Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Why Does OC Have a Much Lower COVID Testing Rate Than San Diego County? Voice of OC

Why Does OC Have a Much Lower COVID Testing Rate Than San Diego County?
Voice of OC
https://voiceofoc.org/2020/04/does-oc-have-a-much-lower-covid-testing-rate-than-san-diego-county/
     While coronavirus testing continuing to be in short supply statewide, Orange County has reported numbers that appear to put it significantly behind its southern neighbor. 
     As of Tuesday evening, OC reported about 3,500 tests per million residents, while San Diego County has reported about 6,000, and Los Angeles County about 5,000. Other California counties, like Santa Clara County, also have reported more than 5,000 tests per million residents. 
     San Diego County, in particular, has a similar population size to Orange County – with about 4 percent more residents than OC – while reporting about 80 percent more COVID tests (20,336 versus 11,307, as of Tuesday evening)....

What Cal is doing right

What California is doing right in responding to the coronavirus pandemic
CNN
Wed April 8, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/us/california-coronavirus-explainer/index.html



'We won't see coronavirus here' ... and other gems from Trump's new press secretary
Kayleigh McEnany, who replaces Stephanie Grisham, has embraced birtherism and claimed Democrats were rooting for the pandemic
The Guardian
Wed April 8, 2020

(U.S.) Death count comparisons (War vs COVID-19)

U.S. deaths only; See "Cost of War" below


U.S. WAR DEATHS
VA DATA:
World War I (1917-1918) Total U.S. Servicemembers (Worldwide) 4,734,991 Battle Deaths 53,402   
World War II (1941 –1945) Total U.S. Servicemembers (Worldwide) 16,112,566 Battle Deaths 291,557   
Korean War (1950-1953) Total U.S. Servicemembers (Worldwide) 5,720,000 Total Serving (In Theater) 1,789,000 Battle Deaths 33,739   
Vietnam War (1964-1975) Total U.S. Servicemembers (Worldwide)  8,744,000 Deployed to Southeast Asia 7 3,403,000 Battle Deaths  47,434   
Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-1991) Total U.S. Servicemembers (Worldwide) 2,225,000 Deployed to Gulf 694,550 Battle Deaths 148 
9-11 attack, civilian/Pentagon deaths:
2,977

Iraq war
U.S.: 4,431 deaths

COVID-19 in U.S. (to date)
Deaths 12,754 - April 10: 16,570


* * *
A leading model now estimates tens of thousands fewer covid-19 deaths by summer
Washington Post (4-8-20)
     At a sober press briefing in the White House last week, members of President Trump's coronavirus task force unveiled data supporting the need to continue the national effort to limit the spread of the virus.     Even while maintaining policies aimed at limiting person-to-person contact, the administration projected between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans would die of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. One slide, using data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, showed a predicted peak in the daily death toll from the disease arriving in the middle of April.. . .     Late Tuesday night, however, the IHME estimate shifted in the other direction. While the model last week projected nearly 94,000 deaths by late summer, its new estimate puts the toll by August at 60,400 — a decline of 26 percent from the model’s previous estimate.. . .     This is unequivocally good news, but it carries with it several caveats….


“Costs of War” [Iraq War]
Watson Institute
International & Public Affairs
Brown University
     No one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion. However, we know that over 182,000 civilians have died from direct war related violence caused by the US, its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces from the time of the invasion through November 2018. The violent deaths of Iraqi civilians have occurred through aerial bombing, shelling, gunshots, suicide attacks, and fires started by bombing.     Because not all war-related deaths have been recorded accurately by the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition, the 182,000 figure for civilians killed from 2003 to 2018 is lower than the actual figure.  .. . .     Several estimates based on randomly selected household surveys estimate the approximate numbers of civilians killed, injured, and made sick due to war. These surveys place the total death count among Iraqis in the hundreds of thousands, including nonviolent or indirect deaths….

Iraq: the Human Cost 
[Persian Gulf War]
MIT
     Conventional wisdom in American politics focuses only on American costs in the war in Iraq: the casualties to U.S. soldiers, the financial costs, and sometimes the strategic costs. But the human cost to the Iraqis themselves are nearly ignored in political discourse, the news media, and intellectual circles. This site is a corrective to those oversights. We present empirical reports, studies, and other accounts that convey and assess the consequences of war for the people of Iraq.  . . .     Another household survey, this one conducted by the Iraq Ministry of Health at the same time as the second Hopkins study, found 400,000 excess deaths, 151,000 by violence. As is the case with most such surveys conducted during time of war, there were problems in data gathering and the analysis tended to minimize violent death estimates. But the survey generally confirmed the very high mortality reported in The Lancet.

Estimates of deaths in [Gulf] war still in dispute
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
     With a second Persian Gulf War drawing near, Beth Daponte's telephone has been ringing off the hook with journalists from around the country asking about her estimates of Iraqi casualties in the first one.     Now a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Daponte was a 29-year-old demographer at the Commerce Department in 1992, responsible for keeping track of developments in the Middle East, when she estimated that 158,000 Iraqis -- 86,194 men, 39,612 women and 32,195 children -- had perished in the war and its aftermath….

Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports
New York Times, Dec. 1, 1995
     As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the country for the Food and Agriculture Organization….
  

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...