Covid19 fatalities and median age of nations

Heard on a podcast that some hypothesize that many of the poorer countries have weathered Covid19 without too much trouble (unlike USA and Europe) because they have younger populations and thus they have relatively mild cases from the infection. Thought I'd take a quick look at the "Our World In Data" web page to see if that seems plausible. Am using the data listed as 2022-02-06 and from nations with at least 1 million people. 

The bar graph divides the nations into those with median population age < 30 (n=83) and > 30 (n=73) and takes the average per capita fatalities. Difference was p < .0001. 

As you can see, the average of per capita Covid19 deaths in nations with median age of population > 30 are higher compared to those nations with median age < 30.

The scatter graph is a simple linear regression and the R^2=0.3404 with a p < .0001 and this level of R^2 would be considered "moderate" strength by some statisticians.

Correlation of median age of nation (x-axis) with Covid19 per capita deaths (y-axis) shows an upward trend line indicated a positive correlation.

Of course correlation is not causation but we know from CDC data that majority of the fatalities in the USA have been in the older population as seen in the table.

 

News: Politics of coverage

Time now Wednesday 10:04AM PDT. Just checked ABCnews.com, NBCnews.com, CBSnews.com, CNN.com, Foxnews.com ...

Four of the five news sites have the Ohio kidnap story as the main story. I define main as big fonts with prominent photo at the top of the web page.

One news site has the Benghazi hearings as the main story.

The other four that have the Ohio story prominent do have "watch live" links.

What does this say about the editorial decisions at the major news sites?

News: Medal of Honor to Clint Romesha

The incredible story of the battle at COP Keating and the role of Clint Romesha had on that day by Jake Tapper.

The base was attacked from all sides by Taliban early in the morning and nearly overrun. Romesha and his team was able to fight back.

An amazing story of courage under fire.

Valor according to Merriam Webster:
strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness : personal bravery

Of course, Romesha, as have other recent recipients of the Medal of Honor have said, they simply did what they had to do.  Romesha said after the ceremony:
"I stand here with mixed emotions of both joy and sadness for me today," he said. "I don't think I'm much different than Medal of Honor recipients Sergeant First Class Petry and former Staff Sergeant Giunta and feeling conflicted with this medal I now wear. But joy comes from recognition for us doing our jobs as soldiers on distant battlefields, but is countered by the constant reminder of the loss of our battle buddies, my battle buddies, my soldiers, my friends." Romesha said he accepted "this tremendous honor on behalf of all soldiers who have served with me that day." "This award is for the eight soldiers that didn't make it and for the rest of the team that fought valiantly and magnificently that day. I will forever be humbled by their bravery, their commitment to service and their loyalty to one another."

News: You be the editor

Was scrolling through the news web pages just now (around 5:45 pm on a Saturday afternoon)...







If you were the news editor, what news item would you be featuring as the "big story" of the moment?

I realize, web based news headlines probably change pretty frequently. But I thought it was interesting that at this particular moment, all 5 web pages had different "top stories." Defining "top story," in this context is the one with the largest photo. I suppose that right there is one problem with "headline" news editing: do we have compelling images to put up?

I think the Iranian election story is pretty big. How do some of the news web pages cover it?

ABC featured the protests after the Iranian elections.

CBS had a economics hard time story though the Iranian election was featured in a smaller photo to the upper right.

Fox had a story on the selling of military aircraft with a text item in the upper right about the Iranian elections.

MSNBC had an item about Soweto with the Iranian election in the upper right with a smaller photo.

CNN has a health care and small business item with the Iranian election as a three bullet point news items amidst many other items.

What do some news web pages outside the USA think?

BBC News...



The China's People's Daily. Please note that the People's Daily is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. One can find a bullet point item on the Iranian elections way down at the bottom of the web page.



The Buenaos Aires Herald...



The Syndey Morning Herald had a small item on the Iranian elections down toward the bottom in the world section.



Kenya's Nation... Iranian election news is in the latest news and further down in the world section.



