A challenge that will never be accepted!

For two days... I would ask everyone to ignore every website and news article regarding the Coronavirus epidemic and simply focus on watching the daily Coronavirus task force briefings and monitor the new numbers put out by the CDC.

Now why would you do this? Why not continue to get your news at Political.wire, Fox News, or the NY Times? Simple:

Because it make logical sense to listen to the actual experts who are in charge of this. Let's make no mistake here folks, there is literally nobody else in this country that knows more about this virus and the Government response than the task force. Nobody. If  you think others do....

Well you are not just wrong, but willfully being stupid.

The truth is the more I read the uninformed, politically motivated, and often simply dishonest reporting of the virus (from both sides) the more it makes my blood boil. Every person who spent a day in a medical class believes themselves to be the expert. They're not. Every member of the media acts as if they have some special inside knowledge of thing. They don't. Ninety percent of what some of these people write is wrong. The other ten percent is a lie. There is literally no reason to read them or listen to them. Not when there are real adults who can provide you with real information.

Let's start with Dr Fauci. Quite literally he is ranked as the top epidemiologist. Not in the country, but in the entire world. This makes him the MOST qualified person on the planet. If he has an opinion and someone else has a different opinion. Guess what? You should listen to Fauci. If you are not listening to him, you are literally purposely choosing to listen to someone inherently less qualified. This goes for Dr Birx as well. A thirty year veteran in battling infectious diseases who was appointed to lead our nation's efforts to fight AIDs by former President Obama. Where Fauci's expertise is purely medical, Birx brings the perspective of being a former Ambassador and having some experience on the political side of things.

In terms of Government responses. I promise you it will be extremely interesting for you to watch the briefing. Everything you hear people "demand" that the task force should be doing? Guess what, they probably are. Today, a reporter ask why they do not take the advice of some Governor who demands that there should be one person in control of getting equipment to where it needs to go. Well it was Mike Pence who got up and explained that this person already exists, was appointed on day one, and explained what this person was doing (which turned out to be exactly what the critic suggested they should be doing). The person in question actually happens to be the head of FEMA (meaning getting supplies where they need to go is this person's full time job).

You will actually hear real numbers (not fake numbers). You will hear real analysis based on the work of top medical and statisticians (not opinions from people who normally would write about politics). You will hear about what is happening from the people who are doing them. Not hearing lies from people like Governor Cuomo who continues to lose his own supplies or apparently isn't aware he has warehouses full of stuff from the Federal Government that he believes he never got. There are reasons why many Governors complain. Because they all want a much larger portion of what is available than the experts believe is justified.

Oh... and they just want to complain. Look at what complaining has done for Cuomo's approvals?

Let's be clear. We all have an opinion and perhaps even some expertise. I figure I have enough statistical competence to examine whether or not the models are turning out to be accurate in terms of real time numbers. But I don't  have a fucking clue about any of the variables that go into it. I don't pretend (as a computer engineer and part time blogger) that I know something important. I don't believe that I am more qualified than the experts on the task force to wield any sort of opinion.

It's easy to sit back and criticize. It also does about 90% more harm than good.

If anyone of you actually believes that a blogger such as myself, or John Hinderacker, or Stacy Matthews, or Taegan Goddard or any political writer from any news publication actually has any real expertise to question the policies of the task force?

Sorry... but you are just an idiot!

We should be heading for a big increase in deaths over the next week...

If the models are correct, then the amount of reported coronavirus deaths should be skyrocketing this week. Based on these models, we should be seeing 1000 deaths a day starting tomorrow and by this weekend we should be flirting with around 1500. That number is projected to continue to go up and by the models, deaths will be surpassing 2000 a day by Easter.

Yesterday there was 573 deaths according to the WorldOMeter website. Those numbers tend to be a little higher than the CDC website (as they accept certain media reports as well as official numbers), but 573 was the highest to date. This actually followed a  drop in deaths on Sunday (363)  after 525 reported on Saturday.

