(Cases in) the South shall rise again!

NC Governor won't yet commit to allowing the GOP convention, so Trump is now threatening to move it. At the moment it seems like the GOP is determined to get tens of thousands of people together in August.

I had similar conversations with family members in the medical profession yesterday. The shift from overwhelming sadness and grief to absolute rage and bitterness has been palpable over the last week or so.

I think Arizona is headed into the "I don't give a f*ck" mode here in the next few weeks. We have seen some higher hot spots in the west Phoenix area and in Tucson. It's basically most areas that have Native American reservations or poorer communities. A nurse I know made a really good point. She works out west and said that a lot of the Native American community has families living together and it tends to mimic those areas in Italy hit pretty hard (grandkids living with grandparents). Her hospital is starting to see additional cases, but ones in Chandler/North Scottsdale have been pretty consistent.

Where I live doesn't seem to be hit as hard and I think people are starting to go back to normal. One friend I have (who has been cautious to this point) finally went out Saturday night to a bar. I asked him about it and he said this (paraphrased but pretty close): "We have 7.2 million people in Arizona. We have done 260K tests and just 16,000 people have gotten it. Of those, just 800 have died. So, over three months, we have had 800 dead from this. At this point, it's really no different than the risk of driving a car. I will try to social distance when possible and maybe even wear a mask. But, I'm not avoiding living my life when this thing just isn't impacting AZ much."

He wouldn't hear of it when I said social distancing has kept the numbers down. He is one of the more reasonable friends I've known here regarding this and he's ready to go back to normal. I'm not sure what this means, but I would highly recommend elderly and other health compromised people stay home as much as possible during the next couple months. People just don't care right now (which is exactly what I told my dad who is recovering from hip surgery this morning). I will be going to the grocery store for my parents (and doing a mask hand off outside of their house) and my sister is picking up some of their meds.

The thing is, places like Arizona might be the safest to do that due to the heat. I don't expect coronavirus to spread very fast (relatively) during the summer. But the fall could bring a rude and very unpleasant awakening.

I'm going to a bar this afternoon for the first time since March 15. Hopefully sitting outside. Very happy about this. And I've always been good at social distancing while at bars do it shouldn't be very different for me.

Yeah, I have noticed a lot fewer people in masks going to the grocery store the last week. I still wear one because my wives parents are super high risk and she is their primary care giver. We did eat out last week and sat outside where nobody was closer than 10 feet from us. It was nice and I am worn out as much as anybody, but their is no excuse to be careless.

I'd expect the heat to encourage more indoor gatherings with recirculating air conditioning. Some churches around here held outdoor services this Sunday. That ain't happening a month from now. Just about everything will be forced into the A/C pretty soon. There's a breeze at the beach; nobody in their right mind in Birmingham or Charlotte or Augusta or Columbia or Columbus or Macon is sitting outside at a restaurant or bar when it's 90 degrees with no wind at 7:00pm.

For example, I just got an email today that the "make-up" for the lost skills from the cancellation of spring soccer will be a new indoor league this summer "if it's allowed." Unless they're socially distancing game start times in a way not done during the winter (indoor) league and radically changing the physical setup of the building to not use part of the fields, it'll be simply impossible to have six feet of spread. I'm pretty sure there's not six feet between the net that keeps the ball from hitting the spectators--all of whom have to stand one-deep in whatever soccer people call what would be the end zone--and the wall. And because everyone is standing one-deep behind a net, anytime a younger sibling has to go to the bathroom, or a spectator arrives after a game starts, or the parents are leaving from one game and entering for the next, or someone leaves early....you have to squeeze past one another. It's not quite as bad a stadium row, but it's tight enough quarters in there that I've asked my kid "can you hold it for 20 minutes" rather than leaving to go to the bathroom and coming back in. All parents and other spectators for both teams are jammed into one "end zone," too. It's, uh, not an environment that I'd think is a good one during a pandemic, but no one is considering kids playing rec-league soccer outside at that time of year, either.

Has it been shown definitively that heat does significantly slow this down?

Depends on who you ask. CDC says who knows. Lab studies have said yes but we don't know how much. MIT says transmission rates should decline by 20-30% during the summer. General consensus is yes it slows it down, but not as much as some other viruses, but there's a lot of unknowns.

We pretty much know it doesn't slow nearly as much already compare to Influenza (to name the resident widespread virus). Dunno about the CDC, but the german institute in charge publishes Surveilance data from doctors offices across the country on Influnenza and other viruses and where they get like 100-300 'hits' for the influenza strains per week in Winter this drops to virtually zero with a couple here and there come April and usually happens only 3,4 weeks after the absolute peak.
It goes virtually extinct locally, than spreads around the globe again. (Some years you have almost no overlap to the year before on various strains. For example the bad flu season in 17/18 in Germany had almost 60% Influenza B, which was not included in the vaccine that year, the year after not a single case all winter)

I really think it is less about the weather/climate and more about the areas where people congregate.

This gets to Quik's point in this or another thread about everyone up the food chain washing their hands of any responsibility.

They will say that they are open (so say goodbye to your refund), but y'all should "distance."

Distancing will be, literally, impossible.

But they told you to distance, so it isn't their fault if you die.

In good news: In Austria at least Remdesivir + Plasma therapy + early oxygen (not Ventilator, but high pressure masks) have really improved Treatment success rate and Symptom length to a similar degree as happens with the flu when properly diagnosed. (Not making it the same, just improving the respective odds similarly).

