Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I heard on the news this morning that we were trending better in GA over the past 7 days. Not great, but better.
I'll take it for now.

 

The University of Alabama reports over 500 Covid-19 cases less than a week after classes started - CNN

The Ohio State University suspends 228 students for violating pandemic precautions even before classes begin - CNN

 

Everyone should read this article...Whether you agree w/ 95 politics or not...


Notre Dame has worked hard to prepare for the fall semester and take reasonable precautions for a safe return to campus. The temporary spike is concerning, but it does not merit the stark remedy of sending everyone home. We think that those who have voiced worries about the positive test results are focusing on the wrong numbers. This is in part because the Notre Dame dashboard focuses on positive cases alone. The more relevant metric is hospitalizations and mortality. By those measures, Notre Dame is doing extremely well and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so. According to the Indiana COVID-19 dashboard, diagnoses of people under 30 make up 29% of Indiana’s cases and 0.4% of its deaths. So far, not a single person under the age of 40 has died of COVID-19 in Saint Joseph County. Of course, not everyone at Notre Dame is low risk, and we certainly support every measure to protect the vulnerable members of our community, both within our walls and without.

For the most part, the “Here” campaign is working well, especially for students on campus and in graduate and professional schools. We are hopeful that the University’s decision to suspend in-person classes will be temporary and will incentivize students to fully appreciate that their behavior impacts the entire Notre Dame community. In order to offer a fuller view of the effectiveness of our measures to mitigate the risks posed by the virus, we join with The Observer Editorial Board and other writers in encouraging the administration to modify the COVID-19 dashboard to provide more detailed information. Specifically, we strongly encourage the administration to provide information on age (18–24, 25–34, etc.) and status (undergraduate student, graduate student, staff, faculty) and also include hospitalizations and mortality statistics (0% and 0%, respectively) so that we have a more balanced and accurate picture of the effectiveness of our efforts.

Our argument is not that COVID-19 is just another flu. It is a virus that, as far as the data indicate, is clearly dangerous to a subset of the population — but that subset is highly unlikely to include college or graduate students. Furthermore, according to a Cornell study, students are safer on campus. Closing campus due to a spike in positive cases will not protect our students, faculty and staff from more positive cases, much less hospitalizations and mortality. Sending students home will sentence them to months more of isolation — with psychological and social effects — or simply allow them to go out and about with local friends without the benefit of testing and supervision. Little surprise that one in four people aged 18-24 seriously contemplated suicide this summer, according to the CDC. This, and other less grave effects, remain invisible on COVID-19 testing charts, but are no less real.

 

https://assets.publishing.service.g...ata/file/911267/School_Outbreaks_Analysis.pdf

Good news about school reopening in England.

 

how do you stop infected college student from giving it to 60 year old cashier at Publix or parent at home when they return home? Have two in college and working in retail and worried about them coming home. A $10 rapid test would sure simplify lots of things, cannot understand why these are not being pushed out

 

It's called masks. Enforce mask wearing in stores. Not difficult.

 

if masks are the answer, why do so many places want you not to pay in cash, is it transmitted that way, what about you touching credit cards at places w/o readers?

 

remember the john travolta movie " the boy in the bubble "? i get the feeling that is how some think we should live, being afraid of our own shadow, you have to live your life smart, but live it.

 

I realize the question was directed at me, but I didn't write that post. It was a quote from the article written by 5 ND professors.
But completely agree about the rapid test. Seems like common sense to me too.

 

Both Germany and UK have reopened schools, and neither has seen a large outbreak. And that's a good thing. But what has also happened, in both countries, is a small uptick in new cases and percent positive tests. Correlation does not equal causation, but this is something that needs to be studied further. And has the UK article expert said (and quoted in the Germany article), there really is scant amount of research concerning COVID-19 and schools.

Preliminary results are positive, but it's only been a few weeks. It will be interesting to monitor cases in each country over the next few weeks to see if the uptick continues, if there is a decrease in cases, or if reopening schools may have caused a second spike because of community spread. Time will tell.

