Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Come on, man.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Wednesday/Thursday, September 2-3

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Wednesday/Thursday, September 2-3

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40Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A large majority of Americans, 58% see the U.S. government’s coronavirus response as worse than other countries.

    But 58% of Republicans (and 67% of frequent Fox News viewers) think the U.S. government has done a *better* job than governments in other countries.

    Pro-Life my ass.

  2. 2.

    Martin

    Wow, a former Trump voter tells Alisyn Camerota on @NewDay “I feel like voting for him helped kill 180,000 Americans.”

    I can’t tell if this voter thinks that’s good or bad.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    From Iowa was reporting false COVID-19 information for months, until this nurse blew the whistle:

    Shouting into the void

    On May 30, Jones tweeted at the news site Iowa Starting Line, “@IAStartingLine did you know that the total daily cases you were reporting in March are now being reported by @IAPublicHealth as double that number now?”

    Meanwhile, Gov. Kim Reynolds was reopening the state using Iowa’s low positivity numbers as justification for lifting bans on gatherings of 10 or more people, bars, restaurants, water parks.

    Jones was telling anyone who would listen about the numbers shell game that the state was playing with COVID-19 tests, but she was shouting into a void.

    Reynolds was opening the state. Nothing would stop her, not even the truth.

    Others in the media had noticed the data problems, but were not getting their questions answered by IDPH or the governor’s office. Emails were going unreturned and calls unanswered. Working in journalism in small newspapers and TV stations in 2020 feels like trying to report from the deck of the Titanic — there is too much going on and your world is sinking. But reporters were asking for answers. Sara Konrad Baranowski, editor for the Times Citizen in Iowa Falls, was relentless in pushing for answers. Over the course of 20 days, she sent 10 emails (the governor’s office prefers emails and refers phone calls from the press to email), but the state didn’t reply.

    Meanwhile, Reynolds was touting the transparency of her administration and forcing schools in-person in the fall.

    So, Jones watched the cases back date for months. Finally, it was August, and Jones sent an email through the IDPH portal asking what was happening. She got a response. On Aug 14. Rob Ramaekers, the lead epidemiologist for the department’s Surveillance Unit, wrote back to Jones noting that they were aware of the problem and working to fix it. On Aug. 17, the Iowa news site Bleeding Heartland, the AP and the Times Citizen reported on the “glitch.”
    …………………………………
    And it wasn’t just the “glitch.” At a news conference on Aug. 27, Reynolds admitted that antigen tests, which are a different type of COVID-19 tests, were not being added to the positive case totals. The tests were added to the overall tests performed, but if they came back positive, were not added to the states positive totals. That’s changing, but the fact that for months Iowans were misled about the reality of the virus in the state, that’s a truth the state can’t shuffle around on an Excel sheet.

    On Aug. 28, the antigen tests were added to Iowa’s numbers and our infection rate shot off higher than an illegal firework in a Des Moines suburb. If Iowa were a country, we’d have the third highest rate of infection in the world.
    ……………………………
    Just three days after I spoke with Jones, Iowa became number one in the United States for COVID-19 cases per capita. And Reynolds moved to shut down bars in only six counties. But schools are opening in person and the reality is worse than we know.

  5. 5.

    Martin

    I don’t understand what Iowa is doing.

    It’s not uncommon for epidemiologists to backdate tests to the expected time of infection. That usually comes with a robust contact tracing program, which Iowa is clearly not doing, though. And adding in the antigen tests is also confusing.

    You have to ask ‘what question are we trying to answer’. I think the public wants to know ‘how many people are currently infected and is that improving or not’. The antigen tests don’t tell you if they are  currently infected, only that they were at some point. So adding that in to these dashboards is odd. Doing that *and* backdating is super odd.

    You normally want to backdate to understand how the virus spread so you can evaluate the effectiveness of previous efforts. You want the current infection numbers to know how to change your behavior today. And you want the antigen data mostly to show how badly you missed the mark -those antigen tests are missed cases that you allowed to spread – so you want that in the context of the backdated stuff.