Hey, leave us out of this one... due to the location vis a vis the mountains there's almost always a breeze at night here in Charlotte! Now that'll also be accompanied by near-nightly thunderstorms in the summer that will drive people inside at times, but this is a city where social life is very much centered around drinking outside on patios & roofdecks. Seemingly every one of the dozens of breweries (and now Seltzeries because apparently that's not a fad) has outdoor areas. (Will people still be idiots and be in packed bars - yes I'm already seeing that unfortunately, and will people including myself overcrowd even those outdoor areas yes, but I'll be able to stay strictly to outside seating and go back to a fairly normal social life.)

Going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I think as a nation we've clearly chosen the path where we accept infections and deaths as long as the hospitals aren't overwhelmed, and North Carolina as a whole is definitely not meeting the benchmarks Cooper etc set for continued re-opening, but I don't see any way they'll go back into lockdown unless hospitals become triage areas like NYC was.Hopefully people are smart enough to at least respect the nursing home regulations and do what they can to avoid contact with and protect elderly and at-risk people (unlike everyone's favorite Andrew Cuomo...), but even though I'm in a more liberal/educated bubble we've still got a couple people on the fringes of the friend group and I run across people every time when I'm grocery stores/gas stations who seem to be outright flaunting their refusal to wear a mask or avoid standing directly next to people. I'm pro-Open, and pro-let people make their own risk assessments (& pro-Darwinism) overall, but throwing a bandanna on for the 5 minutes I'm in a store possibly around older people, or maintaining 5+ feet of separation from people I don't know and aren't talking to seems like a pretty acceptable sacrifice & way too many people won't/can't even do that, which is why I've been arguing against the lockdown stuff from Day 1 until/unless a vaccine is imminent.

I'm still working legally at the Amazon warehouse where it is a quite high risk environment, the company is officially enforcing things while in practice making decisions that force me & others to be within 6 feet of people more than before, and I get a text seemingly every other day confirming another case (and a refusal to tell anyone what department or shift the employee was on...) and I'll be back to borderline illegally coaching kids outside again in a week in what seems like a very low risk environment (where we will avoid any contact drills or players standing near each other, wear masks as coaches, leave the fields if police or park rangers show up because the city isn't officially honoring permits right now, and also weirdly make everyone use hand sanitizer when entering/leaving the fields even though the players wear gloves). I was willing to illegally hang out with the same small group of friends who like me don't have family in the area or interact with elderly people or co-workers I already spend 40+ hours a week in contact with this whole time, and am now willing to hang out outside at bars etc but not inside, while I see people who were holed up the last two months just jumping back in like nothing's changed, and it's baffling to me. (Almost as baffling as the fact we're 2+ months into this, basically no state/city/company has taken it upon themselves to do a real representative sampling so we know how many people are/have been infected, and seemingly nobody cares.) About the only things we know definitively about this is that there is a much lower risk of transmission if you are outside, and a much lower risk of hospitalization/death if you are younger(/in shape), and yet we still refuse to base our general policies around those two facts and drive peoples activities and energy in that direction. :confused:

Trump’s medical beliefs and general intelligence are truly staggering: WHO trials of hydroxychloroquine halted as a study published in The Lancet has found that it might actually double the risk of dying from Covid-19...

Coronavirus: WHO halts trials of hydroxychloroquine over safety fears - BBC News

Dola: I understand that there is someone who has put his blood, sweat, tears, and probably life savings into running this youth soccer league. I am not unsympathetic to that person. It seems like the obvious answer is for Congress to take businesses like this that are nonessential, have a high risk of transmission, but are still useful to the economy, and give the owners 12 months or so of payments to help the weather the storm, and keep their employees on the payroll.

That lets the more essential and less transmission heavy parts of the economy reopen on their own.

Here is a picture of a 1918 Gorgia Tech football game during the spanish flu pandemic

Those seats look very uncomfortable

Maryland's dashboard webpage for CV info was suddenly stripped of a major and easily-seen bit of data - the added cases/numbers in the last day.

You can still find that, but you have to go digging. Used to be right out there.

I'm trying to think what might underlie this decision. Trying to find a non-awful answer there. No luck thus far.

I got to see my first mask/social distancing fist fight today. Guy in his forties took out a guy in his mid twenties after words were exchanged about the young guy not respecting social distancing in Winn Dixie.

You have to be prepared to fight if you are going to be fake coughing behind people while not wearing a mask? Because that seems like something is going to lead to a confrontation most of the time.

Whew, good thing it was Gen X vs Millennial.

Well, was it an entertaining fight?

St Louis county has issued a travel advisory for anyone that went to the Lake of the Ozarks this weekend. Told people that went to quarantine for 14 days or until testing negative.

I'm not up to speed on Maryland politicians since The Wire ended (after Season 4!) & O'Malley/Carcetti had his failed national bid... is Hogan normally a reasonable guy or a sycophant?

That's probably a fair way to look at it, yes.

Most days I'd just laugh or eye roll honestly but, sooner or later, yeah there are definitely odds are that somebody will pick the wrong day.

The good news for me is that if I get a jury in the county where that's most likely to take place, I've got a decent shot at being acquitted via jury nullification if nothing else.

