Coronavirus

[AZRI11]

it is clearly different this time. In March deaths spiked with about a two week lag in cases. We are three weeks into this second spike and deaths are only just starting to tick upward. But also note in the first spike that the weekly rise and dip pattern is absent as well. Testing capacity was just coming online and only the sickest could get tests in March. The stats in cases per day are drawn as one continuous line but it absolutely is wrapped up with test availability.

what is clear is that hospitalizations are increasing. Given the severity of the disease I fear that can only result in more deaths in the future.

View attachment 560953

Better outcomes for ventilated patients https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...3c3534-bbca-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

 

[eevee-fan]

Aerosolizing covid-19

 

[Dave EV]

Construction definitely was curtailed for a period of time in the Bay Area. See these, for example:
Coronavirus Update: San Jose Officials Consider Easing Restrictions For Construction Work
Construction unions lobby Santa Clara County leaders to loosen restrictions - San José Spotlight
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose...ntractors-will-have-to-do-to-comply-with.html
Silicon Valley's largest developments delayed amid COVID-19 uncertainty - San José Spotlight
San Francisco Area Construction To Restart May 4, But Safety Requirements Questioned

I can't speak to landscaping being cut back or not. But again, look at what essential businesses have continued to operate ever since the original March 16th lockdown w/o any curtailment.

You guys are both correct. It was my understanding that construction is considered essential by the Feds, but many locales in the Bay Area shut down construction activity that they did not consider essential.

Here in SD, I did not see landscapers stop working.

If you had to grade the risk of each, construction is typically higher risk as you usually work in small teams.

Most landscapers are either individuals or paired up, and many are family businesses with people in the same household.

There are a number of people from Mexico getting transferred to hospitals here in SD from what I understand - either because we have better healthcare or because their hospitals are overwhelmed.

But most community outbreaks recently appear to be gatherings at residences, bars/restaurants and businesses. There have been some outbreaks in construction, but I haven't heard about any in landscaping. With proper social distancing measures, both jobs should be safe.

 

[linux-works]

we need more shock-signs like this to get the message across:

 

[wdolson]

Not sure what you mean. The purpose of a vaccine is to get R0 below 1. A vaccine doesn't guarantee an individual's protection from the virus.

AFAIK the influenza vaccine isn't particularly effective for older people. It's primary benefit is keeping younger people virus free so they don't kill older people.

We have no idea what the characteristics of a COVID vaccine will be. It may only offer partial protection like the flu vaccine, in which case it will not give us herd immunity. If immunity to COVD wears off quickly after you recover, that too may mean we'll never get to full herd immunity.

Not so far as I know. Talking medians here ...

1. Exposure
2. 4 - 7 days: Sick (and I presume tested)
3. 5 more days until hospitalization
4. 2 more days until ICU

However, the sickest tend to reach stage (2), (3) and (4) earlier, meaning their course is quicker than the median. The majority of the case load will be apparent by day 7 after testing but the trend will be evident sooner.

From what I understand the incubation period can be 4-14 days. That's why people are quarantined for 14 days in most cases.

We may be seeing earlier diagnosis today than we did back in April because of more testing. That may draw out the time between diagnosis and hospitalization. We probably aren't reducing the number of people hospitalized, but we are possibly reducing the number of people who go into ICU and reducing the number of people who die.

However, we're still seeing about 1/2 of the people who are hospitalized have permanent organ damage and/or other long term damage to their bodies. These people might end up in and out of hospitals for years and almost certainly some will die in the next few years.

The Telegraph through Yahoo - today: Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Still too early to tell for sure, but interesting.

I hope you realize that many people who are getting infected with COVID-19 are "essential workers" who if they want an income CANNOT work from home and are on the front lines (e.g. supermarkets, restaurants offering takeout, other stores providing essential goods like Target and Walmart) during an entire workday and may come into contact w/many infected people. And, they may not be able to claim unemployment either since they can work.

To top it off, many of those "Mexican migrants" aren't that well off financially to begin with so they likely haven't had access to good healthcare before COVID-19. Also, some of these folks may live in a multi-generational household and/or w/many other people (for financial reasons), so if one person gets infected, it's quite likely the rest of the household might get infected.

Hourly workers also may not be able to take a significant amount of time off to get tested for COVID-19 (some areas have hours long lines to get tested) or afford to be able to take time off if they feel sick.

