Illinois’ top coronavirus health official breaks down at press conference while practically begging people to do their part in trying to beat this virus:
Meanwhile:
"Seventy local businesses met Thursday night, agreeing to keep serving customers indoors despite a new state order, a Bradley restaurant owner said.
Thomas Spellman, owner of Hoppy Pig, said his restaurant will continue serving patrons inside, defying Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s new order on some regions to cease indoor dining to lessen the spread of the coronavirus. "
Woohoo! Doughnut Day in Victoria!
To expand, there have been no new cases in the previous 24 hours in the Australian state of Victoria. Considering the state was having new case numbers in the 600-700* range at the beginning of August, that’s not too shabby at all.
The Premier has been on (actually, he’s had a press conference every day for at least 125 days), and some new lightening of the lockdown has been announced, with more on the way pending results. Most of that applies to metro Melbourne, but they’re the ones who’ve borne the heaviest burden.
There’s been some hardship, and lots of inconvenience, but it’s good to know that the light at the end of the tunnel may actually be daylight.
Yes its been tough for Victorian friends. Putting the Victorian lock-down into perspective, a good article on how rare it has been globally to ratchet back a high daily case number down to about zero.
It also gives some info on Hong Kong and Vietnam, which don’t feature much in reporting but have done a stellar job.
Before the summer even began, the fear was voiced that Year Two of COVID-19 could very well be worse than Year One. The virus really didn’t make its appearance in earnest in the United States until March when the cold and flu season was ending. Personally, I felt that, from November on, we would get a real indication if this could be the case. The indicators aren’t very good at this point.
The owners at a couple of my favorite watering holes told me that, if there is another prolonged shutdown, they will probably just pack it in and shut down for good. They really can’t take nor even want to take another gigantic economic hit because of COVID-19. Personally, if they shut down all of my favorite bars/restaurants again, I think I’ll just quietly cry.
Aren’t there plenty of indicators that major parts of the country were indeed affected ‘in earnest’ back then and are, so far, largely escaping the spread of infection found in areas that were not hit near as hard?
I need cites because that isn’t even logical. All I know is that, over the weekend, Illinois had its highest positive test count ever, and the entire United States had its second highest ever, and it’s not even November yet.
We can debate all we want, but time will tell. We have a LONG late fall, winter, and early spring stretch to go.
It is my understanding that the New York City metro area is not experiencing new case numbers like it did in March and April. What’s more, it seems that the recent case numbers on the whole are coming from places that had far, far fewer case numbers in the early going than did the Northeast. I thought that was obviously apparent for all to see. I guess I’ll leave it to you whether there is any ‘illogic’ to the data.
This is true, but does not nearly mean that NYC can let its guard down.
Scroll down about 2/3 down the page to the graph “New COVID cases announced each day in New York City”. Note the flat line of peaks between late July and mid-September. Then look from late September to present – NYC’s case numbers are rising gradually.
Just because the recent case counts are gigantic (like March/April) doesn’t mean that NYC is in good shape viz a viz COVID. On the contrary, due to how quickly exponential spread can get out of control, you never want to see a sustained series of increases.
There are new record daily case counts recorded October 25 in the following states.
North Dakota
South Dakota
Montana
Alaska
Idaho (recorded Oct 24)
Wyoming (Oct 24)
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kentucky
Tennessee
Alabama
Arkansas (Oct 24)
Oklahoma
Utah
Colorado
Puerto Rico
New Hampshire
West Virginia
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Lots of other states have hit record highs recently (Wisconsin) or are on a very rapid rise (Vermont)
These case numbers are higher than the ones I reported only a few days ago, in many cases for the same states, and they are shooting up extremely rapidly, in an exponential fashion.
Cases are increasing in Europe, with new highs and incredibly rapid rates in
Poland
Belgium
Italy
In others it’s still going up rapidly, if not as alarmingly fast.
I think the COVID skeptics–the folks who think everything is overblown–are so fixated on what they perceived to be a low death rate that they overlook the obvious: the death rate is a function of the quality of hospital care. What looks like a “tolerable” death rate can quickly become “intolerable” when there are no hospital beds left.
Society can’t function without medical care. So what that the majority of infected only have mild symptoms. Swarmed hospitals are still swarmed hospitals. Swarmed hospitals hurt communities.
I am curious if researchers may one day find a relationship between hospital bed occupancy in an area and the rate of COVID survivors who suffer from long-term complications.