Now models are models are models are models and are only as good as the assumptions being made. The model I am tracking has us coming in slightly "under" the 100 to 200 thousand deaths being talked about by Dr Fauci and Dr Birx. So it could very well understate what will actually happen (if we are to accept the conclusions of the task force). That being said, it's still entirely possible that our numbers will not reach what the models suggest, either because the curve is flattening or being pushed back.

As I continue to state, any good mathematician, statistician, and/or modeling expert will continue to adjust their models as new data comes in. It may turn out that these initial estimates are just that... estimates. But we are obviously too early in this process to know anything for sure.

Pelosi speaking out of both sides of her mouth!

Trump didn't take it seriously, but about five weeks ago she was encouraging people to get out and mingle in Chinatown!

Pelosi, touring San Fran’s Chinatown Feb. 24: “We do want to say to people, come to Chinatown, here we are … come join us” pic.twitter.com/0FEOq9t4VM

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 29, 2020

Maybe New Yorkers could sue Bill De Blasio ??

De Blasio on Feb. 14: The Coronavirus

"Coronavirus should not stop you from going about your life, should not stop you from going to Chinatown and going out to eat. I’m going to do that today myself."

The new standard has been set!

Anything under 200K deaths and Trump is a superhero! 

Well there we have it. Now that we know the expectations and we know that obviously "nature" has made the determination that we were cursed with a deadly disease, at no fault of our own... we can now set realistic goals. 

As the left has repeated, his is the worst virus since the black plague and will be killing millions across the globe and at least a couple hundred thousand here in the United States. Our job is to make sure that our toll does not exceed the top end of the "prediction". 

Good thing we have a leader who be either blamed or praised.

If we end up with a quarter million deaths, then it will be clear that we did something wrong and that ultimately the buck stops at the President. But if we keep this under control and we do not reach the higher end of the predicted spectrum, then logically it will because we did the right things and again the buck stops at the President.

So there you have it. 

• 200K or more deaths and Trump is a goat. 
• Less than 200K and Trump is a Superhero! 

No sense in arguing about anything else in the meantime.

This is the basically the same chart being used to make the calculation of 100-200K deaths

Based on the chart we should know pretty quickly how accurate this prediction is:

click to enlarge

You probably have to click on this to more accurately see the chart, but it shows the amount of deaths per day going up dramatically over the next few days and peaking around Easter. Keeping in mind that if this chart remains accurate, the amount of deaths is calculated around 80,000 (but could obviously go much higher).

Is 80,000 a good or bad number? That depends. I am sure some people would be happy with it (and argue that it's not that far out of line with a bad cold and flu season*) while others will argue that it's the second coming of the plague. That being said, it is nowhere near the doom day scenarios that many people suggested.

Is it realistic? It appears to be.

It's actually pretty close to what Neil Ferguson from the Imperial College suggested when he dropped their 500,000 projection down to 20,000 in the U.K. (which turns out to be approximately one death per 3000).  That exact figure turns out to be 109,000 if you take the US population as the 327 million suggested and divide by 3000.

Moreover, the old 500,000 number in the UK would also project statistically to approximately 2.7 million deaths here in the United States, which was in line with other suggestions for the US and just a little more than the worst case scenarios suggested today (had we done nothing).

Dr Brix was asked a while ago about about the 2 million plus number and made a similar statement to the extent that 2 million plus deaths was a realistic case if we made no real efforts to stop the spread. Sounds like this isn't much different than Dr Fauci and Dr Brix have been assuming all along. I think they probably used these projection models with some real time numbers in order to convince the President that keeping things in place could save lives to the tune of tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

Using the exit poll strategy, we can now start to run the day to day data with what these charts are expecting us to see. If we suddenly start seeing 3-5K deaths a day, then we are probably looking at a much higher number. If things are still in the hundreds into the later parts of next week, then perhaps we can keep it under even the 80K number that is being suggested by this particular chart.

* CDC projected 80,000 deaths from the 2017-2018 flu season

New York is it's own situation

So take a look at some numbers:

The national numbers have been pretty consistent. Approximately 84-85 percent of Americans tested come back as negative. 15-16  percent of Americans come back positive. Of those positive results, 14 percent end up hospitalized and about 1.7 percent end up dead.

