Coronavirus

[madodel]

Kansas nursing home: 10 people have died after all residents got Covid-19 - CNN

10 people have died after every resident of a Kansas nursing home got Covid-19

"All 62 residents at the privately owned Andbe Home in Norton have tested positive for the virus, the release states.
"Steps are being taken to prevent any further outbreak including quarantining residents in their rooms and not allowing outside visitors into the facility," the release says, adding that relatives of all residents have been notified."
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Horses. Barn doors.

Guess that would be the cost of going for herd immunity among that part of the population.

Did the administrators of this place just crawl out from under a rock? This is criminal negligence at this point.

 

[jerry33]

Did the administrators of this place just crawl out from under a rock? This is criminal negligence at this point.

Unfortunately, many homes for the aged are just rooms where people are put until they die. There are all kinds of horror stories, including this one. And yeah, criminal negligence.

 

[madodel]

10 Signs the Pandemic Is About to Get Much Worse

Most frustrating for infectious-disease experts: It all could have been prevented. “We should have had this virus under control already,” says Michael Mina, MD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have spectacularly continued to squander any effort in the time that we’ve had.”​

 

[Norbert]

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Horses. Barn doors.

Guess that would be the cost of going for herd immunity among that part of the population.

It reminds me of the situation in TV shows like "The Walking Dead" where one attempt of isolation after the other goes south and ends in disaster. The best I can tell this whole concept of creating impenetrable walls would be incredibly difficult for countries like the US, meaning it is pure fantasy. You won't have lots of infections on one side and zero infections on the other. If you could, it would have already been done, as without herd immunity infection levels it should be much easier.

(Besides, that's what all reasonable experts say).

 

[Doggydogworld]

Beauty and the Beast, COVID version. Starts a bit weak but great by the halfway point:

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Kansas nursing home: 10 people have died after all residents got Covid-19 - CNN

10 people have died after every resident of a Kansas nursing home got Covid-19

"All 62 residents at the privately owned Andbe Home in Norton have tested positive for the virus, the release states.
"Steps are being taken to prevent any further outbreak including quarantining residents in their rooms and not allowing outside visitors into the facility," the release says, adding that relatives of all residents have been notified."
------------------
Horses. Barn doors.

Guess that would be the cost of going for herd immunity among that part of the population.

Shocking! T-cells are apparently very weak in Kansas! Maybe they were swept up with Dorothy & Toto in a tornado.

 

[madodel]

Beauty and the Beast, COVID version. Starts a bit weak but great by the halfway point:

For nonTweeters it is also on Youtube

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

When you're in New Zealand, you really get to see how easily the virus can spread:

25 new cases of COVID-19

Just 2 outside of the main managed quarantine, related to the port worker from last week. 23 in the managed traveling quarantine.

One of the new cases was not in quarantine since they were not deemed a close contact.

Hopefully NZ will continue to demonstrate to the world how you can smash this thing.

Would love to be like NZ. We could have been, probably, or at least a close approximation thereof. Would not have been easy and we would constantly be battling. But we could have done it.

 

[JRP3]

But we could have done it.

Unfortunately we could not, not with the society we currently have.

 

[wdolson]

Unfortunately we could not, not with the society we currently have.

New Zealand has the advantage of being an isolated archipelago a long ways from anywhere. There are only two ways into the country, via an ocean going ship (there was one guy who showed up in a sail boat, but the fact there was one was notable) or via an airport. Both of those entry points are very easy to control.

Any country that's part of a continental land mass with more than one country on the continent makes it a lot more difficult to control all the vectors. The US has a large land border with a country that has a relatively poorly educated population and a lot of difficulty implementing the sort of controls necessary. The US also has many ports with massive traffic going through all the time. US ports accept and reship stuff from Asia to Europe that are shipped from Europe to the western US ports, put on trains across the US, then put on ships again on the east coast. The number of possible vectors into the US, even with good management are enough to make any pandemic manager sweat.

That's before you get to the idiots both in and running the United States who are practically trying to get people killed.

 

[Norbert]

Quoting myself from Oct 11th.

We are now more than 30% above the Sept 27th value of daily new cases.

7-day average of US new cases, compared to Sept 27th:

Oct 11th: + 20%
Oct 15th: + 30%
Oct 20th: + 46% (today)

Apparently the White House doesn't care because it is "tired" (and immune?). Tired of ruling over a country lacking applause, I guess.

 

[madodel]

7-day average of US new cases, compared to Sept 27th:

Oct 11th: + 20%
Oct 15th: + 30%
Oct 20th: + 46% (today)

Apparently the White House doesn't care because it is "tired" (and immune?). Tired of ruling over a country lacking applause, I guess.

No worries. We're rounding the corner.

 

[Az_Rael]

Washington officials examining about 100 cases that appear to be COVID-19 reinfections

Looks like Washington State is trying to determine how often reinfections happen. Some of the challenges are needing both positive samples so you can do the genetic sequencing, but labs aren’t keeping samples that long. Plus people can test positive for weeks/months afterwards complicates it even more. My guess is only one of the big university hospital lab systems will be able to study something like this on a large scale vs using data from the commercial labs.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Unfortunately we could not, not with the society we currently have.

