Aircraft structures are designed to meet (or exceed) three different kinds of loads, or stresses, imposed on them:
Design Load: The load the structure is expected to endure in everyday use
Design Limit Load: The load the structure must bear without any type of permanent damage
Jun 10 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
A friend asked in in a private chat:
"@greg_travis what is the USA covid body count ATM, and how many of those have occurred since January 20th, 2021?"
Since it took me some time to put together my response:, I'm going to amortize my time by sharing it here
As of last week there had been a total of 1,192,436 deaths where COVID was listed as having contributed to the death on the death certificate
Of those 702,498 (60%) have occurred since February 1st, 2021
Apr 26 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
This is a sniper on the rooftop of the Indiana University Memorial Union in Bloomington, Indiana today
I live approximately 10 miles from this spot now. I graduated from IU in 1988
Let me tell you a little bit about this place
This is the central campus of Indiana University.
The red arrow points to the sniper's location atop the memorial union.
The memorial union (known as IMU) is the largest university college union in the United States. It is also famous for legionnaire's disease
Apr 8 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
If you're looking for something fun to do on Eclipse Monday, saddle up to your favorite death minimizer and say:
"You know, influenza's seasonality is driven by the migratory behavior of seasonal waterfowl, not people getting together for office parties during the holidays"
Be sure to be wearing a full face shield when you do both to protect yourself against SARS-CoV-2 but also because there's about to be a lot of foaming at the mouth
Because, you see, suggesting that influenza's prevalence is due to circumstances that are entirely predictable as
Apr 8 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
How SARS-CoV-2 infections are killing children and young adults
They're killing them by in creasing mental disorders including dementia, mania and stress)
They're killing them by triggering death from liver and kidney disease
Apr 6 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Yesterday I posted this graph showing that there is a very large excess death burden from disease continuing in young adults in the United States
It generated some controversy
The minimizers did not like that I drew a causal inference between SARS-CoV-2 infections (COVID deaths) and excess deaths from disease
"Correlation is not causation" and all that rot
Instead, they insisted the rise in excess deaths were due to ABC (Anything But COVID)
Apr 4 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Death certificates listing death from disease other than respiratory disease vs. death certificates listing death from COVID
There is an almost perfect correlation between the two
This should put to rest nonsense that COVID deaths are over-reported
The data shows the opposite
Same chart except showing only the 18-44 year old demographic
Here the undercount of COVID's impact on this demographic is even more stark
Excess deaths from non-respiratory disease in this demo are running over 700 per month while reported COVID deaths are just over 100
Mar 23 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I've been living (temporarily) in San Francisco for the past month+
I have had the opportunity to spend considerable time at UCSF's Parnassus, Mission Bay & Mt. Zion facilities
Contrasting the behavior of the residents of SF with those of my home in the Midwest it is not hard
To understand the vast gulf between what comes out of UCSF and what the rest of us consider our lived experience, consider:
Of the 593 counties in the United States with a population of 100K or more, San Francisco County is #22 in having the lowest per-capita COVID fatality
Mar 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I see posts declaring that excess deaths from "age adjusted all-cause deaths" in 2023 are negative popping up
Let's talk about that
First, it is true that all-age, all-cause excess deaths in 2023 are much lower than 2020/2021/2022
I calculate just a 1% increase in 2023
Note that I do not use the statistical trick of "age adjusting" deaths
I consider age adjustment morally reprehensible (it discounts deaths the older the person is who died)
Instead I prefer to list mortality rates by age bands
That's problem #1
Feb 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Deaths showing COVID as contributing to death vs. excess deaths from disease
Currently the 45-74 year old demographic shows the least amount of excess death relative to COVID deaths
Since this age group sets the national narrative, the narrative is COVID is over
Unfortunately, COVID for other age groups is not over
In particular, the youngest age group (children) show a very large gap between ongoing excess deaths from disease and their "official" COVID deaths
Conclusion?
