[QUOTE=ewmayer;550989]When you post the data a few few weeks hence, I expect a significant uptrend starting around mid-June, though death rates tend to lag case-count ones due to various reasons:

[URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/why-covid-death-rate-down/613945/"]Why Is the COVID-19 Death Rate Down?[/URL] - The Atlantic

At least on the case-counts front, in my and surrounding SF Bay Area counties, the numbers have absolutely exploded in the past 5-6 weeks, precisely what one would expect from early-June wide-scale reopenings which are proving waaaaaaay premature and a complete disaster, public-health-wise.[/QUOTE]

[URL="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/why-covid-death-rate-down/613945/"]Why Is the COVID-19 Death Rate Down?[/URL] is an excellent article.

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/[/URL] seems to confirm that US death rates are starting to rise again.

I agree that the reopening in the US started way too early.

Some more evidence that the US corona death rate started to rise again:
[url]https://covidtracking.com/blog/weekly-update-unchecked-new-cases-turn-deadly[/url]

If you're not familiar with Hillsdale College or its publication [i]Imprimis[/i], a recent article bears on public policy regarding COVID-19, with Black Lives Matter thrown in for good measure. That link up ahead -- your next stop, [url=https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/four-months-unprecedented-government-malfeasance/]The Twilight Zone![/url]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;551273]If you're not familiar with Hillsdale College or its publication [i]Imprimis[/i], a recent article bears on public policy regarding COVID-19, with Black Lives Matter thrown in for good measure. That link up ahead -- your next stop, [url=https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/four-months-unprecedented-government-malfeasance/]The Twilight Zone![/url][/QUOTE]

From the article:

"While the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has been demographically circumscribed and lower than the previous flu pandemics of 1968, 1956, and 1918 when adjusted for population..."

"has been" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, given that the 3 previous pandemics mentioned are over, whereas Covid-19 is still completely out of control in the U.S., with no vaccine in (credible) sight. Wikipedia on the 1957-1958 pandemic (1956 is wrong, there *may* have been some early cases in China in late 1956 but evidence is contradictory):
[quote]By June 1957 it reached the United States, where it initially caused few infections.[2] Some of the first affected were United States Navy personnel at destroyers docked at Newport Naval Station, as well as new military recruits elsewhere.[9] The first wave peaked in October (among children who returned to school) and the second wave, in January and February 1958 among elderly people, which was more fatal.[2][10] Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman was alarmed by pictures of those affected by the virus in Hong Kong published in The New York Times. He obtained samples of the virus from a United States Navy doctor in Japan. The Public Health Service released the virus cultures to vaccine manufacturers on 12 May 1957, and a vaccine entered trials at Fort Ord on 26 July and Lowry Air Force Base on 29 July.[9] The number of deaths peaked the week ending 17 October with 600 reported in England and Wales. The vaccine was available in the same month in the United Kingdom.[3] Although it was available initially only in limited quantities,[10][3] its rapid deployment helped contain the pandemic.[2][/quote]
IOW, yes, a frightening bug, but a vaccine was quickly developed - despite the near daily "X shows promising results for experimental vaccine Y!" raging-optimism-headlines, there are no such prospects on the near term horizon for Covid-19. Completely different virus family than flu - we *do* know that Coronavirii are responsible for roughly 1/3rd of "common cold" cases, and for those immunity lasts at most ~6 months. There is AFAICT no good reason to believe the C-virus causing the pandemic will prove any different in this regard. (Lots of "but the spike protein" hopes, but studies have now been done w.r.to whether than elicits a more promising immune response, answer is no.) The Wikipedia article only mentions worldwide death estimates, which in population-adjusted terms are similar to Covid-19, and again, the latter is still raging, despite 60+ years of medical advances in the meantime. This [url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/united-states-vaccine-1957-flu-pandemic-180974906/]Smithsonian Magazine article[/url] from last month has a U.S. death estimate:
[quote]The pandemic of 1957-58 ultimately caused 1.1 million deaths worldwide, and it follows the 1918 crisis as the second-most severe influenza outbreak in U.S. history. Some 20 million Americans were infected, and 116,000 died. Yet researchers estimate that a million more Americans would have died if not for the pharmaceutical companies that distributed 40 million doses of Hilleman’s vaccine that fall, inoculating about 30 million people. His swift and perceptive response to the virus led one expert to predict, according to the New York Times, that Americans could look forward “to the time when common virus diseases will be preventable and treatable and even curable.”[/quote]
U.S. population has roughly doubled in the last 63 years, so the current U.S. death count of 142,000 is rapidly approaching the above on a per-population basis. Again, to blithely compare numbers for historical and still-ongoing events is gross misuse of statistics. The Hillsdale article is from the May/June edition, but the trends were already quite clear by then, even absent the ensuing "reopening was premature and a disaster" realization. The author, Heather Mac Donald, is either a liar or a fool. Note her affiliation, the "Manhattan Institute" - I immediately smelled some kind of Big Capital-run policy stink tank. Yep: per [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute]Wikipedia[/url]:
[quote]The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative 501(c)(3) non-profit American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in New York City in 1977 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey.[1][4][5] The organization describes its mission as to "develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility".[/quote]
And co-founder William Casey was CIA director under Ronald Reagan, in case you were wondering where the smell of brimstone is coming from.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;551300]The author, Heather Mac Donald, is either a liar or a fool. Note her affiliation, the "Manhattan Institute" - I immediately smelled some kind of Big Capital-run policy stink tank. Yep: per [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute]Wikipedia[/url]:

