Data Without Doctoring Dr. David Owen 08/15/2020
Morning update: No overall change with recorded deaths still over 200 per day and hospitalizations continuing to decrease very nicely. In trying to slog through the numbers it appears that daily deaths during the second week of July will surpass those during the first week and the third week's daily numbers will likely pass the second week's. Again this is all in retrospect. What is also possible is that the average increase in deaths per day over each week block will start to decline possibly as early as the second week of Aug. (Call this the torturing of data until it tells you what you want to hear!!). And to further confuse matters, we won't know that until the second week of Sept or so!!
When you compare the data from the pandemic down here to the data from NY/NJ the difference is quite startling. A rapid rise in hospitalizations and deaths followed by a rapid decline. That will not happen down here as we drip, drip, drip with 100-200 deaths per day for the next several weeks. I really do not think we'll even get close to zero, unlike NY/NJ until we have a vaccine, at the earliest. What we are experiencing, imho is precisely, a flat curve, probably extending out for many weeks, if not months. This, recall, is what our PH / epidemiologists / politicians were hoping for back in April and now they have it. Why the continued belly-aching is beyond me. Yes, we all wish the numbers were lower, but we have had no severe spike and hospital beds are freely available. And we did not totally trash our economy, and we have a real shot of opening our schools safely.
We will learn to live with this new norm. ___ www.frankcastingmediagroup.com www.frankmulhall.com