The First Ward Coronavirus Report – The trend doth persist!

The First Ward Coronavirus Report – The trend doth persist!

But before we continue, I want to apologize to some of my Facebook fans for being a little crankier than I should’ve been yesterday! Though it’s no excuse, it drivee me nuts – not a long trip according to my longsuffering wife – when people promote absurd theories like:

  • 46 percent of U.S. coronavirus victims are under the age of 47
  • That insipid parachute meme
  • That even more insipid Skittles meme
  • COVID-19 has a 37 U.S. percent mortality rate
  • I’ll listen to the experts, thank you

So, rather than get unduly perturbed, let’s dispense with these unhelpful untruths one by one!

First, according to worldodometer.com, folks 44 and under account for just 4.9 percent of New York City’s coronavirus casualties, and they’re the national COVID-19 epicenter. If we had similar aged-based data by state, that number would further shrink.

This disease generally that generally spares young people. More specifically, 72 percent of NYC casualties were 65 or older, and 72 percent of those folks had a serious underlying condition.

Facts Not Fear 3

Next! The parachute meme.

This thing ain’t never going away because it’s bound to continue mutating. Some medical folks are already saying the coronavirus is an offshoot of the 2003 SARS pandemic, so we’d have to close down the country for years to truly squash this eminently adaptive strain. That means we need to dispense with all the parachute BS.

Moving on to silly Skittles!

The false equivalency there being, if you knew two Skittles in a standard bag were poisoned, you wouldn’t touch any of ‘em, right? With the average Skittle bag containing 58 pieces, that 3.4 percent chance of drawing the chamber with the bullet does approximate our coronavirus mortality rate, but it’s a vast oversimplification.

Again, if you’re older with a preexisting condition, you’re already going to avoid that candy altogether. But if you’re 44 or younger with no health problems, you’re gonna have to eat 10 bags of that vile candy to draw the poison arrow. (.2 percent = 1 in 500)

To put that in perspective, you have an almost four times greater chance of dying in a car crash (1 in 114), but nobody’s giving up driving, are they?

As far as that purported 37 percent mortality rate, I’ll say it again! “Where are all the bodies?”

Regarding our final item, I listening to evidence-based experts is generally a good thing as long as we do it with a reasonable critical thinking filter. To wit, here’s what the experts got wrong:

  • Faucci predicted millions of U. S. cases, but with the COVID-19 peak now in our rearview mirror, the national number sits squarely at 793,000 cases.
  • California said they’d see 26 million cases in eight short week. Five weeks later, they’ve counted just 34,000 cases.
  • Chicago claimed they’d endure 40,000 acute hospitalizations in “a few weeks.” But as of April 19, the entire state of Illinois reported 5,356 hospital beds were occupied by coronavirus patients.
  • And virtually every last one of those epidemiology “experts” have vastly downgraded their original case and death toll estimates.

So, while I’ll promise to make a better effort to be more pleasant, it would be incredibly helpful if you’d similarly promise to be skeptical of everyone, including me – but not the numbers! The math we’ve applied here has been beyond reproach.

And speaking of that math, let’s get back to our table:

Date   Cases   % Increase N Cases    N Tested  Prevalence Deaths 

4/7     13,549            10.5        1,287           5,790       1 in 4.5          380

4/8     15,078            11.3        1,529           6,334       1 in 4             462

4/9     16,422            9             1,344           5,791       1 in 4.3          528

4/10   17,887            8.7          1,445           6,670       1 in 4.6          596

4/11   19,180            7.2          1,293           5,252       1 in 4.1          677

4/12   20,852            8.7          1,672           7,956       1 in 4.75        720

4/13   22,025            5.6          1,173           5,033       1 in 4.3          794

4/14   23,247            5.5          1,222           4,848       1 in 4             868

4/15   24,593            5.7          1,346           6,313       1 in 4.7          948

4/16   25,733            4.8          1,180           5,660       1 in 4.8       1,072

4/17   27,575            7.1          1,842           7,574       1 in 4.1       1,134

4/18   29,160            5.7          1,585           7,241       1 in 4.5       1,259

4/19   30,357            4.1          1,197           5,914       1 in 5          1,290

4/20   31,508            3.8          1,151           5,040       1 in 4.4       1,349

The Illinois testing total sits at 148,358, the prevalence is doing its typical thing, and we’re still at seventh place in the national rankings. We did tie our 4.3 percent mortality rate high, but the good news is that indicator has been essentially flat for the last five days.

That should be sign it will start receding somewhat soon.

But once again! The best news is another record low 3.8 new daily case percentage increase, which may partially be the result of a low testing day. But it extends the downward trend nonetheless! And our descending five-day case moving average supports this disease deceleration theory:

Date         5-day M Average

4/12                 1,457

4/13                 1,386

4/14                 1,365

4/15                 1,342

4/16                 1,319

4/17                 1,353

4/18                 1,435

4/19                 1,430

4/20                 1,391

Meanwhile, look for a shorter report tomorrow because Elgin Mental Health Center administrators are trying to singlehandedly infect the entire city and that story needs to come to light.

We’re doing well Illinois. Let’s keep it up!

5 thoughts on “The First Ward Coronavirus Report – The trend doth persist!

  1. I wish they would separate out people with pre existing conditions from the total dead from the virus. If you are 95 obese diabetic and have cancer I don’t think coronavirus was cause of death. If your life span us measured in months exclude them from count

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