Covid19 stats for Ohio

April 26 COVID-19 snapshot:
Data provided by ODH as of 2 p.m. April 26
Confirmed cases in Ohio: 15,360 
Number hospitalized in Ohio: 3,178 
Number of confirmed deaths in Ohio: 687 
Number of cases in Franklin County: 1,942
And about 28,000 deaths a year from cardiovascular problems.

David Meyers comments:

There is a lot of half-baked science being touted right now. I say half-baked because it’s being put out for public consumption before it is ready. Even in the absence of a major health crisis, it is not uncommon to make claims that turn out to be wrong. The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Johannes Fibiger in 1926 for the discovering that a roundworm caused cancer in rats. Only it didn’t. It was an honest mistake.

Good science usually takes time. It should be devoid of politics and independent of outside influences, i.e. money and fame. But good science takes money. That’s the dilemma researchers find themselves. Right now, there are real scientists—someone said about ninety teams—working hard to diagnose and solve a problem in a few months that would normally take years. They are no doubt feeling pressure to skip steps. The test groups are often small and the controls are possibly lacking. Some scientists are bypassing peer review because that takes time. Others seems to be motivated by a need to draw attention to themselves.

In the meantime, our economy is taking a shellacking. Only time will tell if it was worth it, although many people have already made up their mines.

I decided to take a look at the CDC website to see if I could learn anything more from it that we were being told. The first thing that struck me is that the CDC is lumping Covid-19 together with influenza and pneumonia.** Apparently, anybody who dies of influenza or pneumonia is per se a Covid casualty, now. The death rate for this group is (according to the most recent data) 18.6 people per 100,000 and declining. It had been over 21 just a couple of weeks earlier. I don’t know what it is, now. But on a yearly basis I would expect it to decline.

I wanted to put this in perspective. Unfortunately, the most recent data for the leading causes of death in the United States is as of 2018. They are:

655,381 heart disease [163.6 per 100,000]
599,274 cancer [149.1 per 100,000]
167,127 accidents/unintentional injuries [48.0 per 100,000]
159,486 chronic lower respiratory diseases [39.7 per 100,000]
147,810 cerebrovascular [37.1 per 100,000]
122,019 Alzheimer disease [30.5 per 100,000]
84,946 diabetes [21.4 per 100,000]
** 59,120 influenza and pneumonia [14.9 per 100,000]
51,386 kidney disease [12.9 per 100,000]
48,344 suicide [14.2 per 100,000]

As you can see, the typical rate for influenza and pneumonia is 12.9 per 100,000. It will be interesting to see what it will be at the end of 2020, but we probably won’t know that until 2022.