On a related(ish) note I guess, the frequency with which I see masks improperly worn is getting kinda comical. And by that I mean employees under a mask mandate, not customers.

Can we all at least agree that wearing a mask around your chin is literally doing NOTHING of value for anyone?

Screw whether it bothers you or doesn't bother you that they're doing it, can all sides at least come together on the notion that wearing it that way is silly?

Hogan, a Republican Governor in a deeply blue state, got elected in a weird setup, re-elected in a tidal wave, and ranks among the most popular governors in the US. Plays the moderate lane, ignores/skips Trump, and shies away from the most controversial issues. Some deep blues dislike him and try to paint him as a monster, but he has been mostly moderate and very reasonable in most people's eyes.

I've seen this a bunch, too! I don't get how this is even a thing. I have yet to see a mask on the hair like the sunglasses on the head thing, but I'm sure I will, given time.

SI

When I walk around our neighborhood I have the mask around my neck so that I can pull it up if we meet anyone and talk.

We don't wear a mask when walking the dog in our subdivision. We (or they) just step aside when we pass each other. If we stop to talk, only the dogs are really close sniffing each other.

We may be doing it wrong but think 6 ft apart while talk in the open is okay.

That's how I've been doing it as well. Out walking the dog I'm not wearing a mask and keep a respectful distance when passing others, especially if they are wearing a mask.

Been going out for longer hikes the last couple of weekends. Then I'll wear a mask around my neck and pull it up if I pass someone else wearing a mask. Would say about 50% of the people on the trails are wearing mask. Colorado in general is doin a pretty good job of mask wearing I think. Especially at grocery stores, some require a mask.

Went out to two bars yesterday. First one had a lot of people, very few wearing masks though besides the staff. You were supposed to wear one when going to the bar to order a beer and then take it off at your table but that generally didn't happen. In general though the seating was spaced out appropriately and most people were sitting outside.

Second taproom, a brewery, was much more stringent. Temperature check at the door, mask required, escorted to our table where we could then remove the mask.

Most bars and restaurants in Colorado will be able to open at 50% capacity on Wednesday. The county I'm in got a variance allowing them to open a few days earlier.

Am I falling into my typically overoptimistic way of looking at the world, or have we had a run of pretty good vaccine news over the last couple of weeks?

Officially at 100K deaths.

US has also tested more people than Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada and S Korea combined. Also, out of the 505 deaths from yesterday, 250 were in the NE states. It's almost like we have two different countries when it comes to this: New England and NY are one and the rest of the US is another.

We also have 15-20% more people than all those countries combined so I don't think the raw testing number is super-important It definitely is good news for the rest of the country though that the northeast remains fairly isolated or whatever you want to call it on the casualties here.

The next few weeks will tell the story in Missouri. After the shit show in the Lake of the Ozarks, if there isnt a spike, Im officially open it up. If the 2nd wave starts, I will be shut it down.

South Korea is under 300.

But you're not doling out soup into a to-go container.

They've also tested fewer people than Peru (despite having over 51 million). We've tested 15.4 million so we are going to have more deaths just by the testing effort. Anyone who has tested under 2% of their population (S Korea, China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Brazil, etc) is hard to make any kind of general results comments. Imagine if the US just tested 4 million people from Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Nebraska and Kansas - we would look great right now.

S Korea has appeared to do a very good job in managing this because of the willingness of their people to given away nearly all their privacy. But, we don't know for sure.

When people aren't getting sick, you don't need to test as much. They make us look like a clown show.

I'm actually worried that it might take a few rounds of these types of activities before we notice. Assuming most of those people were quarantined for the past 9 weeks the spread from this weekend could be minimal because few are likely to be infected. However, if they do it again next weekend and the following weekend, now you have increased the # of asymptomatic carriers. Therefore, it might not be until 4th of July until the repercussions are seen.

We kinda do... they haven’t got tens of thousands or even thousands of otherwise inexplicable excess deaths.

South Korea has a culture of wearing masks, they've done it for decades. They have tracker apps on their phones for flu/virus and they have basically given their civil liberties up to the government because they are so afraid of these viruses. Because the US does not want to behave like that doesn't make us "a clown show", it just opens us up a little more to having more cases. At the end of the day, we have tested 15.4 million people and only around 100K of those died from this due to the social distancing and shelter in place laws setup in many states. I'd say that's a pretty good job by our local governments and even most citizens. The federal government didn't do much to help, but atleast it got out of the way to make this much less of an impact than nearly everyone thought it would be in March.

Is the US close to perfect? No, but the results are extremely positive to this point across 80% of the US. We just have to keep social distancing in these hot spot areas and hope the rate of infections/test keeps going down (as it is in many states right now). I'm just not what people want us to do at this point. Of the 74.5 million tests done in the world, the US has done 21% of them (and we don't have close to 21% of the population). People are going to be idiots in areas like Florida and the Ozarks, but most people seem to have taken precautions and stopped this from really impacting the US as a whole like it did in Spain, Italy and other places. But, because we have 100K deaths out of the millions who have had this, we are a clown-show. If you look at places that have seriously tested their population, we are better than nearly all of them by percentage (Belgium, Spain, UK, Italy, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, etc).

Even if that number of 300 is low because they haven't tested as much, they could have 50X that number and still be doing light years better than we are.

