With a lull in the looting, they switch back to ma ma ma my corona

This is the lead story on east coast news sites this morning:

BLOOD RED GRAPHICS OF FEAR AND DEATH. WIND IS HITLER.

AP Friday, June 12, 2020 6:29AM

In Arizona, hospitals have been told to prepare for the worst. Texas has more hospitalized COVID-19 patients than at any time before. And the governor of North Carolina said recent jumps caused him to rethink plans to reopen schools or businesses.

There is no single reason to explain all the surges. In some cases, more testing has revealed more cases. In others, local outbreaks are big enough to push statewide tallies higher. But experts (who have been wrong about everything and completely incompetent at best, criminally negligent or criminally complicit at worst) think at least some are due to lifting stay-at-home orders, school and business closures, and other restrictions put in place during the spring to stem the virus’s spread. The virus is also gradually fanning out.

“It is a disaster that spreads,” said Dr. Jay Butler, who oversees coronavirus response work at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I now quaketh in my boots. Here is what the article says about Arizona specifically:

ARIZONA
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey ended Arizona’s stay-at-home order on May 15 and eased restrictions on businesses. Arizona residents who were cooped up for six weeks flooded Phoenix-area bar districts, ignoring social distancing guidelines.<<<MURDERERS>>> The state began seeing a surge of new cases and hospitalizations about 10 days later.

“It seems pretty clear to me that what we’re seeing is directly related to the end of the stay-at-home order,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association. <<<MURDERERS>>>

It wasn’t just that the order ended: There were no requirements to wear face masks, no major increases in contact tracing… <<<MURDERERS>>>

The AP analysis found Arizona had a rolling average of fewer than 400 new cases a day (almost all of them mild) at the time the shutdown was lifted, but it shot up two weeks later (because testing became available) and surpassed 1,000 new cases a day (almost all of them mild) by early this week. Hospitalizations have also risen dramatically, hitting the 1,200 mark last week (a small fraction of the hospital capacity in AZ). The state also passed another grim milestone last week, recording it’s 1,000th death. Meanwhile Arizona hospitals on Tuesday reported they were at 83% of capacity, up from 78% the previous day. That could force affected hospitals to cancel elective surgeries.

It’s outrageous how they lie, isn’t it? But did you catch the tell at the end? Yes, hospitals could be forced to cancel elective surgeries. That’s what you do in a real emergency. The fact that they have NOT cancelled them means…

You see, every hospital is mandated to have a surge capacity of +50% of their normal capacity. This goes for regular admit, ER, and ICU. So if hospitals normally operate at 75% of regular capacity, and are now 83%, that is the biggest nothingburger you can imagine. Not only that, but the corona-related portion of the overall hospital numbers is really small. But we all know that the longer you can manage to not discharge a corona patient, more Fed$$.

Governor Ducey had to go on TV yesterday, put up all the data charts, and plead with the media to stop spreading fake news. Arizona is open, Arizona is prepared, everyone needs to relax. When it was over, a reporter stated a completely false talking point, to which the governor replied (paraphrasing), “That’s not true, I literally just showed you the charts.”

All this attention has crashed the Arizona Dept of Health website. Once it is back running, I will post the real story. Spoiler alert: We are not all dying. We are not all in the hospital. There is no panic here, other than some prominent panic mongers in blog world. I will post all the data, which has been publicly available this entire time.

But for now, I have to finish up some other work. I’m due to meet some folks for happy hour at 4pm, and the place fills up fast, if you know what I mean.