1. How many flu deaths would there have been last year without widespread vaccination?

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   1. You would have to find the real number of people who got the shot and assume 100% of them became immune to give is a basic idea/ I looked and CDC only gives me percentages. I might be looking at the wrong pages.

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      1. I was thinking about it some more, and perhaps a another good metric is current year flu deaths with the protocols in place vs last year without.

         We still need that estimate of last year’s flu death if there were no vaccine, though. We absolutely cannot compare last year’s flu-with-a-vaccine deaths vs this year’s covid19-with-no-vaccine deaths because OF COURSE something with widespread vaccination will kill fewer people than something with no vaccine at all, everything else being equal.

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2. IMO, your statement, “with full counter plague protocols and actions by most everybody” is far from accurate. Hot spots like NYC and New Orleans appear to be the result, in large part, of NOT taking those actions. It appears likely that the Wuhan virus has been in our population since at least January, if not earlier. We’re having decisions made for us based on crappy computer models, using crappy data, and inaccurate assumptions.

   YMMV….

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   1. So how come the same events did not increase the amount of deaths last year?

3. I’m about 99% sure that the mass graves thing is being done for optics not necessity.

   I’m sure if the city wanted to treat people with respect they could hold all the bodies and cremate people and deliver the ashes to families much the same way that they did with the 9/11 dead, who were held until they were identified.

   They might run out if morgue space in the city but not the whole state. Worst case they could pay some of the local restaurants to store bodies in the walk in freezers or fridges that are not being used, then pay for hazard cleaning when its done.

   They are doing the mass graves thing to shock people. They could treat the dead and the grieving with respect but that wouldn’t help defeat Trump.

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   1. I’m sure more than a few restaurants in Little Italy have stored a body or two on ice over the years…

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   2. It’s Hart Island. They’ve been burying homeless and foreigners there for 100 years. Just more media lies and distortion to provide aid and succor to the enemy – propaganda against the increasing sentiment that it’s past time to wrap this up.

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      1. Yes, The WSJ captioned that photo with “Potter’s Field” which is a medieval term for the pauper’s burial ground.

         1. The term is even older than that. Its straight from the New Testament. Matthew 27:3

   3. The ones being buried on Hart Island are unclaimed bodies that have been around for a while, not necessarily virus dead. Big cities take advantage of mass casualty events (or those with that potential) to use federal subsidies to clear out the bodies they can’t afford to bury otherwise. Another example of city governments not bothering with their basic responsibilities.

      Source: brother-in-law, who worked for DMORT, commenting on these graves today.

4. I wonder how much the mitigation steps we’ve taken have actually helped, though. Ok, concerts/events are cancelled, and bars/restaurants are shut down. But people are still tripping over eachother at grocery stores and public parks are packed in ways I’ve never before seen. I suppose closing almost everything may have helped some but I suspect the main reason we’ve seen things slow is that people are suddenly much more conscious of washing their hands, not shaking hands, and not touching their faces.

   1. Fortunately I don’t live in a city, so things like “public parks” don’t mean much. As for grocery stores, they are limiting the number in the store (there’s a line outside, spaced 6-10 feet apart with tape and traffic cones). It’s not hard to keep distance, certainly “tripping over each other” isn’t an issue.
      I suppose that is why relatively rural states like NH have few cases.

   2. Every grocery store I’ve been in has had signs up reminding people to stay 6′ away. One store has tape X’s on the floor to indicate the spacing. People have been extremely good at maintaining that distance, even when some idiot is camped in front of a case, carefully deciding which package of ground beef catches their eye.

      Only seen public parks while driving by — and the people there seemed to be maintaining their distance, too.

      This is in suburban Ohio, so YMMV.

5. NYC? Let it burn.

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6. New York City is also not America. It does not define us. It does not rule us. It does not even represent us.
   New York City may be a very, very large city, population-wise. They’re actually kinda small as land mass goes (the nearest “megacity” to us is El Paso, Texas, which has several times the land area but a fraction of the population; it’s far more “normal” for American cities in that regard than NYC). They’re piled on top of each other almost literally.
   New Orleans is a party city. Not just the spring break folks, or Mardi Gras. The whole town. Impromptu parades and weekly, if not nightly, bar hopping and rolling parties. They heard the prognotications, shrugged, and figured that since no one with guns was forcing them to hole up, it was playtime as usual. Now they’re blaming those men with guns for not forcing them to stand in the corner for their own good.
   The United States is not NYC or NO.
   If we don’t cut the quarantine bullshit, if we don’t go back to work soon, even if there is enough food come winter time, there won’t be enough money worth buying it. We can’t print our way out of the slump we’ve allowed to be imposed on ourselves; witness Venezuela. Or Africa. Or the CSA. Or any number of countries that tried that, only to discover that a wheelbarrow of cash was not sufficient to buy a loaf of bread. If we allow this to continue, that will be our future, too. The federal government and the president’s administration are doing what they can, but it is not, can not be, never will be, enough to stage off the economic disaster we are growing for ourselves.
   Not to mention the many and nigh-innumerable unconstitutional edicts the state governors and legislatures are handing out. Freedom of assembly had been trampled into a bloody pulp. Freedom of travel without government intrusion is an essential part and parcel of assembling, and that too is taking a bearing. Forced closures are a governmental taking without a recourse. Freedom of religion is on the block as well. And some governors are attempting to use all this as excuse to step on gun rights as well.
   This has to stop.
   The First Amendment does not have “pandemic protocols” or exemptions. Neither does the Second. Nor do the Fourth, Fifth, or Ninth. I’ve also read 18 USC § 241 and 242. Violations of Constitutional rights are a codified federal crime. No pandemic exceptions there, either.
   Wear a mask if you feel it necessary. Make a mask if you can’t find any. But get back to living. Get back to producing. Deny the power hungry tin pots.
   And prosecute every politician and jack boot that tries to enforce this illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral faux quarantine.
   I say this, as one of those who wears the jack boots. As a cop. As an armed, uniformed, gun wearing law enforcement officer. But I remember the oath of office I took. It was not to protect, serve, and defend the President, or Congress, or any portion of the federal bureaucracy. Neither was it to protect, defend, and serve any governor, state legislature, or local official. It was to protect, serve, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and through that, the people.
   But if the People will not stand for their rights, I might as well resign and go home.
   I’ll close with two quotes from over 200 years ago, that I believe are as applicable today as they were when they were uttered, save the fact that we now face not one King George, but fifty.

   Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither.

   Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course other may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

   It is not now, nor has it ever been, a safe world, free from danger or disease. But it has been a -good- world, of late, due to liberty.
   We are throwing that away.

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7. The stagistics aren’t the same. When someone has the flu but dies of something else, it’s not marked a flu death. With this, if you die with it, regardless of if the thing you died of was a preexisting condition, it’s a covid-19 death.

   1. “Man with covid19 dies after skydiving without a parachute” is the current joke about the way deaths are being counted

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