Death is not the only problem we are dealing with here. Why do you continue to ignore the problems of long range and/or permanent physical damage?
And you’re ignoring the long term problems of losing your business, job, delays in diagnostic care of other diseases, sucides etc…
As the numbers go down it’s important that these things are taken care of in a timely manner.
Well, except for that exponential growth thing: last time we peaked, it was 5 weeks after restrictions were tightened back up before we started to see case counts decline, and then they declined quite rapidly. If we wait until case counts get back to their peak, we keep growing for a long time. And schools really aren’t fully reopen here: we are at about 40% capacity at most. Schools don’t appear to be driving the spike.
what spike? It’s been pretty flat in Texas for the last 4 weeks. we went through this with Florida. Estimates ranging from 250 a day to 800 were given and 7 weeks later the numbers were under 200.
In Dallas County, we’ve seen a 40% spike in hospitalizations over the last two weeks; we’ve gone from 200 cases a day–the county, not the state–to more like 400 a day lately (though hiccups in our data reporting have made the numbers sort of slippery). The best data is hospitalizations, and those look very bad. That was the whole point of @bump when he started the thread.
I saw the earlier articles about issues in Texas but I’m not seeing them now and the current death rates are not going up.
If I understand your POV on things, @Magiver (and please correct me if I’m mistaken), you feel that restrictions should generally be loosened, and then, if an area sees an upturn in death rates from COVID, restrictions should be put back in place there until the death rate goes back down.
But, as I imagine you’re aware, reported death rates are very much a lagging indicator:
- Positive tests for COVID lag behind the actual infection
- Hospitalizations from COVID lag behind positive tests
- Deaths from COVID lag behind hospitalizations
- Reported deaths lag behind the deaths themselves (depending on the jurisdiction, by days or weeks)
Given that, if one is waiting for a change in the death rate to impact a decision to implement tighter restrictions, there are weeks’ worth of people who’ve already become infected, and the hospitalization and death rates will continue to grow for several weeks after you’ve implemented the new restrictions.
Hospitalizations definitely up and deaths usually lag that by a week. You don’t wait until you’ve hit the car in front of you before you at least lift off the accelerator.
And that data was a week ago.
We have about 30 employees in my school. In the last 10 days:
2 unrelated COVID cases
3 exposures related to one of those
1 exposure unrelated to any of those
We currently have 20% of our staff out on COVID restrictions. And none of these were related to school reopening. Anecdote is not data, but it sure reinforces what the data is also telling us: this is a third surge. And the governor wants us to reopen bars (though so far, he’s not mandating that we do so).
not entirely correct. But again, we’ve been through this before with Florida. People were estimating significant changes upward when in reality they went down at the end of the predicted time period.
ICU capacity is certainly an indicator of trends as is the severity of those in ICU.
It’s not a simple task to balance the definite loss of jobs against the possible loss of life. I certainly wouldn’t want to make the call. It’s a polarizing situation that pits both sides against you…
I went through it a couple of times and may have missed it… I’m not seeing the claims made above. What specifically do you want to quote from it and what prediction in daily numbers are you going to make for the end of November.
From your site they predicted this for Dallas: A slightly increasing number of COVID-19 patients are predicted to be in the ICU (red line).
It is right there in the graph labeled confirmed COVID infection hospitalizations. Not hard to find.
Love finds a way! Am I being facetious? Sure (but only a little.)
This part is not necessarily true – and in fact, is one good reason (among many) why hospitalizations are a better indicator than are positive PCR tests.
A surge in new cases (positive tests) come before the surge in hospitalizations. Even in places like NY where testing was new.
It shows an increase but your site also predicts a slight increase in ICU covid cases. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Are you predicting a substantial rise in deaths?
In many places there is no longer any correlation at all, meaning that cases are rising significantly while hospitalizations either remain stable, increase gently, or fall.
But regardless, my point was that many who end up in the hospital receive their first test once they arrive, not before. It’s not as though the population who get hospitalized are necessarily a subset of those who have already tested positive.
I am confirming the increase in hospitalizations.
Now as to what that implies? Deaths increases generally follow hospitalizations increases, and the risk of exceeding hospital capacity is always a worry. Bars opening are a high risk action in that context.
I swear, it’s July all over again here: case counts are rising, but people say it’s no big deal, because hospitalizations are low. Hospitalizations start to rise, and well, the death rate is not so bad. But the relatively low death rate (which is still a steady 2-4 deaths a day, every day, relentlessly) that we have now is a reflection of the lower case count weeks ago, when we were much more locked down. It’s like we just can’t get our minds around the time lags with this things.
Tarrant County announced they are reopening bars yesterday. Dallas won’t, unless we have to, but most bars are operating as “restaurants”, so it’s sorta moot. And lord knows about the sprawling suburban counties around us.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it in this thread or one of the other ones, but people would take this a lot more seriously if it progressed faster, more like food poisoning. Think about how much more seriously people would take it if they went from exposure to being sick in 48 hours instead of [does some math] 300+ hours.
Anyway, one of the other problems were having, at least from what I’m seeing on facebook is the amount of deniers. People that, when death statistics are mentioned, they’ll immediately jump in to say that not all those people were diagnosed or how many were all sick with something else as well or they were all part of some demographic that most people aren’t (usually age related). And, the one that bugs me the most is when they write off all the deaths by telling us how some other thing kills lots of people as well (ie car accidents, cancer, suicide etc). I never understood that one. Just because lots of people die one way shouldn’t justify lots of people dying in some other, unrelated way. To me, that would be like if I was about to push you off a building and justified it by telling you that your mom, best friend from college and next door neighbor all died from cancer, so what difference does it make if you go this way?
Well if you look upthread you’ll see what I predicted - US is in the real critical run up to the election and shutdowns are simply not tolerable for political reasons right now - the Repubs simply do not intend to acknowledge the gravity of the spread of infection.
The spread will continue but the deaths will largely occur after the vote - which is the political caluclation that has been made.
Unfortunately for the idiots, they have little grasp of maths or of growth rate curves and simply do not understand that small numbers appear to be small in absolute numbers but the accelaration in spread rises extremely rapidly.
Put simply, the GOP has thrown the dice with the US public for its own political ends - and as far as it is concerned it is a worthwhile gamble.