• New York is responsible right now for 43 percent of all positive results and 59 percent of all hospitalizations and 35% of all deaths.
• In New York the amount of testing coming back positive is a stunning 33 percent. That is over  triple what the rest of the country is seeing.
• In New York the percentage of those coming back positive are almost twice as likely to be hospitalized than those testing positive in the rest of the country.
• If you look at the rest of the country and exclude the New York figures, the percentage of positive test results drops to 11 percent and the amount of those people hospitalized drops to 10%. 

Now the good news coming out of New York is that there do not seem to be any more deaths than the rest of the country. In fact, their percentage of deaths are actually slightly lower than the percentage of deaths for the rest of the country. Not sure what to attribute that to at this point, but it might be nice to believe that their use of the experimental medications is helping. 

The news media did this to themselves....

and are gladly willing to continue to undermine their own credibility over their hatred of the bad orange man

Gallup - approval of their handling of the coronavirus:

Hospitals 88-10
State governments 82-17
Your employer 82-14
Trump 60-38
Congress 59-37
News media 44-55

Of all the groups they polled, nothing rates lower than the news media, and Trump beats them by 16% in approval.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) March 26, 2020

Don't look now...

Post-ABC poll shows Trump and Biden in a competitive race for the White House

President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden are in a tightly competitive race for the White House in the November general election, with the president gaining ground on his likely challenger over the past month as the coronavirus pandemic convulses the country, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Trump has moved from what was a seven-point deficit in February to a near tie with Biden today. Among registered voters, Biden is favored by 49 percent and Trump by 47 percent. Trump is more trusted to handle the economy, while Biden is more trusted to deal with health care. When voters are asked whom they trust more to confront the coronavirus outbreak, the difference between the two is statistically insignificant.

           (Note: Trump led Biden 47-43 in confronting coronavirus crisis) 

Despite the rapid consolidation around Biden among a broader Democratic electorate, the former vice president suffers from an enthusiasm gap when contrasted with the incumbent president. More than 8 in 10 (86 percent of) registered voters who currently side with Trump say they are enthusiastic about their support. That compares with 74 percent of Biden supporters.

More telling is the gap in the intensity of that enthusiasm, which can translate into who turns out to vote and who might not. Among registered voters who support Trump, 55 percent say they are very enthusiastic about backing him while 32 percent say they are somewhat enthusiastic. Among Biden’s supporters, a far smaller 28 percent say they are very enthusiastic while 46 percent are somewhat enthusiastic.

These things are all about momentum. If Biden is in what is basically a statistical dead heat here in March, then he is in serious trouble. The concept of Biden just having to "stay alive" is much like a boxer who has accumulated a lead and just needs to do little more than not get knocked out. Much easier to avoid getting knocked out than having to step up and win more rounds.

But at this point it now looks like Biden will have to make something happen (not just hang on) in the coming months. If he continues to hide (as he has) while Trump continues to lead (as he has) then these numbers are going to drop further for Biden. He's going to have to actually win some of these later rounds if he wants to win a general election.

But the bigger problem is that Biden is still Biden and he has never been either a smart guy or a talented politician. He has lost his previous attempts at the Presidency for a reason. He lost early on in retail states to Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg for a reason.There are also allegations of sexual assault that so far has flown under the radar, and let's not forget that Burisma is still a thing and Hunter Biden is still a problem.

So if he hides, he loses ground. If he steps out into the public, he probably loses more ground. Moreover, there is a growing sentiment within the Democratic Party that Biden might not have actually been the smart choice, and many are scrambling to find away around this. Sanders is now challenging that the Debates should continue and that he plans on taking his campaign all the way to the conventions.

Oh... and just keep some additional facts clear. These are still registered voter polls. If  you look at the enthusiasm gap and the problems the Democrats have had pulling in the young voters to their primaries this year, this number is going to swing when the pollsters start calculating "likely voters". Not to mention, Trump can probably lose the popular vote by two or three percent and still wins the electoral college.

Sunday Funnies

Former Obama Official peddles complete lie on MSNBC

Claims that hospitals in Michigan had run out of ventilators and were now having to determine who would live and who would die. 