As a question, if I want to get news from sources outside the USA, which ones would be reliable? Which ones would be mouthpieces of their governments?

I choose the various outside the USA sources by trying to think of each continent outside of North America and then of a country or city in that continent.

News: Colombian Military Rescues Hostages

Amazing!!!

Daring rescue by the Colombian military using deception!

Excerpt:

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) -- Government agents posing as rebels tricked a gang of armed desperados into handing over 15 hostages during a rendezvous deep in Colombia's unforgiving jungle.

The Colombian government's bloodless rescue of the hostages Wednesday was the product of a perfectly executed ruse that depended on old-school spy games rather than high-tech gadgetry.
.........
All 15 hostages were handcuffed and placed aboard the helicopter, along with two of their guards, leaving the rest of the FARC detachment on the ground.

Once the chopper was up and safely away from the landing zone, the fake rebels persuaded the real ones aboard to hand them their weapons. Moments later, both rebels were on the floor of the aircraft, cuffed and blindfolded by their erstwhile comrades, Betancourt said.

A crew member turned and spoke to the hostages.

"We are the national military," he said, Betancourt recalled. "You are free."

Amazing!!!

Bravo to the team that pulled off this hostage rescue operation!

News: What is really happening in Iraq?

If you read this things seem pretty grim. Excerpt:

Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, has been the site of some of the deadliest bombings, including a double suicide attack on March 6 that killed 120 people.

The attack came a day after at least 16 people died when four car bombs rocked the center of the capital. Three of the blasts took place in one 30-minute span.

If you read this you think progress is being made. Excerpt:

As the tribes turn on al Qaeda and its Islamic State of Iraq, the targeted raids against al Qaeda in Iraq's network of facilitators, bomb makes and leadership cells continue. Today's raids by Coalition forces resulted in the capture of 20 al Qaeda operatives. A series of raids near Taji in Salahadin province resulted in 16 al Qaeda captured, including "a foreign terrorist suspected of involvement in the May 2007 Samarra suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack," while another four operatives were captured near Balad.

I suppose the reality is that in different parts of Iraq, the situation is different. In some places, they really are getting sick and tired of foreign fighters and local insurgents and are starting to turn against them. In other places, they still have a hold on the populace either through fear or loyalty to their cause.

How does one decide what to do next?

If you listen to the war critics, they say, it is time to leave because the trend line is going downhill and we are just going to get caught in the middle of an eventual full blown knife fight between the rival factions so might as well cut our losses now.

I suppose the most optimistic of the war critics will say that when we leave the rival factions will decide it is better to make nice to each other and peace will break out all over the country.

My fear is that the existing Iraq government actually wants a civil war. I'm under the impression that more of the power is in the Shiite bloc and I fear they secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) want to crush the Sunni and exact revenge for all the years they oppressed everyone else.

The "best case scenario" is that the government and most of the people actually do want to work together and what is needed is for foreign fighters and local insurgents to be defeated sufficiently that the average Iraqi on the street no longer fears reporting them to the authorities. They really can't operate in large numbers without either the tacit support of the locals or the locals being intimidated by their presence.

News: Pot in the Parks?

Who would have thought that a National Park would have pot growers?

National Parks Traveler has the story. Excerpt:

The gardens, which covered about 3 acres along Elk Creek, were spotted last Friday. On Tuesday rangers and other law enforcement personnel went in and destroyed the plants. While two individuals tending the gardens managed to vanish into the brush, two others linked to the site were arrested outside the park and several more arrests are anticipated.
.........
The product, if allowed to mature, would have carried a price tag in the millions, he says, as each of the 17,334 plants in the gardens could produce roughly a pound of marijuana that carried a street value of $4,000 due to its high (21 percent) THC content.

Mexican drug cartels are thought to be behind the growing operations, and the two individuals arrested this week were Mexicans in the country illegally, according to the chief ranger.

Wow!

