I like how NPR "explains" that cases have fallen in India because of masks, while also stating that mask mandates were in place before cases rose and that serioprevelance indicates almost 60% of urban populations have already had Covid.
I found this video from a month ago (supposed to be funny?) showing that no one is wearing masks until they are forced to - and then immediately take them back off once the danger has passed. There are dozens of similar videos.
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California was the first state to issue a stay at home order, has mandated masks for months, and has been one of the 10 most restrictive states over the past three months; Florida has no state mask mandate, no lockdown and is one of the least restrictive states in the country.
Florida and California are two of the three largest states by population and both have sunny, warm weather and reside on a similar latitude. One has had open theme parks for months; the other has never allowed Disney to open. Let's compare how they are doing...
Cases in California are now 4X higher than in Florida. Both saw a spike in the Summer, but California's late Fall growth in cases is dramatically worse than Florida's:
Four days ago, Oxford University published a report on US state government responses to Covid-19, showing a wide divergence in relative stringency with that divergence growing over time as 1/2 the US states open up and 1/2 continue to lock-down:
This study, if anything, understates the differences between states as I have personally visited 20 states since this Summer and the day-to-day experiences in Alabama or Idaho vs. Washington or Nevada are dramatically and obviously different.
Euromomo.eu shows excess mortality in the Spring more than 2X that seen in the fall, despite wider spread:
Similarly, the CDC estimated excess mortality in the Spring was about 2X that seen in Summer or Fall, despite ever widening spread:
Why has Covid become so dramatically less lethal over time? One primary reason is that doctors are no longer actively mistreating patients: wsj.com/articles/hospi…
It has now been 4 weeks since "cases" peaked in the northern Great Plains states; they have now fallen nearly 50% since mid-November despite mild restrictions and limited mask mandates:
Cases in the Rocky Mountain states appear to have peaked one week later (before Thanksgiving):
The southern Plains states seem to have hit a plateau before Thanksgiving and may have begun their inevitable descent:
Officially, the CDC shows 335K excess deaths in 2020. But, something is very wrong with their baseline expected deaths. For some reason, they "expected" mortality to decline this year - after steadily increasing annually for the past decade:
If the CDC had simply extended their average expected deaths trend into 2020, excess deaths would be reduced by 114K. In other words, about 1/3 of CDC reported excess mortality is due entirely to an artificially low baseline:
To paint this in the best possible light, I believe the CDC may have reduced expected 2020 deaths because of the extraordinarily mild Winter deaths observed in 2019. However, past trends indicate that low mortality years tend to be followed by high mortality years.