Innocent Bystanders

Coronavirus Update: 5-26-2020 May 27, 2020

Didn’t intend to publish this chart this often, and the data may be influenced by Memorial Day, but the trend is just so dang pretty I couldn’t help myself. Enjoy:

We’re a month past the beginning of the loosening of the lockdown in many states, with no sign of any negative effect in the daily death data.

And today, Colorado’s “Safer-at-Home” policy expires.

COVID-19 Update Thru 5-24-20 May 25, 2020

Let’s start the new week with a COVID-19 chart. An encouraging COVID-19 chart:

That’s what I like to see – a nice steady decline that even the clowns in New York can’t screw up.

How Does COVID-19 Stack Up? May 24, 2020

Some folk were asking me how COVID-19 deaths compared to deaths from other causes. I ran across some data that was helpful, so I was able to create the (probably unnecessarily complicated) chart below. This chart shows average worldwide daily deaths from the top 20 causes (excluding COVID), overlaid with the time history of COVID-19 deaths.

As you can hopefully discern, at their peak of ~7000/day in April, COVID-19 deaths were comparable to deaths from lower respiratory illnesses and dementia. At their current level of 4400 deaths/day, they are comparable to deaths from diarrheal illnesses.

Of course, you should probably put in some margin for unreported Chinese deaths.

Craving Tuesday May 23, 2020

Moved up to Fort Collins, CO a few months ago, eagerly anticipating exploring the plethora of interesting restaurants and bars in Old Town. Then COVID-19 crushed my dreams as we all started cowering-in-place. Number of restaurants and bars explored?

1

However, the governor has stated that on Monday he’ll be deciding if restaurants and bars can reopen. Based on what I can see of Colorado’s COVID-19 stats, I’ll be bending an elbow at a pub by Tuesday:

Of course, most reopening plans call for restrictions to < 50% capacity, and most restaurants require > 75% capacity to survive. So we’ll have to see if this is a reopening in name only, without a practical path to economic viability.

But I pledge to try to make up for the capacity gap at any establishment that does reopen.

COVID-19 Update Through May 20 May 21, 2020

Been a week since the last COVID-19 post, and the data is looking good, so here’s the latest 7-day moving average of coronavirus deaths in the United States:

Over the past week the 7-day average has dropped by almost 200 deaths per day, from 1534 to 1342.

In the next couple of weeks we should start to see the impact of states reopening businesses. Hopefully it’s negligible.

Updated 7-Day Average of COVID-19 Deaths in the US May 14, 2020

Reported COVID-19 casualties typically peak on Tuesday & Wednesday of the week, so I thought I’d update the chart of few days ago through yesterday (Wednesday):

We may get a peak on Thursday this week, but I think there’s cause for cautious optimism.

The Promised 7-Day Average of COVID-19 Deaths in the US May 11, 2020

Promised this a few days ago (OK, almost a week ago). Here is a plot of the 7-day average of US deaths due to COVID-19:

The death data has issues, of course, due to the changing (and very loose) definition of COVID-19 deaths, and the dredging up of past deaths which are dumped into the data.

But, it’s what we’ve got. And what we’ve got says that we hit the peak on April 19.

COVID-19: Our Modern Tower of Babel May 11, 2020

We were seemingly headed toward global everything: communication, travel, commerce, entertainment, etc. – all of it. Post-COVID, however, we’re seeing headlines like:

Delta is “consolidating” their routes and dropping several cities

Reduced travel options, restrictions on travel between countries, realization that global commerce can lead to domestic shortages, the threat of future pandemics, . . .

. . . well, it’s like the people and economies are being de-globalized and isolated.

Much as with languages in the tale of the Tower of Babel.

Maslow Strikes Again May 8, 2020

Almost 6 years ago I wrote a post titled “A Tale of Two Philosophies,” wherein I talked about the Maslowian hierarchy of needs, and the differences between liberals’ and conservatives’ perceptions of where our primary concerns should lie on Maslow’s pyramid. Here’s an excerpt.

…I believe that conservative and liberal attitudes are informed by different positions on the Maslow hierarchy of needs chart. That’s the chart that shows that as societies/individuals progress, they move from one set of needs up to the next, gradually working toward self-actualization:

This chart is one I’ve used before, and I am lazy, so I didn’t change the “DNC” label to something more relevant. But suffice to say that I think that conservatives live in Tiers 2 – 4, with special emphasis on the Safety Tier* (Tier 2). Liberals, on the other hand, occupy Tiers 3 – 5, with their emphasis on Tiers 4 & 5 (Esteem and Self-Actualization).

I think one of the key lessons of the COVID-19 experience is its reminder of  the fragility of our hold on the bottom tiers of the pyramid. When you can’t pay rent, food and essentials aren’t available at any price, and everybody is arming themselves against a worsening of conditions, it’s clear that the upper tiers (Esteem, Self-Actualization) are nice-to-haves, not have-to-haves.

Some writers have noted this point by saying, “Boy, worrying about pronoun usage certainly seems to have dropped out of vogue.”

Obviously, though, everyone should be striving to clamber up the pyramid to the best of their abilities. The question, then, is: How much involvement should the government have at each tier?

I’d claim that recent events have verified conservatives’ position that the government needs to get the bottom two tiers right, and that its ability to ensure that our Physiological and Safety needs are met should be robust against all threats and circumstances.

And that’s all.

Until we lock those tiers down, the government has no business mucking about in the higher tiers. Responsibility for those tiers should be left to the individual and society.

Several leading figures among the Democrats have been talking about how the COVID-19 crisis is a sterling opportunity to effect the societal changes that they’ve long longed for.

They should have come away with the opposite conclusion.

COVID-19 Update Thru 5-4-2020 May 5, 2020

Howzabout a COVID-19 update? Here are slightly modified versions of Worldometer’s daily casualty charts for the world and for the United States:

You can see that the world’s daily deaths are definitely declining, while the United States’ daily deaths appear to be dropping as well, though not as strongly.

Both graphs show a strong weekly dependence, with peaks in the middle of the week, and troughs on weekends. This suggests that a 7-day moving average might be more appropriate in evaluating trends.

I’ll try to get to that tomorrow.