Ah, so how many weeks should we have to wait before your prediction is another dud? I've asked you this before, incidentally and you've always been hesitant to answer - because you know you're on the hook for another failed prediction if it does not happen. Several is three or maybe four. Three weeks? Four weeks?
At the beginning of the pandemic the average time between the first positive COVID test and death was only 2 to 3 weeks because most people only got tested at the hospital admission door due to the shortage of COVID tests. Now that COVID tests are plentiful and it is easy to get tested -- most people get tested well before they land up in the hospital. There are also improved therapies and drugs being used in hospitals (which also reduced the death rate). The average length of time between the first positive COVID test and death has now increased to 6 or 7 weeks.
Ah, of course it has. So given that you started talking about variants back in February (the 25th of Feb to be exact): We're like 5 weeks into it (never mind the fact that the variant would already have been on the ground for weeks and weeks prior to being reported about) then we should see a spike any day now, right? Or am I mistaken because of something? Goal post moving, maybe? Maybe we have to wait another six weeks because of...stuff? I'm sure you'll come up with some reason or another. LOL
A new day.... a new study showing Florida greatly under-counted COVID deaths. This county by county study showing that rural counties in Florida accounted for most of the under-reporting. This new study brought to use courtesy of researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. COVID-19 has been more deadly in Florida than reported, especially in rural counties, study shows https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0210331-a4rnsenzajdd5nnwzm2fkg5g5y-story.htmlhttps://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0210331-a4rnsenzajdd5nnwzm2fkg5g5y-story.html Many COVID deaths went unreported last year in Florida’s rural counties, allowing the severity of the pandemic’s impact to be understated, according to a nationwide study released this week. Although urban counties such as those in South Florida did a good job identifying COVID deaths, most rural counties reported an unusual jump in deaths for 2020 but left many of them unexplained or attributed to other causes, according to a study by researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “I think there’s a hidden pandemic here that’s not being appreciated,” said Andrew Stokes, assistant professor in the Department of Global Health in the Boston University School of Public Health. “But it’s not hitting Florida equally. It’s hitting some areas more than others.” “If COVID deaths are being suppressed in certain counties in Florida, that is creating the appearance in those counties that COVID is not a real big deal,” he said. “And that’s probably affecting people’s behaviors.” The study examined more than 2,000 counties nationwide and found the number of unreported COVID deaths was higher in rural counties, particularly ones that were poorer, less educated, with higher percentages of Black residents, with higher rates of diabetes, and located in the southern or western states. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed but has been made public to allow researchers the chance to read it and comment. Among possible reasons for undercounting deaths include the skepticism about the severity of the disease in conservative areas, less widespread testing, and reduced availability of health care in smaller communities. “We saw patients in hospitals dying of COVID refusing to acknowledge they have COVID and saying it’s a hoax,” said Katherine Hempstead, a co-author of the study and senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “It’s been politicized. Some act like not as big a health problem as other people do.” Other possible reasons, she said, could be that hospitals discharge patients too soon so they die at home and the death is not recorded as a COVID death. Hempstead said if someone died at home in a rural part of Florida, they may not do a lot of toxicology testing because they don’t have resources. “There are differences in resources, and that affects what gets considered on a death certificate,” she said. In total, Florida had 21,890 deaths officials attributed to COVID in 2020. The study looked at the number of deaths in each county, focusing on “excess deaths,” those that were above what would have been expected without the COVID pandemic. If COVID deaths were correctly reported, the vast majority of these deaths would be assigned to COVID, as they were in Florida’s urban counties. But in most rural counties, they were not. The number of excess deaths not assigned to COVID ranged from about 10% in Union County to nearly 80% in Franklin County, according to the study. Although a few urban counties ranked high for missed deaths, the vast majority were rural, with many found to have missed 20%-50% of deaths. One factor in the uncounted deaths could have come early in the pandemic when coronavirus testing was scarce. “My understanding is that Florida did not assign COVID to the death certificate in cases where testing did not occur,” Stokes said. “Attending physicians and medical examiners are only coding COVID if there was a test.” Five of the six counties with the highest likely percentage of missed deaths fall under the jurisdiction of a single medical examiner, Dr. David Stewart, whose Panhandle-based District 2 includes Franklin County, which headed the list, followed by Jefferson, Wakulla and Leon counties. Taylor County, for which he is also responsible, ranked sixth. “There could be some medical examiner effects here,” Stokes said. “You can see the underreporting is greatest in several districts that are controlled by the same medical examiner. For example, District 2 seems to be quite problematic.” Stewart declined comment. Medical examiners had been in charge of reporting COVID deaths to the state for the first half of last year, before voluntarily relinquishing control in Augustbecause the workload turned out to be overwhelming. Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of Florida’s Medical Examiners Commission, said there is no reason why a medical examiner would intentionally under-report COVID deaths. He thinks it is more about being uninformed about how to look deeper. He also said big counties quickly became more experienced about how to recognize a COVID death. There were several reasons COVID deaths could be missed in rural counties, he said. Some small counties lack hospitals, which means the deaths of the sickest patients may be counted in nearby counties that do have the facilities. Gov. Ron DeSantis has bragged about what he’s described as Florida’s success in fighting COVID without the drastic measures imposed by other states. If Florida’s death count turned out to be significantly higher, that would undermine that message. But Stokes said failures to report COVID deaths in rural Florida counties were balanced by more complete reporting in urban counties, minimizing the impact on the state total. He estimates that Florida had more than 2,600 excess deaths in 2020 that were not counted as COVID. Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said that while the research on missed deaths in Florida was unsurprising, the state probably ranks in the middle for missed deaths, which is an issue nationwide.
I wish I could say Kimmel is funny, but he isn't. And I'm removing the political angle completely. He used to be funny when he focused on humor. Now he's wading into the activist arena and he's just not as good. Remember when he did mean tweets? One of the funniest segments. Or when he went on the street to ask questions about world events or people and the average idiot gave some really hilariously stupid comments? That was funny. This was just meh. Not even is he vastly incorrect on the things he says "Republicans want 9 forms of ID for voting" as an example, it just falls flat. The audience has a few folks giggling, but that's it.
Its not a new study at all. That's another GWB lie. Gonna have to trademark that phrase from now on. The GWB Lie ™. It's the same study, and has the same problems with it that it had before. AND, the author has admitted that if you do the same analysis for other states, Florida wouldn't stand out as being outside the norm. They ONLY DID Florida. Wonder why. You're just a liar, and you do it over and over. But now we have the GWB Lie ™. With 1/3 less calories!
"It's the same study," -- Tsing Tao's current claim to label this a "GWB lie" Let's take a further look... both articles have links to their respective studies. Are you claiming that the study regarding rural counties under-reporting by researchers at Boston University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7480051/ Is the same study as the one in the earlier article - where the study is from the the American Journal of Public Health and the primary author is Moosa Tatar. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306130 These are two totally different studies.
I stand corrected, this is not the same study. You make up shit so many times and never admit it that it is hard to tell the difference. So lets look at this new study. Your article, and your commentary, make it seem that what happened in Florida is an anomoly and different than what happened everywhere in the US. Are you saying this new study shows that Florida is worse off than other states? Because I'm looking through it right now and I don't see that. Yet, your commentary was decidedly all about how Florida was the problem (no doubt to continue your narrative). Can you show me the Florida call outs in the study or do I have to look through it all to find out?