Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”

Gov. Ned Lamont is winning solid approval ratings from a large majority of the state’s citizens for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. You have to like the no-nonsense, non-sensational way he has been handling this awful situation. What could be harder than having to balance human lives saved against jobs lost and economic security for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens?

But what does the data say about how Connecticut is doing compared to other states? Isn’t that a very real scorecard on performance we should be looking at to judge the effectiveness of our political leaders and our collective citizen responses?

The data are not so flattering — they are decidedly grim.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation data as of May 22, our state ranks third in COVID deaths per million of population (1,031), behind only New York at 1,492 and New Jersey at 1,248. The national average is “only” 296 COVID deaths per million; our neighbor Rhode Island is at 564.

How could we be so far off the national mark? Are our death rates somehow an inevitable consequence of having New York as a neighbor?

A big part of the puzzle could be that we have not focused on the heart of the problem in Connecticut. The state’s own data reports that about 71 percent of our COVID-related deaths have been from residents in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. By contrast, 51 to 53 percent of COVID deaths are from nursing home residents nationwide. If you add in the COVID deaths in Connecticut’s prisons, the percent of our death toll from “confined populations” is over 76 percent.

It’s hard to argue that our high death rates in these vulnerable but confined populations is somehow the result of proximity or contagion from New York.

● Read in Hartford Courant

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Obsessed with the virus epidemic, Connecticut might not have noticed two deaths last week from a different cause -- the murder of two women in their home in Windsor. There is little chance that Connecticut will notice those murders any time soon, for while police have charged two 17-year-olds with the crime, the young men have not been officially identified and their prosecution will be secret, as in totalitarian China.

Ever since 1818 Connecticut's Constitution has declared unambiguously, "All courts shall be open." But last year the General Assembly and Governor Lamont enacted the Chinese system on the premise that secrecy would be better for juveniles charged not just with lesser offenses like car theft but also with murder and rape, lest juveniles so charged risk getting bad reputations.

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Restoring accountability in state government should not stop with repeal of the secret trials law. The legislature also should take note of the farce that has become the Partnership for Connecticut, the agency created by statute last year at the request of Governor Lamont's friend, the billionaire Ray Dalio, to mix government money with the billionaire's and spend it in the name of improving the education of disadvantaged students. Also at Dalio's request, the partnership was exempted from state accountability and ethics laws.

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Read in Journal Inquirer

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As of the first week of May, more than 66,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that three to four weeks typically elapse before death, thousands more who are already infected will also succumb to the virus. That said, the direct toll from the infection has markedly declined throughout the United States, including the epicenter of New York. The curves have been flattened – the stated goal of the isolation has been accomplished – for both hospitalizations per day and deaths per day.

We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences.

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Read in The Hill

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The worst jobs report in history shows why the economy must reopen.

When we wrote on March 19 about “Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown,” the reaction in elite media quarters was horror and denunciation. Well, after Friday’s horrific jobs report, how do you like the shutdown now? The people who said we have to sacrifice the economy to crush the virus have succeeded in the former even as the virus will be with us for many more months or longer.

Unemployment in April soared to 14.7%—the highest rate since the government started keeping records in 1948—while employers shed 20.5 million more jobs after losing 870,000 in March. The labor-market bleeding is even worse than those numbers suggest since 6.4 million workers left the workforce.

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Read in The Wall Street Journal

The “Underbrush Theory,” helps to explain what has happened.

The Underbrush Theory states that there is a natural rate of attrition (a.k.a., deaths) for any population, and reducing deaths for several years below this natural rate (e.g., perhaps because of lucky guesses on the right flu vaccine, more flu vaccinations, improving sanitation, better public health programs, better medical care, new drug discoveries, etc.), just means Mother Nature’s bill is inevitably going to be higher in some subsequent year when she throws a novel flu cocktail at us.

It’s like Smokey Bear preventing forest fires for so long that the underbrush accumulates to feed what inevitably becomes a much bigger, more destructive fire in some future year (think California and Australia). We must all remember that old age is still lethal — no one is getting out of here alive. The only question is what the proximate cause of death will be. Flu-related deaths are and always have been the default option for many old people.

● Read in CT Mirror

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Read and comment here on The Red Line

Democratic governors in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia are temporarily suspending raises for state employees or freezing pay until they can better understand the fiscal impact of the pandemic, but, thus far, Connecticut state employees are still scheduled to receive a second pay increase, projected to cost taxpayers $353 million.

The second round of wage increases is set for July 1, the start of the 2021 fiscal year, and is comprised of a 3.5 percent general wage increase, combined with an annual step increase of 2 percent.

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Read at Yankee Institute

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Read here on The Red Line

As you know, the coronavirus—if you catch it, and get very sick—is a terrible thing to go through and you may even die. The virus and the fear of it are sorely testing our medical capacity in some places... The heroic efforts and sacrifice of many doctors, nurses, and volunteer civilians are all notable and praiseworthy. Millions of Americans are pulling together. We all know this.

Did you know the chances of recovery from the coronavirus are about 98%—if you catch it? Did you know this?... We are getting conditioned to a lot of panic because of the wide range of speculation about other numbers we accept as our new fright-inducing reality, an increasingly confusing and frenzied set of numbers. And the normalization of our panic is having dire consequences and augurs for even worse.

Our officials and media have warned us of 2 million deaths in the United States. Then 200,000 deaths. Then 100,000 to 240,000. This needs to stop. There have been a total of 68,000 coronavirus deaths worldwide. And we are told we will see, just in America, three to four times that number. Does that even pass the plausibility test?

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● Read in Real Clear Politics

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Read and comment here on The Red Line