There have been many stories about the disparity on how people of color have been more affected by COVID-19 like What Do Coronavirus Racial Disparities Look Like State By State?.

I'm Asian and can work from home due to the nature of my work so my exposure to potentially infected people is limited and for very brief periods of time. I have health insurance due to my employer and my company pays us VERY well, so access to routine healthcare for me from a $ point of view is NOT a problem. Most of my company can work from home (and is, due to county mandate) and we don't have a large % of Hispanic/Latino nor black workers.

A lot of the outbreaks in the west are in farming communities with large numbers of migrant workers this time of year. The migrant workers are living in a petri dish that is a breeding ground for the virus. Some cities in the west are seeing increases in cases, while others are not.

I think what may be happening is as some migrant workers get break in harvests they visit family who live in cities like Los Angeles, san Diego, and Phoenix. But even though there is a big outbreak in Yakima county in Washington and some counties in eastern Oregon, the large cities of the Northwest don't have the large Hispanic populations cities of the Southwest (NW cities have Hispanics, I live with one, but they have much smaller Hispanic populations that further south) have and so the migrants aren't visiting those cities.

it is clearly different this time. In March deaths spiked with about a two week lag in cases. We are three weeks into this second spike and deaths are only just starting to tick upward. But also note in the first spike that the weekly rise and dip pattern is absent as well. Testing capacity was just coming online and only the sickest could get tests in March. The stats in cases per day are drawn as one continuous line but it absolutely is wrapped up with test availability.

what is clear is that hospitalizations are increasing. Given the severity of the disease I fear that can only result in more deaths in the future.

View attachment 560953

The death rate may be delayed. It may spike in the next few weeks, or it's possible that they are helping more people survive their initial hospital visit just sets them up for years of bad healthy.

 

[cwerdna]

Aggressive anti-mask customers are forcing some restaurants to shut dining rooms to protect employees from abuse

I think what may be happening is as some migrant workers get break in harvests they visit family who live in cities like Los Angeles, san Diego, and Phoenix.

Yep. I've seen some news stories about COVID-19 spread amongst migrant farm workers. Some of them are given little or no info about COVID-19, how to limit its spread and may not be given any PPE nor the ability to easily wash their hands when they're out in the fields.

So yeah, what you mention is plausible.

 

[jerry33]

I mean the chemistry. I read it as two anions stuck together

Sorry, don't know about the chemistry. I do know the test strips show 200 ppm for chlorine.

 

[electracity]

Yep. I've seen some news stories about COVID-19 spread amongst migrant farm workers. Some of them are given little or no info about COVID-19, how to limit its spread and may not be given any PPE nor the ability to easily wash their hands when they're out in the fields.

So yeah, what you mention is plausible.

I'm curious about covid severity in people who do physical work. This type of work not only selects for individuals who are capable of performing the work, but the activity itself may moderate metabolic disease.

There have been news stories about covid in meat processing plants, but I've seen nothing about outcomes. The one death story I remember was about a family member.

The neighborhoods in Chicago currently most infected by Covid are Mexican-American.

 

[Doggydogworld]

it is clearly different this time. In March deaths spiked with about a two week lag in cases. We are three weeks into this second spike and deaths are only just starting to tick upward. But also note in the first spike that the weekly rise and dip pattern is absent as well. Testing capacity was just coming online and only the sickest could get tests in March. The stats in cases per day are drawn as one continuous line but it absolutely is wrapped up with test availability.

what is clear is that hospitalizations are increasing. Given the severity of the disease I fear that can only result in more deaths in the future.

View attachment 560953

San Antonio's spike started one month ago. There was a small uptick in deaths after about 10 days, but the real ramp started Thursday. We had 19 die the past 4 days, including the county emergency management coordinator. That's out of 2 million people, so not sky-high yet, but the trend is bad. Our previous high was 14 in 4 days in early April when the virus was ravaging a nursing home. Once that burned out we averaged less than 1 death per day for two months, equivalent to 140/day nationwide. Things seemed to be under control.

Early testing definitely adds to the lag between cases rising and deaths rising. And freely available testing increases case counts among the young and minorities. It's hard to know which differences between March/April data and today are actual changes vs. changes in test availability. San Antonio had drive-up testing open to everyone in May and early June, whether they had symptoms or not. Positivity.was 3.5% then, now 20%+.

 

[dhanson865]

"A bus driver in the south-west of France has been left brain dead after being attacked by passengers who refused to wear face masks."

