More on modeling and the media’s investment in panic mongering

Michigan wasn’t gonna be fooled by some limey’s crazy-ass model for Coronavirus projections. Nosiree, they had homegrown talent for that, and based the state’s shutdown on a model developed over a weekend by some college kids.

That model predicted 85,000 deaths, revised in Model 3.0, to a still astonishing 55,000. Actual death count as of May 16th? 683. And who’s dying?

We learned on Thursday that 98.8 percent of all deaths attributed to COVID-19 occurred among residents of long-term care facilities or others with serious underlying conditions (sometimes several of them). Per comments in the daily briefing yesterday (below), all such deaths are attributed to COVID-19.

On a follow-up piece today on Minnesota’s woes, Powerline points out a phenomenon that I’ve noticed elsewhere: the media is all-in on the lockdown and does everything it can to foment hysteria.

“What we have here is a massive political and public policy failure aided and abetted by the media. The obvious truth at the heart of this saga is slipped into the bottom of Joe Carlson’s current Star Tribune story “Minnesota logs 699 new COVID-19 cases day before state relaxes stay-home rules.” The headline contributes to the campaign of fear that is also an essential element of the saga, yet Carlson’s story concludes:”

“Advanced age and living in a group home are risk factors for developing more severe illness. Nineteen of Sunday’s 22 newly reported fatalities happened in people who lived in long-term care or assisted living facilities. All 22 were between the ages of 50 and 99.

Pre-existing health conditions are also a major factor in the death rate. 

In Minnesota, at least 519 of the people who have died had one of seven chronic health conditions, state officials said. So far, only eight people have been confirmed to lack any of those conditions, while full data are not available for the other 195 people who died from COVID-19. Minnesota has seen 722 deaths from the virus.

The conditions tracked by the health department are: chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma; serious heart conditions; compromised immune systems from cancer treatment, smoking, bone marrow or organ transplantation and other factors; severe obesity (BMI of 40 or higher); diabetes; chronic kidney disease undergoing dialysis; and liver disease.

Carlson doesn’t perform the calculation for his reader: those with significant underlying health conditions account for 98.46 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities in Minnesota. …

Why this hasn’t been the headline news every day — why it is buried at the bottom of Carlson’s May 17 story — is one of those mysteries the solution to which is hiding in plain view. In the manifestation of the CCP epidemic of 2020 in Minnesota, it is the dog that didn’t bark in the night. Governor Walz has orchestrated a devastating fiasco with great fanfare and with the support of the Minnesota media.

Minnesota’s press is not the only organ deliberately distorting its coverage of this pandemic. Here’s how Maine’s newspaper is pushing the news:

Maine reopening despite missed benchmarks, inadequate testing regime

Gov. Janet Mills has continued to lift lockdown measures that have slowed the pandemic in Maine even though the state has failed to meet key reopening prerequisites and other essential benchmarks and guidelines established by public health experts.

The missed targets include downward trends in new cases, minimum levels of daily tests performed, and the establishment of a regime to routinely test asymptomatic individuals in exposed roles such as health care providers, supermarket clerks, ambulance crews and factory employees.

Facing heavy pressure from business and industry, Mills announced April 28 that Maine would take its first steps toward reopening on May 1, when barbershops, hairdressers, auto dealers, doctor’s offices and golf courses would be allowed to reopen statewide. But at the time, Maine had not met key thresholds laid out by the White House in mid-April: a “downward trajectory” of cases for at least 14 days or, failing that, a reduction in the positive share of coronavirus tests compared to 14 days earlier.

On April 28, Maine’s new-case trend had been going up for nearly a week, and it has ascended more steeply in the two weeks since, growing from 21.7 a day on April 28 to 33.6 a day on May 14, according to a Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram analysis of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s data.

And then, finally, in the 15th paragraph. a parenthetical admission tagged on [emphasis added — Ed];

The day after Mills’ announcement – Wednesday, April 29 – the new testing data showed the positive rate had actually increased from 4.8 percent to 5.1 percent since the previous report, which covered the period from April 16 to 22. This was lower than the rate earlier in the month – 8.1 percent for the period April 8 to 14 – but also failed to meet the White House criteria. (The rate has dropped dramatically with a large expansion in testing, falling to 1.8 percent in the period ending May 13.)

Maine, Minnesota, everywhere: there is a determined effort to distort news of what’s happening in this pandemic. “Herd immunity” is a term buzzing around these days, but another distinguishing feature of herds is that fear is contagious, and as it spreads so does panic, until you have the entire group stampeding off cliffs. Cattle rustlers used to use this phenomenon to their advantage by whipping up the heard and steering them into box canyons where they could be trapped, subdued, and rounded up. Who are the rustlers today and who’s riding herd? And why?