Quoted by, not written by, ThelmaLou:
Let’s see, and what’s the first one of those rights in the list?
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
– person who’d kind of like to stay alive, here
Two comments -
First - 100% correct. Disc’ed in some other place here but the current data is that it seems like 10% are responsible for 90% of the spread, and many do not spread it at all. Studies show that only a small minority of household contacts get infected, in most studies 10% or less. Household contacts are still the prime source of spread.
Second - part of the point of CarnalK’s link was that timing matters for the PCR test. (And they did not even mention the variability between tests.) Aunt could have been an asymptomatic infection that gave it to uncle and is already cleared of virus in her nose. Or could have been tested too early. If she is curious and reliable antibody testing is available (the Roche one for example is quite good) she may want to get an antibody test when her quarantine period is over.
Thanks, DSeid.
Yesterday saw the greatest rise in new cases since the start of the pandemic. Mostly driven by Brazil and a 10% uptick in the US.
6,850,597 total cases
398,244 dead
3,351,249 recovered
In the US:
1,965,708 total cases
111,390 dead
738,646 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
World-O-Meters notes:
Similarly:
So the US total jumped a bit and the reasons have all been re-tallied for the correct dates of occurrence.
6,976,045 total cases
402,170 dead
3,411,788 recovered
In the US:
1,988,544 total cases
112,096 dead
751,894 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
There are now over 400,000 dead from Covid-19; more than 25% of them came from the US.
While new cases per day in Hawaii have been zero or low single digits for a while now, we’ve just had two days in a row of nine new cases each. That’s still single digits but almost back to double digits.
Situation in Brazil, and by extension South America as a whole due to the effect of travel and migrant workers is looking incredibly bleak.
Changes have been made to the reporting of cases by the Brazilian health ministry, they will only be reporting new cases and new deaths and not the cumulative totals.
However it is much worse than that, because President Bolsonaro is blaming WHO for - reasons - and the health ministry lately has been stuffed with staff from the military, a military that will do the bidding of Bolsonaro.
We all know that military data can be manipulated in order to make it look better for the leadership under the guise of national security, what is the betting that the death rates suddenly decline, already Brazil has dropped from a high of 1400 deaths in one day to 900 - although the weekend reporting pattern may well be contributing.
Now we will really see the effects of letting this virus completely loose - the data won’t be accurate but time will tell, when epidemiologists do their work in a year or so’s time we will only then know the answers.
Once we stopped looking at incoming cases in Australia, and started looking at the rare local cases, we got what appeared to be cyclic outbreaks: cluster of cases, then a week later, cluster of cases infected by the previous cluster before it was identified, then a week later, cluster of cases infected by the previous cluster, etc.
+45 in my county since Saturday.
Rats.
This past Monday Panama relaxed the movement restrictions that have been in place for the past two and a half months. We were allowed to leave the house between 5 AM and 7 PM any day of the week. Previously you could only go out for two hours every other day at a time based on your ID number, with men and women on separate days (and nobody on Sunday).
It was a great relief to be able to leave the house whenever I wanted (at least during the day), and go for my daily walk for exercise at 5:30 PM when it’s cooler rather than during the heat of the day when I was allowed to leave the house before).
But it didn’t last evan a week. On March 12 they opened up the first “block” of the economy. Two weeks later (surprise!) there was a sudden jump in new cases. They had dropped to around 150/day, then suddenly jumped to over 300/day, and have continued to rise. Yesterday was the highest number of new cases ever, 541.
So the Ministry of Health announced last night that they are clamping down again, and reimposing the restrictions in the two provinces that include Panama City and its suburbs, where the vast majority of cases have been. (Actually, a high proportion of cases are in clusters in low-income neighborhoods in the suburbs.) People in the other provinces, where cases are much lower, and continue to circulate according to the new rules.
The Ministry of Health blames it on the lack of compliance with the regulations on wearing a mask and social distancing. More than a 1000 people were detained in the last week for violating the curfew. However, I was actually very surprised that they had decided to open up despite the rise in cases. I thought they would have been better off to maintain the restrictions for a few weeks more to get the level of cases lower before reopening. I have the strong impression that the Ministry of Health doesn’t really have a solid plan. The former Director of Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, a major medical research facility here, gave a scathing interview a few weeks ago in which he said he didn’t see much point in the movement restrictions per se, but the real problem was the lack of contact tracing and testing by the Ministry of Health.
This is all very frustrating. Panama has endured the tightest lockdown of any country in the Americas, and one of the strictest in the world, and things are still not close to being under control. I don’t know how many more months this will take.
Wow, bummer. Some could try to spin this as “if even strict behavior restrictions don’t work well enough, what’s the point in ANY behavior adjustments?”. I don’t think that’s a sound conclusion, but there’s a nugget of truth, I suppose. In part it’s about how much death and sickness should be tolerated.
Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of it. Compliance with masks and social distancing seems to have been reasonable in the supermarkets and a hardware store I went to. But I live in a relatively high income part of term. I heard from a friend she went to a store out in a lower income part of town after restrictions were relaxed, and it was so crowded she decided not to go in but go to a smaller store nearby. I think compliance may be much lower in other areas. And Panamanians are not known for their conscientiousness in complying with rules and regulations.
The first day restrictions were relaxed I took advantage of the opportunity to take my daily walk in the evening in the Cinta Costera, an oceanside park. Unfortunately, many others had the same idea, many without masks. Fortunately it was breezy and it wasn’t so crowded that I couldn’t generally avoid coming close to others. However, I discovered that the inner path away from the ocean was nearly empty, and on subsequent days I walked there.
I think one of the problems is enforcement. I’ve only seen police at checkpoints along the major streets, checking ID numbers. Enforcement at stores seems to be entirely up to the owners.
The U.S. hits the 2 Million Total Case Milestone:
For a while it looked Brazil might be a contender in several weeks. But:
**Brazil stops releasing Covid-19 death toll and wipes data from official site **
Oh, great. Giving The Howling Yam ideas.
Well, Kansas apparently decided keeping certain details under wraps was a good idea already.
…so in New Zealand we hit Level one at midnight tonight. Its been 40 days since the last recorded community transmission, 17 days since the last case, and as of yesterday we have zero active cases.
Look at the stats. All zeros, except the one remaining active case converted to “recovered” so we got a 1 and a -1 to balance things out. Testing is down but we are still testing on average 1800 people per day, looking to see if we have missed anyone.
So at Level 1 essentially everything goes back to normal. We’ve gone from the toughest lockdown to basically one of the most open countries in the world. Everything but the borders open. The Prime Minister said when she heard the news that we had no new active cases she did a little dance. Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the other person who has essentially guided us with daily briefings said that “he allowed himself a broad smile.”
We still have a long way to getting back to normal. A lot of businesses have already gone under, many more will follow. And we have to keep on our toes: we cannot become complacent. But like the Prime Minister today I did a little dance, and like Dr Bloomfield I allowed a broad smile on my face.
7,091,666 total cases
406,195 dead
3,461,619 recovered
In the US:
2,007,449 total cases
112,469 dead
761,708 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Regarding Panama:
Panama is rather notorious, historically, for it’s mosquito population and their ability to spread pathogens. So it could well be that social distancing regulations ARE far less effective in such an environment, and/or that the most aggressive approach is warranted because it is far easier to control human behavior than that of insects.