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DAY 118: COVID-19 Et Tu, National Geographic?
The screengrab above is from a special National Geographic presentation on the COVID-19 epidemic. There is a lot of good news hinted at in the image, but you wouldn’t know it from the way NG is playing it. For example – completely white space means no one, “0” people have died in that county. And tragic as deaths are, there is only a small fraction of the country that can be described as having a true health emergency. Nevertheless, in line with all the national media, NG is also taking the line that things are uncertain and the contest is still in doubt:
Over the course of April and into early May, the numbers hovered around 25,000 new cases per day, which indicates that the U.S. is riding steady in its peak. New cases are beginning to decline in hard hit areas such as New York City. But the steady overall tally for the nation means spikes are occurring elsewhere.
Assuming that tests are being deployed thoroughly, a regional growth in coronavirus cases signals a breakdown in one of those strategies, while a decrease suggests the virus is being controlled. Here are the top 10 states and territories that have experienced the greatest change—an increase or a decrease—in coronavirus cases and deaths per capita over the last seven days from the previous seven days.
I will ignore case counts because more testing means more cases without any relevant data as to the likelihood of severe illness or death. Sad to say (as I am a member of that group) but a disease that most threatens the population most likely to toddle off in the next decade or so and who is not a significant part of the productive workforce, does not constitute a public health emergency. A public health concern, for sure, but not the basis for draconian measures.
So here are the graphs from NG on the states with the greatest change over the last seven days.
First the increases:
Now the decreases:
Remember that an increase means a “breakdown” in control and a decrease means “the virus is being controlled.” There is a subliminal message in these graphs. Note that the grey segment in the background to the chart reflects the period of time that “stay-at-home” orders are in place. All of the states displayed as having the virus under control have those orders still in place while 3 of the 5 states displayed as having a “breakdown” in control do not have “stay-at-home” orders in place. Message: orders good, no orders bad.
Next, let’s examine the claims in detail by picking two of these states — one “increasing,” one “decreasing” — and comparing them. The two in each group closest in total population are Colorado in the “increase group” and Connecticut in the “decrease” group. Colorado ended its “stay-at-home” orders at the end of April; Connecticut has maintained the “stay-at-home” orders.
Uh oh. This is confusing. Now both are showing “decreases”? No, these charts only cases, not death. It is the text above the graph that talks about Colorado deaths increasing and Connecticut deaths decreasing. But look, when you compare the deaths per 100,000 people Colorado is at 20.8 while Connecticut is at 91.7 — four times as high as Colorado. So having a slight uptick in cases in Colorado is still a better position than a decrease in cases in Connecticut. Let’s take a look at the death rates per 100,000 in all of the greatest increase and decrease states over the last seven days:
|
States with Increasing Death |
Deaths/100K Pop. |
States with Decreasing Death |
Deaths/100K Pop. |
| Delaware |
28.5 |
New York |
141.5 |
| Colorado |
20.8 |
New Jersey |
114.1 |
| New Mexico |
12.1 |
Connecticut |
91.7 |
| Iowa |
10.7 |
Rhode Island |
45.3 |
| Nebraska |
6.5 |
Pennsylvania |
34.6 |
So you can see the comparisons between these groups is fairly meaningless. To say nothing of the fact that the graphs are clean and legible and made to fit the same space even though the scales on the y-axis vary greatly.
The narrative from the media, including NG is that although things may have been worse, they are still bad, and getting worse wherever “stay-at-home” orders are not in place. And if those orders don’t remain in place there will be a second wave, possibly higher than the first. So be afraid. Be very very afraid.
But the people, or at least more and more of them, are not seeing it that way. I’ll admit that if you are a small business owner you want to see good news whether it is there or not. But I think the good news is there and is factual. NG pushes the case fatality rate which is bad if it were equal to the infection fatality rate. But it isn’t and won’t be.
It starts as a trickle and then a flood. The people will be free.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
The “Weekly Change” map is also a little misleading. There’s a big red patch in NW Wisconsin — Burnett County — that looks like OMG! Their death rate is skyrocketing!
Except, until last week they had no cases — one of a handful of counties in Wisconsin that never had a single case. They now have one case and that one person died. So “Weekly Change” makes it look like a hot-spot. It has the same number of deaths-per-100,000 as Dallas Texas! Except it’s a very rural county where the largest municipal area is a village of 1,300 people.
Statistics are funny things.
@rodin you have such a way with words! Something of concern does not constitute an emergency. Can I use that? I think it’s just wrong to continue to feed the public on fear, when it’s so clearly misplaced and exaggerated. The NG and others in their sphere really don’t want this to end.
NG has been woke for a long time.
This pandemic has exposed (pardon the pun) us to two weaknesses that Americans have:
fear and math
By this time, anyone who does analysis of trends in cases, deaths, or testing without reference to per capita and relative changes in those ratios is doing so in bad faith. Early on it was more understandable. Not anymore. Now they do it to deceive.
