Energy Blog

April 17.  Trump Supports Protesters of his Own Phase Restrictions

Trump tweeted to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA”, and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA”, backing protesters to quarantining restrictions in the three states, against their Democratic Governors.  Of course, that encourages conservatives all over the country to violate social distancing and protest in their own states.  Some have even suggested that these are politically arranged demonstrations in swing states.  If Trump didn’t play politics despite the life or death seriousness of the situation, VP Pence would have to replace him.  Trump’s oscillations might be called ‘passive-aggressive’, ‘bi-polar’, or ‘flip-flop’, but we have more important things to think about these days.   The four states which Dr. Murray of IHME says may open by May 4 does not include the above three, being Vermont, West Virginia, Montana, and Hawaii.

The IHME modeling of dates by the week in which states will be ready to open is below, with the lightest color of the above four, is on May 4.  California looks like May 18, and New York is May 25.

The IMHE modeling has now forecast 60,300 deaths for the entire country if we all stick to the confinement plans.  US deaths have now passed 36,000.  The 95% probability limits on US deaths is 34,000 to 140,000.  US deaths per day peaked 2 days ago at 2,500 according to the fit.  By May 1, they will still be 855/day, and be 55,300, or 5,000 below the total prediction.

The IHME projects release dates when the Coronavirus will be essentially eliminated in a given state, at only 1 new case per million.  Even then, the IHME requires testing, contact tracing, limited gathering size, and isolation.  This is not a projection of the 14 day decline gateway period in the President’s new guidelines. 

New York was fit at 837 deaths/day one day ago.  The IHME projected a release day for New York State one June 1.  On May 1, there will still be 242 deaths per day.  Total deaths is 22,000, which is 37% or 3/8 of total projected US deaths.

California was fit to peak at 96 deaths per day one day ago.  The total is projected at 1,660.  The release date is May 18.

Michigan has 30,023 cases, with 2,227 deaths, and projected total of 3,304 deaths, if stay at home is rigorously followed.  The deaths/day are fit at 200/day 7 days ago.  The projected release date is May 18.

Minnesota has 2,070 cases, with 111 deaths, and a projection of 195 deaths.

Virginia has 7,491 cases, with 231 present deaths, and a projection of 736 deaths.

Trump’s Rushed Phased Recovery

Update:  A Stanford study of antibody tests in highly infected Santa Clara County, CA, indicates the amazing result that 50 to 85 times the number of known infected people were actually infected.  If that is verified elsewhere, it would be wonderful.

Articles that I read, especially the one from the IHME projection model that the White House uses, talk about resuming normal activities when daily deaths reach a very low rate, in their case, 0.3/million.  Even for the largest state, California, that is 12 deaths per day.  For New York State, it would be 6 deaths per day, instead of the recent plateau of almost 800 a day.  Nobody discussed the 14 days from the peak Gateway Period.  It is probably not a coincidence that the safety confinement period is 14 days.  It improbably implies that after the day you reach the “peak”, no other people are infected.  It implies not actually looking at any of the projected falloff curves, or that there is not interstate travel from states that can peak an entire month later.

So lets discuss the practical statistics and projections here, and in another article, the very generous and risky safety criteria in the guidelines, which neglects the science of the amazing capabilities of the virus and of superspreaders to propagate the virus.

The largest American infection center is New York City, with a third of the country’s infections.  We have been showing the plateauing of their hospital data every few days, and it drags on for a week, because it is reality, not just a three parameter fitting curve of the IHME model.  In state projections, the maximum death rate often only is reduced by a half after two weeks from the “peak”.  As Gov. Cuomo keeps pointing out, their are other parts of the state, which will have their own separate peaks from New York City, which itself has five boroughs.  In California, there are Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose as independent progressing areas, as well as a slow spread to all counties.

Before we get into a particular case, we note that there is a 14 day gateway to get into Phase 1, and others to get into Phase 2 and Phase 3.  But there is no required length to stay into Phase 1 or 2, other than the gateway.  So a state can go from peak to complete relaxation in four weeks, if it looks like they can start Phase 1 now.

While there will be another IHME super fit tomorrow morning, we look at the New York projection of deaths per day.  Since we do not have sufficient or timely testing, we don’t know the true number of cases per day, so the IHMΕ uses Coronavirus deaths in hospitals.  But now, the CDC is separately totaling other deaths, which is confusing, since it is not as clear as China’s adding in clinically diagnosed cases.  Anyway, the New York projection was to peak on April 10 at 800 per day.  But on April 7, it already was 791.  On April 12, it still had 758.  It doesn’t decline to half the peak until April 18, and a quarter of the peak at April 22, which is 12 days after the peak of the fit.  Will the state consider things relaxed at still that death rate?