News: Horrible day in Blacksburg, Virginia

When I was writing in my blog this morning, I hadn't turned on the radio. At that time, I would have heard a little bit of news of a shooting incident in a dorm at Virigina Tech.

As I drove to work, I did hear just a short news item on it. It was a crime story and unfortunately, all too common, but nothing more than that for news editors deciding what to put on the air.

As the workday unfolded, the news came out that a second shooting had occurred and it was something of terrible proportions.

As of this afternoon, reports are that 32 were murdered and 29 hospitalized. The gunman was reported to have committed suicide. Law enforcement officials are investigating but for the moment it appears the two shootings are related but that could change as more facts are ascertained.

What is there to say after the horror of such a violent act?

How can one express the outrage and sadness at the total senselessness of what happened this morning?

Lord, don't know how to pray right now. Am just so angry that someone would hold so little regard for life to do something this awful. Can only ask that you will bring comfort to the family and friends of those who were lost today. Help strengthen the arms of good hearted people in the Blacksburg community to hold up those who are now hurting beyond comprehension. Lord, have mercy. Amen.

News: Tony Snow's cancer has returned

Tony Snow is the White House press secretary. I didn't know he had fought cancer previously. Excerpt:

Snow, 51, had his entire colon removed in 2005 and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer. A small growth was discovered last year in his lower right pelvic area, and after months of monitoring, tests now show that it has grown slightly. It was removed Monday.

Doctors determined that it was cancerous, and found during the surgery, which was exploratory, that his cancer had metastasized, or spread, to his liver, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

She said Snow is comfortable and feeling fine after his surgery and has pledged to aggressively fight the disease with an as-yet-to-be-determined chemotherapy treatment course. He will be in the hospital recovering from the surgery, a major procedure, for about a week.

I wonder if these intrusions (Edwards and Snow's battle with cancer) of real life and humanity will have any affect on the dialog in DC?

News: The Edwards Dilema

Heard the news about the return of cancer for Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democrat candidate for President John Edwards.

Politics aside, they are in a tough situation.

The most thoughtful thing I've seen on their circumstances comes from Dean Barnett who has Cystic Fibrosis and is a political writer from the conservative camp. But on this matter, he writes simply as a fellow human being. Excerpt:

Over time, as my condition worsened and got more serious, denial was no longer an option. Compromise became the order of the day. On the golf course, I used to carry my bag for 36 holes a day. First I began to take a caddy. Then a cart. Soon I was playing twice a week instead of twice a day.

On more serious matters, compromises were also necessary. When you get sick, really sick, you wind up compromising on just about everything. Your disease forces you into the habit.

I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW BAD I FEEL FOR ELIZABETH AND JOHN EDWARDS. I’m familiar with the body-blow of a sudden diagnosis that turns your world upside down. It’s incredible – you walk into a doctor’s office and within a span of minutes you find out your life will never be the same. In the back of your mind you nourish the hopes of miracle cures or that you might be like that guy in Dubuque who got the same diagnosis but oddly enough lived forever, but the reality of the situation sits there in your mind. You can’t shake it – it just won’t leave.
.........
At the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: Family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day that you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left.

But as we approach that end, we finally realize that all along they were what mattered most. As a consequence, life often remains beautiful and worthwhile right up until the end. The past several years for me have been a journey to what’s at the center of my life. One of the things I found there that I didn’t expect to was writing. (You lucky people.)

The Edwards have begun their own journey of that sort. Whether they still find presidential politics at the center of their lives a few months from now is an open question. Regardless, the journey is theirs, and one would have a heart of stone to wish them anything other than good luck and Godspeed.

News: James Cameron and the Jesus Family Tomb

It is all over in the news.

But the buzz seems to have settled rapidly compared to the Da Vinci Code.

I heard a brief report on it on my iTunes of a ABC Nightline podcast. The story didn't even merit a full show and the tone was somewhat skeptical of the claims made in the documentary. So even the secular news media isn't going crazy for it.

As you would imagine, the Christian scholarship community has been responding.