Cases per million population:
USA - 5,215
Belgium - 4,959
Spain - 6,060
Italy - 3,813
France - 2,800
Sweden - 3,412
Netherlands - 2,661
Canada - 2,298
Ireland - 5,015

Hey, at least its better than our educational and health care systems.

We've also tested 15.5 million people - most of whom had a reason to be tested.

Here's the most important number (IMO): Deaths / recorded cases -
USA - 5.8%
UK - 14.0%
Belgium - 16.2%
Spain - 9.6%
Italy - 14.3%
France - 15.6%
Sweden - 12.0%
Netherlands - 12.8%
Canada - 7.7%
Ireland - 6.5%

While we may have slightly more cases per million (we are talking about a difference of 1-2K per million or 0.2% of people), we have significantly fewer deaths.

How does deaths per recorded case tell us anything worthwhile? You yourself have been saying repeatedly that we don't really have any idea how many cases there have been both here in the U.S. and globally. This stat is basically just a substitute for number of tests conducted.

Deaths per recorded cases is a completely meaningless number. Especially with lack of testing.

It tells you how many people with the virus you can keep alive, it’s probably the most important number from this limited data set. If you have 1,000 cases and 30 die, it’s better than having 100 die. It shows that you have a better infrastructure with which to treat the sick patients. It also means how successful we’ve been at keep the most vulnerable from getting it.

Again, I agree you can’t tell a ton from the limited numbers, but you can see how many people with the virus you manage to keep alive. What’s a more important number than that?

I apologize for trotting out a wilted half-zinger, days late, but what are the odds that someone/everyone who will risk their lives for a maskless, 'zero ducks given', industrial grade, dirty water boozer is NOT peeing in the pool?

Who exactly should South Korea test ? Carpet Bomb Testing without cause is not desirable unless a new magic test arrives that is vastly easier to use truly widespread. Otherwise it would guarantee getting more false positives than actually infected* (which would lead to a poor use of further ressources in tracking/tracing etc). They test massively and quickly when there is cause. I highly doubt that SK misses nearly as many deaths as the US arguably does (backed by preliminary excess mortality), total test numbers or no. That argument is somewhat valid for countries with lots of infection activity and few tests (and the excess mortality data backs it up), not for countries that have demonstrably slowed the spread to a crawl at a low level.
They just have much fewer cases and succesfully prevented wider spread from the start, that is why they tested less when looking at the whole 3 month span.
Does the US by now even routinely test contacts of cases ? (Honest question)

* Good vid explaining False Positives: False Positives & Negatives for COVID-19 tests | Using Bayes' Theorem to Estimate Probabilities - YouTube

(And SKs prevelance will be heaps lower than 1 % )



The US has done a fairly good job on it mainly in places not hit early and fast, no ? (And in those after the first month, same as Spain/Italy).
Which for the US comprises a larger % of the country than elsewhere, simply by geography. Lombardy is 20% of Italy, Paris (+ Alsacce) 20 % of france in terms of population, with all other regions much closer than the majority of US is relative to NY et al.

Also, this has to be pointed out: 15 mio tests is NOT 15 mio people tested. It is a fraction of that. The vast majority of tests are going to be multiples. Heathcare workers in hospitals get tested routinely a lot (over here also in care homes or outpatient stuff), even everybody released from hospital needs a negative test (2 here) etc etc. Again, i don't know what the numbers would be. Just that it is not cut and dry.
The difference between the test numbers now vs 6 weeks ago really is less likely due to testing more suspected cases than ramped up prophylactic testing. Which is great, don't get me wrong. But it is also why it does not neccesarily means more tests = keeping better track of people and being able to disrupt chains of infection.

:) I read this mid-swallow and almost drowned on the water I was drinking.

The case fatality rate is going to be similar in all countries with similar medical advances. There's no reason to believe our treatments are so much better than France's or the UK's. If a country's medical system lags behind or if the cases get to a point where they overwhelm the medical system, the CFR could go up.

If the 1% CFR number proves to be true, there have been at least ten million cases in the US. Basing a stat on a number that undercounts cases by at least 80% doesn't get you anything worthwhile.

A 1% case fatality rate seems pretty unlikely at this point. I'd be shocked if it was higher than 0.7% and will probably be around 0.5%. As contagious as this thing appears to be, we'd have a much higher death total than 100K (or even 200K) if it was 1%.

Still, the US has arguably been better than most European countries (outside of Germany) and Canada when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable and helping patients who get it. I'm not saying that Trump has done anything right or that we have a great health care system - I know those are hot-button words that cause a riot in here (and I don't believe either are true, FYI). The whole point of my response was because of the comment that the US is a "clown show" when it comes to dealing with the virus. That is just simply not true.

I'm not sure how you can say that we've been better at protecting the vulnerable. Look at the numbers of nursing home cases and deaths. Look at the numbers of prison cases and deaths.

Forbes, yesterday, ran a story that claimed over 40k deaths among nursing home residents.

Unfortunately most of the deaths will end up being elderly people with compromised health conditions (and many will be in assisted living). But for a country of 330 million, 100K deaths is extremely low. Especially when you compare to places like UK, Spain and Italy.

So either this isn't very deadly in the US for some reason or the US has done a solid job in minimizing situations where covid cases leads to deaths.

