Why Numbers Matter So Very Much

Our Lives Depend on Them

We don’t have remotely have enough test kits to evaluate how reopening businesses really will impact us. By the time we can verify specifics in this CV-19 hell, it is often too late. Our federal projections have been woefully inaccurate, and even the President who wants to reopen it all quickly (he fought for this even by Easter!!!) admits his projection of 60,000 American pandemic deaths was not realistic. “President Donald Trump dramatically raised his predictions for the eventual death toll from the coronavirus pandemic within the United States, saying up to 100,000 people could die from the disease.

“That figure is a sharp uptick from the president’s comments just last month when he said he believed around 60,000 people would die from the virus. Despite the shift, Trump said his response to the outbreak in the United States — where more than 1.1 million people have been infected — had been ‘successful’ and said without his intervention more than a million people could have died.

“‘We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,’ Trump said during a town hall event with Fox News on Sunday [5/3]. ‘That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.’ … The president did acknowledge that he had previously predicted a lower number, saying the estimates had ‘gone up.’…  ‘I used to say 65,000 and now I’m saying 80 or 90, and it goes up and it goes up rapidly,’ Trump said. ‘But it’s still going to be, no matter how you look at it, at the very lower end of the plane.’… He continued: ‘In terms of death … we’re at the lower level, the lowest level predicted. And we might not even hit that. It might be lower. And ... sadly that’s all we can do.’” Huffington Post, May 4^th

“The lower end of the plane”? Trump saved us by banning travelers from China? His efforts saved us from a seven-figure death toll? Seriously? Then please explain to me what the United States has the highest number of infections, the highest death toll on earth, higher than any expert’s interpretations of the same numbers in China or India, nations with vastly larger populations. Blaming the states for the death toll? First, this is a global pandemic, not something that can be nicely contained in a US state. Only the federal government is constitutionally empowered to deal with international mega-crises. And as for Trump’s latest estimates of expected CV-19 fatalities noted above, they are wildly and unrealistically optimistic. Will you be one of them?

Secondly, the states with the fastest and latest rising infection and mortality rates from CV-19 are those whose reopening policies are in alignment with Trump’s own policies of encouragement. “Liberation” as he calls it. Those states with policies of continued lockdowns and mandatory safe distancing protocols are showing real progress. Thirdly, as NY Governor Andrew Cuomo pointed out on May 4^th, why do the federal government’s own tracking numbers, from the CDC, suggest that no matter where the CV-19 outbreak may have begun, the massive infections on the Eastern Seaboard, particularly in New York, emanated from Europe, not Asia? Shutting down travel from China to the United States was irrelevant to saving those lives.

Fourthly, if states believe that statistical accuracy is an important, why are some states – beginning with Florida (for the details for how Florida is officially downplaying CV-19 mortality numbers, see my rent The Biggest Lies Yet blog) – purposely trying to distort their CV-19 death tolls? And why are we now learning that even those who have not attempted to falsify those statistics may have severely undercounted the relevant numbers?

According to the April 29^th Vox.com, “It’s long been the consensus of experts that more Americans are dying in the coronavirus pandemic than the official figures indicate. But exactly how many?... [At the end of April], the first estimate of how many more people have perished was published in the Washington Post, using one of the best methods commonly used by researchers: measuring excess deaths.

“And it was a grim one. The Post, in partnership with researchers from the Yale School of Public Health, estimated that 15,400 more people died between March 1 and April 4 than would ordinarily have been expected, a substantially higher toll than the 8,128 coronavirus deaths that were reported over that time by government agencies. Ordinarily, the researchers project the US would have had a little more than 50,000 deaths in the studied period, but the actual deaths were more than 60,000.

“Not all of those excess deaths were necessarily directly a result of Covid-19. As the Post reporters wrote, mortality in a pandemic is a complicated recipe… The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.

“But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease… ‘Determining the cause of death is more of an art than a science, and guidelines can change,’ Daniel Weinberger, who led the Yale School of Public Health researchers, told me. ‘There are likely many more people who died of coronavirus-related causes than who have ‘coronavirus’ listed as a cause of death on the death certificate.’”

