It looks like deaths (may) have started to rise!

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2020

American carnage in action: Just in time for deaths to appear to begin moving up, The Atlantic has offered five perfectly decent reasons explaining why deaths keep going down while "cases" keep going up.

After a long decline from a very high point, have deaths begun increasing again? A 3-day holiday weekend can create a significant statistical glitch, but this is where the numbers have stood on each of the past seven Thursday mornings:

Daily deaths nationwide from covid-19
7-day rolling average
May 28: 971.9
June 4: 908.6
June 11: 773.4
June 18: 650.0
June 25: 574.7
July 2: 537.9
July 9: 551.6

A long decline began in mid-April, when the 7-day rolling average exceeded 2000 deaths per day. To appearances, that long decline has leveled off, and may now have started to rise.

Why have deaths been in decline in recent weeks even as "cases" have been rising? The Atlantic offers five perfectly sensible reasons. The essay is well worth reading:

1. Deaths lag cases
2. Expanded testing is finding more cases, milder cases, and earlier cases
3. The typical COVID-19 patient is getting younger
4. Hospitalized patients are dying less frequently, even without a home-run treatment
5. Summer might be helping—but probably only a little bit

We'll guess that there could be other perfectly sensible reasons. (Improved policies regarding nursing homes?)

That said, the oddness of "cases" as a statistic makes this phenomenon a natural puzzler. Remember:

The number of "cases" you see reported each night is only the number of cases which have been confirmed/diagnosed by a coronavirus test. There may be many other new infections (new cases) which haven't been so diagnosed.

Just two nights ago, on MSNBC, Dr. Redlener said the actual number of new cases may be ten times as high as the number you see reported on a daily basis. It's just that all those other new infections haven't been confirmed by a test. Infected parties may have no idea that they're even infected.

In short, no one knows how many actual new cases there actually are at any given time. That makes it hard to compare the number of "cases" with the number of deaths.

In many other countries (not all), deaths have largely been snuffed out. In Donald J. Trump's America, deaths may be back on the rise.

You'll continue to hear every kind of statistical misstatement from the stars of cable news, even at times from experts. But we're involved in a rolling disaster-by-dumbness—a dumbness which started long ago, in large part within the tents of our mainstream press elite.

They pimped The Donald every step of the way, going all the way back to Marla Maples' report of the "best sex ever." To balance things off, they kept calling Hillary Clinton Evita and Nurse Ratched, while tolerating crackpot discussions of the many people she'd killed.

All the idiots gamboled and played, having their fun with these dimwitted themes. In November 2016, the laughter largely faded.

At that point, we geniuses over here on the left decided to start our resistance. We leaped into action, ready for battle, at least thirty years too late!