The UK has passed Italy and is now second to the US for recorded Covid deaths. It was predicted weeks ago that the UK would end up with the highest toll in Europe.
Meanwhile New York has revealed 1,700 previously undisclosed Nursing Home deaths.
There are now more than quarter of a million deaths world-wide, with recent signs of just a slight slowing down of deaths (but cases keeps climbing at 80-90,000 a day).
Countries with more than a thousand deaths recorded (with new totals to date for 5 May GMT):
– https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
BBC: UK reports highest death toll in Europe
- The latest daily reported death total for the UK (29,427) is now higher than the total for Italy (29,315)
- The UK has reached this figure faster in its epidemic than Italy, but there are caveats to the comparison
- Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says there will be no “real verdict” until the pandemic is over
- Europe’s first-known case may have emerged almost a month earlier than thought, French doctor suggests after re-testing patient
The death count in New York has been bumped up:
National review: New York Reports 1,700 More Coronavirus Deaths at Nursing Homes
New York on Tuesday announced 1,700 previously undisclosed suspected coronavirus deaths that occurred at nursing homes and adult care facilities.
The new data from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, which includes people who passed away before a lab test could confirm they had coronavirus, brings the state’s death toll from the virus to at least 4,813 since the beginning of March. That number does not include nursing home residents who were transferred to hospital before they died, causing the actual toll of the virus on nursing homes to remain fuzzy.
There are now over seventy thousand deaths recorded in the US,
BBC: A hunt for the ‘missing link’ host species
It was a matter of “when not if” an animal passed the coronavirus from wild bats to humans, scientists say. But it remains unclear whether that animal was sold in the now infamous Wuhan wildlife market in China.
The World Health Organization says that all evidence points to the virus’s natural origin, but some scientists now say it might never be known how the first person was infected.
Global health researchers have, for many years, understood how the trade in wild animals provides a source of species-to-species disease transmission. As life-changing as this particular outbreak has been for so much of the global population, it is actually one of many that the trade has been linked to.
Infectious disease experts agree that, like most emerging human disease, this virus initially jumped undetected across the species barrier.
Donald Trump keeps trying to blame a Chinese laboratory and has promised to release evidence. Others are also promoting this claim – Mike Pompeo: ‘enormous evidence’ coronavirus came from Chinese lab
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, claimed on Sunday there is “enormous evidence” the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese laboratory – but did not provide any of the alleged evidence.
Pompeo said: “There is enormous evidence that that’s where this began,” later adding: “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”
But when he was reminded that US intelligence had issued a formal statement noting the opposite – that the scientific consensus was that the virus was not manmade or genetically modified – Pompeo replied: “That’s right. I agree with that.”
BBC: US allies tread lightly around Trump lab claims
UK officials believe it is not possible to be absolutely sure about the origins but point to scientific opinion suggesting the most likely scenario is that it was from a live animal market. However, they add that it is impossible to rule out the theory of an accidental release from a lab without a full investigation.
Their view echoes comments on Tuesday by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who said: “We can’t rule out any of these arrangements… but the most likely has been in a wildlife wet market.”
US intelligence, like other countries, has devoted extensive resources to try and understand what has been happening within China, and some of the information could be highly sensitive.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told National Geographic on Monday that he did not entertain the lab theory. The World Health Organization (WHO) also says it has not received any evidence from the US to back up the lab theory.
Intelligence may well point to China having tried to play down or hide details of the initial outbreak, although this is different from hiding the exact origin of the virus.
Trump is still trumping up claims and has reassigned his ‘miracle’ claims.
But that ignores the more important comparison of tests per population.
- USA: 7.6 million tests (22,988 per million)
- Germany: 2.5 million testst (30,400 per million)
- Italy: 2.2 million tests (37,158 per million)
- Canada: 919,000 tests (24,359 per million)
- France: 1.1 million tests (16,856 per million)
- Spain: 1.9 million tests (37,158 per million)
- Belgium: 3309,552 tests (39,3632 per million)
- UK: 1.3 million tests (19,026 per million)
- Australia: 664,756 tests (26,069 per million)
- New Zealand: 155,928 tests (32,335 per million)
There are 39 countries with a higher testing rate than the US.
It would be a miracle if Trump started to be honest (unless he doesn’t understand the numbers).
Fox News: Coronavirus death toll in US projected to double as restrictions ease, key model predicts
A revised mortality model predicts coronavirus deaths in the U.S. will nearly double to 135,000 through August as states continue to ease social distancing restrictions.
The grim new projection, released by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) Monday, which has helped influence the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak, has jumped up considerably from its April 29 forecast of 72,433 deaths.
the new projection coincides with an internal Trump administration forecast obtained by The New York Times that predicts the daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1. It also projects there will be 200,000 new coronavirus cases every day. This is a significant jump from current numbers of roughly 25,000 new cases and 1,750 deaths each day.
Sources told Fox News that while a significant portion of the data comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the projections of new cases and deaths come from modeling done at Johns Hopkins University.
When asked about the document, White House spokesman Judd Deere said: “This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting.
“This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed.”
Your NZ 
Blazer
/ 6th May 2020Boris and Trump…Al’s 2 heroes….hopeless!
David
/ 6th May 2020How come Cuomo and De Blasio get a pass despite being in charge of NY which has a death rate of above 1000 per million making it the worst affected place on earth. Cuomo has stated that everything he asked for the Trump administration gave him and in America its the Governors who run things.
They only got around to cleaning the subway last week, they were slow at every level but somehow get a total pass.
Pete George
/ 6th May 2020Who gives them a pass?
I could start looking at all the state governors in the US but I don’t generally want to get to that level of detail here.
David
/ 6th May 2020Not you PG the media in general.
NY is in a terrible state with some very bad early missteps but Cuomo has huge approval ratings and a largely unquestioning media to his and De Blasio,s terrible performance. Half of the US deaths have been in NY.
Duker
/ 6th May 2020Yes, De Blasio and Cuomo have been negligent but on a national level where he could act has been worse…the early months when he praised China like WHO did, the 2 week period after the India trip where he refused to take action advised… so many mis steps after that..
Have you looked at California and Washington State ?
David
/ 6th May 2020Washington State have done a great job given they were first.
Pink David
/ 6th May 2020“Have you looked at California and Washington State ?”
Have you looked at Texas and Florida?
Duker
/ 6th May 2020Texas Governor just said to each City/county ….Its up to you
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dallas-salon-owner-gets-7-days-jail-reopening-during-coronavirus-n1200836
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020At least she gets fed in jail. The judge is still getting paid but she isn’t.
Duker
/ 6th May 2020There goes Trump again …”vrag naroda” or Enemy of the People
Duker
/ 6th May 2020The University of London-UCL a Mike Handley at a computer science research unit has done some interesting graphs comparing US states,[along with many others comparing countries] adjusted for covid cases per mill of state population.. the numbers are about week out of date, still worthwhile but best for maybe many months
“The graph shows cumulative number of confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. The country curves are shown offset by the amounts shown.
I am pulling data for this graph from the NYT dataset, which is much less noisy than the JHU dataset I was previously using.
I have aligned the states by a 4.5% daily increase curve. Italy did not show sustained 4.5% increases, but a number of US states did so, and aligning in this way shows more clearly how common their growth rates are, or have recently been.
New York, Louisiana, Washington State and Oklahome have all dropped below 4.5% daily increase rates.
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-us-norm
Duker
/ 6th May 2020Well well well….
” A British scientist advising the government on its coronavirus response resigned from his role on Tuesday, after the Daily Telegraph reported he had broken lockdown rules by meeting a female friend….Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College in London, said he was standing down from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which plays a key role in shaping government policy.
The Telegraph said he had been visited by a 38-year old woman on two occasions.
Gezza
/ 6th May 2020Old news, I’m afraid…
https://yournz.org/2020/05/06/open-forum-wednesday-241/#comment-415637
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020A UK view:
https://yournz.org/2020/05/06/open-forum-wednesday-241/#comment-415699
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020And the John Hopkins projection claim disowned:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/trump-johns-hopkins-coronavirus-model-statistics
Duker
/ 6th May 2020“The document was intended to illustrate scenarios, including relaxing restrictions on businesses, travel and social distancing that has brought the economy to a standstill in recent weeks. The information was intended to highlight what might cause significant increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths throughout the United States, the statement said.”
Same as happened here, they werent forecasts or projections of a ‘big number’ just illustrative concepts of might be’s.