I don’t suppose it occurred to NG to compare the death rate per county to the percentage of foreign born in each county? I’m pretty sure that they would find a (spurious) correlation. Because the foreign born tend to be lower income, which is (at least somewhat) associated with higher population densities, working in manufacturing, carpooling or using mass transit, etc.
Last week I hit a jackpot in my finances. I doubled my net worth. WOW! When the week started I was worth a quarter. By the end of the week I was worth fifty cents. Better call a real estate agent. I need to buy a new house.
I agree with you. No matter what surveys, the media or the politicians say, life will out. People feel more safe (and are more safe) and are acting that way. In April and March, there was a lot of uncertainty about what was happening. That coupled with the scary situations in Italy and soon New York meant that most of us voluntarily stayed home and followed the orders that were put in place. I was skeptical, but I went along with it because I was willing to believe that I was wrong and that the situation could get out of control very quickly. But now, even though we don’t know everything and probably won’t for rather a long time, we do know some things. Most importantly, we have a better understanding of high risk and low risk populations and situations. Good enough that sensible, free people are making decisions about what level of risk they are willing to take.
The people will be free indeed.
Try this interactive map from the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission to see about the increase or decrease in cases over a 14-day period. Hover over the State and county names will appear, click on them and you can see the data.
I have added it to the line up of websites tracking data that I look at. They are tracking cases like everyone else because that is the most consistently collected and publicized data. As you are aware I discount the case data because more testing more positives. It might be interesting to track the positive rate of tests performed, but not sure what it would tell us other than the level of hypochondria in the population. Positive results from testing is running at around 13%.
The 14-day period that Heritage selected creates greater “smoothing” than the 7-day period used by National Geographic and some others. The benefits of “smoothing” when you have something of long enough duration is that it doesn’t prompt over concern by a potential daily outlier. If it is a trend the “smoothed” value will change, it just won’t change as rapidly the longer the period you select for the smoothing.
New Mexico is listed among the “increasing” states.
Do they mention that 90+% of those increases (cases, hospitalizations, and deaths) are limited to the Navajo Nation, where the State of New Mexico cannot legally do anything? And that despite being the fifth-largest state by area, with 75% of it being completely unaffected, our Governor has refused until Friday to treat differently parts of the state differently?
She’s gunning to be Biden’s VP, so despite what she says in her daily Fakebook addresses, all of her decisions are informed solely by politics, not “Science!”
I used to download NG videos of exotic places and animals, but I stopped when every single one of them had the script “Look at this beautiful place/animal/whatever. It is going to die from global warming.”
Exactly. A society that used to celebrate colonial adventures is now beyond woke.
It’s a long time, in years and thinking, since George Bailey held up a National Geographic and talked about the world. I had NGs for years that I kept. No more.
Can you lend me 20 cents?
Is the NG number on Colorado before or after they cut their COVID death toll count by 20 percent, after they got caught labeling a guy who was found dead with a .55 blood alcohol level as a coronavirus fatality? They’ve now split the category in to people who died of coronavirus, and people who died with coronavirus.
This is why we study political science in college.
Another phenomenon that is appearing, at least in my wife’s hospital and others, is that hospitals are now running Covid tests on every single patient scheduled for surgery now that they are catching up with the previous delays. That is sort of a random testing protocol compared to what we’ve been doing all along, testing only people with Wu Flu symptoms.
I am guessing before, but I do not know for sure.
Indeed, my brother-in-law, who died in 2004, complained about their leftist social engineering slant back then already.
So everything that’s good is portrayed as bad, and everything bad is portrayed as good . . . got it!
But if you don’t wear one you are killing people!
A person’s informal mask provides the same amount of protection for the people around him or her as coughing into his or her elbow would. That’s not nothing. These masks aren’t perfect, but they are helpful because sometimes a cough comes up too quickly for a person to cover his or her mouth in time.
I too am thrilled to see us get back to normal. It’s really wonderful. But the aspect of this virus event that has been nagging me since it began is that we civilized people have had for a century anyway very sophisticated methods and materials and habits to prevent global contagions. Our success has allowed great cities and global travel to flourish. Our good health has been the major impetus for global economic growth and world peace.
I am thrilled that this virus turned out to be not too bad in the end. But I can certainly understand, having watched this story develop since last November, why the world’s leaders freaked out about it. This viral enemy blew through all of our existing defenses, of which there are hundreds. It was wild to watch because it is not a hundred years ago.
In my private thoughts, I think what really stopped it from doing more harm than it did was simply the prayers of millions of people.
By the way, I want to go on the Ricochet record as predicting that next November, we are not going to see a second wave. All indications point to a very hot summer and a very cold winter coming. Those extremes are bad for viruses and insects. So they are good for us. :-)
We can put this behind us now. :-)
Routine disclaimer to fend off inevitable lawsuits.
@misthiocracy posted in the link library this article that says asymptomatic persons can not transmit the Wuhan virus. If correct, doesn’t that undermine the argument for wearing masks?
Everything about this epidemic argues for and against everything else in this epidemic.
I would say no because we still don’t know who has actually had it. It would mean that people who know they have had it don’t need to wear a mask. So that’s good. :-)
The only wave I want to see in November is a red one . . .