Now it wasn't just MSNBC that started peddling this disturbing fake news. Reporters from MSNBC parent NBC news and other media outlets repeated it as well. All because some guy (whom the media adores because he was with the Obama administration) misrepresented a memo from a single hospital in Michigan.

The hospital in question put out a memo that provided guidance if they ever came to a situation where they would run out of resources. This was a prudent thing to do and I am sure nearly every Hospital has some sort of internal policies in place for this sort of emergency situation.

Of course Andy Slavitt was "still" tweeting about how this hospital had run out of respirators after the Hospital had not once, but twice made official public statements saying that no, they were not out of respirators, nor where they even near being out of respirators. The fact that this went on (in spite of the denials of the actual hospital) is what makes people with large twitter followers so dangerous. Why does a guy like Slavitt have so many followers? Because people want to hear news like this (true or not). 

Proof positive that the word "trust" means something different in liberal circles than in conservative circles. In my world I trust people who tell the truth (whether it's what I want to hear or not). In liberal circles they will only trust people who tell them what they want to hear (whether it is true or not).

Btw... this guy (who is not an epidemiologist) is tweeting pretty much non-stop on how to stop the spread of coronavirus. Most of it includes a national order to shut everyone in, the use of the Defense Production Act to federalize everything, and the unrealistic concept that we should be able to test 350 million Americans who we have ordered to stay home within a day or two. It's almost as if he believes that there is a coronavirus testing replicator (like in Star Trek) and that there isn't any real issue with finding a few hundred million of them overnight and then somehow administering them to everyone. To say he he (like so many of these people) are large on theory and short on the details of execution is an understatement.

Trump's Coronavirus response approvals!

A reminder for whiny hateful liberals who desperately want to believe Trump is fucking this up!

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	Approve	Disapprove	Spread
RCP Average	3/11 - 3/25	--	52.1	43.4	+8.7
ABC News/Wash Post	3/22 - 3/25	845 RV	52	45	+7
FOX News	3/21 - 3/24	1011 RV	51	46	+5
Economist/YouGov	3/22 - 3/24	1170 RV	48	46	+2
Reuters/Ipsos	3/18 - 3/24	3763 RV	49	44	+5
Gallup	3/13 - 3/22	1020 A	60	38	+22
Emerson	3/18 - 3/19	1100 RV	49	41	+8
Axios-Harris	3/17 - 3/18	2019 A	56	44	+12

The big lies about Coronavirus and the response...

There have been several media driven lies that continue to be repeated ad nauseum, facts be damned. But a few of them really stick out.

1) Trump is not listening to the science: This is probably the biggest and most transparently visible lie that is being spread. The fact is that every day Trump gets up and does a briefing in which life long medical experts are brought up to speak. The NIAID and CDC is made up of people specifically dedicated to the spread and control of infectious diseases. Both Dr Fauci and Dr Birx have decades of experience in the very field which make them "most" qualified to understand the coronavirus, which is why they are spearheading the efforts.

The media has attempted to make a big deal out of every little thing that appears to be a disagreement.  They especially like to demand that Trump saying things like he would like things open by Easter to be "ignoring science". But Trump has continuously touted efforts of  the Task Force and to date Trump has gone along with their recommendations 100%. The President is obviously being lobbied both by the medical experts as well as his financial experts. As President, it will ultimately be his call as to how to best balance the two.

But for now, the CDC and coronavirus task force have been calling the shots. Both Dr Fauci and Dr Birx have publicly pushed back on the idea that Trump is not listening to them or that there are fundamental issues of disagreement.

The reality is that both legitimate and arm chair medical "experts" have come out of the woodwork here. Not all of them are going to agree which makes it impossible for anyone to listen to "everyone". So while many of our nation's Governors have decided to rely on medical guidance from people other than the NIAID, CDC, and the task force, that doesn't mean that the career epidemiologists who are advising the task force are still not the gold standard for whom people "should" be listening to. Perhaps Governors (like ours who keeps claiming that coronavirus is destined to infect a vast majority of Minnesotans and kill thousands) are the ones listening to the wrong experts.

