California’s data is not accurate.
And it’s unclear how much testing was done in Florida; it was suspended for the hurricane.
Holy effing crap! No one, and especially me, has said it’s an all-or-nothing situation. Get a clue. I’m not going to bother going back to my post that kicked this off and quote my disclaimers and qualifiers. So let me just say once and for all:
**ON THE RECORD: **
Those who are an a position to, those who can, those for whom it is possible need to behave like everyone has it, including themselves. There will OBVIOUSLY be exceptions, like those who live together, who are caring for others and must do so in person, those who <fill in your own exceptional blank>. But generally the more people act like they and everyone outside of their own household with whom they come in contact are contagious and follow protocols faithfully (even obsessively), the sooner we will defeat this virus.
Are we all on the same page? I thought so.
This is supposed to be a breaking news thread so let’s get off this subject.
I have noted over the last few days that the increase in infections does not seem to be replicated in the number of deaths.
This is just during this week, but something does not look right to me
Thus far, increases in deaths from COVID have nearly always lagged increases in positive tests by several weeks. If infections (or, really, positive tests) have increased in the past few days, the related death increases won’t be seen for a couple of weeks.
And if a higher percentage of cases are young people, the trailing death rate shouldn’t have the same rise as previous case increases had.
I’d be surprised if the change was sufficient to result in a 60% drop in fatalities.
Where are you noticing a drop at that rate?
I guess the fatalities do have to fall off at some point…
Sorry, that was really meant as a response to manson1972, who asked “what difference would a test make? Don’t you have to act as if you are infected either way?”
Look at Florida, for three days we have 245, 225, 120.
Bearing in mind the poltical leanings it seems more than a little out, and todays figure is 180 - the changes just do not resemble anything previous, a fall in deaths is not impossible but given the way infections rose 3 to 7 weeks ago it is just very unlikely.
Does not compute, I can also imagine there could be occasional delays for local holidays etc but the one thing we do not get with this virus is step changes
Cases still rising in Melbourne Australia, after escape from quarantine a month ago. Daily numbers swing from 400 to 799, indicating that what we are seeing is outbreaks, but, unlike two weeks ago, we don’t have something looking like a 5 day cycle: now we’ve got endemic outbreaks.
Contact tracing has broken down. When we had almost no cases, almost every case could be traced to a source case, and all contacts self-quarantined. Sometime last week, it became obvious that we had no idea where most of the new cases came from: we could quarantine the detected cases, but weren’t succeeding in identifying the sources. To stop spread by contact tracing, you have to identify contacts in the first 48 hours at least: if, as was happening, you haven’t identified source in 5 days then it’s already too late, the spread has continued.
Possibly for that reason, Melbourne has moved to stage 4 restrictions (2, 3, 2…3…4…) No bars or restaurants, most shops closed, masks at all times, at home when not at work, ‘necessary’ industry and some manufacturing open with reduced workforce, attendance lists, carrying permits on the way to work, demanding OHS cleaning requirements.
“Possibly” because just before the new restrictions, the government made COVID policy consideration a Cabinet Committee – secret and exempt from FOI. In announcing the new restrictions the Medical Officer did use the phrase “shock and awe” – some part of the policy is to impress people with the importance, not necessarily medically based.
@casdave – Florida hit its peak in new infections in the middle of July, so we might reasonably expect to see deaths peak and start to fall around two weeks after that, which is exactly what we do see. Exactly the same thing happens in Arizona (infections peak in the first week of July, seven-day rolling average of deaths peaks and starts falling around July 19, although the day-to-day pattern is pretty spiky).
Trevor Bedford - genomic epidemiologist at FredHutch in Seattle has an interesting thread on Twitter.
Also in Melbourne, we had a couple of bad nursing home outbreaks. One of these is worth further consideration.
The first bad nursing home outbreak in Australia was in the state of NSW. Old people died, (by rumour, demented and with existing DNR orders). They were not moved to hospital. As in the USA, many people think that old people should be automatically moved to hospital when they get sick.
In the medical community, it was a commonplace understanding that nursing homes are staffed by minimum wage employees with poor English language skills, no training in infection control, employed as casual workers (no sick leave) doing shifts at multiple sites. As such, there was an understanding that nursing homes were poorly equipped to handle COVID outbreaks.
Obviously this message got through to somebody in the government, because in this later outbreak in Melbourne, the minimum-wage workers were all sent home and replaced with skilled nursing staff.
Unfortunately, in Melbourne, university trained nurses mostly don’t speak migrant-community languages, and don’t normally do actual nursing – that’s a job for nursing aids. Sending them in to do basic care of non-english-speaking patients in an unfamiliar facility with all-new management and no existing systems didn’t turn out well, in spite of their superior skill in infection control. There’s been considerable political damage, and doubtless some important people are feeling burnt. It’s not clear to me how they will handle any future outbreaks.
The NYTimes puts out a COVID update newsletter every day, which I believe anyone can subscribe to for free.
This disturbing tidbit was in today’s:
Airborne transmission. A leaked report from the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment provides one of the clearest examples yet that the coronavirus can be transmitted through the air. The study examined a retirement home where almost an entire ward of patients was infected. Health authorities found large quantities of the virus in the air-ventilation system.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Not up for continuing this discussion…
Look for a big outbreak in South Dakota in a couple weeks. Some 250,000 motorcycle enthusiasts are congregating at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally with virtually no one wearing masks. Also should fuel outbreaks across the continent.
Very interesting.
[quote=“dtilque, post:4132, topic:847758, full:true”]
Look for a big outbreak in South Dakota in a couple weeks. Some 250,000 motorcycle enthusiasts are congregating at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally with virtually no one wearing masks…[/quote]
Although… you don’t get THAT close to other people when you are on a bike, right?
Restaurants, bars and most important, looking at other bikes and talking to other riders. In close proximity.
If all they were doing was riding, it’d be OK. Hell, I ride my bicycle every day and don’t wear a mask while doing it. But they park those bikes and walk around to stores, restaurants, concerts, and various events.
The SD governor encouraged people to come to Sturgis. And no requirement that anyone wear a mask while there.
19,543,562 total cases
724,075 dead
12,545,567 recovered
In the US:
5,095,524 total cases
164,094 dead
2,616,967 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: