COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

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Danoff
(Arizona is also taking off)
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Masks are required in public places in my town now. I was in Phoenix yesterday getting some work done on my car and ran around to a few stores while waiting for it to be finished. In the Glendale area of Phoenix (north west) about 98% of people were wearing one. After I picked up the car I went east to have some fun in the canyons and stopped at a store in east Mesa and I'd say that number dropped to about 50%.
 
Danoff
The US overall is on an upswing in new cases/day that we have not seen since the initial outbreak. Texas, Florida, and California appear to be the driving force (Arizona is also taking off).
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What was the changing point in California, though? IIRC, LA was the first city to commence a lockdown followed the same day by the state. I believe I've read LA has even extended their "Stay Home, Stay Safe" approach til' August. I thought California would surely be one of the better off states given how proactive they were in the beginning.
 
McLaren
What was the changing point in California, though?
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IMO, the realization that the economy meant more than the pandemic came when it became clear the health care system wasn't going to be to overwhelmed.
 
McLaren
What was the changing point in California, though? IIRC, LA was the first city to commence a lockdown followed the same day by the state. I believe I've read LA has even extended their "Stay Home, Stay Safe" approach til' August. I thought California would surely be one of the better off states given how proactive they were in the beginning.
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I'm guessing CA just has a lot of potential for outbreak and that keeping a lid on it requires more effort there than just about anywhere else in the US (possible exception for NY). If you look at Texas, Florida, and Airzona on the right, the only states that have experienced this kind of takeoff are NJ and NY, right at the beginning.

91-DIVOC-states-NewJersey.png

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
 
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South Korea believes they have started fighting their second wave.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53135626
Health officials in South Korea believe the country is going through a second wave of coronavirus, despite recording relatively low numbers.

The country had been a success story in dealing with Covid-19, but now expects the pandemic to continue for months.

Head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC), Jung Eun-kyeong, said the first wave lasted up until April.

Yet since May, clusters of new cases have grown, including outbreaks at nightclubs in the capital, Seoul.

Between those periods, daily confirmed cases had fallen from nearly a thousand to zero infections recorded for three days in a row.

Officials on Monday said that over the last 24 hours, 17 new infections had been recorded, from different clusters in large offices and warehouses.

Dr Jeong said the recent resurgence had led her to conclude that the country was in the grip of a second wave of the virus, and that she expected it to continue.
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McLaren
What was the changing point in California, though? IIRC, LA was the first city to commence a lockdown followed the same day by the state. I believe I've read LA has even extended their "Stay Home, Stay Safe" approach til' August. I thought California would surely be one of the better off states given how proactive they were in the beginning.
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I think SF was actually the first, on March 16. The state followed a few days later, IIRC. California is on the upswing because the rules have been relaxed, plain and simple. People are far, far more active now vs March & April. Restaurants are up and running again with fairly substantial crowds, retail is back. It has started to resemble "normal" life...and I think the numbers speak for themselves. I have a feeling the protest activity has not helped either.
 
JKgo
...Feels like literally a couple of days ago that I was bemoaning the fact that South Africa breached 70,000 overall cases milestone.

Well, it's now over 92,000 here.

Yet the government here seems to have just about given up or caved in depending on how you look at it. Just about every single business type, including the entertainment sector, are to be allowed to open their doors.

I get that economy needs to function somehow and put the proverbial food on our tables, but is reopening, say, casinos really necessary? This is purely anecdotal and I've no data to back me up, but from what I observed, an overwhelming majority of casino patrons are squarely in the most affected age groups. Wouldn't opening casinos cause a potential floodgate of clogged-up hospitals and Covid19 deaths to burst open?
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...Well, it's been a literal couple of days later, and South Africa has witnessed her overall case numbers shoot past 100,000, with almost 2,000 dead.

Wonderful.
 
We're rapidly approaching the point of going back into a lockdown here in Utah. There are some that are dead set against it, but thankfully our governor is strongly weighing the options. I'm sure the SLC mayor will issue something before the state does though since that's what happened last time.

All this because ignorant people decided to politicize masks and will refuse to wear them.
 
Hearing 1 hospital in Dallas' ICU is now full & there are Covid patients being kept in the ER. UT Southwestern reporting a 24% increase in hospitalizations since last week in N. Texas, the bulk are in the 21-40 year range. They're forecasting another 20% increase in the next 2 weeks. They have reported on Twitter their Covid unit is full and are converting extra space.
 
