Coronavirus Outbreak...

[carpedm9587]

Something truly odd is happening. I track RealClearPolitics because I find polling aggregators to be less biased. Their tracking of Trump's job approval shows the expected "rally-around-the-president" bump in late March, and then shows that this bump is eroding in an interesting way: Trump's approval is dropping faster than his disapproval is rising. When you look at the polls that are aggregated, if you know the general history of them, one of them jumps right out: Rasmussen Reports. Since Trump took office, this poll has consistently been about 4-8 points to the right of the mean. Trump has called them out many times because they have actually shown him at dead even (disapprove-approve), or even a point or two ahead, several times. They have shown this even though the aggregate has never been in the positive since the first two days of Trump taking office. Now, all of a sudden, they are a full 8 points to the LEFT of the mean, and the gap has been widening over the past couple weeks.

I have long suspected that Rasmussen was skewed because their poll somehow over-represented the GOP and/or conservatives. If that suspicion is correct, it suggests that Trump's approval within his base is showing a few cracks. While I consider that unlikely, it does fit with what we are seeing here: a strong emphasis on the economy and dismay at the scale of the coronavirus response and its impact on that economy. Trump is clearly currently in "this is bad and we have to respond" mode, and it may well be that some of his base is not happy about it. If that is true, and history repeats, this background noise will continue to rise, Trump will see he is risking his base, and his focus will shift more forcefully to "reopening the economy." If he does that and the feared "second wave" actually manifests, Trump will be between a rock and a hard place. Return to mitigation and risk his base, or respond to the second wave and risk the moderates currently supporting him.

This is going to be very interesting to watch unfold. Black swan indeed...

[carpedm9587]

Which means... what, exactly? Spain, Italy, France, and Germany combined have a population of about 261 million. The US has 328 million.

The rest of your post makes some sense, but I'm not sure why you keep bringing up this "the US has more cases than the next 3-4 countries" when the population difference is so large.

In hindsight, it would probably be better to point out this statistic: we have 4.3% of the world's population and 29.6% of the world's confirmed infections. We just crossed half a million infections and today more than 2,000 people lost their lives.

I think the fiction that the federal response has been "great" is largely laid to rest. Trump is too busy campaigning at his briefings and watching TV between them to do jack.

[oxmixmudd]

In hindsight, it would probably be better to point out this statistic: we have 4.3% of the world's population and 29.6% of the world's confirmed infections. We just crossed half a million infections and today more than 2,000 people lost their lives.

I think the fiction that the federal response has been "great" is largely laid to rest. Trump is too busy campaigning at his briefings and watching TV between them to do jack.

Yep, # new cases looks to be on the high end of our 'static phase'. But deaths are up again.

Testing is up to .7% (7,000 or so per million) but New York has it up to about 2.1%, which is getting close to top 10 territory.

Iceland has tested nearly 1/4 of its population and shows a .4% fatality rate with about 40% of its cases recovered. This is a little low relative to their measured 50% asymptomatic results and S.Korea and Germany's robust testing but not full testing mortalities of 2 to 2.3%. It has 11 in serious/critical condition and about 60% left to recover. Even if 5 of those 11 die, the mortality would still be < 1%. Let's hope not that many more die, and that perhaps real mortalities are < 1%

Typically robust testing produces a low initial mortality that rises. Their logarithmic growth curve is fairly shallow, and given the extent of their testing that makes sense, but it is not flat - which goes to how hard it is to control this thing. Once we are 3 to 4 weeks into their very shallow growth phase we will have a very solid 'real' mortality (as real as it is likely to get anyway).

[carpedm9587]

If there is any headline that tells me just how far many Republicans have fallen from common sense, it's this one.

Republicans Trust Donald Trump More Than the CDC for Medical Information, Poll Shows (Newsweek)

ETA: Actually, I just fell into the trap of falling for a headline without reading the story (so I'm not going to change my post...I made the error...so be it). The headline leaves the impression that, if asked who they trust more - Mr. Trump or the CDC, most Republicans answer Mr. Trump. In reality, it is simply that 80% Republicans trust Mr. Trump - and only 74% named the CDC as a trusted source. The headline isn't false - but it's badly ambiguous. At best, it's bad editing. At worse - it's biased in the extreme.

[Mountain Man]

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020...le-of-meeting/

[firstfloor]

Number of deaths doubling every 4 days, roughly.

[carpedm9587]

This article leaves me fuming. I don't know who the guy was who slashed the tires of the medical staff at a hospital in NYC, but they should throw the flipping book at him!