The USA projection is no longer a simple falling curve, but now has a long second wave from late peaking states.

Trump never meant for us to defeat the Coronavirus, just to flatten the curve, and live with it, in order to rescue the economy.

CNN said just now that only 4 states could start reopening in early May.  The newly released IHME analysis has the total deaths projection down to 60,000 now.

CNN also said that many states will not be able to make Phase I until late June or early July.

Trump tweeted to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA”, and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA”, backing protesters to quarantining restrictions in the three states, against their Democratic Governors.  Of course, that encourages conservatives all over the country to violate social distancing and protest in their own states.

April 15. Trump Indicts WHO for His Own Failings

Trump cut off funds for the WHO, and implied that the director was pro China for trusting China for six days while the Coronavirus grew.  Trump blamed him on increasing the death toll by twenty fold.  But wait, WHO did not have the resources of the CIA, who knew what was going on in China.  WHO did not have Peter Navarro’s January report, distributed in the White House, warning of the severity of the pandemic.

Trump was in denial during February, with the famous clip after talking to Xi Jinping, and claiming that the virus would disappear in April.  He also told us that the 15 US cases would soon decline to zero.  Delaying an entire month should deserve 5 times the punishment of the head of the WHO.  Trump should therefore resign, not even pausing for another fake impeachment trial.

Trump claims that 24% of the US counties have no cases.  Yes, there are a lot of rural counties, but many no longer have rural clinics, because of Republican lack of Medicaid and rural hospital support.  So people from rural counties go to city hospitals in city counties for severe attacks like the Coronavirus, and that is where they are recorded.  Granted, I don’t have any data to back this up, but it makes sense.  Emancipating these rural counties will have no effect, since they must travel to big cities for supplies and services on a regular basis.

Then, there are half of the states with less than 2,500 cases.  That is an enormous number for a virus that grows exponentially, especially if most of the cases are in the key one or two cities in the state.  Some of these may be in the 9 states which do not fully shelter in place, which I covered in a previous article.   Dr. Birx said that 9 states had less than 1,000 cases.  While they won’t have the massive cases of our largest cities, several of them peak late near May 1st, and could start a second wave if unconfined.  If Trump doesn’t recognize the growth, he is making the same mistake that got us to where we are today.

The meat plant is South Dakota with now 500 cases, is a case of disbelief in the state.  They should have done whatever they could to separate, like double or triple shifts, masks, temperature checks, lots of testing, and contact tracing.  Trump’s Liberation Day of May 1 or earlier will not work in areas that do not take the Coronavirus seriously, both by workers, management, ownership, and government inspectors.

The demonstrations at the state capitol of Michigan’s lockdown, is undoubtedly inspired by Trump’s constant insulting their woman Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  It is sad that we have a President with that behavior.

The weird thing, is that just like states don’t need Trump to allow them to set their own policy, half of these states are already emancipated from lockdowns which they never had in the first place.

The odd thing about me writing this article about the 3,143 counties and equivalent in the United States, is that I actually knew the man who had driven through every one of them.

Dear Donald:  Thank you for allowing our Governors to do their jobs under their State Constitutions.  I sure that you will arrange your granting of Authority to each one with the individual ceremony for each, in a form to enhance your reelection chances.  Probably, you will insist on a public TV event during prime time for each, and insist that they praise you profusely.  Some will be followed by ticker-tape parades, which poor public servants will have to clean up.  

So I give you this helpful warning.  The nation’s stockpile of ticker tape and ticker tape flinging machines is almost empty.  Since it is only two weeks until May 1, Winning-Day, you had better use the Defense Procurement Act to produce the needed machines and ticker tape for 50 parades.  Since the production of that much ticker tape will seriously reduce the country’s paper supply, which is now used for toilet paper, we should all run out and stock up on toilet paper as soon as possible.  You just said that you would open up the country in beautiful little pieces, hint-hint about the ticker tape.  I got it.

Companies can do testing weekly, and take temperature every day, you said.  Wow, that deserves re-election.  Restaurants going back to 150 seats.  Sports stadiums. Worrying about hand shaking, how charitable of you.

