Franklin Country death rate from Covid: .0066

I've been looking at the Ohio "Dashboard" for Covid this morning. The state fatality rate is .012 from Covid with 922,143 cases and 11,695 deaths. If your loved one has died of Covid, that's 100% for your family, however, closing down the state and listening to terrifying news every evening for .012 death rate seems callous for the rest of us, especially the elderly who can't see their families, and the young adults whose careers and businesses have been shattered.

Now a look at the counties. Huge differences in cases and death rates. Our three largest counties are

Franklin (Columbus, the largest, has gained 13.2% since the 2010 census), death rate .0066

Cuyahoga (Cleveland which was the largest in the 2010 census, but has lost 3.5% in a decade) death rate .013

Hamilton (Cincinnati) death rate .0069

Franklin Co. had the most cases, and the lowest death rate.

I looked at the race/age/poverty figures, and Cuyahoga (Cleveland) is older, with a larger minority population, and higher poverty rate. I'm no expert in statistics, but the spread between the races appears much smaller than the age spread. Because the co-morbidities increase with age, this could be the reason. In developing countries, for instance, the death rate is lower than the U.S. and Europe even though they don't have as good a health system. They have younger populations. (And maybe they were allowed to use HCQ?)  My friend Anna Loska Meenan, a retired physician, says India’s death rate is a fraction of USA, and they can buy HCQ over the counter.  Trump was right and was demonized by the media and the medical establishment.

https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards?

The big day is here

Today, December 14,  the electors of each state cast their vote in the Electoral College, that much hated, peculiar entity that elects the President. An amazing invention so that 47 states aren't ignored and that even the little guy gets representation. It's also the day the vaccine that our President fought, badgered, and bullied for to get it out in record time to defeat the virus is being administered. The Democrats will always ignore this, because they could have never done it and they know they weaponized it at our expense to defeat the man who had exposed them (both parties). No matter how the vote goes with the Electoral College, we know Trump has been the winner in both the election and the vaccine. I will be in line when it comes to the elderly in Ohio, and I'll whisper, "Thank you, President Trump. You have triumphed."

How accurate are Covid PCR tests?

"So, even if the test has a very high specificity of 99%, when the virus stops being present at pandemic levels in the population and starts to decrease to more endemic levels, you quickly get to a point where most positive results are false positives, and where the disease seems to be much more prevalent than it really is.

As you can see, the less prevalent the disease is in reality, the more likely the test is to generate a false positive result, and the less useful the test is as a method for figuring out who actually has covid. And the less prevalent the disease is, the more prevalent it will seem to be in relation to reality. If decisions about covid continue to be made largely based on what PCR tests show, we might never be able to call off the pandemic!" https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/06/how-accurate-are-the-covid-tests/

Early Covid tests failure rate 33%

So how does the blame game work? If Trump was at fault for hospitals not being prepared, is it also his fault if CDC failed on the tests?

“On Feb. 6, a scientist in a small infectious disease lab on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campus in Atlanta was putting a coronavirus test kit through its final paces. The lab designed and built the diagnostic test in record time, and the little vials that contained necessary reagents to identify the virus were boxed up and ready to go. But NPR has learned the results of that final quality control test suggested something troubling — it said the kit could fail 33% of the time.”  Read the story: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/929078678/cdc-report-officials-knew-coronavirus-test-was-flawed-but-released-it-anyway

The fact that NPR would publish this failure of CDC and it’s been so critical of everything Trump indicates to me that this will be recorded as a Trump failure.

How Sweden did it. Dr. Sebastian Rushworth

"The Swedish Public Health authority has never admitted that the goal of their chosen strategy is to reach herd immunity. However, from an epidemiological stand point, all strategies depend on reaching herd immunity in one way or another. A vaccination based strategy also builds on getting to herd immunity, it just chooses a different way to reach it. At some point in the relatively near future, every country on Earth will have developed herd immunity to covid, either by letting the disease spread until that point is reached, or by vaccinating enough people to reach that point."

https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/10/31/a-history-of-the-swedish-covid-response/?

"I think it’s becoming pretty clear that SARS-CoV-2 is a seasonal virus, just like the four “common cold” coronaviruses. It would be strange if it wasn’t, considering how similar it is to them biologically. And I think that, just as with all other seasonal respiratory viruses, we saw a drop over the summer months, and we are now seeing an increase over the autumn. The pandemic stage of covid is now over, and we have entered the endemic stage."

Sounds like Dr. Rushworth is worth following. https://sebastianrushworth.com/

"I am not saying that covid is nothing, or that it doesn’t exist. I am saying that it is a virus with a marginal effect on longevity. And yet, public policy in most countries has been driven by doomsday scenarios based on completely unrealistic numbers. To put it simply, we’ve acted like we’re dealing with a global ebola outbreak, when covid is much more like the common cold."

https://sebastianrushworth.com/.../how-deadly-is-covid-19/?

Good article. Interesting information on how dangerous the common cold is for the elderly or people with other health problems. Colds are also caused by coronaviruses.

Will you get the vaccine?

"Less than half of American adults say they would get a government-approved [rushed, deadly] coronavirus vaccine if one becomes widely available, new data from the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking Poll show, with the majority unsure about getting the vaccine or saying they're ruling it out entirely. Forty-four percent of American adults say they would get the vaccine, with 22 percent saying they wouldn't and 32 percent saying they aren't sure... Among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 31 percent say they aren't sure whether they would get a vaccine, while 36 percent say they would and 33 percent say they wouldn't. While a majority of Democrats and those who lean

Democratic -- 58 percent -- say they would get a vaccine, 30 percent say they're unsure and just 12 percent say they wouldn't get vaccinated. Independents align more closely with the Republican groups. Thirty-seven percent say they and their families would get vaccinated, 25 percent say they wouldn't and 38 percent say they aren't sure."

Are NBC news survey Monkeys that reliable, or do they get primarily Democrats? And look at the numbers, the vast majority say yes, or unsure (probably waiting on the "science" to settle a little instead of changing week to week).

I will get a vaccine eventually--but like a first year model of a car, I'd want the bugs worked out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/poll-less-than-half-of-americans-say-theyll-get-a-coronavirus-vaccine/ar-BB185CwG

Restart the count

These two tests are being conflated both by the CDC and some states. Let's start over on the count, shall we? It's just science, you know, and that is never wrong, except a lot during this pandemic.

Viral tests — also known as PCR tests due to a process known as polymerase chain reaction — are administered to discover whether someone has an acute, current infection of COVID-19. These tests are what public officials are referencing when confirmed cases are reported.

Antibody, or serology tests, on the other hand, measure whether or not an individual might have come into contact with COVID-19 in the past. They do this by testing an individual's blood to see if their immune system has developed antibodies in response to the disease.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/cdc-misleading-covid-testing-data?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-and-states-are-misreporting-covid-19-test-data-pennsylvania-georgia-texas/611935/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/499085-cdc-acknowledges-mixing-up-coronavirus-testing-data