Sadly, no. Actually even as testing has increased in some states (not all) the percentage of tests coming back positive has also increased, and by a lot. In Arizona a couple of days ago the test positivity rate was about 28%. If the positivity rate is increasing even as the testing numbers are going up, you have an out of control epidemic.
So they shifted the premise. Now it's that most of the identified cases are young people and they're unlikely to get sick. But now the hospitals are filling up in Arizona and Texas, and hospitalizations are increasing in all of those states with rapidly increasing cases. And what we have always known is that the answer to the apparently steady state death rate is that deaths are a lagging indicator.
It takes at least two or three weeks from the time of diagnosis to the time of death, often longer. And then it takes another week for the death to be registered as a Covid-19 death. So when we look at death, we're looking back a month. So let's take a look at Arizona (I could have picked several other states).
As you can see, the case rate starts to shoot up around the beginning of June, and the death rate starts to go up about three weeks later. For the country as a whole, the case rate started to increase a couple of weeks later, as declining cases in the northeast continued to offset the outbreaks in the south and Midwest for a while. So, it's a reasonable expectation that we'll see the national daily death tally start to increase in another week or so. I hope not -- these few days so far are not enough to establish a definite trend. But what won't happen is that it will magically disappear, as some malignant clown keeps insisting. That is literally insane. He thinks his words have magical power.
3 comments:
Actually, I think that Shitler's words have magical power. The legend of King Midas is just that--a legend. But here, we have a living, breathing, beefy-cheesy-fart-blowing disgusting malevolent con man who can actually turn everything that he comes in contact with into shit.
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/us-public-finance/declining-enrollment-revenue-risk-more-acute-for-private-colleges-08-06-2020
Fitch anticipates annual enrollment declines could range from 5% to 20% for many colleges and universities in fall 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Private colleges could experience more meaningful financial effects than public colleges, given a higher reliance on tuition and student fee revenues, for which the median share of total revenue is 82%, compared with 38% for rated public universities.
Enrollment pressures, particularly related to declines of international students and incoming freshmen, will not affect institutions equally. Private colleges in competitive regions with challenging demographics, such as the Northeast, and/or an already vulnerable demand profile, will be most affected.
Yes. I'm not sure how we'll be affected -- the demand for Ivy League education is very strong -- although the loss of international students is definitely going to be felt. We don't rely on tuition to nearly that extent, obviously, but they are cutting expenses quite noticeably already. A lot of other institutions -- museums, cultural institutions such as symphonies and ballets, concert venues, and of course the hospitality industry, will have to rebuild with a lot of bankruptcies and damage to infrastructure. Certainly some colleges will not survive. But what can you do? We couldn't keep the place open and have the senior faculty start to die off. Sometimes there are no good choices.
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