    I can’t believe they don’t know what they’re doing, so I have to assume they’re doing this under influence

    [Edit] Need to add, there’s a debate on whether to report a positive on the date the test was  conducted, or the date the result was received. Again, knowing the delta is actually pretty useful information, so there’s a motivation to not draw attention to this

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. 14 new cases. 10 cases from local infection: six Malaysians, three from the Tawar cluster and one from the Telaga cluster in Kedah, and two in Sabah from the Benteng Lahad Datu cluster; four non-Malaysians, all from the Benteng Lahad Datu cluster in Sabah. Four imported cases: two Malaysians, one from the MV Bunga shipboard cluster and one returning from Singapore; two non-Malaysians, one from the MV Bunga shipboard cluster and one arriving from the Philippines. The cumulative reported total is 9,374 cases.

    Four more patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 9,083 patients recovered — 96.9% of the cumulative reported total. Active and contagious cases currently being isolated/treated in hospital rose to 163 patients; four are in ICU, three of them are on respirators.

    No new deaths were reported today. The total stands at 128 deaths, 1.37% of the cumulative reported total and 1.39% of resolved cases.

    in other news, Senior Minister for National Security Ismail Sabri Yaacob has announced that visitors from countries that have reported 150,000 or more Covid-19 cases will not be allowed into Malaysia, effective 7th September. This ban is in addition to the ban announced yesterday on long-term visit pass holders from India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, which also takes effect on 7th September.

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    Re the Indiana University announcement; it’s not unheard of for a university to award, on compassionate grounds, a posthumous degree to a student who passed away when just shy of completing the requirements. I just hope IU won’t need to do that for any of its senior class.

  8. 8.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yesterday, China reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases and 0 new domestic asymptomatic case, for the 11th day in a row.

    At Ürumqi in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region, there are currently 20 confirmed and 7 asymptomatic cases, with no cases in serious condition. 2 confirmed cases recovered yesterday and were discharged from hospitals, 2 asymptomatic cases were released from medical quarantine. There are 381 close contacts remaining under quarantine and medical observation.

    Yesterday, China reported 11 new imported confirmed cases, 13 imported asymptomatic cases:

    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 6 confirmed cases, 3 Chinese nationals each returning from Saudi Arabia (via Baku) and Spain; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Saudi Arabia (via Baku) and Spain
    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 3 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Suriname, Gabon and Iraq; 3 asymptomatic cases, 2 Chinese nationals each returning from Tanzania and 1 from Iraq
    • Shenzhen in Guangdong Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Mexico
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 2 confirmed  cases (previously asymptomatic), both Chinese nationals returning from Singapore; 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines (via Phnom Penh)
    • Xiamen in Fujian Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines
    • Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Singapore
    • Zhengzhou in Henan Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from the Philippines
    • Heze in Shandong Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Ethiopia; note that Heze is pretty far away from main ports of entry (Jinan in Shandong Province and Zhengzhou in Henan Province), so probably not a case of someone arriving at Zhengzhou or Jinan and diverted to Heze for quarantine, how did this case pass through the entry testing and quarantine, this case bears watching

    Today, Hong Kong reported 8 new cases, 7 from local transmission, 4 of whom do not have clear source of transmission.

  9. 9.

    Argiope

    @Martin: what if the antigen tests they are adding detect IgM, not IgG?  I’m not sure which antigens they are testing for, but IgM is current infections and IfG is current immunity, right? Also, if you retire, please run for something where you get to shape policy.  We need you—or at least your region does.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Another entry in the annals of Republican governance:

    A new report suggests Governor Parson is ignoring White House Task Force recommendations to institute a statewide mask mandate. The Springfield News Leader says documents show the task force recommended the measure two weeks ago, but Parson still says it’s not necessary.

    If the WH task force said to institute a statewide mask mandate 2 weeks ago, you know it should have been ordered a month before.

