46th President of the United States, Joe Biden
Discussion
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
I think what the data shows across the globe is that when the virus has become endemic, lockdown and increased lockdown severity has not resulted in a significant reduction in overall death rate.
In this respect, Trump's approach was probably, inadvertantly, the right one; keep the economy going because you're going to get the deaths anyway.
It's a failing across the Western world that we haven't been able to coordinate or properly test different approaches, other than incidentally.
That doesn't tally with what the the UK is doing right now though. Infection rates and deaths are falling because of lockdownIn this respect, Trump's approach was probably, inadvertantly, the right one; keep the economy going because you're going to get the deaths anyway.
It's a failing across the Western world that we haven't been able to coordinate or properly test different approaches, other than incidentally.
Edited by RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat on Friday 5th March 10:00
HM-2 said:
That's because lockdowns are typically instituted in response to endemic spread and elevated death rates. Hence "flattening the curve".
Indeed, however unless you're an isolated nation such as NZ or Aus, you don't have the choice of locking down to prevent it becoming endemic. All you can do is an effective track and trace, as we've seen in SE Asia, aiming to spot and stop outbreaks as they happen. The West failed miserably at that. I think it was the LSE who released a report this week claiming the lockdowns will have removed more years of life than they have saved.
As for infection rates, they're utterly meaningless because they're only a function of testing and there are too many variables within that to make any meaningful comparisons.
One advantage the US has over other countries is significant populations within States, with their own differing responses to the virus. This should produce significant data, enabling the government at federal level to assess where the right balance was between keeping everyday life functioning and locking down to prevent health services being overwhelmed.
Byker28i said:
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
I think what the data shows across the globe is that when the virus has become endemic, lockdown and increased lockdown severity has not resulted in a significant reduction in overall death rate.
In this respect, Trump's approach was probably, inadvertantly, the right one; keep the economy going because you're going to get the deaths anyway.
It's a failing across the Western world that we haven't been able to coordinate or properly test different approaches, other than incidentally.
That doesn't tally with what the the UK is doing right now though. Infection rates and deaths are falling because of lockdownIn this respect, Trump's approach was probably, inadvertantly, the right one; keep the economy going because you're going to get the deaths anyway.
It's a failing across the Western world that we haven't been able to coordinate or properly test different approaches, other than incidentally.
Edited by RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat on Friday 5th March 10:00
We're wavering quite a bit off topic but I think my initial question was why GOP governors are getting a hard ride from you when the reality is, they're actually faring pretty well in terms of numbers and the people are enjoying a lot more freedom than the likes of locked down states and the UK for example.
Byker28i said:
That doesn't tally with what the the UK is doing right now though. Infection rates and deaths are falling because of lockdown
You say it doesn't tally. On what do you base your thinking? The countries/states where the virus is endemic and have locked down the hardest don't have correspondingly low death rates. Lockdowns don't work on the virus, and they also have devastingly harmful consequences on the population. Trump was an idiot over his description of the virus and how he approached it in public (bleach FFS?), but whether by accident or design his desire to keep things as open as possible seems to be vindicated. It would be a mistake for Biden to reverse this thinking when we can see lockdowns cause more harm than they solve.
gumshoe said:
Can you explain then why, on a per capita basis, Florida has fared so well compared to so many states. And especially so against the likes of California who have had very strict lockdown rules?
We've said many times now that you ignore - the Florida stats were positively adjusted because politics, there are whistleblower complaints, the figures cannot be compared.Shall we compare NY's fudged care home deaths with those in Florida to try to prove a point that Florida was worse? Of course not, the figures are flawed in NY, we know Cuomo amended them for political reasons.
gumshoe said:
Again you are wrong; they are not all counties.
Weird thing to argue about. I said
The top states in Florida are Miami, Broward (Fort Lauderdale etc), Palm Beach and Orange county (disney etc) - all holiday destinations that were opened up and have admitted I meant Counties not states - brain didn't keep up with fingers
If you read it as such, then they are counties - ok so Miami is Miami-Dade - but otherwise if you read them as counties my post still makes sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_...
They are the top 4 counties for infections in Florida, all were open for outdoor activities
Plenty of evidence for their opening and infections rising
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/28/flor...
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2020/11/17...
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/12/10/fl...
Floridas were having a rise
The U.S. reported 306 new coronavirus variant cases Sunday, a record increase for viruses that can spread more easily, dodge some treatments and immunities, or both. Nearly all the new cases were in three states: Florida, up 104 cases to 605; Michigan, up 85 cases to 421; and Texas, up 41 cases to 102.
among those, Florida added four cases to its previous one case of P.1, a dangerous variant first seen in Brazil, and the state's first reported case of B.1.351, a variant first seen in South Africa.
NY Times interactive tracking seems to think it's fallen again. Do you think that could be a weekend spike due to delays in reporting?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/florid...
