RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/what_the_coronavirus_numbers_are_telling_us.html

There are lots of numbers flying around about the coronavirus, so here is a brief attempt to put some context to them. 

The United States daily new case volume rose to the mid 30,000 range in April, then started a slide to about half that level in mid-May. Since then, there has been a steep rise, to the mid 70,0000 level last week, down a bit this weekend to the low 60,000 level. The distribution of cases among the states has also changed. In the first surge, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana were hardest hit. In the last 6-7 weeks, Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and a few other states in the southeast have had the highest volumes, though a large number of states have rising numbers. 

The fear surrounding the virus is, of course, most associated with its death toll. The daily number of new deaths reported is far lower now, even with the much higher daily new case levels, than at the peak of daily deaths two to three months ago. Daily deaths were regularly in the 2,000 range or higher, reaching 2,500 per day, and dropped to the 500-750 per day range in June. They are up a bit now to close to 1,000 on some days, with higher death tolls in the most severely hit states, likely to increase more since there is a lag between positive testing results and deaths associated with the new cases.  

This country has the highest caseload in the world, and one of the highest caseloads in the world compared to population.  But as far as deaths, many countries have higher death rates per million people than we do. In addition, there is the case fatality rate: deaths divided by positive cases. The US case fatality rate has dropped steadily for several months, from about 6% to below 4%. Death numbers are lagged, as indicated already, but back in April, new deaths were on some days 6-10% of new positive cases. The last few weeks, that percentage has been about 1-2%.  The US case fatality rate is far lower than many other countries, including our developed world peers in Europe. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_age_of_conspiracy.html

I sometimes think that when future historians look back on our time, they will label it “The Age of Conspiracy.” And there would be some truth to that. One tends to see conspiracies, plots and secret plans galore, wherever one looks, whether from the perspective of the left or the right. The left believes that the right is conspiring to promote a fascist takeover of the nation, in line with its presumed colonial history. The right sees a socialist, if not a communist, conspiracy to ignite a coup against the body politic and its political organization. There is no possibility of moderating these views. They are frankly irreconcilable.

The issue is that some so-called conspiracies are hoaxes ginned up by those who seek to alarm a docile and pliable, low-information public. And some conspiracies are precisely what they are called, real plots that can be verified objectively. The problem is how to distinguish conspiracy-mongering from representations of fact.

“Like every successful con,” Rupert Darwall writes in Green Tyranny, “maintaining audience credulity depends on preventing the audience from noticing what the trickster is up to,” a tactic known in the trade as “defining the baseline” — that is, by deceptively touting how damaged the world would be minus whatever transformation is envisioned. In all too many instances, there is no dispositive proof that such would be the case. Much to the chagrin of our false prophets, the seas do not rise to engulf our cities and low-lying islands, famine does not fall upon the land, populations do not grow extinct, the air is not becoming unbreathable, the spring does not grow silent, and the world does not end on a given date — though it may on the next given date, or the next. We can always hope.