And co-founder William Casey was CIA director under Ronald Reagan, in case you were wondering where the smell of brimstone is coming from.[/QUOTE]
I would have thought "Hillsdale College" and [i]Imprimis[/i] would have been sufficient for that.

Thanks for the specific critiques. When I read the assertion of "widespread rioting," is about when I thought of [i]The Twilight Zone![/i] and figured it might be worth it as entertainment value to post the link.

I'm old enough to remember the "long hot summer" of 1967 which featured many race riots. I still remember hearing the voice of H. Rap Brown saying words to the effect that it was "time that Cambridge exploded."

In 1968 there was rioting in Europe as well as in the good ol' USA, some of it connected with the Vietnam War. There were also race riots in many US cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968. [i]That[/i] was widespread rioting.

Robert F. "Bobby" Kennedy was running for President, and I remember him breaking the news of MLK's assassination to his audience during a campaign stop. RFK was himself assassinated shortly after winning the California primary that year. LBJ's VP H[sup]3[/sup] became the Democratic Party candidate without having been in any of the primaries, winning the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There was a lot of street entertainment associated with that convention. In November, Richard Nixon was elected. His ghost is, no doubt, chuckling malevolently at the current situation in the good ol' USA.

Today's laugh-out-loud flashback: 27 January, Forbes magazine [url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/01/27/the-countries-best-and-worst-prepared-for-an-epidemic-infographic/#4f4ed2605799]ranks the US #1 in the world as the country "Best Prepared to Deal With a Pandemic"[/url].

Somehow they seem to missed the not-exactly-new completely dysfunctional greed-driven for-profit medical/industrial/insurance money-extraction paradigm, the government of, by and for the Big Money interests and the military-industrial-surveillance-media complex (not new under Trump, just made that much worse), and the toxic "My Freedoms" national jingoism and decades, nay centuries, of exceptional-nation propaganda which have so many USians believing that commonsense public health measures are an unlawful intrusion on their precious individual liberties. Well, with regard to not containing the pandemic, we're exceptional all right - by this time next year the odds are quite good that the covid-19 death toll with be over 1 million, and for every death there will be many serious hospitalizations and "recovered" patients with lifelong adverse health sequelae as a result. (A just-out German study shows serious heart damage among a frighteningly high % of the 'recovered', including the young. Other studies show similar results for lung function.)

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;550875]The numbers are being updated routinely. The peak is now >24,000 above the norm for that week.[/QUOTE]
I feel that the link that I have been using, while lagging, may soon be much more reliable in the future. Below are the deltas for the deaths for the weeks indicated vs last week (current reporting week is 30 and is less than 50% complete, 29 is supposed to be in the 80's but is more like 65%)
[CODE]19 232
20 305
21 280
22 390
23 651
24 1135
25 1485
26 1911
27 3485
28 8204
29 21284
[/CODE]
The attached file is a graph generated on the site. While aimed at Flu and Pneumonia, COVID looks like it is getting caught as a happenstance. It shows a second peak developing.

[URL="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53598965"]The number of deaths from coronavirus in Iran is nearly triple what Iran's government claims, a BBC Persian service investigation has found.[/URL]

Where else, I wonder?

PRK might fall into that.

And the recent Trump reporting fiasco is an attempt at it.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;552430]PRK might fall into that.[/QUOTE]

Possibly, but one time being a paranoid autocracy with extremely tight border security and few contacts outside one's immediate neighbors comes in handy is during a pandemic. So their govt is likely lying about the numbers, but OTOH there is no reason to believe the numbers would be especially high.

On the pointless ritual of cleaning ...
 

[url]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/scourge-hygiene-theater/614599/[/url] [quote]COVID-19 has reawakened America’s spirit of misdirected anxiety, inspiring businesses and families to obsess over risk-reduction rituals that make us feel safer but don’t actually do much to reduce risk—even as more dangerous activities are still allowed. This is hygiene theater.[/quote]Real risks are scary, please don't explain them to me. Instead, give some activity to do, no matter how pointless, and make me [i]feel[/i] safer. Thanks. :tu: