WUHAN VIRUS DAILY UPDATE FOR APRIL 17
SLIGHT DECLINES TIL TUESDAY? As projected, both rates of growth (rog) for new incidents and deaths are slightly down today but really can't call this anything but a sideways move because we know they're gonna push new big death numbers on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Stanford has conducted a remarkable study ( Stanford Anti-body Study ) by doing the most obvious thing ever and actually testing people semi-randomly for Wuhan-virus anti-bodies. The results are that the numbers of people who have been exposed to the virus but show no symptoms is 40-50x what was detected by hospitals testing people who are symptomatic. Since this isn't a true randomized test these multipliers could be a little high but it's still an extraordinary number! It's also precisely what a lot of people have anticipated being true - including myself - and why WE MUST CONDUCT RANDOM ANTI-BODY TESTS IN EVERY STATE NOW! There is no other piece of information more important to inform policy makers than this. It's cheap and easy to do.
WHY THE HELL ISN'T THIS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE? WHY HASN'T THE CDC MADE THIS THEIR #1 PRIORITY? WHY IS THE FDA STILL HINDERING TESTING BY APPROVING MORE TESTS BUT STRICTLY LIMITING THE LABS ALLOWED TO PROCESS THEM? These policy failures are literally destroying peoples lives every single minute they are in place. There is ZERO reason not to fix them.
One other data point for today, NY has reported deaths today but missed the deadline for reporting new tests and incidents. Guess they have more important things to deal with than actually address the issue of 1/3 of all deaths being under their watch. Rumour has it they were going to report a really big number so the following incidents and test figures are without NY counts.
Given a total of 3,568,382 total tests completed in America, our new total for incidents is 694,520 (+31,260), up slightly to an increase of 4.71% over the previous day (-0.12% from yesterday). Deaths have totaled 32,365 (+2,069) which is an increase of 6.83% (-0.76%) over the previous day. Since the peak in Mar 19, rates of growth for incidents has fallen by 46.92% and for deaths has fallen by 36.03%. There were, again, only 150,391 tests completed at a time where we need more testing than ever.
In two days we'll break 35,000 deaths and it's quite likely that Tuesday will tell us we hit 40,000. Of course, thanks to the CDC's new loose policies on reporting causes of death and our government apparently paying bonuses for reimbursements of Wuhan-virus designated cases (I'm trying to get details on this now), YOUR GOVERNMENT has now created a massive incentive for hospitals to over diagnose and now LIE to us about the state of this pandemic. Understand that due to hospital preparedness for Wuhan-virus cases (which haven't been coming anywhere near the number predicted by any advertised model even including isolation impact) - hospitals are seeing 1/2 to 1/3 of their usual patient loads and are going broke fast. Also remember that accountants and administrators have been in charge of hospitals ever since HMOs were created, not doctors. They desperately need money and our governments desperately need more of their currency of choice which they spend to obtain power - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). We desperately need to have doctors put back in charge of our health care. I'm working on seeing if I can detect this FUD factor. We'll see...