Read on Twitter
1/ Since May, I’ve seen a national and state level narrative that simply doesn’t fit the facts. Media and politicians fan the flames of fear and panic for political and financial gain. This harmful rhetoric, completely devoid of context, does nothing but sow fear. Thread below: https://twitter.com/GovLarryHogan/status/1329457448881582080
2/ I was born in MD and I’ve lived here most of my life. I’m horrified at what I’m seeing and the damage being done to children and the disadvantaged as schools announce closings for 2021. But what are the actual facts? https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/howard/cng-ho-virtual-hybrid-vote-20201117-bmrlj4vuvngqbmjb7ey2644zte-story.html
3/ The facts are that, as of 11/18, we are going through a completely normal respiratory illness season. We hear about rising case numbers and C19 hospitalizations, but in context, hospitals are at COMPLETELY NORMAL LEVELS for this time of year with plenty of room to spare.
4/ Here are heat map projections from http://aha.org . As was predicted months ago, the Midwest was still going to see an uptick of C19 cases/deaths, as they had not finished the initial wave back in March. But overall, as a nation, we look normal.
5/ Fact of the matter is, our hospitals in MD and across the country aren’t at risk of running out of beds, but they are at risk of being under-staffed due to school closures. These issues are policy driven (article from March warning of such issues) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-nurses/u-s-hospitals-say-coronavirus-school-closures-add-to-staffing-pressure-idUSKBN2110JO
5a/ Another point that simply is being lost in the Covid noise is the fact that flu is basically non-existent right now. Some parts of the world are down 90% in flu prevalence. Follow @kerpen for good flu updates. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6937a6.htm
6/ Back to MD – case numbers sound scary but the deaths are no longer following the increase. This is most likely because:
a)We had far more infections in the spring than confirmed cases
b)Weakening virus
c)Better treatment
a)We had far more infections in the spring than confirmed cases
b)Weakening virus
c)Better treatment
7/ Aside from the fact that human intervention hasn’t stopped the virus anywhere in the world, we can look at the trajectory in the UK. Natural flattening will occur, regardless of response, and this is nowhere near March level (it was flattening before the illogical UK lockdown)
8/ MD and US All Cause Deaths are both trending normally. MD has been since August. Do not confuse this with excess deaths. We certainly have excess deaths from the spring, but if we weren’t testing and breathlessly reporting, we wouldn’t even know C19 was here anymore.
9/ Here is an excess deaths chart for MD. Again, it was an awful spring with many of our very sick, vulnerable population dying. But also note how we’ve been far under the excess deaths threshold for the past 3-4 years, meaning the vulnerable population had built up significantly
10/ Again, this is another example of the danger of solely focusing on one problem. C19 was a terrible illness IN THE SPRING, but the virus we’re fighting now is bad policy through ineffective human intervention. https://twitter.com/FD2403/status/1325860728537026561?s=20
11/ Here is a great thread on the damage of school closures by @malkusm. These closures are a direct result of the context-less reporting coming from our leaders. https://twitter.com/malkusm/status/1328807363294457859?s=20
12/ No one is denying that the spring was awful. I’ve heard few argue that we shouldn’t have locked down for 2-4 weeks to flatten the curve. But our response since, and the narrative we’ve created, are leading to far more damage than this virus ever could.
End/ I’m happy to help compile these statistics, @GovLarryHogan , simply so we can add some context and start working our way out of this self-inflicted psychological jail. We need to do a better job of outlining all of the facts, not just C19.