My wife works for an insurance company that is contracted to assist those that have Medicare and Medicaid... the most poor and elderly and vulnerable population you can get. They probably serve about 25,000 people. They have had over 80 people die ("that they know about" because they're not allowed in nursing homes right now to do face-to-face visits, so the people they haven't heard from could just be ignoring them, or could be dead). That's 0.3% of a specific population that is not even 100% infected. I'd say that's spectacularly bad, and probably not anyone's specific fault because these are a lot of people with no family, no money, and no way out of the situations they're in.

Man, the battles on my towns facebook group about mask wearing have reached epic proportion.

There's a lot of news out there about vaccines, and when one may become "deployable", but I haven't found much on what actually happens then.

Let's say a vaccine is "deployable" by December. (Dr. Fauci thinks this is a reasonable possibility). What happens then? How many people will be vaccinated in 2021? How is the vaccine distributed? How do governments obtain it and distribute it? Or does the private sector do that directly? Who decides who gets it first? Does the entity who "wins" the race matter in terms of what their base country is? Does the "host" country of discovery take care of their country first and then distribute globally to the highest bidder for years afterwards?

I'm optimistic about a vaccine becoming a reality based on what the experts are saying, but much more guarded about how that actually impacts us. Does a December 2020 vaccine mean that coronavirus ends in 2021, or are we still looking at a 5-10 year period of restrictions, closed schools and businesses, balancing risks, and learning to live with the virus first as the vaccine is gradually produced and deployed on a scale never before attempted? There seems to be an assumption that this is like that virus video game where the second a vaccine is "official" we're all saved immediately. When it seems like that part could be really ugly too. And based on the declining numbers we're seeing in a lot of places, it seems like better treatments + seasonal impacts + partial herd immunity + tracking and tracing and isolating + mutations + mystery factors that ended previous pandemics could beat full global deployment of a vaccine as the way out.

My biggest question with that is what if it slightly mutates again in the fall (like most flus do)? The hope would be that even a mutated vaccine would help minimize the symptoms (esp compared to those note vaccinated). But, the scary situation would be one where the eldery/compromised get a vaccine in December and think they are OK to go back out in January - only to find the strain they vaccinated against is different than the one in the world now.

The whole vaccine thing is a big unknown to me.

I'd be pretty impressed if a vaccine was deemed deployable in December and if any significant number of elderly Americans actually obtained it that same month. Is that really in the cards? I guess there will be some production prior to that determination that the vaccine is ready to go. It's just hard to imagine that process will be efficient with all of the countries and interests and obstacles involved, and the problems we've had just distributing masks.

That's why "we have to just wait for a vaccine before we can do X" talk always kind of makes me cringe a little. Though it doesn't seem like experts phrase it in those terms. A vaccine will be at best be one of many tools that move us forward. It's not something we can assume will fix everything immediately, or the basket we put all our eggs in.

Yeah, I guess that was more of a hypothetical than an actual situation that would be likely. More likely would be a vaccine starts prepping people for the fall of 2021. But, the question would still remain.

I was on a call today with a variety of federal "leaders" discussing this issue. Trying to set aside politics per se, my most profound takeaway is the very widespread belief (which I sense as being truly held, not there because it's just the party line) that the only thing holding back the economy from roaring right back to where it was pre-pandemic is the relaxation of government rules. Like it's a light switch.

I do not understand what psychological facets underlie this, but it seems to be very universal. I might be flattering myself with my assessment that I'd know if they were just toeing the line for party/leadership reasons. But my sense is that they really believe that this is what is at stake - we maintain the shut-downs and distancing rules and everybody is out of a job, or we relax them and everyone is back to work tomorrow. Fascinating.

Once the vaccine comes, what happens with it? Does the company that created it share it with other companies so that it can be mass produced?

Does it get created by a company that Trump has influence over and he can determine who gets the vaccine? I can totally see him only letting his supports get it or at least trying to control it.

Will it cost $600 a shot because of demand?

I have no faith it will be handled in a humane manner.

I think this is the typical issue of people in positions of power (I even see this in business). They are so disconnected as to the way things work that they think that if they clear road blocks things just happen.

I think a lot of people need to spend more time fishing and gardening so they can understand that even if you do everything right, some things just take time to come to fruition.

I agree that questions about the vaccine are going to be the next huge problem that will have to be managed and there's no reason to think it will be managed well. Production would have to be ramped up in a historic fashion--who is planning for this now? For the forseeable future, vaccine supplies will be much, much too low. Decisions about how to parcel out limited supplies around the world will have to be made my world governments--what sign of international cooperation do we have in a world where the U.S. has effectively pulled out of and cast aspersions on the WHO, and will most likely pursue an avenue of enriching and protecting friends of the administration? This issue is going to make mask-wearing look like nothing as we start truly depending on our governments to make life or death decisions for billions of people.

Death panels on steroids!

I think they’re literally producing a ton of vaccines that may or may not work. Read some article about Pfizer and they have 4 different ones.

100k deaths in 2 months with a country largely locked down is high.

The death toll is likely higher due to lack of testing and political reasons.

These are pointless comparisons. There is no other country in the world with the same or even similar demographics, geography, politics and economy as the USA. It might be possible to compare much smaller countries that are actually very similar in all those aspects, but even then you're talking apples and orange. Comparing any country with the USA is comparing apples with goat milk.