2) The United States is "botching" the testing: Let's be perfectly clear here. There isn't another country on the planet who has come further in a quicker amount of time as it pertains to testing. We started our extensive testing when American casualties was still under 300. Name a previous infectious pandemic where our reaction and mass widespread testing started prior to a massive amount of people already dead.

In the past week we tested nearly well over a half million people (526K) and there is no longer a huge "backlog" of symptomatic Americans who are not getting testing. More Americans have now been tested than in any other country. We have now begun testing people who are symptom free and will soon be offering simple testing kits that can be received through a drive in system. These things don't happen overnight, and much of the testing accomplishments of other countries have been overstated.

As explained in the task force briefing yesterday, we are creating testing kits at a rate that we will soon be able to send these kits to other places in the world to help them assist in their testing. Since when does the country who is "botching" the testing have the ability to provide assistance to the rest of the world (many who obviously did it better in the eyes of liberals).

3) The Federal Government is withholding medical supplies from States: Give a Governor a podium and a media audience and it's amazing what can happen. So far Andrew Cuomo has blamed the Federal government for much of his own mismanagement. Cuomo had ignored his own experts who demanded that they were short of medical supplies. He blamed others for losing the medical supplies they did actually have. He demanded that the Federal Government response on respirators were woefully short because he needed 30,000 of them (which was one of the things that Dr Birx pushed back on). Quite frankly, he has done very little lately but complain. Which is apparently a trait that many Democrats admire (the ability to point fingers and complain) because many believe he should replace Joe Biden as their nominee. If he held his breath until he turned blue and stomped his feet really hard, he might be just appointed King Democrat.

Others demanded that the President should use his executive powers to force private industry to help out, until he actually did. Now these same people are questioning exactly why did did so with General motors. You cannot make this shit up folks. The reality is that Ford, Tesla, General Electric, 3M, and a list of others too long to list have stepped up to assist in making medical supplies that will go out to the various states. Is every state going to get everything they want? Not if Cuomo continues to believe he needs a respirator for every confirmed case of coronavirus. But they will get the lion share of what they need, and none of that would be possible if we simply relied on the Federal Government (rather than coop with private industry as the President has).

As it stands, what we are doing right now is totally unprecedented. Moreover, we are doing it at a time when we are very early (according to the casualty rates) in the spread. When was the last time our Government sent FEMA, the National Guard, the Federal Military to actually build temporary hospitals or move large military hospital ships to areas that need them. Did the Obama Biden Administration do these things when tens of thousands were dying from the Swine flu? Certainly we have never done anything closely resembling anything like this at a point where we have a casualty rate sitting at only  0.0005% of the country.

Bottom line: The response of the task force has been nothing short of spectacular on this. The medical experts advising the task force are the very best in the field of epidemiology and there is no good reason to be listening to anyone else at this point. We are currently the leaders in testing, and are developing even better testing that should help not just Americans but the entire world. The manner in which our private sector has stepped up to assist with medical supplies is nothing short of heroic.

Instead of whiny liberals complaining about everything because their personal hatred of Trump and political aspirations come first, perhaps they should just say thank you to everyone involved in this.

Can liberals keep their story straight?

To quarantine or not to quarantine. That is the question.
More backtracking by liberals? 

Sweeping statewide quarantine orders may not have been the most effective strategy to combat the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded on Thursday, as he weighed plans to restart the economy.

 

“We closed everything down. That was our public health strategy,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “If you re-thought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don’t know that you would say ‘Quarantine everyone.’”

It’s the third day in a row that Cuomo has publicly mused about quarantines and how best to eventually restart the Empire State’s shattered economy.

“I don’t even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people, [it] was probably not the best public health strategy,” he said. “The younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.”

So now a couple days after lambasting every part of the country that didn't follow his lead, and specifically attacking the President for not forcing everyone to follow his lead... he is now admitting that perhaps his strategy wasn't the best one after all?

Meanwhile, Joe Biden basically is taking the stance that whatever Trump and the task force has done, is currently doing, and will do in the future has, is, and will be dead wrong, and so he would have done everything differently (if not completely the opposite). The only saving grace for Biden is that pretty much nobody is paying attention to anything he has to say (and shouldn't we if people actually believe he is qualified to be President?).