 

some really strange and divergent numbers today.according to worldometer there were 1,047,928 tests recorded today with 40,098 new positives for a less than 4% positive rate.what is strange is that covid 19 tracking only had 634,461 new tests today.i know they lag behind worldometer in all categories, but usually only around 50-60,000 less tests, not 410,000. hope the worldometer numbers are right, and we do not find out that several states had their numbers counted twice today, that would be a bummer about the 4% today. usually new cases and deaths show up on tuesday's, don't remember a huge jump in reported tests.

 

Tracking the world and U.S. numbers at three day intervals. Here are the three day increases and while the data set on Aug 22nd was horrendous, it's very encouraging for the last set. All #s are down and the U.S. fatalities are at its lowest point since July 20. U.S. cases are lowest for the given period.

Increases
Cases........................fatalities........U.S. cases..U.S. fatalities
June29…..535,253………11,239………...128,855…….1,143
July2...…..574,195………15,882………...155,378…….2,702
July5...…..573,206………12,875………...145,739…….1,084
July8...…..610,409………15,274………...176,004…….2,293
July11...…674,987………15,599………...196,714…….2,541
July14...…615,422………13,572………...189,431…….1,740
July17...…731,765………18,120………...224,935…….2,921
July20...…665,107………13,872………...191,417…….1,770
July23...…797,581………23,257………...208,562…….3,499
July26...…761,205………15,569………...201,848…….2,516
Aug13……804,615………17,788………….164,220……..4,223
Aug16……762,882………16,247……..…..150,966……..2,713
Aug19……736,947………17,045…………..133,256……..3,200
Aug22……821,076………18,685…………..141,540……..3,846
Aug25……669,525………14,571…………..114,300……..2,230

 

forgive me, but what do these numbers mean?

 

Sorry - I didn't label them since I've been posting them since April. I went back and labeled them. They are world cases, world fatalities, U.S. cases, and U.S. fatalities. All numbers represent the amount of increase during the three-day interval. Tracking raw numbers is one thing. Tracking the extent of increase provides another layer.

 

There is a lot of odd numbers going around that make the data suspect....

 

Florida has recorded 9,000 new child cases of COVID-19 in the past two weeks since schools reopened. The links also reports a few hundred have been hospitalized, and 1 more additional child death due to COVID-19.

What will be interested to see if in a few weeks, there is a trend upward in total cases. While the overwhelming majority of school kids who get the virus won't need hospitalization, it's the community spread that should be the bigger worry. Will these kids spread the virus to their parents/adults who live with them? And will that spread go out into the community and cause another spike in cases?

Two weeks is too early to tell, especially with a disease that has an incubation period of 10-14 days, and onset of symptoms are often very mild before they become serious. Like the European countries that have seen a small uptick in overall cases since schools have reopened, we'll know more in the upcoming weeks.

 

This link was also posted in the FLORIDA thread, and I'll post my updated response to it here as well...

This number is dropping. Starting with the July 17th report, the 14-day numbers for <17 are as follows:

7/17: 11,655
7/25: 14,353
8/1: 13,809
8/8: 8,585
8/15: 8,181
8/22: 8,196

In looking at the 5-14 age group, we can see that the 14-day total peaked on July 26th (6,733 new cases), and that number has steadily dropped to 3,057 as of yesterday's report. For context, there are over 4,500 public schools in the state. I don't think it's a stretch to say that even if you factor in the 15-17 age group that you're still looking at close to 1 child per school. And that's only counting the public schools. Areas that exceed this average can and should be more restrictive, but areas that fall below the average should feel pretty confident about being able to manage the situation.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Looking across the water, Spain had one of most severe lockdowns in the world. However, as they have opened up their country their cases have also started to go up.
They have not started school yet this fall.

In contrast, Sweden didn't lock down at all, and they have had zero resurgence (so far.) Perhaps they achieved herd immunity?