By the way, the WHO is just a health organization, as its title states.  It is part of the UN.  The same UN which the right wing of your party has opposed, since it would not be told what to do by any international organization.  It is not the WHO’s mission or authority to cut off transportation of one country to another.  But this is a crucial time for WHO to fight the spread of the Coronavirus to the poor and underdeveloped countries of Africa.  Thanks for pulling the rug out from under them when even doubling our funding would be the humane thing to do.  We spend $10 billion for yet another nuclear aircraft carrier, but can’t afford a half billion to protect an entire continent from a ravaging invisible plague.  The third largest contributor in 2019 to 2020 is the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, which has vaccinated 760 million children in poor countries.  Trump has already tried to cut US government funding of the WHO even before the present kurfuffle.  In the 2019, 2020, and 2021 budgets Trump proposed cutting the WHO contribution by half.  By the way, the favorite White House model for Coronavirus projections, by the IMHE, that we have used for many articles, relies on fitting foreign data compiled by the WHO.

What about WHO not condemning China?  WHO is just a service organization.  If Trump wanted China condemned, he should bring up such a resolution to the UN, and pursue it.  That is something which only Trump can do for the US.  What Trump could also do, is call up his buddy Xi Jinping in about a minute, and vent his anger.  So lay off of the WHO.

In the 2017-18 budget for the WHO, I see that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave about 2 1/2 times the US assessed amount.  When people cite US funding, they sometimes include the much larger voluntary contributions.  China was way down the list of contributors for Trump to single them out for comparison.  It turns out, that the $900 million, two year US government contribution, has been appropriated by the US Congress, and Trump is violating the law by suspending it for 60 days.  Much more is given by voluntary US sources, which Trump also should not be able to block.  Do you remember when Babe Ruth quit baseball because someone on his team only hit 15 home runs instead of the 60 that Ruth hit?  I don’t either, because it wouldn’t make sense.  I am sorry to say, that this looks like Trump’s compulsive retribution against the WHO director for criticizing Trump’s blockade of travel from China.  It turns out, that many Americans returned home from China anyway.

Since Trump realized that his delusions of grandeur in running the restart will not come to pass, his formation of all colluding industry leaders was presented as just a group that will have interesting ideas to contribute.  They obviously refused to fly to Washington just so Trump could stand them up in another Name-dropping self-pat on the back.  As the leaders of their own industries, in a free-enterprise country, usually backed by Republicans, they have their own authority and responsibilities to their own companies, not to the take-all-the-credit President.  Obviously, by reading off their names, Trump hoped to capture the loyalty of all of their workers.

Trump again crushed any questions about his delays and too-little too-late record.  Nothing new there.

Trump cast responsibility on the previous administration for having bare national reserve.  Let’s put this in time perspective.  Trump was only elected President for four years.  When the virus struck us, he had completed three of those years, that is 3/4 or his time, or 75% of his time as President.  If the reserve needed restocking, he had three years to learn that, or, three years to fill it.  The buck lands on his desk, it doesn’t time travel years to the past.

Yes, I am angry that I wasted another two and a half hours, first waiting for an hour for his conference to start, for no apparent reason, and then listening to self promoting for an hour and a half.  Yet I do it, like many Americans do, because it is the best and newest comedy show on TV. 

I wasn’t going to actually publish this article, until I learned that Trump was going to put his signature on all of the $1200 checks.  This is the cheapest way to buy an election.  Previous Presidents could have done this with tax refunds, or social security checks, or government salaries.  It is actually the American taxpayers who are going to be paying off the share of the $2.2 trillion involved, which aren’t loans.  By the way, we still don’t know if Trump paid any taxes.

One very sad note:  like China did, New York State today added 3,700 past deaths which were clinically due to the Coronavirus, but without testing, to their separate total, which now is almost eleven thousand, at 10,842.  Of this, NY City is 7,905 deaths.  The CDC now requires that everyone reports these extra deaths, in a separate category.  The US now has 609,422 cases, of which a third are New York, at 203,348.  US deaths are at 26,056.    World cases have reached 2.0 million.

Restarting Chaos:  State Coalition versus Trump

Trump assigns problems to States, when he fails to solve them.  But initially, he grabs all of the power that he can, and now, governing by a single tweet alone, he has claimed the sole “absolute” power to restart the entire country.  He has said that he wants to do it all on the same day, undoubtedly to be celebrated by a ticker-tape parade with marching bands.  Yet the CDC Director says we must study this county by county.  This, despite never having the nerve to tell any states that they had to self quarantine.  He said that he loved the Constitution so he wouldn’t do it.  The next day he claimed that he had the “Absolute Power” to do it.  Trump’s tweet that he would do it very soon is probably a response to New York’s Governor Cuomo forming a NY-NJ-CT-RI-PA-MA-DE regional coalition.  When the Coronavirus resurges, Trump will of course blame it on the states again.  The coalition is forming its own team of experts and perhaps predictions.

There will also be a Western coalition consisting of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Trump still controls, without public or inspector general oversight, the $2.2 trillion aid bills, and can starve rogue states.

Here is Gov. Cuomo’s smart restart outline.

Here is a main regional problem, the dates of peaking in this region differ by 18 days — two and a half weeks.  It’s every greater nationwide.  

Here is a small table of peaking dates of the US and these states, for hospital beds, and deaths, which follow a day or two later.  In New York, the deaths peak has formed a half week plateau, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta says that deaths can follow admissions by a week or two.

We are using today’s April 13 IMHE forecast, which unfortunately raised the eventual total deaths to about 69,000, up from 62,000 before.  By May 1, about 51,400 deaths will have occurred, leaving a gap of 17,400 left.  IMHE does three day averages over 19 regions around Wuhan China, Spain, and Italy.  It will also be modeling a restart with virus second waves.  They say that the restart should be at only 0.03%.

New York’s peak five days ago, will lead to 14,542 total deaths, and by May 1, almost all, 14,512, will have occurred.

Add to this chaos Trump’s complaining about Dr. Fauci, who only agreed with the obvious statement, that had we taken action earlier, fewer people would have died.

CNN has just reported that the Los Angeles Model shows that 95% of residents will be infected if the stay-at-home order is dropped now.

Takeaways from Trump’s three hour news conference:  The President has both UNIVERSAL Power, and TOTAL Authority over the States, in addition to his previously claimed Absolute Powers.  He said that he would provide a document on that since a newsman asked about it.  VP Pence seemed to imply that states surrendered that when they signed onto a national emergency declaration, which only got them $5 billion in total.  The President is forming three or more committees to restart different areas of industry, composed of leading CEOs, who haven’t been contacted yet.  They will be announced by the weekend.  Dr. Fauci had to wait for three hours to say in one sentence, that medical opinions will have an input to the decision.  Later, Trump implied that he had so cowed the Governors and Mayors who were dependent on him for equipment and funds, that they would cooperate without the President needing to use his Superpowers.  He also said that regional coalitions sounded reasonable.

CNN has reported what share of national essential jobs are performed by African Americans:

Here are the hopeful declining hospitalization slides from New York Gov. Cuomo’s news conference today.

There is always a question whether the decrease in deaths is just the weekend effect.

April 11.  Positives From New York and the Demise of the Flu

First of all, I am discontinuing the terribly time consuming table of daily percent increase, which I was doing for far too many states, anyway.  It takes hours, and gives me a sore arm.  So I will just be occasionally incorporating better graphics from non-commercial sources, since using commercial publications might lead to conflicts on a University website.  It’s a tricky question, since the newspapers are making their Coronavirus coverage available for free, but still advertising for your subscriptions, which I subscribe to anyways.  I will also be doing other things, and trying to read interesting Coronavirus articles.  Despite our focusing on the science and mathematics involved in understanding the entire Coronavirus scene, the economic pressures on people and companies, the federal political scene that dominates our country has been dominant in failing to mount an effective fight.  Not needing to follow the daily stories, means that I no longer have to listen to Trump’s two hour self praising sessions.

I was recalling an old story, that cash was analyzed, and cocaine was found on it, since occasionally it was rolled to sniff cocaine, and then mixed with other cash.  So I looked up if the Coronavirus was being exchanged in cash.  To my shock, there were 1.7 billion articles on that found by Google.  I didn’t see a direct scientific study, but found some interesting ideas.  

The one real telling article, was that the Chinese were recycling cash by cleaning it in ultraviolet light, which I was thinking about.  But on top of that, they were locking it up for 14 days afterwards, before putting it back in circulation.  Some articles also pointed out that everything, like germs and uncleanly contaminants, can be found on cash.  All of these sound like reasons to clean our cash.  My other thought was that minorities who largely work in the public sector, have to handle a lot of cash, and might increase their exposure.  

Another story was that credit cards are not clean, either.  While I see the market cleaning everything on the hour, they probably can’t clean the sensors inside the card readers.  It is also contaminating when you have to sign a screen with your finger, or even pick up their attached pen to write your signature.  You can tap your new credit cards now, but many places don’t use that yet.

There were the continuation of two positive indicators today.  The first, is that the seasonal flus have almost died out, modulo the lack of a truly scientific reporting system.  Here is this week’s graph, from the CDC.  This shows the decline of influenza A and B, to where you can barely see it on the graph.

Whereas a few weeks past the country was solid red or high, this last week’s report shows mostly minimal or low.  Some of the states without confining orders, like Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Carolina, still have high flu rates.

The second is that the decline in New York hospitalizations, ICU room admissions, and new intubations with ventilators are declining.  I am showing the three day smoothed rates for the first two.  The tragic New York death rate has at least seemed to plateau, since it reflects the intubations from a week or two ago.