The fault lies in attempting to deny or distort facts, delay necessary actions, deny responsibility to take curative measures, make false promises that have no chance of being kept, promulgate policies that precisely accelerate increasing person-to-person contact that feeds the virus and denigrate those presenting the truth. I think at this juncture, I need to differentiate between traditional Republicans – a respectable political party – and Trump Republicans who have distorted what was once a functional government into a bumbling maze of contradictions and fake news.

My blogs are not an indictment of the entire Republican Party. There are plenty of GOP stalwarts who remain aghast at Trump, his policies and statements, his mindless support from Fox News [the May 3^rd Fox News Virtual Town Hall is pictured above] versus those Trump-Republicans (afraid of alienating his base) unwilling to stand up and do what is best for Americans without political considerations.

The government’s reaction to a life-threatening pandemic is NOT about protecting Donald Trump from personal attacks or heaping him with false praise. But it is about the litany of disinformation from that lockstep-Trump-sycophant group of Republican US Senators (all but one of them) and Governors (most of them) that have turned a medical pandemic, killing thousands of Americans, into what has become primarily a partisan political battle.  It’s tough to do what’s right in the over-politicized world of “polls-trump-facts” leadership. While many former and current Republicans find that to be failed leadership, those GOP leaders in office seem unable to rise to the occasion. Leadership cannot be a popularity contest when so many lives are at stake.

However, it does not have to be that way. As former Republican President George W Bush attempted to send a non-partisan call for unity, Trump just slapped him down. Everything seems to be about the “me and only me” President of the United (??) States of America. “[Former President Bush] released a video this weekend [beginning of May] encouraging Americans to stand up to the coronavirus pandemic, and did not mention current President Donald Trump.

“It doesn't sound like that sat too well with Trump… ‘He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!’ Trump said during a series of Sunday tweets in which he otherwise echoed praise of his performance on the virus and other issues.

“Trump's criticism of Bush dealt with the latter's silence during the impeachment investigation and trial. But he quoted a Fox News commentator who was talking about the coronavirus video that Bush made.” USA Today, May 4^th.

The only policy that has truly thwarted the spread of CV-19 has been keeping people from direct contact with each other. Nothing else has worked. So, when governments enable increasing personal contact at a point where the virus is anything but contained, the results will be obvious… and fast. If the government even tells us the truth. It appears that those protestors and scofflaws, those individuals who are willing to sacrifice the lives of what they believe are the elderly, the infirm and mostly city dwellers, simply do not see CV-19 as a threat to them, other than economically. They are simply following the pattern of inconsistent messaging from conservative governors and the President. They have been horribly misinformed.

What’s worse, there are lemmings out there who truly believe that it government “reopening” policy changes will result in that restored economy they dream of. Even if the disease were less infectious than it is.  “A 2,200-person survey by Deutsche Bank last month suggests that ‘consumer comfort, rather than government policy, will have the most profound impact on shape of the U.S. economy.’ Results found that during the next three months, fewer than 20% would be comfortable phasing into eating out, shopping, movies, parties, social events, concerts, museums, theaters, gyms, even vacationing. By the six month point, nearly half felt they’d be comfortable, including even attending work conferences or travelling abroad. But the presidential election is just over six months away and 55% said they didn’t know or had no opinion on whether any kind of a political rally that would be comfortable.” From business consultant Dennis Duitch’s Weekly Report (5/4).

I am reminded of one friend, an avid surfer, complaining to me that he is hardly at risk while out seeking and riding waves. Sun and saltwater. No one close. But then I see all those images of open beaches, as surfers have to carry their boards across crowded sands, people who are way closer than six feet apart, not wearing masks and cavorting as if there were no pandemic. Reminiscent of the spring breakers who brought the virus to their parents and grandparents… and to each other. If CV-19 could smile, it would!

            I’m Peter Dekom, and as the infection rates skyrocket, the CV-19 death toll explodes and the economy nosedives, I only wonder whom Donald Trump will blame; it won’t be Trump, of that we can be sure.