(07-15-2020, 04:16 PM)Alan V Wrote:Quote:CNN
Hospital data on coronavirus patients will now be rerouted to the Trump administration instead of first being sent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.
The move could make data less transparent to the public at a time when the administration is downplaying the spread of the pandemic, and threatens to undermine public confidence that medical data is being presented free of political interference.
Trump doesn't control the CDC.
As of today, thanks to Trump's action, whatever partial trust I had for the numbers being published -- of positive tests, deaths, recoveries -- is gone.
Official projections say 100K more deaths by election day, but we are now in a scenario of geometric progression, and I haven't trusted the official projections for some time. They are probably quite low.
As of today the mortality rate -- that is, (deaths * 100) / reported cases -- is about 3.9% with roughly 1% of the US populace (admitted / known to be) infected so far.
It took us 4 months to reach 1% infected, let us assume 2 months to reach 2% and another month to reach 3%. That puts us in mid-October with roughly 420,000 dead (that we know of).
The "tell" that reality is far outstripping the numbers will, I think, be that supply chains will collapse again, in a bigger way than they did in March and April.
Even in my county, which is probably one of the safest in the country right now, the damned fools re-opened the local mall. Supposedly they agreed to run the A/C with a greater mix of outside air at higher fan rates, with some form of anti-viral filtration in place, but I think I'd be a fool to imagine that some HVAC engineer inspected and certified this and will check back regularly. AFAIK it is just a matter of the building owner saying they'd do it. And we don't even know how much that will help, even if done. So I think in about a month, this and other actions will insure a resurgence even here.