Basically the left has bet the farm that this coronavirus crisis would hit epic levels, the country would blame Trump, and that Democrats would reap the political benefits in November. To assure their political success, liberals have discounted pretty much anything and everything the President and task force has said and in many cases just took off in the opposite direction. Obviously you cannot blame the President if you do not distance yourself from him every chance you can.

The reality here is that if this virus does not reach the epic levels that many doomsayers state and most liberals tout as the scientific and expert opinions that Trump (and apparently the life long epidemic experts at the CDC) are not following... then don't these people all turn out looking like fools?

I think deep down people are going to eventually try to determine who was more right and who was more wrong. Is this going to be a killer virus of a lifetime that infects tens of millions of Americans and kills hundreds of thousands, or will it be closer in scope to a seasonal bug that infects and kills in the same range as a seasonal flu bug.

Time will tell. But it seems sad that liberals have attached their bandwagon to the predictions and generally hope of massive sickness and death.

ABC News obviously believes these words taste horrible!

Coronavirus impacts: Disrupted lives, elevated stress, and soaring worry: Poll 

In the political arena, President Donald Trump’s overall job approval rating advanced to his best on record in ABC/Post polls, 48%, even as 58% say he acted too slowly in the early days of the outbreak. This is the first time since he took office that Trump’s approval rating has exceeded disapproval of his work, 46% (though the difference isn’t statistically significant).

Fifty-one percent approve specifically of Trump’s handling of the outbreak; 45% don’t.

That said, there are substantial risks to the president. Trump’s overall approval rating drops among people who are more worried about catching the coronavirus, report severe local economic impacts, say their lives have been especially disrupted or know someone who’s caught the virus. He also has lower approval in states with higher per-capita infection rates.

Well to be clear, this means his approvals have gone down in Washington, New York, and California, and has likely gone way up everywhere else. Much depends on where you get your news. Do you trust the NY Times and WaPo  or are you are listening to the Coronavirus task force and actual doctors and scientists (many of whom are now tempering earlier predictions of doom).  Are you more apt to believe Andrew Cuomo complaining 24-7 about what everyone else hasn't done for him, or are you more apt to believe the numbers suggesting that he has more and needs less than he claims... and that 99% of whatever shortage there is can be blamed on his own State and his own lack of leadership.

The reality is that it's perfectly reasonable to believe that there are things that could have been done earlier, but understand that much as been done and that much more is being done. I also believe that much of this is tempered by the fact that very few people were calling for "more" and many (Democrats especially) were critical of early action that the President did take, calling things like the travel ban to be knee jerk and racist.

We do not expect perfection. We expect adaptation and ultimately we want long term results. The end of this story has not yet been written. But if it ends with limited casualties, an actual vaccine, and at least the start of an economic recovery, Trump's approvals are not going to be negatively affected by things that were said (or not done) in the first weeks of all of this.

The buzz about Birx

Birx raised some ire yesterday by claiming models might be wrong.

Retired U.S. Army physician who was appointed to the global
 AIDS Ambassador post by President Barack Obama in 2014.

I’m sure you have seen the recent report out of the U.K. about them adjusting completely their needs. This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that says there would be 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They’ve adjusted that number in the U.K. to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000. We are looking at that in great detail to understand that adjustment.

I’m going to say something that is a little bit complicated but do it in a way we can understand it together. In the model, either you have to have a large group of people who a-asymptomatic, who never presented for any test to have the kind of numbers predicted. To get to 60 million people infected, you have to have a large group of asymptomatics.

We have not seen an attack rate over 1 in 1,000. So either we are measuring the iceberg and underneath it, are a large group of people. So we are working hard to get the antibody test and figure out who these people are and do they exist. Or we have the transmission completely wrong.

Basically it feels like anytime someone says that the coronavirus is not the black plague, they are met with anger and resentment. Almost like telling a small child that there is no Santa Claus or trying to convince a religious zealot that everything they read in their holy book might not be true.

Moreover, regardless of the reputation of the task force doctors and experts (many of whom have spent their lives in the medical field studying these things) there are many who simply discount them because they are associated with the bad orange man. As it stands Dr Birx has been studying infectious diseases, vaccines. immunity, and everything having to do with virus spreads for thirty years. Most of the arm chair experts questioning her have about 30 days of experience with their opinions with no actual schooling or expertise.

