Many families are enjoying the Memorial Day weekend. It’s traditionally the big kick off to summer fun.
Will there be a nation wide spike in Covid-19?
How significant do you expect it to be?
A recent high school pool party in Arkansas resulted in several new Covid-19 cases (the actual number hasn’t been reported). Governor Hutchinson blames our recent spike on new cases in our prison system and increased public testing. We’re entering into phase 2 of opening up the state businesses.
I’m concerned what 7 to 10 days from now will look like? We have the big holiday weekend and states are opening back up.
We’ll soon see if Covid-19 continues to decline after the sacrifices that were made to shelter in place.
There’s a limit to how long people will distance themselves from their families.
Social distancing looks easier on paper. It’s basic human nature for families to come together and celebrate on holidays. That’s especially true after being apart for almost two months.
I hope the spike in cases isn’t too large. The hospitals aren’t fully resupplied from the first wave of Coronavirus.
Cynical prediction: Cases will go up in some places and fall in others; individuals (and entire news networks) will enthusiastically cherry-pick which places they think are representative according to their own prior convictions; half the country will end up believing that there has been a Memorial Day spike and the other half of it will be equally convinced that there hasn’t, regardless of whether there actually was one or not.
A certainly accurate prediction at least as far many people and media outlets…predicting. Which is what the commentary will actually be on the news/internet next week at least, a prediction. It takes people awhile to show symptoms and generally awhile to get sick enough to go to the hospital after that. It would be a few weeks till you saw much effect at hospitals. But no way are media or people on the internet going to hold off commenting that long. Especially the ones who really just express their same socio-political views, and disdain for those not sharing them, via each ostensibly different news issue which comes up.
Longer run I think there’s still more of a middle ground of people who would believe official or reputable private source figures about what the numbers really turned out to be, though also people who’ll always cherry pick what agrees with their preconception, or move goalposts as needed for their side to have been ‘right’.
But let’s say somebody was actually not that interested in their side being right or actually didn’t much identify with either of the two basic sides in the US divide. Right now they would still be in pretty much of a ‘fog of war’ on this disease generally. Like some media clips are people kind of close together without masks but outdoors. AFAIK we don’t really know how much risk that is. Likewise what side you take with the video of Costco employee kicking the guy out for no mask, guy says ‘I woke up in a free country’. What actual risk was there, not ‘well what if nobody wore a mask?’ kind of social signalling thing but actual risk posed by this guy, or in stores where the staff don’t confront people like that (or localities that don’t enforce it to avoid confrontations). I don’t know that with any certainty and if the public experts do know they don’t seem willing disclose except in vague generalities (‘you really should wear masks where you can’t keep 6’ distance’ said Dr. Birx on TV yesterday, that’s hardly an exact answer to how much risk it poses if you don’t wear it, including possibility you would stay 6’ away from others).
And most of the stories of obviously risky stuff are anecdotes. I don’t see a way to watch some minutes of the left or right news and process that into a numerical answer how many news cases? Then what’s the numerical definition of ‘spike’.
Yeah, honestly I think that is one of the most frustrating things about this whole situation – all of the data is so messy and confusing and sometimes contradictory, and yet people keep talking as if they are SURE about what will happen in the future, and always in ways that coincidentally happen to match up with their overall political beliefs, because for some reason I don’t understand this has become a left-right culture war. And I just … don’t trust certainty right now.
The reason for the culture war aspect of this weirdness is that due to business closures and stay at home orders the economy suffers as a sacrifice to the people’s health. Different political ideologies tolerate this to different degrees.
No, you have to look at the source of the statistics.
The CDC numbers seems reliable.
People reporting on the CDC numbers may have an agenda. It never hurts to question what’s being reported. A healthy skepticism is warranted these days.
Not to get too far from the OP, but cases are going up no matter what we do. If there was an investment vehicle that tracked to the infection rate, we could all invest in it and expect 100% that it will go up over time. There should be no doubt about it. And the infection rate seems to be dominating the headlines. ISTM the ever-increasing infection rate is being used, as others are saying here, as a tool for their own personal, political, or network agenda.
I would like to see a little deeper reporting on this - isn’t the rate of hospitalization and the ability of the health infrastructure to keep up with the spreading infection, as well as deaths, more a reliable indicator of problems than just hammering on the infection rate or how many tests are being given?
So, just to manage expectations - we should see a spike in cases 10-14 days after the 3-day weekend - that should be no surprise anywhere. But, have the local health systems been able to keep up? And have the number of deaths increased dramatically from the trend? To me, that is a more interesting question than just seeing a spike in cases without seeing what happens afterward.
Shouldn’t we be looking at the percentage of tests that are positive, not the number of those tested that are positive? Using my own county, which is still on lockdown, as an example:
April 22: 3, 814 people had been tested. The rate of positive tests was 3%.
May 25: 8,158 people had been tested, yet the rate of positives was only 2%.
(April 22 was the last day the positive rate was 3%. It’s been steady at 2% ever since.)
Perhaps someone could explain to me how it could be otherwise elsewhere.
I would imagine that hospitalization and death increases would be independent of the number of tests deployed. Of course, they’re going to be harder to pin to a specific date than positive tests though.
Here in New Hampshire I figure if we don’t have a spike in people sick enough to be hospitalized in 3 weeks due to Memorial day, we’ll get one by June 21st, 3 weeks after we open the beaches and attract sick Massh-, um, Massachusetts residents.