I still believe in America.

Any country that's part of a continental land mass with more than one country on the continent makes it a lot more difficult to control all the vectors.

The land borders are not really the problem for us.

That’s all I will say.

I did say “a close approximation.” Eradication may not be possible with our borders.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Unfortunately we could not, not with the society we currently have.

The examples below are what make me think it really isn’t just our American culture that is our problem. Culture would cause problems at some point. But at a much lower level. Americans have a “can-do” culture. But, we need to be told we *can* do it, and be given the freedom to do it. And we have neither! In particular, freedom has been greatly restricted this year - we don’t have the tools like masks and testing, etc. which allow us to have our freedom, and those weapons of freedom are being actively withheld and discouraged. It’s a big problem. There is no freedom.

The Ministry of Truth must pay Atlas well.

 

[Norbert]

From October 1st, I haven't seen this before:
Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden

Primarily a refutation of the Trump administration's pandemic politics, but also of his relationship to science in general.

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges.

 

[Norbert]

New Zealand has the advantage of being an isolated archipelago a long ways from anywhere.

That can certainly be an advantage, however Germany for example has also succeeded in getting new cases very low for 2 months or so (until there was another outbreak that it didn't contain, measures were taken only recently).

Also as your mention of Oregon shows, even within the US the differences can be large, and currently the borders are not the source of the problem.

However with borders I think it is especially important to respond quickly when there is the beginning of an outbreak anywhere (since that might occur more often).

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

For those keeping score in Sweden, here's the current age distribution of cases. No significant increase in mortality should be expected yet, since new cases are dominated by those between 20 and 60. There will be an increase from the current very low level, of course, since people between 25 and 60 die of this disease in *significant* numbers (especially 50-59!). But it will be small relative to the prior peak - for now. IFR should stay low. I'd expect lagged CFR (current deaths compared to cases ~20 days ago) to stay below 1%, and IFR to be below 0.2% with these numbers.

Also, case ascertainment has probably gone up 5x or 10x vs. the prior peak. So we should expect a much lower CFR, in any case.

We'll see how strong the disease pressure gets in Sweden. That could cause the IFR to increase substantially - as much as 5x increase or more. You have to apply the age-stratified risk (provided) to these numbers to predict the change in IFR & CFR over time.

It's too bad we can't get a good snapshot of age of infections nationwide in the US as well. It's possible to get state-by-state data (for example FL provides data on every case), and the predictions of mortality after applying the age-risk to those data have been fantastically accurate. Age is the primary determinant of risk!

Veckorapporter om covid-19 — Folkhälsomyndigheten

Reference for approximate age-stratified risk:

 

[wdolson]

That can certainly be an advantage, however Germany for example has also succeeded in getting new cases very low for 2 months or so (until there was another outbreak that it didn't contain, measures were taken only recently).

Also as your mention of Oregon shows, even within the US the differences can be large, and currently the borders are not the source of the problem.

However with borders I think it is especially important to respond quickly when there is the beginning of an outbreak anywhere (since that might occur more often).

Good management can keep numbers down compared to other places with land borders, but being a literal island helps a lot more.

I did some digging. The latest data on new cases:
Oregon: 560/million per week
Germany: 891/million per week
New Zealand: 10.58/million per week

New Zealand is more than an order of magnitude and close to two orders lower than Germany. All three places have good COVID management in place, but when people are coming across land borders from less controlled regions, it's tough to stop. Where the bulk of cases in Oregon are is telling too. Multnomah county (Portland) is a bit higher than the state per capita, but most of western Oregon is below the state average. The worst places are all in Eastern Oregon where conservatives are listening to the president more than the governor. Malheur County on the Idaho border has been the worst county in the state for over a month.

New Zealand has a population who got behind the PM to fight the virus with relatively few rule breakers. And those who did break the rules ended up on the news and were mocked. Social pressure was high and effective. Which is a major factor, but once they eliminated the virus' initial outbreak, they were able to contain it with strict border controls.

I saw an interview with a Kiwi comedian who normally travels back and forth between Australia and New Zealand. She was a judge on Australia's Masked Singer so she had to spend a couple of weeks in quarantine in Australia before doing the show. When she went back to New Zealand she had to quarantine again. In six weeks she spent four in quarantine.

 

[renim]

G....
I saw an interview with a Kiwi comedian who normally travels back and forth between Australia and New Zealand. She was a judge on Australia's Masked Singer so she had to spend a couple of weeks in quarantine in Australia before doing the show. When she went back to New Zealand she had to quarantine again. In six weeks she spent four in quarantine.

New Zealand did and continues to do considerably worse than South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland in regards to COVID19 in regards to per capita deaths and local transmission cases. And those Australian States presumably did worse than Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan with those same per capita metrics.

(For instance, Thailand population 70 million, covid deaths 59, so less than 1 in a million death count todate.)

and even within australia, the 2 worst states were/are Victoria and NSW

'Hold the line': Daily local cases in Victoria versus NSW (linear, uncropped)  | Created with Datawrapper

and even the lessons there are difficult for many to admit...