The first cases in Europe and the USA were around late January. So, it has been in the US since February and most places didn't lock down completely until late March, early April. So, 100K cases in 3+ months (the last two with shelter in place) is pretty good for a country of 330 million. Spain (27K in 46.7 mil), Italy (33K in 60.4 mil) and the UK (37.4K in 67.8 mil) have done much worse. You can make the same claims on potentially more dead due to lack of testing in those countries (they combine for 7.8 mil tests, while we have done 15.9 mil).

Had the local states, hospitals and population not responded the way we did in the US, we could have easily matched the rates of the UK or Italy and had 180-200K dead. Is it as good as places like South Korea with a culture developed on using masks and protecting against flu viruses over decades? No, but it is an impressive effort by most of our population in regards to social distancing and the health care workers.

People have no problem saying how terrible we are when compared to South Korea or Germany. Why is it different to compare us to Italy, the UK or Spain in the same vain?

I have been keeping tabs on this link:

Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19

It shows weekly excess mortality in the U.S. from 2017 to present for all causes. Regardless of how deaths are being counted I felt like this illustrated better than anything else how the pandemic has impacted mortality in the U.S. When you start looking at the data by specific locations that have been heavily impacted (i.e. New York, New Jersey) it gives you a sense of just how messed up this has been for certain regions. I would love to see the exact same dataset but with splits for age and gender, but alas.

Italy and Spain had less lead time than us. UK fucked up because they are run by a buffoon too.

Sad that the wealthiest nation in the world has to resort to "hey we aren't as bad as a few other countries". Have some higher standards.

You understand that if a combination of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, FDR and Obama were all president, we still would have close to 100K dead - right? The president does virtually nothing to impact this. He doesn't run states, hospitals or control how every person behaves. The reason we only have 100K dead is because of the medical infrastructure we have (and have had) that does a heck of a good job of managing patients compared to the world. We also have a somewhat responsible population that did a fantastic job of social distancing for those two months.

I know this will upset everyone who loves blaming the president or certain political parties for what is wrong with their lives, but Trump and congress did next to nothing to impact how well everyone did (as individuals and communities) to minimize this. Unless we went full South Korea and locked everything done, did massive curfews and mandated masks to leave the house, etc - what happened now was going to be the result. I know that makes everyone who spends hours a day complaining about Trump, liberals or each political party angry - but it is reality.

But it is not an Influenza virus. They truly are not behaving in the same pattern as a coronavirus. They also all have been around a lot longer. It is possible it will substantially mutate (never say never), but it is not understood to be nearly as likely, especially a major genetic shift.
This also does not happen with the flu all that often. (When it does,we get pandemics like 09, 68, 57 and 1918 of course) What does happen is genetic drift where some viruses change slowly over time.
The main issue with the flu with regards to vaccine is not merely mutation but that there is a multitude of Influenza Virus subtypes in circulation and the ones that are most widespread in any given country are different every year with a few that are "mainstays" while others pop up less regularly. And these are the problem.
So especially problematic is the fact you need to pick the likely candidates to spread in your country way before winter, because unlike the current situation the flu actually does almost go extinct locally and spreads across the globe anew every year from one hemisphere to the other. So often there is a virus that makes it to a country that the vaccine does not cover. Or you don't get it done in time.

To give an example: the worst flu season in Germany in forever was 17/18 where very atypically an Influenza B strain was widespread and it was not Part of the Vaccine. The years before Influenza B made up like a few % of lab confirmed cases and the year after there was not a single Influenza B case registered all season in all the Surveilance data from doctors offices.

Also, vaccine coverage is simply abysmal, which is at least partly because people need to be vaccinated every year. So you need to convince people again every year. And have health providers pay for it every year. This need for yearly vaccination is not anticipated for Vaccine(s) covering SarsCov2 best anybody can tell, which will help selling people on it a lot, if not immediately then still adding more every year.
I understand skepticism, but if a vaccine works (and the outlook is really good) then it is very, very likely to work significantly better than the ones against Influenza.

The CDC explains the issues with the flu vaccine fairly well:

Selecting Viruses for the Seasonal Influenza Vaccine | CDC
How the Flu Virus Can Change: “Drift� and “Shift� | CDC



Again it needs to be said that the US has natural protection due to to the geographic Makeup of the country. Add in reduced air travel and how exactly was the virus ever going to spread in numbers to many places before measures, change in behaviour and the weather/outdoors effect helped a lot ?
All countries have a couple bad hotspots that were hit early and were conducive to the spread with big events and lots of socialising in large numbers. Except those in the US make up a smaller part of the country and are farther away from the rest on pure distance. That matters and helped. (And makes countrywide numbers look better).

Geographic remoteness on a country-scale is also part of the reason why Island nations or SK, which might as well be one with the only boarder being NK, stomped it out as they had far fewer imported cases in the same period of time (And no, the UK does not have the same buffer as Iceland or New Zealand ;) )

It is possible to mainly get lucky. Which is a good thing, unless there comes the next pandemic in the hopefully far future and people go "oh look, no early Tests, no PPP, sending sick people into nursing homes, high death rates early on ventilators, the president setting a bad example and spouting nonsense. And still we did ok, so maybe those things are not really important ?" ;)
This is really the main thing why i hope all countries that had that luck (Germany did, too on other fronts with less cases from china and catching the first few) take that into account and not just go from the good or 'good' results and judge by that exclusively how they have done with what they had to work with.

I don't think anybody making that argument does it out of malice.