My Governor  "again" in justifying his Statewide shutdown (complete with 90 days in jail and $1000 fines for people not following the order) made reference to his strong believe that upwards of 80% of Minnesotans will get this infection and that thousands (if not tens of thousands) of Minnesotans could die. I have yet to understand exactly where he is getting these numbers.

But what is clear is that he is not relying on the experts at the CDC.  Why bother to have a Center of Disease Control with all sort of doctors with decades of experience fighting infectious diseases and viruses if we simply ignore them and rely on other medical experts to base our most monumental decisions on?

On second thought...

Imperial College scientist who predicted 500K coronavirus deaths in UK revises to 20K or fewer

A scientist who warned that the coronavirus would kill 500,000 people in the United Kingdom has revised the estimate to roughly 20,000 people or fewer. Scientist and Imperial College author Neil Ferguson said Wednesday that the coronavirus death toll is unlikely to exceed 20,000 and could be much lower, according to New Scientist. He added that he is “reasonably confident” that Britain’s health system can handle the burden of treating coronavirus patients.

This isn't just "any" scientist, the study from the Imperial College is what prompted Boris Johnson to shut down his country. In fact, many have used this particular Imperial College study as the justification gold standard for shutting things down. Now we are being told that rather than a half million in the UK and over two million in the US...  well... it may just be another flu season.

I am not going to get into the whats and hows of what prompted this "revision" other than to say that the further we get into this, the less it becomes about "theories" or "statistical modeling" and the more it becomes about actually analyzing the reality and creating real data driven predictions.

Imagine how things work on an election night. You start off with little more than exit polling and then as you get real time results, you start to adjust the exit polling to make it more inline with what you are seeing. If results closely mirror the exit polling, you get a quick call. If the results are not in line with the exit polling, then it can be a long night. But eventually the analysts are able to merge the two data points together to make a more solid prediction.

Over the past several weeks, all we had on the coronavirus was theories and modeling (polling). Over the next two to three weeks we will start to get real time results (vote counting). What these scientists and statisticians will be doing is trying to tie together the theories/modeling with the known data until the two eventually converge into predictions that everyone can agree on with some degree of confidence. 

The left starts to Panic!

After complaining that the President never gave press conferences, CNN, MSNBC and others now refuse to carry the Coronavirus briefings.

So as the general public starts to see the President as an actual leader in a time of crisis (versus Dementia Joe working out of his basement trying to figure out his 1980's camcorder) the left wing media appears to be increasingly concerned. 

It's not enough to continue ask dishonest, argumentative, and repetitive questions during the daily briefings. That apparently has not worked for them. I suppose at some point in time the general public will see the questions as petty and disingenuous after being asked and answered for five days straight. It's also one thing for the media to attempt to undermine the President, but undermining CDC doctors is a whole different can of worms.

Now certain networks are deciding to not carry them, because they believe that the President, the task force, and the CDC are providing "disinformation". I am sure what this disinformation is, other than they seem to be taking the word of people they "want" to believe over what is being said in the daily briefings.

The other day I saw someone dispute the claims that they were ramping up testing and would be caught up with the backlog sometime this week... by citing statistics from March 9th. What does March 9th have to do with the recent ramp up of testing? Is it a lie to say that 4000 ventilators were shipped to the state of New York, because previously Cuomo had offered that he only had received 400 (which was actually a previous shipment) and needed 30,000?

Moreover, when did it become a thing to question the expertise of the CDC when it comes to infectious disease or an infectious virus? There is technically no group of experts in the world (and most certainly not in this country) with more experience, knowledge, and expertise in this particular subject. Yet, you get people "shrug off" what they say while chasing down whatever medical expert tells them what they want to hear.

We are in a full scale crisis and we can no longer trust our media to be even remotely objective about what is actually happening. Everything is about trying to discredit the President and apparently the Task force and the CDC. The problem is that at some point in time people will simply start to tune out the media rantings. For more and more Americans that point has already come and gone.