Its like say a fashion week is what women will be wearing… when we all know its not but ‘one trend’ might break through
I thought the White House favoured the University Of Washinton IHME ‘simple model’ Trump would explode with any Institute with Bloombergs name on it
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
thats has end of May 91k( maybe)-155K( worst case) deaths for US
duperez
/ 6th May 2020A lovely angle from Wisconsin. Their Supreme Court had a conference to debate the authority of a cabinet secretary to extend Gov. Tony Evers’ “safer at home” order for controlling the spread of COVID-19
“Chief Justice Patience Roggensack thanked participants and noted “there’s an awful lot of emotion.” She said the increase in cases in Brown County was the result of an outbreak in a meatpacking facility and that it wasn’t from “the regular folks.”
That as a backgrounder to what is happening there.
“Multiple Wisconisn meat packing facilites that closed after COVID-19 outbreaks will now have to re-open following an executive order from President Donald Trump.
Pres. Trump issued the order Tuesday, following warnings from companies such as Tyson, that shut downs could cause serious problems in the U.S. food supply chain.
“More than 550 meat processing workers have become infected with COVID-19 in Wisconsin, causing shut downs at plants like JBS Packerland in Green Bay, and Patrick Cudahy.”
I’m trying to work out how the Chief Justice and her allies think it’s not legal for the Governor to make ‘regular folks’ stay at home, but it is legal for the President to force meat workers to go to work.
Elsewhere:
“The meat slaughtering and processing industry is among the hardest hit by the pandemic. At least 167 plants have had outbreaks, sickening at least 9,400 people, primarily workers. At least 45 workers have died, according to the media outlets’ tracking.”
In Calgary, Canada one meat processing plant has had more than 900 cases. Seems to be risky. I wonder if metalworkers can throw sickies, for bone spurs.
Pink David
/ 6th May 2020Trump talking sense.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/trump-says-u-s-must-reopen-even-if-more-americans-get-sick
Pete George
/ 6th May 2020Disbanding the US Covid task force and pushing states to reopen more quickly is a big risk.
2,300 deaths and 24,210 new cases in the last 24 hours. The risk is that that will increase.
duperez
/ 6th May 2020There is only one risk which is important. To those that matter anyway. The electoral one.
Pete George
/ 6th May 2020Dead people don’t vote – but family of dead people do vote.
And nearly a million active cases (16,000 critical) may still get to vote, if they survive.
duperez
/ 6th May 2020In the overall scheme of things it’s not going to be many. Probably a couple of hundred thousand max. They’re dispensable. (I’m being in Trump mindset.)
Spread the number over lots of states, take into account the Electoral College system and the President giving Americans their most basic right of freedom, albeit the freedom to wander free to infect or be infected, it’s worth a risk.
It’s the Big Dance for Donald and he’s in to win. Expect the unexpected too.
Pete George
/ 6th May 2020He’s spreading a broad brush.
But a risky one. Some people will bristle.
Pink David
/ 6th May 2020“Disbanding the US Covid task force and pushing states to reopen more quickly is a big risk.”
A big risk? More than 30 million people have already been made unemployed. SWAT teams are being used by state governments to stop people opening bars. I see a risk that is getting to once in a thousand year world changing catastrophe, and all you see is your own fear of a minor virus that will be little more than a footnote in history.
“2,300 deaths and 24,210 new cases in the last 24 hours. The risk is that that will increase.”
An average day in the US sees 6,500 people die. How many lives have been destroyed in the lock down when this lockdown has zero evidence that it has saved a single life?
Stay home, kill everyone.
David
/ 6th May 2020If you open the economy before there is a vaccine you are going to get a 2nd and 3rd and 4th wave until there is a vaccine possibly in 6 months time. Its going to take a decade to recover as we speak.
The reality is that this virus is a risk to older chubby people with health issues and seems to kill around .6% of people. We could isolate those people with a redesign of how we societally operate for a short period and let the rest of the population live normal lives.
In effect the rest of the world is now following Sweden as the only viable option.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020As I said, we are back to where we were in February except with a wrecked economy and now have the option of doing what we should have done then.
Blazer
/ 6th May 2020still trolling unashamedly Al…onya.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020It’s the stark truth, B.
Gezza
/ 6th May 2020Secretary of State Pompeo is such an appallingly greasy sycophant to Trump – regularly parroting whatever idiotic fantasy utterance his boss burbles out before anyone can stop him – that he’s a national embarrassment. The guy’s as big as a bus but must be as timid as a mouse when it comes to standing up for honesty & integrity.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 6th May 2020I gather he has annoyed you somehow?