If you are interested, there is a pan-european project designed specifically for tracking excess mortality for influenza and pandemics l, doing the same thing with at least some rudimentary age brackets, starting in 2015.

https://www.euromomo.eu/

Age Group 15-64 (yes, very rudimentary) is actually also very noticeably increased here, also compared to flu spikes. (% wise of course, naturally total numbers get larger with higher age as is the nature of death in general ...)

You can select countries individually as well which gives a more nuanced picture. Italy and Spain are now at normal levels, UK still significantly higher than the worst flu season in the time frame at its peak.
Also, comparing Sweden to Norway and Denmark is illuminating as they all have much more in common as far as circumstances are concerned (than say Sweden and Italy.)

Edit: this is not 'covid-adjusted' like the CDCs overview, just the total excess mortality.

This just makes no sense to me. The leader, whether Trump or someone else, matters. The decisions made by the administration matter. The idea that everything would have been the same no matter who was in charge is simply not rational. It's just a way to defend Trump without specifically saying that you're defending Trump.

There was a pandemic plan eft by Obama's ebola team. Trump ignored it.
There were pandemic simulations. Trump ignored them.
There were warnings in January. Trump ignored them.
There was a group on the NSC dedicated to pandemics. Trump disbanded them.
There were monitors in China. Trump fired some of them.
There was no effort to build up PPE in February, after Trump's own staff was making very pessimistic predictions.
There was no national testing plan and still isn't.
Supplies were confiscated and given to private vendors.
Trump kept sending the message that the virus was a hoax and now mocks things like wearing masks.
The admin repeatedly made false promises like having testing in Wal-Mart parking lots.

And that's just what I can remember quickly. These things matter and any other president would have handled it better. I'm absolutely certain thousands of people died needlessly because of the inept response of Trump.

Yeah, that quote is just completely poor. Maybe he couldn't have averted all the deaths, but we seem to be one of the few countries still reeling.

Plus the mocking of wearing masks, he has a disdain for it, so his goobers follow...some of them will die I'm sure Trump will keep chugging along.

He takes no responsibility for it. His lackeys want people to die so the economy (his only positive recovers in time for elections).

Most conservatives seem to lack the understanding on conserving life right now to prop that orange stooge up.

Well if you can't trust a twitter acount named "Le Chat Proud Democrat" then who can you trust?

See, I thought that was suspect too, but the cat avatar convinced me.

I think this came from a reddit post. The current data is here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm


And the historical info here:

https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html

Could be a categorization issue but that's how it was pulled.

It’s just wild to me that smart people feel that if we had a different president, the death toll would be much lower. Clearly I’m once again in the minority on this, so I won’t piss into the wind too long. I just can’t wait until we get Biden in as president and we never have to worry about something like this again. It’s not the choices of people to not social distance and be careless with masks that infected some of the elderly and Heath compromised, it’s because we didn’t have a federal task force, Chinese monitors or enough PPE in February. Solve those and we are at 50K dead, not 100K....

Your argument is that no nation had any control over what happened with COVID, or if they did it was impossible for the US to do anything similar. You're saying that the federal's government's response could not have been any better if better is defined as saving more lives. That's nonsense.

In that first link Pneumonia deaths are remarkably consistent for the first seven weeks, until they start doubling and tripling for 6-7 weeks...I have no idea how remarkable that is, cuz I didn't want to get the degree that would be necessary to squeeze something out of that second site.

I was able to find a few places that referenced an average of 50,000 pneumonia deaths per year in the US, in which case a few weeks of over 10,000 certainly seems significant....there's more than 50,000 pneumonia deaths on that first chart just between 4/4 and 5/9, and a total of 91,000 deaths from 2/1 to 5/23.

Nations have no control. This is pure luck.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-zea...-the-hospital/

I know you are a smart guy Arlie and I can't believe that you believe the opposite.

If anyone else was President, they would have taken this thing more seriously and acted sooner. That alone would have prevented deaths.

Hilary would have listened to the pandemic briefings when Obama folks gave them to her. Hell, she may have even kept a lot of those same people. She wouldn't have killed the pandemic response team either.

You don't think those 2 things would have made a difference?

The US approach to Covid could probably be looked at as the Replacement level response. If we had a faster, more coherent response we'd be measuring the Lives Saved Above Replacement (LSAR) in the tens of thousands.

I break it into 3 segments (1) before early Feb (2) from early Feb to mid-March (3) after mid-March.

I don't blame Trump for much before early Feb. However, WP and NYT both reported it was likely to be a pandemic in early Feb. It wasn't until mid-March in his "I can't read speech" to the nation that he started taking it seriously albeit reluctantly.

So there was a period from early Feb to mid-March where I think he could have organized to "fight the war" better. I do believe Hillary/Biden would have done a better job during this period.

So yeah, I think the death toll would have been lower. Some would want us to believe it would have 50-80% less, I'm more in the 20% camp.

Trump did not do a good job and was slow in taking it seriously. I agree there. However, we had 23K deaths on April 15. At that point, nearly every state had shelter in place, most hospitals had plenty of PPE/ventilators and social distancing/masks were encouraged by all states/feds. Since that point, we’ve lost over 80,000 lives. These aren’t happening because of a slow federal government.