  11. 11.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The China National Health Commission announced the plan to further increase RT-PCR testing capacity in advance of the coming flu season in the fall:

    1. Ensure by end of Sept. that there is at least 1 hospital capable of running RT-PCR test for every 1M people, centered around Class 3 hospitals; currently the testing and test processing capacity is highly concentrated at Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, not enough in the townships and the countryside
    2. Ensure that by end of the year all Class 3 and Class 2 medical facilities are capable of processing RT-PCR tests, and continue to develop testing bases and and qualify 3rd party test labs for each city, whose services can be purchased to provide surge capacity in the event of an outbreak
    3. Construct 100 mobile testing labs (likely the FireEye installations from BGI), with 10K / day test capacity each, to serve as 1M / day strategic mobile reserve capacity
    4. Dividing China in to 8 macro regions, each of which would develop 500K – 700K / day reserve testing capacity via public and 3rd party testing labs, which can then be surged to any outbreak within the macro region; the aim is, with the support of the national level mobile testing labs, to be able to test the entire population of any area with an outbreak within 5 – 7 days (presumably with sample pooling)

    It appears that that the central authorities intends to formalize and standardize the responses to any emerging outbreak, especially the mass screening aspect honed through experimentation at Beijing, Dalian, Ürumqi and Shenzhen/Shanwei outbreaks, as well as the first mass screening at Wuhan, and is setting up the infrastructure to do so.  While provincial and national level test resources were surged to each of the outbreaks to support mass screening efforts, they were done on an ad hoc basis. The CCP regime is also still treating response to COVID-19 like a war, even as the population is encouraged to return to normality (with restrictions for the “new normal”).

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Brazil brushing up against 4 million reported cases, India not very far behind; 83,000+ new cases reported there over the last 24 hours.

    Russia, from numbers they’ve released (whose reliability all along has been suspect), has now exceeded 1 million cases reported.

    Numbers change so rapidly it gets hard to keep up. U.S. deaths now over 188,000. If current trends continue will reach 200,000 or more by the Rosh Hashanah holiday mid-month.

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    ‘Urgent’ request sent to states in push for coronavirus vaccine delivery by Nov. 1

    Every pile of Russthuglican Trump trash can get “vaccinated” first.  They’ll probably just be injecting people with bleach.

  14. 14.

    Robert Sneddon

    @NotMax: Russia, from numbers they’ve released (whose reliability all along has been suspect), has now exceeded 1 million cases reported.

    It’s actually funny to watch Russian numbers of (presumably confirmed) cases, every day they get very very close to 5,000 but never quite go over that magic number.

     

    Aug 28 — 4829 new cases

    Aug 29 — 4941 new cases

    Aug 30 — 4980 new cases

    Aug 31 — 4993 new cases

    Sep 1 — 4729 new cases

    Sep 2 — 4952 new cases

    Sep 3 — 4995 new cases

  15. 15.

    Rusty

    “But 58% of Republicans (and 67% of frequent Fox News viewers) think the U.S. government has done a *better* job than governments in other countries.”

    When we want proof that propaganda and advertising work, that you can fool some of the people all of the time, that we are no smarter than our ancestors from the dark ages, we can just point to this.  It’s not a failure of Trump, it’s a failure of our whole culture and society.

  16. 16.

    mrmoshpotato

    Wow, a former Trump voter tells Alisyn Camerota on @NewDay “I feel like voting for him helped kill 180,000 Americans.”

    Please tell me Alisyn followed up with “How so?” and let this person have some self-reflection on what a racist, misogynistic, gullible moron they are!

  17. 17.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: l read that in the paper last night. I’m not one bit surprised,  because he’s playing to his MAGA base. This is the governor who thought we needed a special session so St. Louis police didn’t have to live in St. Louis, and to try to override their elected prosecutor. *rolleyes*

  18. 18.

    TS (the original)

    I have no idea if the Australian economic impact is as bad as the Feds are making it out to be. They have made some massive errors in their financial math over the past few months.

    The Federal government is currently fighting the states who have closed their borders – saying it is doing massive damage to industry and tourism & they should be opened. The states are disagreeing. Putting out these financial figures is how the Feds think they can change people’s minds. Most Australians still think the virus has to be sorted before worrying about economics.

  20. 20.

    Princess

    27%. There’s that number again.