The driver in Bayonne had refused to allow several people - who had no tickets and were not wearing masks - to board the bus on Sunday night, a police source told AFP news agency.

The man, who is in his 50s, sustained serious head injuries after being punched.

Five people have been arrested.

Face masks are mandatory on public transport in France.

Bus driver is left brain dead after he was beaten up for insisting on masks in France | Daily Mail Online has a confusing prior account that seems to cover periods when he was still alive and only one person was arrested.

 

[bkp_duke]

"A bus driver in the south-west of France has been left brain dead after being attacked by passengers who refused to wear face masks."

Apparently the USA does not have exclusive rights to dumbassary.

 

[madodel]

Apparently the USA does not have exclusive rights to dumbassary.

Sad this stupidity/insanity is worldwide. @dfwatt I see International expansion for your moron spray product in the near future.

 

[TespaceX]

Trump is really reaching down low. You think he’s hit the bottom but he keeps proving you wrong.

Twitter

I think he’s mad that no one listened to him wanting less testing done. Although, DeSantis is probably doing the best he could to obey.

(This one probably belongs in the other forum....Twitter)

 

[Kant.Ing]

You guys are both correct. It was my understanding that construction is considered essential by the Feds, but many locales in the Bay Area shut down construction activity that they did not consider essential. Here in SD, I did not see landscapers stop working...

Here is what I observed in my neighborhood. In Cupertino, constructions for single family housing rebuild and commercial buildings didn't really stop--they paused for the first couple weeks or so, then they resumed with a maybe 60% workforce. I noticed 3 houses even managed to complete and owners moved in last month. I chatted with one of the owners, and he jokingly told me the labor is cheaper in this time.

 

[linux-works]

every kid is gonna want one of these for christmas this year:

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Early testing definitely adds to the lag between cases rising and deaths rising. And freely available testing increases case counts among the young and minorities. It's hard to know which differences between March/April data and today are actual changes vs. changes in test availability. San Antonio had drive-up testing open to everyone in May and early June, whether they had symptoms or not. Positivity.was 3.5% then, now 20%+.

I agree. I look at it as: over 65 years makes up 10% of cases now vs. 20-25% at the peak. If that implies that half as many old people are getting infected (it may or may not reflect that, depending on how testing is distributed now vs. the peak), that will cut IFR in half by itself.

With current testing levels & infection distribution, I expect a CFR of about 1.5% and an IFR of about 0.35%. Increased testing will lower CFR, and increased break-in into older communities (which is inevitable I feel) will increase IFR (which is probably close to a minimum barring further improvements in treatment). I figure we're at ~200k infections a day at the moment (and for the last week), so I expect we'll head up ~700 deaths a day relatively soon.

AZ most likely has a backlog of about 100 deaths right now, so I expect 120-160 deaths tomorrow reported there (if they make up the entire backlog - if not, we'll see 90 deaths or so a day this week, then dropping to ~50-55 in a few days, then rising from there (probably will be a steady state 70+ deaths a day by end of next week).

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

The Telegraph through Yahoo - today: Exclusive: Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes

Yeah, this is nonsense, FYI. The March 2019 "discovery" has been thoroughly debunked - there were no negative controls, etc., etc.

It's true that there have been coronaviruses circulating for a long time. But that's about where the story ends.

The guy is with Oxford CEBM, which has been wrong about everything they have produced so far, so this is not surprising.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I was going by this state Gov graphic


View attachment 560117

You of course will not see this since you have me on ignore.

Remember Thursday July 2nd did not include data from LA. Kind of a large omission.

Be sure to add this info to your trends if you've been looking at weekend numbers from California at all, and note that you should probably add 9k, not the ~7.2k reported below, due to data from a lab being missing:

 

[SMAlset]

One thing to remember to put things in perspective is that early cases didn’t have the advantage of wearing a mask due to the public policy of limiting masks to our frontline health workers since supplies weren’t stockpiled to meet the pandemic. The current maskless “Asymptomatics Gone Wild” groups, along with citizens who simply don’t care about anyone and refuse or intentionally miss-wear masks, clearly are the reason for the overwhelming of care facilities now. These people don’t have an excuse of not having knowledge of the virus or lack of supplies.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1280092727363997696

I strongly disagree with this take. Fear-mongering! I doubt we are still only finding 1 out of 10 infections (though it could get back to that depending on what happens in FL & TX & AZ). We'd be seeing way higher mortality, even after accounting for delays, if that were the case.