RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-model-estimates-us-deaths-down

A key coronavirus model has lowered its estimate of total U.S. deaths in its latest projection of how many will die due to the contagious virus.

The revision will likely fuel criticism from skeptics that initial projections were overblown, and one that government leaders may use to say that efforts to combat the spread are working.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) lowered its projection of total deaths from 68,841 (with an estimate range of 30,188 to 175,965) to just over 60,308 (with an estimate range of 34,063 to 140,381) in an update published Friday.

The institute said that change was partially driven by both higher estimates in states like New York and New Jersey, and lower projections in states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia and Florida.

“By incorporating the trend in cases alongside COVID-19 deaths in our model, many locations are now predicted to have longer peaks and are taking longer to move down the epidemic curve to zero deaths,” a statement from the institute said. “Subsequently, these places now have higher projections for cumulative COVID-19 deaths through the first wave.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/493195-its-our-right-and-duty-to-question-those-deciding-americas-fate

When in the United States of America did it become objectionable, or considered outright wrong, to question the wisdom and policies of our politicians, bureaucrats and “experts”?  If “we are all in this together,” as people have been declaring about the fight against COVID-19, then shouldn’t we all have a say in our collective fate? That should be the right of every American citizen, even those who disagree with states’ shelter-at-home and business closure orders.

When did it become wrong, or a crime punishable by arrest, for Americans to peacefully protest a governor’s stay-at-home order, as happened recently in Raleigh, N.C.? Evidently our right to peacefully protest has become a “non-essential activity” to be broken up by the police. In Lansing, Mich., protesters against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order used vehicles for their “Operation Gridlock.”

To curb the spread of COVID-19 in America, we have temporarily surrendered our lifestyles, livelihoods, life savings, mental health and even our very freedoms to the dictates of politicians, bureaucrats and public health experts. “For our own good,” they have put in place orders to control the movement and actions of most of the nation’s 330 million people.  

No one can deny that COVID-19 is a dangerous, highly-infectious virus. That said, the solutions to curb the contagion seem to be holding Americans hostage. Are we still allowed to contrast what’s happening with this pandemic to those of the past and ask logical questions?

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/493370-keeping-the-coronavirus-death-toll-in-perspective

As governors and mayors debate when to lift their coronavirus stay-at-home orders, public health experts predict a flood of deaths should businesses be allowed to reopen before universal testing or a vaccine for the disease is available. These are the same experts whose previous apocalyptic models of coronavirus fatalities and shortages of hospital beds and ventilators have proved wildly inaccurate. It may be useful to look at some numbers for perspective. 

As of 3 p.m. Eastern on April 16, there were 30,920 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. New York state accounted for 14,198 — or 46 percent — of those deaths. New York City accounted for 11,477 of New York state’s deaths and 37 percent of national deaths. This week, New York City started counting deaths as coronavirus fatalities if the patient had not been tested for the disease but was suspected postmortem of having it. This relaxed standard increased the U.S. death count by 17 percent. Other jurisdictions will inevitably follow suit. 

The national coronavirus deaths represent a death rate of 9.4 per 100,000 of the U.S. population. Take out the New York fatalities and the New York share of the national population, and the coronavirus death rate for the rest of the country is 5.4 per 100,000 of the U.S. population.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-ventilator-shortages-have-not-come-to-pass/

The ventilator shortages of which we were all gravely warned have not yet come to pass.

In March, one of the most feared aspects of the pandemic was the widely reported coming shortage of ventilators. One well-publicized estimate, repeated by the New York Times, the New Yorker and CNN, was that the U.S. would need roughly one million ventilators, or more than five times as many as we had. Gulp. Ventilators are expensive, they’re complex machines, and they can’t be churned out in the thousands overnight.

In the state that (as of today) has one-third of the country’s confirmed COVID-19 cases, New York governor Andrew Cuomo sounded the alarm for ventilators repeatedly. On March 27, he acknowledged “I don’t have a crystal ball” but said his state desperately needed 30,000 ventilators, maybe 40,000, but had only 12,000. When President Trump noted that Cuomo’s state had thousands of unused ventilators it hadn’t even placed yet, Cuomo admitted this was true but said he still needed more: “Yes, they’re in a stockpile because that’s where they’re supposed to be because we don’t need them yet. We need them for the apex,” Cuomo said at the time. On April 2, Cuomo predicted the state would run out of ventilators in six days “at the current burn rate.” But on April 6, Cuomo noted, “We’re ok, and we have some in reserve.”

Now New York appears to have passed the apex. Deaths, a lagging indicator, crested at 799 on April 9 and hit 606 on April 16, the lowest figure since April 6. Hospitalizations are also declining, and on April 16 also hit their lowest level since April 6. Cuomo today has so many ventilators he is giving them away: