California is having some trouble with the number of covid patients:
It isn’t just California having these problems:
Apparently, Tennessee is taking top honors today. Memphis (Shelby County) had been doing better than the rest of the state but now we are getting overwhelmed. It doesn’t help being the major medical center for dumbass Mississippi and Arkansas idiots, too. There are only 11 ICU beds available. And no staff to open the overflow facility that sits waiting.
South Korea too:
US prisons:
States with a new highest reported daily cases (seven day averaged) on December 17 2020
Maine
Rhode Island
Connecticut
California
Georgia
Texas
Tennessee is, possibly as a statistical fluke, not on the list today (it was yesterday).
Georgia finally broke through that artificial-looking peak from back in November.
So six states today, but lots of others that only missed i by a day or so, and it’s going up in all of these.
Today in Austria, the government announced that the country will be returning to a strict lockdown on 26 December. All non-essential shops and services are to close once again on that day. Meanwhile, people are being encouraged to avail themselves of the ongoing mass testing. The lockdown will end for those with a negative test on 18 January. Those who tested positive, or who went untested, must remain under lockdown for an additional week. (I’m not sure how anyone is going to enforce this; I doubt stores and restaurants will be demanding to see a negative test result before allowing customers to enter. More likely an honour system will be used.)
Starting tomorrow, travel warnings/restrictions will be put in place for every country on earth except for Australia, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Uruguay, and the Vatican.
As with the rest of the EU, mass immunizations will begin on 27 December. Those getting the vaccine first will be health care workers, care home workers, and the elderly. The vaccine will then gradually be rolled out to other risk groups, before finally becoming available to the population at large.
The country is currently seeing around 2000 new infections per day. Neighbouring Germany has ten times the population of Austria but 16 times as many new infections (around 33,000 per day).
In COVID-free Australia, there’s been another outbreak. Hotspots associated with a Bowls club and an RSL club. (Slot machines. Food and entertainment like Las Vegas). In response, the state government has closed the beaches.
Sometimes you wonder if the advice is coming from the medical advisor, or the media advisor.
I’m not positive at all – about why the delivery numbers went down, or about why you think it. (Although I might piece it together by seeing if your past posts were pro or anti Trump).
Looking at DJT’s Twitter feed, he appears to be spending lots of time on a futile attempt to upend the election result, and much less time on COVID. As an anti-Trump type, I think this is to the good from a public health standpoint.
It was inevitable that there would be a level of disorganization in the vaccine rollout, and it doesn’t seem that bad to me yet.
Bigger disorganization will come if, after hospital staff and nursing home staff and residents are taken care of, the next category isn’t age-based. If it is based on occupation, there will be massive queue-jumping because of difficulty knowing who really does face to face work.
What about pre-existing medical conditions? If based on giving to people given a golden ticket by their board-certified family or internal medicine doc, that could work, but would probably be seen as discriminatory against people who do not have a regular doctor. If based on what people say, a lot of us will have suddenly gained 30 pounds and have had a heart attack last year.
I suppose the age thing can also be gamed by someone saying that don’t have ID.
So bigger messes await. (But not as big as no-vaccine !)
It’s interesting that Massachusetts has by far its highest case count but according to this page at Boston.com the death rate of 50/day is way below the high of 170/day and appears to be trending now.
Which vaccines have been approved in the EU? That hasn’t made headlines here in the US.
I’m pretty sure the real case count in April was higher than it is now. In April there was a shortage of tests, and the positivity rate was very high. Now most people who think they might have covid are getting tested, along with a lot of “just in case” testing.
Boo hoo.
Lock her up for a bit, that’s fair and the penalty for being an entitled dumbass. No problem.
Four months is excessive.
76,013,074 total cases
1,681,249 dead
53,281,606 recovered
In the US:
17,888,353 total cases
320,845 dead
10,394,286 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
I was watching a streaming of a court case in Ontario today. Large church was contesting the COVID strict restrictions on services and seeking an injunction against the provincial government to allow it to have large service on Christmas. (Background: covid rates are shooting up in Toronto.)
Counsel for the church cited the SCOTUS case from last month that dealt with a similar situation.
Crown counsel: “With all due respect, I would suggest this court should not be following precedents from a country that has millions of cases and over 300,000 deaths.”
Trial judge ultimately declined to issue an emergency injunction and set the matter down for full argument and evidence at a later date.
She called the day before the race to have her location tracker bracelet loosened. She wasn’t just short of the full quarantine and got impatient or overconfident. She was 2 days in. She didn’t just step outside her hotel room, she went to a sporting event.
If she wanted to be there, she needed to get there 2 weeks earlier, or settle for virtual attendance like responsible people do.
So far almost all the cases are restricted to Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and a localised 5 day hard lockdown has just gone into effect. Keeping the beaches themselves open would be contrary messaging - people from across Sydney go to these beaches. Fortunately, the weather is crap this weekend, rather than one of our 40C shockers, so that helps.
The rest of Sydney has been ‘requested’ into soft lockdown [i.e. minimise non-essential movement and activities, cancel events if you can], and state border restrictions have hurriedly gone back up as many of those states have gone many months without a single case and don’t want any right now, thank you.
While everyone is annoyed, especially as the source may be overseas air crew, they know that you have to go in hard and fast to stomp down on any outbreak, otherwise it becomes exponentially harder every day.
I keep wondering if there are adequate safeguards to prevent vaccine from reaching ungood temperatures or other storage/transport SNAFUs (like the ‘shaken not stirred’ mentioned above).
I’ve heard there are some temperature-warning ‘alarms’ in the Pfizer vaccine packaging but I kinda wonder if there would be incredible pressure to “look the other way” if 100 or 1000 vials were OOPS! stored 5 or 10 degrees too warm. And now hearing about this jiggling thing I think that’d be even more likely to be overlooked.
Accidents and mistakes happen. I just worry that they could be overlooked and unreported. It’s not like milk or meat that’ll smell bad if it’s not stored at the proper temperature. How would anybody know?
She’s not merely an entitled dumbass. That would apply to, say, someone who went and sat in first class when she had an economy class ticket. No, her actions also showed a reckless disregard for the health of others. The quarantine rules exist to protect people from a deadly virus. Her actions very well could have killed someone.
The closest thing I can think of that people seem to get the gravity of is drunk driving. The reason it’s wrong is because you’re likely to cause harm to someone else. Even if the driving goes okay, we still have a rather strong reason to punish, because it could have gone very, very badly.
Sure, there are worse people. But that’s why she got only 1/6th the maximum sentence.
To me ,the real problem is how lightly we seem to take people who violate this crap. We were told to stay home, only go out when needed, wash our hands, keep our distance, and wear masks, and yet so many people want to make excuses to not do that.
I was genuinely happy that it seemed like, for once, one of these stories involved people taking this seriously.
My only pause is whether or not the place she is being held is safe from the virus, as I don’t think she deserves to be infected with it.
Yes. Like most of the COVID handling in my state, it’s about the ‘message’ rather than the disease. What particularly irritates me is that in my state, the quarantine system is run by a manager from the prison division, reporting to the police minister. Again, because what we have here is a law-and-order issue, not a health issue.
… as long as you don’t hurt the pubs and the clubs.