    Also: while it is great that the number of hospitalizations are going down and doctors are able to cure more and more of those who do get hospitalized, that’s only one part of the story. I have several friends who had mild/moderate bouts of covid in March — never saw the inside of a hospital — and who are still, STILL debilitated with weakness, heart problems etc. They seem to be slooowly getting better — one reported being able to go for a five minute walk yesterday. But six months of debilitation is going to take a toll, and who knows what the long-term effects on the heart will be. I feel like covid might end in lowering life expectancy across the board.

  21. 21.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — 101 new confirmed cases, half of which were in the Glasgow area which is now under advisory lockdown, no home visits from unrelated members, no home parties etc. There’s been one death reported from back in August where it has now been confirmed the person who died had COVID-19. Hospitalisation numbers are stable. Test positivity rate is 1.1%.

     

    The R0 figure, referring to the spread of the disease is now rated at 1.4 for Scotland (big error bars on this though). The lower number of cases and the Test and Protect operation means this number is less critical than it was when there were thousands of cases each day but it’s still worrying.

  22. 22.

    Robert Sneddon

    @mrmoshpotato: What’s the significance of the number 5000?

    I’d guess Putin or someone high up in the Russian government has expressed a wish that the numbers don’t go above 5000 as it would look bad. The people collating the data have taken this advice to heart and when the count gets close to that value they stop adding new cases and publish the last number they generated on the spreadsheet.

  23. 23.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has convinced me something that I had suspected, but was not sure of: much high percentage of the population in China is actually in better touch with objective reality, despite the heavy censorship and information suppression and the Great Firewall, than the percentage of population in the US (and the rest of Anglo-sphere ex-NZ, for that matter, but the US is especially bad), despite freedom of speech/press and the open internet. The reasons are as follows, I think:

    1. Precisely because of the censorship and suppression, the vast majority of people in China are predisposed to be skeptical of narratives promulgated by the CCP regime, suspects that information is being withheld from them, and will generally reference their own lived experiences before trusting government pronouncements (at all levels) and state media; a lot more Americans are more credulous of what they are fed from MSM or social media, less cognizant of the inevitable biases and limitations of these sources (whether the biases are caused by ideology, profit motive or ignorance), there seems to be an unconscious faith that freedom of the press means a truth-telling press (the truth is indeed, out there for you to find, but you have to dig through a lot of chaff to get to it)
    2. General respect for knowledge and expertise by the vast majority of the Chinese population, versus rampant anti-intellectualism in large segments of US society
    3. Information asymmetry: tens of millions of Chinese have close relatives living overseas, or have lived overseas themselves, tens to hundreds of millions of Chinese have physically ventured outside of Mainland China, circumventing the Great China Firewall is not difficult with VPN, language is a more formidable barrier but anyone with high school and university education in China has some facility with English, most Chinese are curious about the world and are willing to consume news (curated though it may be) about the world; much higher percentage of Americans have a very provincial outlook, despite having much better means to explore the world (either physically or virtually)
    4. The authoritarian/paternalistic information management by the CCP regime also pushes most of the kooky conspiracy theories to the margins, at least when the regime is grounded in reality and respecting science, as is largely the case with COVID-19 response (and Climate Change, for that matter), it means the population is not confused by pseudo-science; (becomes a major drawback when it comes to history, where the CCP regime has a strong motivation to distort/whitewash/ignore); the atomization of information dissemination in the US (where one can comfortably live in epistemic closure) reinforced by rampant anti-intellectualism (“my opinion is as good as your fact”) means people can construct their own realities or live in realities constructed by cynical forces

    Liberal democratic government requires informed and engaged electorate (beyond the periodic national elections) to properly function, that requires much harder work in the modern (post-modern?) information environment, and putting away the comfortable assumptions that has led to complacency and apathy. Unless these underlying forces and schisms are addressed, whatever gains from a change in the party holding the Presidency and Congress could prove temporary. 40+% of Americans are living in a fevered dream, have to get that down to < 30%. There are retrograde and reactionary forces in better functioning liberal democracies (New Zealand, Germany, Scandinavia ex-Sweden, South Korea), too, but they have not yet been allowed to hijack the society and polity.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    @mrmoshpotato:

    It has no real significance. Some government pooh-bah decided that a daily new case number of — oh, let’s see — 5,000 would look bad. So the unspoken signal was propagated through the bureaucracy: falsify fix the data to keep the number below that.

