Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/21/u-s-reports-over-1000-corona.html
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Washington Post is saying it is the first time in 7 weeks.
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If they are admitting over 1,000, imagine how many it really is…
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White House isn’t admitting anything. The various ‘fake news’ providers are having to compile data themselves.
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Though it seems to be compiled from statistics on confirmed cases, which are known to be undercounts, as even when covid is the cause of death, that’s not necessarily what’s put on the death certificate (particularly in conservative states).
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The fact that Conservatives love to fudge data is well known.
We used to have an autocratic fellow up here in Canuckistan called Stephen Harper. He destroyed tons and tons of data all in the name of non-science. He literally had the Department of Fisheries destroy irreplaceable logs and the like so he could wish away the depleted fish stocks. He also tried to do away with the long form census. I shudder to think how he would have handled COVID-19 - I bet a bunch of doctors would have been having window accidents.
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And don’t forget: it’s not just Covid deaths being undercounted. It’s also deaths from the debilitating after-effects and the deaths from people dying due to putting off treatment from other ailments because they’re (rightfully) scared as shit to go anywhere near a hospital.
My annual physical has been on hold for months now, despite the fact that I could probably use one especially given the side-effects of sequestration.
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As predicted. This bug is frighteningly wed to statistical patterns, truly.
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destroying data about a pandemic should be a crime
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As should be profiting from a pandemic:
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Someone get in touch with Guinness…sigh
There’s all sorts of levels to why the coronavirus death tolls are undercounts. On one level it’s fairly innocent: people die without ever being tested, and there’s apparently no real standards for listing “cause of death,” so someone might die of covid-19 induced heart or lung failure, and that gets listed simply as heart or lung failure, with no mention of the virus.
Then there’s the ideological level - local conservative coroners and doctors leaving off the information, various state officials censoring or altering the data that’s inconvenient, and now the federal government engaging in shenanigans with the collecting and storage of the information so they can control it. That part comes pretty easy because US conservatives have the same history of censoring and altering inconvenient environmental data, too.
I keep half-expecting inconveniently truthful health officials to start having window accidents like they’ve been having in Russia lately. Though American tradition dictates that they mostly just get threatened with guns or pulled out of their houses and whipped - that’s what happened during the 1918 flu pandemic.
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Triage by jury, if you are deemed too ill to survive, you go home to the “love of your family”. Hopefully you have a family, and that they survive after catching what you bring home to them.
“We are going to have these committees reviewing each case,” Vazquez said. “End-of-life decisions and hospice decisions and comfort-care situation for all those patients who most certainly do not have any hope of improving we believe they will be better taken care in the love of their own family and home rather than thousands of miles away dying alone.”
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I have no words, only a deep, unbearable rage.
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Oh but don’t worry, Trump is pulling out all the stops to “end the bloodshed” [checks notes] oh wait, hold on…
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