Byker28i said:
They are the top 4 counties for infections in Florida, all were open for outdoor activities
You keep reverting to cases/infections. They're irrelevant for comparison purposes. I've explained above why.Death rates/excess deaths can give a meaningful comparison. In this regard it doesn't appear to me that Florida is much worse off than states who have locked down.
Do you believe Florida is fraudulently misreporting death rates?
During an exchange with a reporter this Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if the Trump administration “deserves some credit for laying the groundwork” for the current COVID vaccine rollout.
“I don’t think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died of this pandemic,” Psaki said.
“So, what our focus is on, and what the President’s focus us on when he came into office just over a month ago, was ensuring that we had enough vaccines , we are going to have them now, we had enough vaccinators, and we had enough vaccine locations to get this pandemic under control,” “There’s no question, and all data points to the fact that there were not enough of any of those things when he (Biden) took office.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1367540970380787715
“I don’t think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died of this pandemic,” Psaki said.
“So, what our focus is on, and what the President’s focus us on when he came into office just over a month ago, was ensuring that we had enough vaccines , we are going to have them now, we had enough vaccinators, and we had enough vaccine locations to get this pandemic under control,” “There’s no question, and all data points to the fact that there were not enough of any of those things when he (Biden) took office.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1367540970380787715
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
Indeed, however unless you're an isolated nation such as NZ or Aus, you don't have the choice of locking down to prevent it becoming endemic. All you can do is an effective track and trace, as we've seen in SE Asia, aiming to spot and stop outbreaks as they happen. The West failed miserably at that.
You'll get no disagreement from me there- lockdowns are the outcome of core failures in policy and represent nothing more than a sticking plaster.RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
The people who voted for the Republicans expect them to do their job. If the stimulus bill is being used not only for stimulus, but also other spending that is more politically potent, it's only right it gets scrutiny. Isn't the point of any democratic policital forum that measures are examined and negotiated before they enacted?
But these actions aren't scrutiny, just pointless delay for the sake of making trouble.Do you really believe the stuff you post?
AW111 said:
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
The people who voted for the Republicans expect them to do their job. If the stimulus bill is being used not only for stimulus, but also other spending that is more politically potent, it's only right it gets scrutiny. Isn't the point of any democratic policital forum that measures are examined and negotiated before they enacted?
But these actions aren't scrutiny, just pointless delay for the sake of making trouble.Do you really believe the stuff you post?
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
Death rates/excess deaths can give a meaningful comparison.
No, they're just very differently flawed. Once you're infected your age, sex, weight, ethnicity, medical history and wealth are all significant factors in your mortality risk..
Demographics in CA and FL will be very different.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2521-4
Noah EV said:
AW111 said:
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
The people who voted for the Republicans expect them to do their job. If the stimulus bill is being used not only for stimulus, but also other spending that is more politically potent, it's only right it gets scrutiny. Isn't the point of any democratic policital forum that measures are examined and negotiated before they enacted?
But these actions aren't scrutiny, just pointless delay for the sake of making trouble.Do you really believe the stuff you post?
5 In a Row said:
The polls suggest that 60% of Republican voters are in favour of the stimulus so the GOP aren't doing their job, they're playing petty procedural games of the type that will just turn some more people off them.
They may be in favour of the stimulus (how many people don't want free/low cost support?). It's what's attached to the bill that might need looking at. silentbrown said:
No, they're just very differently flawed.
Once you're infected your age, sex, weight, ethnicity, medical history and wealth are all significant factors in your mortality risk..
You can only practically filter the data so much.Once you're infected your age, sex, weight, ethnicity, medical history and wealth are all significant factors in your mortality risk..
If someone dies, they die. You can't artificially change the number of actual deaths. There may then be variations in method of reporting to consider (as in when is a covid death a covid death). It's a lot more useful than looking at cases, which you can literally move up or down by testing more or less.
If you want to argue that the death rate in one state compared to another is effected equally (or more) by the differences in demographic, as it is lockdown severity, then go for it.
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
silentbrown said:
No, they're just very differently flawed.
Once you're infected your age, sex, weight, ethnicity, medical history and wealth are all significant factors in your mortality risk..
You can only practically filter the data so much.Once you're infected your age, sex, weight, ethnicity, medical history and wealth are all significant factors in your mortality risk..
If someone dies, they die. You can't artificially change the number of actual deaths. There may then be variations in method of reporting to consider (as in when is a covid death a covid death). It's a lot more useful than looking at cases, which you can literally move up or down by testing more or less.
If you want to argue that the death rate in one state compared to another is effected equally (or more) by the differences in demographic, as it is lockdown severity, then go for it.
Looking at the demographics between California and Florida...
Obesity is almost the same (Florida slightly higher than California, 27% versus 26.2%) https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/
The median age in Florida is 42 and in California 36. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_...
Heart disease deaths per 100,000 population? Florida 33rd with 143. California joint 35th with 140. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and...
Black population of Florida 15%, California 5%.