Would having a different president help on the margins? Potentially, but that’s hard to prove. But if the answer is that a different president like Hillary or Biden would have minimized the deaths, I just think that is incorrect. We would be close to this number no matter what - but that’s not an endorsement of Trump. That’s a statement that thinking if we switch presidents, everything would be better is incorrect. We would still have a ton of deaths in NY, NJ, Chicago and other international hubs or highly dense places. It hides the flaws we do have to just put it all on Trump. That’s my point.

Even regardless of the (very relevant) issue of timing, the President's initial response was to have his son-in-law practically interfere with states efforts to get medical equipment, for a significant amount of time.

FWIW, we are definitely on the margins of a political discussion right now.

Agreed, I’ll get back to the virus itself and save that for the other thread

One of the benefits of no one wanting to travel to your city is that it's basically almost gone where I live. We have 14 active cases remaining, with only 3 new ones in the past 14 days.


Coronavirus Dashboard (Live)


It will certainly come back with another wave, but I'm hopeful that we can at least get outside and enjoy the summer a little, which is something I was worried wouldn't happen a month ago.

My St. Louis perspective that likely is true in most cities...

In these internet debates people always want to avoid human nature and the combination of low education, selfishness, and just pure apathy for others. Locally in Saint Louis the city was on lockdown for all of April and most of May. I have a friend that works for the St. Louis police department that has told me most nights in North St. Louis look like the infamous Lake of the Ozarks picture. Guess where most of the St Louis and St Louis county deaths are happening? (outside of the nursing homes obviously) Want to guess why the press isn't all over this one?

City of St. Louis COVID-19 Data
St. Louis County map shows coronavirus cases by zip code | FOX2now.com

The Lake of the Ozarks was likely a large group of rednecks ("red staters") but I know the Lake of the Ozarks well and am quite certain 50% of the partiers were your garden variety "woke" liberal college/young 20's kids.

So what's my point? It just seems like everyone wants to make this red state/blue state, liberal/conservative, but isn't it pretty clear this is a combination of the uneducated along with young that just don't give a fuck? I live in a smaller suburb of St. Louis in what one would describe as a woodtick city and the nicer hardware store and grocery store have almost 100% mask wearing, the Walmart and Feed/grocery store practically zero. (Though Walmart now has a mask policy that is possibly national and not local)

Trump's response has been pathetic, his leadership super divisive, but he isn't the cause just one of the symptoms of a selfish society. The United States isn't higher than the rest of the world because of Donald Trump, it's higher because it's the United States. You may say Biden or Obama would have been different? North St Louis is still not listening to Obama or Biden the Lake of the Ozarks I guarantee is still happening under them or even a Democratic governor. Politicians just aren't as influential as some like to give them credit for.

I think this is very true, to a point. There are absolutely huge clusters of people across the entire political spectrum who have some measures of ignorance, willful ignorance, and/or DGAF. No party or belief system has a monopoly on "stupids" or "smarts". However, there's a lot of polling out there which links mask usage to political identity and there's a TON of evidence to show that helps blunt the spread of the virus.

I think there's a real debate to be had, however, about whether that's a chicken or egg thing. Is this about following a particular leader/belonging to a particular group and their beliefs or do people gravitate towards that leader/group because his/her/their beliefs are similar to the constituents' own. Either way, yes, the bully pulpit has a lot of limitations.

That said, I have argued in other threads (possibly this one) that there are structural things we could have done better as a country (PPE availability early on, testing capacity even now) and I do think those things rest at the feet of our leaders. And, messaging /does/ matter some, even if it's not 100% effective. Even changing the minds of or not giving political cover to 5% of the populace means 15-20 million people here.

SI

But I'm not one of those people. Or hope/try not to be.

Updated CNN graph on how individual states are doing in flattening the curve. I know there is good discussion on how valid the statistics are but its the best we have right now (I think).

GA seems to be doing okay. GA has been re-opening up for the past 3 weeks or so the people are doing something right. Is there a graphic somewhere that compares the metro areas?

Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

I think the two biggest things were testing - and that's something no government got right (or knew to even prepare for, to be fair) and wearing masks. We can have the most buttoned up state/federal system for this with tons of PPE, early warnings from other countries, shelter in place, travel bans, etc. But the biggest issue we had from March on was people not knowing/caring they were carrying the virus and giving it to a bunch of different people.

There are people that just don't give a F*ck and that's why we will always have some propagation of the virus. There are 20-year old kids that went to Mardi Gras and then, without a mask, stood by a 75-year old woman in walgreens. There are people who rushed to beaches in Florida without masks and then visited their parents. Here in AZ, I have a friend who works in the Casino (with a mask) and he said he saw over 100 60+ year old people enter just yesterday without a mask. You can have all the plans you want - but these situations are what take it down. So, the focus needs to be on really educating people on using masks (if not mandating it in certain places) and be able to ramp up test production quickly moving forward. People are going to not listen and be idiots, but if we can test them on a bigger scale - the kids that get Covid at Mardi Gras can know and atleast avoid their grandparents for 14 days.Those are the lessons I hope we learn from this.

I can't accept the idea that no plan and poor response is just as effective as a good plan and good response. Any of the past four Presidents would have done a much better job with planning and response and, yes, that would have saved lives.

It's also important to look at us right now. We're still confirming 15 thousand cases a day. Spain has been under 1 thousand for 9 of the past 10 days. Italy has been below 1 thousand for 15 days.