I hear ya. But we’re not gonna beat it here. Pisses me off. Because, you know, we could.
Running some numbers - same as I did before, really. I worked up these numbers yesterday evening my time.
Figures are from worldometer.com (from yesterday) for COVID-19 deaths in the US, starting with the first confirmed death on February 29 - that I could find, anyway.
Numbers for combat deaths in WW2, and population of the US as of 1940 and 2020 taken from Wikipedia. For those curious, the population of the US increased by about 2.5 times.
So. Since Feb 29, a period of 257 days, 247,938 Americans died of COVID, an average of 962/day.
In WW2, 291,557 Americans died in combat. I chose the start date of 7 December 1941 and an end date of 8 August 1945*. That’s a period of 1340 days, giving an average of 218/day. Multiplying that by 2.5 gives us an equivalent of 549/day in 2020.
Interestingly, the projected number of deaths on December 7th of this year isn’t that far off from the total raw number of combat deaths in WW2.
I’m having a little trouble finding military spending by the US in WW2, but it looks like about 4 trillion dollars in today’s money.
I’m kinda wondering how the American Civil War compares, but these numbers are really getting me down…
*There may have been some combat deaths included which were outside that range of dates, but I don’t think they’d affect the numbers much.
From what I’ve seen, most people in Connecticut appear to be wearing masks, and restaurants and bars are still limited to less than full capacity. Due to this latest surge, restaurants were just rolled back from 75% to 50% capacity.
According to my sister, this not the case in Houston.
I’m still not getting it.
You were bemoaning the increase in news cases in Connecticut.
You say Connecticut is largely following guidelines and is seeing an increase in new cases.
Texas is not following guidelines and is seeing huge, staggering record number increases in new cases.
That’s not much of a contrast, and it leaves me unsure what your point was in trying to draw one between the two states.
The only contrast that I was drawing is that Connecticut largely appears to have been following the guidelines and Houston has not. That’s it.
You may be reading more into a four word transition statement than is there. (i.e. “Contrast that to Houston.”)
Okay; thanks for the explanation.
53,091,981 total cases
1,299,407 dead
37,212,856 recovered
In the US:
10,873,936 total cases
248,585 dead
6,728,120 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
California joined Texas in the Million Plus States Club today.
The US had more than 161,000 new cases today.
The US will have more than 250,000 dead from COVID-19 within 48 hours from now.
Looking ahead to Thanksgiving in the US.
The article says that the infection rate was already increasing in Canada, but that Thanksgiving made it worse, especially since there were mitigation protocols in place, and it still got worse.
Today in Austria the government will make a decision on whether to amend the existing lockdown restrictions. It is expected that they will be tightened, since the existing restrictions have not led to enough of a reduction in the rate of new cases and deaths. Intensive care capacity is currently at about 50%, which is twice as high as it was during the first wave in the spring. Already hospitals in some states are having to redistribute patients and are warning that there will be a nationwide crisis if the rate of admissions continues to climb. At least one state has already closed all its shopping centres, and the minister of education is proposing to introduce regulations that will facilitate homeschooling. (Unlike Germany, Austria has no nationwide ban on homeschooling, though the existing regulations don’t make it as easy as in, say, the United States.)
People are slacking off and getting careless. And as the holidays approach, I suspect this behavior will get worse. We will have to be grinches to protect ourselves.
…Many earlier coronavirus clusters were linked to nursing homes and crowded nightclubs. But public health officials nationwide say case investigations are increasingly leading them to small, private social gatherings. This behind-doors transmission trend reflects pandemic fatigue and widening social bubbles, experts say — and is particularly insidious because it is so difficult to police and likely to increase as temperatures drop and holidays approach.
…This week, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced a 10-person limit on gatherings in private homes, calling them a “great spreader.” Similar restrictions have been imposed in states including Ohio; Utah; Connecticut; Colorado, where one recent cluster involved seven people infected while playing the dice game bunco; and Rhode Island, whose governor has pledged to fine violators. Oregon last week announced a “pause” in hard-hit counties on most groups larger than six people.
This COVID-related article in WaPo is not paywalled. I don’t know if you have to create an account to view it.
Yeah, people will definitely get on board with that. 
Here’s a 3-minute video about the superspreader phenomenon:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/superspreader-events-explained/2020/10/14/1eccd0dc-3256-44ef-8e57-e9bcdfb509be_video.html
Some more states are reporting record high seven-day-averages of daily new cases, dated Nov. 12
Iowa
Wyoming
Rhode Island
Wisconsin
Idaho
Nebraska
Connecticut
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Indiana
Kentucky
Arkansas
Vermont
Maine
Michigan
Illinois
Maryland
Happy Friday the Thirteenth
Update on one aspect of contact tracing - the use of digital contact tracing apps.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6518/760
They proceed to discuss how to potentially gain better uptake and what sort of oversight may be needed to achieve it.
There’s already a run on -80 C freezers, with expected shortages, in anticipation of the Pfizer vaccine being approved. It is blindingly obvious that this will happen, and we could probably be ready for it if we used the Defense Production act to immediately ramp up production. I’d put the odds on that happening before January 20 at roughly 0.
For over a week, Connecticut has had more new cases per capita per day than Texas.
Has any country beat it? Some have done better than others but with Europe going through a major surge I don’t think it’s just the US.
I thought people might find this graph of the US rolling 7 day average for new cases useful:
I don’t know if it counts as beating it but there are only 53 active cases in New Zealand. If they haven’t beaten it its at least on the ground bloody and barely moving.
THe infection curve is exactly as I predicted - the brakes on social distancing were taken off especiailly by Red states and heartily ignored by Reds in Blue states, the unlock pretty much got into full swing in the third week of October and now its skkyrocketing just after the election.
This was a calculated risk by the Reps, they hoped that some semblence of normality would help them get their vote out on the day - which it did, and they also knew that by the time the numbers of deaths followed the same trend the election would be over.
They knew it would happen and they decided their electoral hopes were more important than the lives of their electorate - it is as simple and as brutal as that.
Oregon just announced that we’ll have new state-wide restrictions starting next Wednesday and running for 2 weeks, and 4 weeks in Multnomah County (Portland). Bars and restaurants are back to take-out only, gym are closed, and both indoor and outdoor gatherings are limited to at most 6 people from no more than 2 households.