20,000: US death toll overtakes Italy's as Midwest braces

[turbinetree]

Last edited Sat Apr 11, 2020, 07:40 PM - Edit history (2)

Source: Associated Press

By The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world Saturday, surpassing 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt.

With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland.

Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago’s Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up.”



Forliti reported from St. Paul, Minnesota. Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

Read more: https://apnews.com/040ecc3fb10e961714a3211ad1c049df

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This article has been updated...............thank you

[OnlinePoker]

1. And the U.S. has now passed Italy with the most total CV deaths

It will be over 20,000 this afternoon. On a per capita basis, it's still far behind Italy, however. U.S. deaths would have to top 105,000 to be at the same per capita level as Italy currently has.

https://ncov2019.live/data

[efhmc]

2. 61 per million versus 322 per million

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Spain is actually higher in cases per million at 350.

[yaesu]

3. This is a devastating toll for any country of any size, I hope this nightmare ends for them soon. nt

[Igel]

4. Perspective.

It's likely more died this year from the flu than so far from COVID.

Many more died in 2017-18 from the flu than in the most recent year. 61k is the current estimate (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html). In April 2019 I missed the devastation.

Thousands were dead, many thousands of people mourned their losses, but the country carried on. And the flu deaths may have been weighted to the elderly and ill, but flu tends to be a bit more into equality that COVID is when it comes to the age distribution of the dead.

The flu goes for maybe 6 or 7 months. We're into month 3 now for COVID, and it's sure to get worse. But current projections through August (which would be 6 months) are for under 62k. What was the death toll in 2017-18 again?

IMHE hasn't been far over in its projections on any kind of regular basis. It missed NY for the last couple of days, but the trend's been right. It's under for the US total. (It's expected that as it approximates the real curve better that there'll be days over and days under, since data are never perfectly smooth--you see perfect data, and you know it's an amateur cheater or a 1-in-a-million event.)

The difference isn't the number of dead. In fact, the distribution by age is less shocking than the flu. It's the incessant count, day in and day out, of the sick and dead as we're doing the social distance tango (which is why the death toll for COVID is so low, but 62k still doesn't rank as a major disaster). If we did this for the flu come fall, people would be shell-shocked and we'd cancel Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the "winter holidays."

[Demsrule86]

5. This isn't the flu...and my guess is many more have died from the virus then is reflected in the

the numbers

[Kaleva]

6. Perpesctive

The reason for the Stay at Home orders across this nation and social distancing is that without such measure, we'd likely suffer a calamity that hasn't been seen since the Spanish Flu.

IMHE projections are based on a number of assumptions. That social distancing will be retained until at least the end of May and " that appropriate measures are put in place to guard against the reintroduction of COVID-19 from another state or country. These measures may include mass screening, contact tracing, testing of all individuals entering the country, and quarantine of people who test positive".

http://www.healthdata.org/covid/faqs