Does anyone know if ICU/hospital capacities are reported/tracked anywhere? I found a link (which I put in the OP) that tracks current hospitalisations (from COVID) but it's actually a pay site and you can only browse a few pages before it blocks access, which is annoying as hell.

The number of available beds is really a crucial number, though I guess in most places it is a difficult thing to know/track. One thing is certain, however, and that is that healthcare provision is inherently limited and capacity can only be raised by so much - and nowhere on Earth could be expected to cope adequately with consistent daily growth rate in hospitalisations of over a few percent.
 
Touring Mars
Does anyone know if ICU/hospital capacities are reported/tracked anywhere? I found a link (which I put in the OP) that tracks current hospitalisations (from COVID) but it's actually a pay site and you can only browse a few pages before it blocks access, which is annoying as hell.

The number of available beds is really a crucial number, though I guess in most places it is a difficult thing to know/track. One thing is certain, however, and that is that healthcare provision is inherently limited and capacity can only be raised by so much - and nowhere on Earth could be expected to cope adequately with consistent daily growth rate in hospitalisations of over a few percent.
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In the US, most of the hospitalizations and the usage of resources are tracked by individual health departments. I'm trying to make heads or tails of the link you posted though. I don't think that's the current hospitalization, but rather the cumulative hospitalizations since COVID-19 started. Looking at other charts by the "Coronavirus Tracking Project" I see that it's broken down by state. Looking at the Utah one, it states that the hospitalizations right now sit at 1,192, but I'm looking at my dashboard through work that tracks all this stuff and it shows our current count, statewide is 171 confirmed cases with 67 of those in the ICU and 27 under investigation. Our total hospitalizations though is 1,192 since March.

Another issue is that not every state reports the numbers, or if they do they report them poorly. I get a pretty decent picture of what's going on through my dashboard, but it's by no means a complete picture thanks to shoddy reporting.
 
Jezza819
Number 1 ranked men's tennis player in the world Novak Djokovic and his wife both test positive for COVID-19.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles...om&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial
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The report coming out was that he was at a large party in Croatia following his tournament. Croatia, from what I heard, is not practicing social distancing. He was complaining that the US Open would be boring because he'd have to be confined. He's probably not going to attend (wasn't sure if he was planning to) but now he might be barred from attending anyways (due to potentially new quarantining of visitors in the NYC area).
 
Donald Trump has contradicted The White House claim that his comments on slowing down testing were a joke... only for Dr. Fauci to contradict him and say that there has been no order to slow down testing. Either way, Trump's lack of leadership and clarity is appalling, as is the fact that he seems to think that joking about testing is appropriate right now... and that holding a rally in Arizona today is a good idea :rolleyes:

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A new paper out this week in Science Translational Medicine suggests that the true infection rate in the US last month was far higher (around 8.7 million in a three-week period in March) than confirmed cases in the same period (ca. 100,000)...

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/06/22/scitranslmed.abc1126

I don't know how this translates into the wider scheme of things, but it would be consistent with some previous estimates (Oxford, Stanford) that suggest that the real infection numbers could be 50-100 x higher than detected cases. If the actual infection rate in the US is indeed around 80x higher than reported, then the US would already be at 50% infection... which seems ridiculously high.

That said, I am beginning to wonder if that annoying persistent cough I had throughout March was maybe less innocent than I thought...

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The crumb of comfort that might be found among the spiking case numbers across the US is that the death rate continues to drop. Obviously, this is probably not going to last as there is another wave of infections, but provided the most at risk group (that accounts for the majority of deaths thus far) remain shielding/protected, the casualty rate could (hopefully) stay managable... provided healthcare providers don't become overwhelmed.
 
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Touring Mars
That said, I am beginning to wonder if that annoying persistent cough I had throughout March was maybe less innocent than I thought...
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Who knows? Allergies hit so many of us. I have a cough right now (I coughed once, lightly, in a dry way while typing this). It's a nagging allergy that hits me every year at this time, or COVID-19. :)
 
Yesterday was our first day that no one died from Corona since the 12th of March. We have 48 people on the IC's. Between 1 and 22nd of June 179.259 test were taken. 169.227 results are known, and 2357 people tested positive. Our poop poking scientists tell that the virus is slowly disappearing from our turds too.

