The Epidemiolgical Environment For COVID Shutdowns

One of the troubling aspects of following COVID news is the minimal analysis of disease statistics that's appearing anywhere. One allegation that's frequently made, and at least partly confirmed by official spokespeople like Dr Birx, is that, unlike practice with previous epidemics, any death with COVID as a comorbidity -- which could include cancer, diabetes, heart failure, or drug overdose -- is counted as a COVID death. In other cases, apparently not consistent across jurisdictions, any death regarded as "probable" COVID is reported as such, even though no test was conducted. There are also financial incentives for counting every possible death as COVID related.

But even in the face of those uncertainties, there has been little serious analysis of the statistics, even if we accept everything that's reported as correct. For instance, why have the infections and deaths in New York-New Jersey been out of line with the rest of the US by orders of magnitude? As of today, total deaths in New York were 21,845. total deaths in the US were 83,082. We'll stipulate that these numbers are correct. But this is 26% of all US deaths.

Deaths in Los Angeles, the country's second city, have been only 1,613. Los Angeles was a major entry point for visitors from China and elsewhere in Asia. The discrepancy is by an order of magnitude. Why? I haven't seen any serious attempt to explain this anywhere, not in the mainstream media, not on blogs, not on YouTube. I won't try here, but I can ask additional questions based in information I see at the links given. If anyone can correct, expand on, explain, or otherwise reassure me about these questions, I'll be delighted to publish their contributions here.

First, more than half of COVID deaths are in only in five states.

Of the nearly 80,000 deaths from the virus in this country as of Saturday afternoon, nearly 48,700, or about 60 percent, had occurred in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

New York remains the hardest-hit state of any in the country by far, having logged nearly 27,000 deaths as of Saturday afternoon. The next-hardest-hit state, New Jersey, had recorded over 9,100.

. . . Those concentrated numbers are reflective of a virus that seems to strike noticeably heavier in some locations than others, a pattern that has borne out in numerous countries around the world.

When media suddenly turned around in March and decided COVID was a problem, when it had previously minimized it, it published scary maps from the CDC showing the exponential expansion of circles, not just in New York and Philadelphia, but all over the country -- Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Trump sent a field hospital to Seattle and a hospital ship to Los Angeles, neither of which turned out to be needed.

As an English major who's only occasionally worked with statistics, I nevertheless have to ask whether the "models" employed to predict the spread of the virus weren't off simply because one or another variable wasn't accurate, but because the basic exponential model of virus contagion was incorrect. But I'll leave that to more qualified people to discuss in coming years.

Next, it turns out that 39% of COVID deaths have occurred in in nursing homes.

In the US 39% of All US COVID-19 Deaths — or 31,900 — Occurred in Nursing Homes.

Italy also saw 40% of their coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.

At least 4,900 seniors have died in New York State nursing homes from the coronavirus so far this year. Around 20 percent of all New York state deaths were in nursing homes.

New York State, the UK and Italy all had laws that encouraged infected coronavirus patients to be sent back to nursing homes.

If this is correct, it gives entirely new perspective to the idea that "those over 65" are the most vulnerable to COVID. Actually, it's those in nursing homes, who by coincidence happen to be over 65. This is borne out at least anecdotally by recent news. Only on May 10 was New York Gov Cuomo forced to change the state policy of returning patients diagnosed with COVID to nursing homes.

Governor Cuomo is effectively reversing a much-criticized policy directive that was sending seniors treated for COVID-19 back into nursing homes.

A March 25th order from the state Department of Health required all nursing homes to readmit seniors who left to be treated for coronavirus at a hospital.

It appears that the Pennsylvania health secretary was fully aware of the risks in such a policy, since she moved her own mother out of a nursing home when she ordered nursing homes to take in COVID patients.

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine’s mother moved out of a personal care home with the health secretary’s help, after Levine ordered all nursing homes and long-term facilities in the state to accept coronavirus patients from hospitals.

Levine admitted Tuesday to moving the 95-year-old Pennsylvania resident out of her personal care home, which is similar to an assisted living facility although technically distinct.

. . . “My mother is 95 years old. She is very intelligent and more than competent to make her own decisions,” said Levine, who in 2015 became the first transgender cabinet member in Pennsylvania’s state government.

47% of all COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles County are in nursing homes, and half of the cases in the entire state are in nursing homes and probably more.

So although even Dr Birx has said that CDC statistics can't be relied on and may be inflated by as much as 25%, even if we accept those statistics for the purpose of argument, they paint a puzzling picture on one hand of why there is such enormous regional disparity, and on the other a deeply troubling picture that nearly half of all cases have been caused by government policies themselves -- when apparently "public health" officials are fully aware of their effects.

Yet the same "public health" officials want to tell us we can fix the problem by not singing in church.