Be sure to check out the many posts from Mark Goodacre, an Associate Professor of New Testament in the Religion Department at Duke University. He rounds up a lot of posts from other scholars.

Ben Witherington has also posted extensively but unfortunately, he hasn't learned how to use the label feature in Blogger so I link to one of his earlier ones. Witherington is a professor of New Testament at Asbury Seminary.

One more place I'd recommend people check out is Stand To Reason's (by Melinda Penner) breakdown of the controversy.

Bottom line is that the tomb theory has a lot of assumptions and some of them not very good ones.

UPDATE: Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason has written a piece you should check out if you really want a very quick overview of the controversy. In particular, he calls to task some of the head-in-the-sand, knee-jerk (am I using contradictory mixed-metaphors here?) responses from some in Christian circles. He then uses his usual "Dragnet" "nothing but the facts" approach.

News: Bob Woodruff's Report - To Iraq and Back

Absolutely riveting (complete video) report by Bob Woodruff on his experience of recovering from brain injury suffered from an improvised explosive device while covering the Iraqi war. The report goes on to explore how the Veteran's Administration is trying, not entirely successfully, to provide medical care for the injured soldiers.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
-- Abraham Lincoln

News: That's huge! 990 pound squid!!

Check it out!!!

Excerpt:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, one expert said.

The squid, weighing an estimated 990 pounds and about 39 feet long, took two hours to land in Antarctic waters, New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton said.

The fishermen were catching Patagonian toothfish, sold under the name Chilean sea bass, south of New Zealand "and the squid was eating a hooked toothfish when it was hauled from the deep," Anderton said.
........

News: Radioactive wastes near Arches NP

Good grief!

There is 130 acres of radioactive stuff left over from old mining for nuclear material during the Cold War. Unfortunately, it is near the Colorado river near Arches and Canyonlands National Park.

Excerpt:

The land they occupy sidles up to the Colorado River, and some fear the wastes could pollute that river, which 25 million people in the West and Southwest rely on for drinking water.

While the government agreed in 2005 to remove the wastes, with an eye on accomplishing the task by 2012, now officials are saying they might not be able to accomplish the job until 2028.

Like most people, I have mixed feelings about the Federal Government. We do expect them to be capable of doing things but we know they often don't do it well and take too long and spend too much to do it.

News: New Yorker Article on Adam Gadahn

Fascinating reading the story of how Gadahn went from typical middle class life to being part of Al Qaeda.

Anyway, I heard about the article because Hugh Hewitt interviewed Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason about how he felt being mentioned in the New Yorker article.

The paragraph:

Gadahn wrote of a yawning emptiness, and he sought ways “to fill that void.” He began scrolling through AOL’s religion folders on the Internet and tuning to Christian programming on the radio. That summer, he attended several Christian lectures and events, including one led by Gregory Koukl, an evangelical talk-show host who argues against religious pluralism. But Gadahn found evangelical Christianity’s “apocalyptic ramblings” to be “paranoid” and hollow. As he later recalled, “I began to look for something else to hold onto.”

In the interview, Koukl and Hewitt felt the writer was a bit sloppy in how they wrote that paragraph and I'd have to agree with them.

I don't doubt that Gadahn heard some lectures where there was apocalyptic rambling and paranoia but he probably also heard some watered down Christianity in some places and thoughtful Christianity (from Koukl) in others. But the fusion of Koukl in one sentence with paranoia in another creates the impression, Koukl is one of them! And anyone who has ever heard him on the radio or read his writings knows he is definitely not one of them!

Also, the phrase "argues against religious pluralism" can be kind of loaded. It can suggest mean-spirited, intolerant and argumentative. Again, anyone who has heard Koukl knows those are the last words one would use to describe him. When Koukl speaks and writes about religious pluralism what he means is that you treat everyone well and respectfully but you honestly point out that not all religious truth claims can be true.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting story on how religion is communicated in the media. Since many in the media are non-religious they probably don't recognize there are differences within the religious community. Thus, when they write about it, they aren't always very careful.