greenjar_01]

25. NY death numbers in March-May 2020 alone suggest much, much higher infection rate

They are completely outsized relative to the more reliable recent ratios of cases to deaths, and those are probably an underreport (though, to be fair, there is very likely large under-counts of death numbers as well).

[Shermann]

33. The uncounted cases don't get us to herd immunity

The science just doesn't support that right now.

[greenjar_01]

40. No, but they probably get us to highly reduced spread, which was the claim

[DeminPennswoods]

44. Sanjay Gupta of CNN thinks the same

He said he thinks the number of infections is actually about 3x s what's reported. If that's true, then roughly 80M have already had covid19 plus the number of vaccinated people (53M) is approx 130M, more than 1/3 of the US population.

Also saw Cheney's former WH cardiologist on MSNBC or CNN the same day discussing this. He, too, thinks there is at least some community-based immunity going on.

[Shermann]

46. That's still nowhere near herd immunity

You need 60%, and that's being optimistic. It could require 80%.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. Deaths are a lagging indicator

The sequence is infection(cases), hospitalizations, then deaths. So infections have come down, now hospitalizations have declined and deaths will follow in a few weeks.

As for another surge, I recall reading studies relatively early in the epidemic that "herd immunity" might be achieved with significantly less than 70% having immunity/been infected. Perhaps that's going to prove to be true. Right now, the US is at about 25% (80M) with vaccinated plus infected and recovered.

[LisaL]

24. We don't know what will happen when the variants hit.

The immunity to variants is less than to the original virus.

[C Moon]

29. The deaths are still way to high, but in Los Angeles the numbers are finally improving.

We're back to infection rates that we had before Thanksgiving 2020.
Let's hope the vaccines and people wearing masks and social distancing continues.

[LymphocyteLover]

34. it's bloody awful but most people can't comprehend that much death

still the numbers are trending in a better direction and vaccines are ramping up

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. The headline you object to says "some". And you've picked out just one of the figures.

So, no, it's not a "lie". It's clear that it's the cases and hospitalizations it's saying have improved. They say "but" before talkign about the deaths.

It's also analysis, not a news report.

[ProfessorGAC]

38. It Also Says This

But Covid-19 deaths are still painfully high.

Not sure why the objection by the OP is so strong.

[choie]

42. Wonder how the upcoming

spring break is going to affect the number of cases. Considering how "open" and flagrantly anti-masking and social distancing Florida is, it doesn't bode well.

[Initech]

45. According to the Worldometer we're not at 3K deaths / day anymore.

Actual number is less than 1500 / day. Still unacceptable but it's way better than it was back in December.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/