  25. 25.

    Jinchi

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Just three days after I spoke with Jones, Iowa became number one in the United States for COVID-19 cases per capita.

    Trump will consider that a confession. ‘This nurse should be prosecuted!’

  26. 26.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Robert Sneddon: Thoroughout the 00s Putin’s increasingly authoritarian regime at least had the air of competence, compared to the mess of Yeltsin years, anyway. Now, not so much.

  29. 29.

    dnfree

    @YY_Sima Qian: I think that’s a stunning and thoughtful analysis. We are glad we were able to visit China, on an excellent tour, in 2008. That gave us just a small glimpse of the people and history, one that the vast majority of Americans will never have. Thank you for sharing your data and insights.

  31. 31.

    Ken

    @Martin: And adding in the antigen tests is also confusing.

    According to the report, they were adding them to the total number of tests, but not to the total positives. So deliberately increasing the denominator but not the numerator.

    As Joni Ernst would say, “Trump’s numbers look better if you do that, so what do you think they’re doing?”

  33. 33.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Ken: That is why I am much more confident of the numbers produced by China and its provinces than most GOP led states in the US. In Jan., it would have been an unthinkable prospect.

  34. 34.

    OSweetMrMath

    @Amir Khalid:

    This is a dead thread, but I have to say something about universities awarding posthumous degrees. In 2013, a classmate of mine at Boston University was killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. The university awarded her a posthumous degree. In response to this death and others, the university began working on a formal policy on awarding posthumous degrees. Boston University finally published the official policy this year, at which time it was interpreted as a response to coronavirus.

    It is good and right that universities have these policies in place, and I hate that the existence of these policies is being conflated with the poor coronavirus response that many universities have.

  35. 35.

    Sloane Ranger

    UK figures for today.

    There were 1,735 new cases today. Apart from those in Scotland they break down as, England 1,507; Northern Ireland 77 and Wales 50. The trend line continues its slow climb upwards. Wales remains the hardest hit Home Nation with a total of 575.8 per 100,000 population, followed by England at 522.2. The other Nations are in the 300s.

    175,687 tests were processed yesterday out of a capacity of 369,937. There have been complaints that it is becoming more difficult to get a test with people sometimes having to travel up to 100 miles and having to wait longer than 24 hours for the result. Having said that there is a walk in testing centre on the Market Square of my town. Probably because we are on the Government’s watch list of areas with a high and growing incidence.

    There were 13 new deaths, 11 in England and 1 each in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

  37. 37.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Covid-19 has killed more police officers this year than all other causes combined, data show https://t.co/3Qgmmxc8uO

    So much for “blue lives matter”.

    I mean, frankly, “blue lives matter” is a stupid response to “black lives matter” because they’re completely independent statements, and because it allows inference of a despicable lie. After all, we’ve seen cops kill plenty of black people when their lives were in no danger whatsoever.

    It’s a messed up country we live in, where you can’t even get people to agree that cops should prevent deaths *when doing them exposes them to no danger whatsoever*.

  38. 38.

    Royston Vasey

    3rd September
    Two new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in New Zealand today, one in managed isolation and one in the community.
    The case in managed isolation is a woman in her 30s who arrived from the Philippines via Hong Kong on 29 August, and tested positive at day three of her stay at Distinction Hotel in Christchurch.

    The community case has been epidemiologically linked to the Auckland cluster.

    There are seven people with COVID-19 in hospital; five on a ward and two in intensive care.

    With 16 previously reported cases now considered to be recovered – all identified in the community – total active cases are at 115, including 36 people in managed isolation and 79 from the community.

    The total number of confirmed cases in NZ is now 1408 (plus 350 possible cases from April).

    Laboratories completed 10,521 tests yesterday.
    New Zealand had 5 new cases yesterday.

    Total death remain at 22.

  40. 40.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ken:

    Someone never heard of Benford’s Law, especially as applied to second digits.

    Yeah, digit histograms are fun. It’s easy to crudely do by eyeball, too. :-)

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