Deaths from SARS2 infection under-reported in children
Feb 10 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Well six months of 2023's data is now final and, unfortunately, past trends are holding steady with regard to excess deaths from disease in children and young adults
2023 will likely close with:
12% increase in deaths from disease in those aged 18-44
14% increase in those 0-17
As of July, the 18-44 demographic was experiencing a surge in deaths from disease with the preliminary incomplete data supporting an intensification of that surge
Feb 9 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
1/In the USA, what you're experiencing and what you perceive are largely driven by geography and age
This "big picture" chart shows the ongoing progression of the pandemic by HHS regions
It's way too cluttered to be useful as-is so come join me for a deeper dive...
Right now we're looking at total excess deaths for all age demographics. That produces a pretty cluttered picture as we saw.
But what happens if we zoom in by Variant?
Let's start with Wuhan...
The initial (spring 2020) Wuhan wave was
Feb 8 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Exciting news for my Excess Death Explorer (best excess death explorer on the planet)
1. New signal processing routines (I knew being a licensed HAM radio operator would come in handy) 2. Now has Health and Human Services Regions 1-10
You can really see different patterns of the pandemic in the YAH (18-44yo) demographic (more at the excess death explorer)
Feb 5 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In a normal year:
55% of deaths happen in those over the age of 75
37% happen in those aged 45-74
6% in those 18-44
2% under 18
This is what we mean when we say "children aren't supposed to die"
@Loretta_Torrago @arijitchakrav @19joho
In 2021 that changed
51% of deaths happened in age 75
41% in 45-74
7% in 18-44
Jan 22 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Be aware that people who are wealthy and powerful are that way because of the status quo (hence the "urgency of normal")
The status-quo aligned forces are underwriting a relentless campaign to relabel "Long COVID" as generically "Long Anything"
This is dangerous
The emerging narrative is that >ANY< viral infection can be expected to produce long-term, possibly lifelong, effects
Whether or not that viral infection is SARS2 virus or influenza or the common cold
And that "long" is not only common, it's mild
So stop complaining
Jan 18 • 21 tweets • 5 min read
1/Watching the senate testimony on Long COVID and I am overwhelmed by the recurrent theme of LC victims and their struggles with simply being believed
My late wife began exhibiting "flu-like" symptoms in January of 2012 of which the primary manifestation was easy exhaustion and
2/a lack of stamina. In the first few months of her illness she was repeatedly told that they could not find anything obviously wrong and that she probably "just had the flu" (literally)
In September of 2012 -- nine months after her symptoms had begun -- I took her to the
Jan 13 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Excess deaths from disease in those aged 18-44 through September of 2023
Excess is calculated relative to a monthly linear trended baseline from 2015-2019
Q: Why only through September 2023?
A: These are calculated from death certificates where death from disease (ANY disease) is coded on the death certificate as the UNDERLYING cause of death (UCD).
I.e. deaths FROM disease not deaths WITH disease
UCD determination takes time to
Jan 11 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In November of 2020, I along with eight other aviation safety experts, joined a request to the FAA seeking to have the FAA divulge under FOIA the exact manner in which Boeing's 737 MAX met the certification criteria for commercial airliners
2/This was during the process in which the 737 MAX was being re-certified after the horrific 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019 in which shoddy software quality control ultimately took the lives of 346 people in two separate crashes
The FAA responded to our FOIA request
Jan 10 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1/Why I know so much about airplanes and the airplane industry
Every engineering endeavor -- from building a shed to building a large commercial airliner -- is a series of thousands upon thousands of compromises
When you work on machines you learn of those compromises
2/You learn what function each compromise was meant to satisfy as well as the distinct "signature" that every compromise leaves embedded in the very nature of the machine
Every time we compromise we reveal something of ourselves
A poet chooses her words from thousands available
Jan 10 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
1/Five years ago a number of us warned that the errors and oversights that led to the Boeing 737 MCAS tragedies were so egregious and so vast in scope that it was impossible for the 737 MAX to not have many many more defects of the same nature
2/That nature being the relentless cost-cutting, outsourcing and financialization at Boeing, largely as a result of the reverse takeover of Boeing in the 1996s by McDonnell Douglas
We petitioned the FAA as well as Boeing and others to be relentlessly transparent
Jan 8 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
I've put together an article on the Alaska Air 1282 incident
You can read it in PDF form here:
Please pass along and retweet to anyone you think might be interested