[Mountain Man]

New study finds that 90% of those requiring hospitalization because of the Chinese crononavirus have preexisting health issues.

...the most common were hypertension (49.7%), obesity (48.3%), chronic lung disease (34.6%), diabetes mellitus (28.3%), and cardiovascular disease (27.8%).

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...ng-conditions/

[carpedm9587]

New study finds that 90% of those requiring hospitalization because of the Chinese crononavirus have preexisting health issues.

...the most common were hypertension (49.7%), obesity (48.3%), chronic lung disease (34.6%), diabetes mellitus (28.3%), and cardiovascular disease (27.8%).

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...ng-conditions/

And this is news? Almost 40% of Americans are obese. Close to 30% are hypertensive. Close to 30% have some form of diabetes. Almost 35% have cardiovascular disease. You'd get a similar distribution for "adults admitted to the hospital for a broken leg." Throw a rock and you have an over 90% probability of hitting someone with an "underlying condition."

Leave it to Brietbart to spin some commonplace numbers into the requisite right-leaning message...

[oxmixmudd]

And this is news? Almost 40% of Americans are obese. Close to 30% are hypertensive. Close to 30% have some form of diabetes. Almost 35% have cardiovascular disease. You'd get a similar distribution for "adults admitted to the hospital for a broken leg." Throw a rock and you have an over 90% probability of hitting someone with an "underlying condition."

Leave it to Brietbart to spin some commonplace numbers into the requisite right-leaning message...

Yet more "this is all fake" misinformation.

[firstfloor]

[firstfloor]

BoJo lives! PM is out of hospital and recovering at home. An Easter miracle?

Death rate in ITU is standing at 51% - not good odds.

[demi-conservative]

BoJo lives! PM is out of hospital and recovering at home. An Easter miracle?

Clap for BoJo, firstfloor!

[JimL]

Clap for BoJo, firstfloor!

Not exactly the Easter Miracle the Trumessiah was dreaming of, but good for Boris.

[carpedm9587]

As predicted...the noise from many on the right is increasing. Fauci is doing harm. The economy is at risk.

Little surprise. The economy is the constant drum on which so many on the right beat, and has been Trump's constant (false) claim to fame. Before the pandemic, the economy was doing fairly well, but Trump had little to do with it. He inherited a strong economy. The numbers reveal it all.

During the second Obama administration, unemployment dropped five points. During Trump's it dropped one point. Of course we can claim that there wasn't much more room for Trump to drop it, but that is because it was already approaching historic lows. Trump is like the pitcher who gets credit for winning the game when he comes in at the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs and strikes out the last batter. The heavy lifting was already done.

Trump's repeated boast during the campaign was that the economy would/should be running at 3% GDP growth, and 4% might even be possible. Take a look at the first 3 years of Trump's term and it averages to 2.5% growth. Run the numbers of exactly the same quarters in Obama's second term, and you get almost exactly the same number. The difference? Trump accomplished it by goosing the economy for a few quarters with a massive tax cut that primarily went to the wealthy, at the cost of an almost $1T annual deficit. Obama accomplished it while simultaneously cutting the deficit from the $1T highs it had reached in 2009 because of the stimulus (a stimulus I mostly opposed).

But Trump is very good at deflecting blame for anything that puts him in a bad light, and taking credit for anything that puts him in a good light, even if he had little/nothing to do with it. And the reality is that many people, in the face of a good economy, vote for the incumbent. So Trump had a shot - until the pandemic and our response gutted the economy. Unemployment is predicted to climb into the 10-20% range, and GDP growth is plummeting. Both the U.S. and the world are almost certainly heading for a recession that could make the 2008/2009 recession pale by comparison. Back then, we had reasonably effective leadership at the helm. Now we have a buffoon...so I'm not particularly optimistic about the likely outcomes. And the buffoon in the oval office knows that he is losing his primary claim to success: the economy. So he has to trade that for human lives - and that puts him between a rock and the proverbial hard place. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

My prediction: he will go in the direction of "open the country" and try to rescue the economy. The result will be a resurgence of the pandemic within the next 6 months. If other countries continue to mitigate the pandemic and are successful, when our pandemic resurges, the U.S. will be isolated from other countries who do not want the pandemic to spread back into their countries, and our economy will be trashed again - and perhaps worse.



ETA: I should note I also oppose most of the current stimulus package. Fiscal responsibility has gone completely out the window. The party that talks so much about "stealing from the rich" is largely silent while we steal from generations that are not even born yet and cannot object. So too are Democrats. It's criminal, IMO.