On July 1st, there will no longer be a limit on how large groups can be, as long as people keep their distance from each other.
 
Touring Mars
The crumb of comfort that might be found among the spiking case numbers across the US is that the death rate continues to drop. Obviously, this is probably not going to last as there is another wave of infections, but provided the most at risk group (that accounts for the majority of deaths thus far) remain shielding/protected, the casualty rate could (hopefully) stay managable... provided healthcare providers don't become overwhelmed.
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I've been reading this is happening b/c the most prone to succumbing to the virus are staying home, and a huge bulk of the current cases are in the demographic most likely to easily survive. Of course, there's also a claim that the death lags 2-3 weeks, so the deaths from this younger demographic catching it may not be happening yet. Further on that claim is that if hospitals do exceed capacity, deaths could occur regardless in the younger demographic if they can't get care. There is a nurse on Twitter from our area claiming she lost a "pt" who was in the hospital for coronavirus & died b/c that person's vitals (or similar term?) dropped resulting in needing an ICU transfer but no ICU beds equipped for Covid were available leaving them in a dire situation. Whether or not there's truth to it, it sounds like an extreme situation & that there would be protocols in place to avoid it, but given what Italy/China reported about sudden deaths from lack of available care, it also doesn't sound impossible.
 
Dennisch
On July 1st, there will no longer be a limit on how large groups can be, as long as people keep their distance from each other.
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When can we start exporting Stag Parties again? They're making a hell of a noise here, time to get them back to Amsterdam where they belong!
 
TenEightyOne
When can we start exporting Stag Parties again? They're making a hell of a noise here, time to get them back to Amsterdam where they belong!
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Better be fast, as Amsterdam wants less of those. Fewer tourists, especially those coming to Amsterdam to do what Amsterdam is famous for. Fewer ladies of the night, coffeeshops are slowly banned from the centre, they want a city centre for people from Amsterdam, or a dead centre.
 
Was waiting for a more neutral source to post this as the first was shown as biased.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is planning to end federal support for local coronavirus testing sites across the nation at the end of the month — including seven in Texas, where confirmed cases of COVID are spiking.

Texas officials are urging the White House to rethink the move, warning of “catastrophic cascading consequences” of pulling federal support for testing sites, four of which are in Houston and Harris County and administer thousands of tests per day. City officials consider two of those sites — the largest in the city, administering up to 500 tests each per day — the backbone of Houston’s testing efforts.
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/po...o-pull-support-for-testing-sites-15360900.php
 
Dennisch
Better be fast, as Amsterdam wants less of those.
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It's not about what Amsterdam wants, it's about what we're sending. As soon as we're able we're going to let them put their tutus, fairy wings and L-plates back on and we're packing them into an Easyjet.

McLaren
Was waiting for a more neutral source to post this as the first was shown as biased.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/po...o-pull-support-for-testing-sites-15360900.php
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I can believe this could be true... but surely it can't actually be true?!
 
McLaren
I've been reading this is happening b/c the most prone to succumbing to the virus are staying home, and a huge bulk of the current cases are in the demographic most likely to easily survive. Of course, there's also a claim that the death lags 2-3 weeks, so the deaths from this younger demographic catching it may not be happening yet. Further on that claim is that if hospitals do exceed capacity, deaths could occur regardless in the younger demographic if they can't get care. There is a nurse on Twitter from our area claiming she lost a "pt" who was in the hospital for coronavirus & died b/c that person's vitals (or similar term?) dropped resulting in needing an ICU transfer but no ICU beds equipped for Covid were available leaving them in a dire situation. Whether or not there's truth to it, it sounds like an extreme situation & that there would be protocols in place to avoid it, but given what Italy/China reported about sudden deaths from lack of available care, it also doesn't sound impossible.
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This is what I'm assuming as well.

Much has been said about the danger of lockdown being worse than the disease. Unfortunately, the danger of no lockdown creating a situation whereby non-COVID deaths starts to skyrocket is also there too.

Really, the only solution to this is to learn how to live with the virus - and that means much more testing, more PPE, social distancing, home working, flexible and innovative approaches to everything about public (and even private) life until/unless a vaccine becomes generally available...

McLaren
Was waiting for a more neutral source to post this as the first was shown as biased.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/po...o-pull-support-for-testing-sites-15360900.php
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... wow.
 

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