If you look across the main dividing factors, there isn't evidence to suggest California's demographics make it more susceptible than Florida to deaths from Covid.
Obesity is almost the same (Florida slightly higher than California, 27% versus 26.2%) https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/
The median age in Florida is 42 and in California 36. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_...
Heart disease deaths per 100,000 population? Florida 33rd with 143. California joint 35th with 140. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and...
Black population of Florida 15%, California 5%.
If you look across the main dividing factors, there isn't evidence to suggest California's demographics make it more susceptible than Florida to deaths from Covid.
HM-2 said:
So I'm doing exactly that right now.
Ok great to see someone backing up their assertions. Might have been more helpful to do that before assuredly claiming Florida performed worse than California.HM-2 said:
I've taken the data sets here, stripped out all weeks that don't show excess death rates, removed the extraneous repeated data sets to concentrate only on the unweighted all-cause data, and averaged the low and high excess. Probably not the most rigorous methodology but it will do in a pinch.
Reporting can be lagged so why would you strip out something that will distort figures? The CDC data is not weighted at all. What weighting did you think it had? It also has no repeated data sets besides United States being the aggregate of all the states, which isn't relevant as we are concentrating on Florida and California.Looking at all cause deaths across 2014-2019 - there has been a steady, as expected, increase in deaths over the course of 2014 to 2019. What is more interesting is that there has been a steady year on year increase in deaths per capita in both states (and the aggregate data). This seems to indicate that Americans are actually suffering a reduction in life expectancy in general, or their census is not accurate.
HM-2 said:
Firstly, a caveat- there are 45 weeks of data meeting these criteria for California and 44 for Florida.
Exactly why you should not strip out anything. You create an arbitery set of filters and then have problems trying to compare. HM-2 said:
The population of Florida is 21.48 million, and their total excess death toll as an average of low and high excess from the 4th April 2020 until 30th January 2021 was 30,859.
What are you actually defining here with the excess death toll "their total excess death toll as an average of low and high excess"? What does that sentence actually mean? The average of anything includes the high and the lows, and err, the numbers in the middle. That's the definition of average. What other average formula do you use that sees you need to make an obvious statement like this? And then what did you do, add all the averages back again to get the "total excess death toll"? Explain this please as it makes no sense at all. If there's a specific theory you're trying to prove there are better descriptive statistics you can use rather than the average. So unless we can understand your meaning here, none of us can help you with this.
HM-2 said:
That's approximately 143.7 excess deaths per 100,000 citizens in that timeframe.
The population of California is 39.51 million, and their total excess death toll as an average of low and high excess from the 28th March 2020 until 30th January 2021 was 59,581. That's approximately 150.8 excess deaths per 100,000 citizens in that timeframe.
So even using your own calculation of excess deaths, you are now telling us that California did worse fare worse than Florida? So you are now contradicting what you said earlier and agreeing Florida did better.The population of California is 39.51 million, and their total excess death toll as an average of low and high excess from the 28th March 2020 until 30th January 2021 was 59,581. That's approximately 150.8 excess deaths per 100,000 citizens in that timeframe.
HM-2 said:
However, this is one significant event that's largely ignored by this analysis- the California wildfires which burned between May and December 2020. In addition to the 31 direct deaths that came about as a result of these, academic studies point to thousands of indirect excess deaths during the most serious period of ~40 days between August and September alone. Now some of those deaths are themselves likely to be Covid-adjacent, but it does serve to highlight the obvious issues in comparing excess deaths without giving proper consideration to other contributing factors.
This is not relevant and really is a desperate grasp at straws. The wildfires are insignificant in their deathtoll. You will note I said earlier that I am ignoring additional deaths as a consequence of additional suicides, untreated cancer or other treatable illnesses that have been ignored. See here for an study claiming that there are far more non covid deaths as a result of lockdowns than there were lives saved. I am ignoring all that. Moreover, they are included already in the excess deaths so they are not being ignored. To compare like for like, you have to include all excess deaths, same as we did for Florida.https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/20...
You discredit yourself when you seek to skew the figures to suit your narrative by including the 31 deaths as a result of wildfires, claiming "thousands more died indrectly as a result". You cannot run a statistical analysis on unverified claims like that. Equally someone will come along and say the extra deaths in Florida were a knock on result of hurricanes that have occured over the years and nothing to do with covid. It's not helpful.
Keep the goalposts in one place.
Byker28i said:
We've said many times now that you ignore - the Florida stats were positively adjusted because politics, there are whistleblower complaints, the figures cannot be compared.
And you are ignoring that we are talking about relevant actually quantifiable metrics here (excess deaths). There is significance for why we are looking at excess deaths. Case can be fudged as you have pointed out. They can be fudged up and down. And they are largely irrelevant (we have relatively settled case fatality and infection fatality ratios now). The excess death really measures what is really happening. And it by no means is a perfect measure. But it is better than cases.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff