Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I feel like some posters have been postulating something like this since April or May. The vast majority of the country haven't, and it's possible that the immunity built up during the first wave is already waning on a large scale. If that isn't the case then we should not be seeing rapidly growing cases and deaths.

 

I know that I didn’t think there were only a handful of people who hadn’t been exposed in May. The CDC were the ones telling us that you can add a 0 in reality to all the new case numbers that you are seeing daily. Meaning that quite a few more people have contracted the virus than what’s in the numbers.

There are a lot of things that could be going on. I’ve seen several articles with scientists discussing mutations and I think that is likely a culprit in the sudden violent spike. Especially, in Europe.

 

Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine: Meet the scientists who developed the vaccine

But amid the coronavirus pandemic, the couple's groundbreaking research in the field of modified genetic code has catapulted them into the public eye, as the brains behind the world's first effective coronavirus vaccine.

Sahin, 55, and Tureci, 53, set up BioNTech in the central German city of Mainz in 2008. On Monday the company's partner, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, said their candidate vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing infection in volunteers.

It uses the never-before-approved technology called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to spark an immune response in people who are vaccinated.

On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Sahin explained the significance of the news -- and sent a message of hope for the world.

 

Add a zero to our case numbers and we still only have a third of the country infected, which means we are less than halfway to the mythical herd immunity (if it even exists for this virus).

 

Another instance of Mask mandates are really not paying off.

Maryland has had a mask mandate since July 29th. Look at their uptick in cases. They have far more new daily cases now than when they first put the mask mandate in place.

The only silver living I can see is that mask appear to lower the viral load.

 

Another instance of No Mask mandates are really not paying off.

Iowa has not had a mask mandate since July 29th. Look at their uptick in cases. They have far more new daily cases now than ever. Cases are up 203% in the last 18 days.

Cherry picking and formal fallacies suck.

 

wonder how much of the current spike is from Halloween parties? 4 sec games called off this weekend. my daughter was showing me snapchat etc of parties at UF her social media friends were attending or people driving through midtown. Greek organizations at UF are sponsoring off campus parties with no ramifications. surprising.

 

A lot of these spikes were already happening before Halloween, though I’d suspect such gatherings just piles on to existing problems.

 

My niece just got a positive test. Her boss had been feeling ill with a fever but came to work anyway. Infected 4 in their work area....

 

That was probably the case in the beginning. Heck, you could probably add two 0's in March. Testing has gone up significantly now, however, and the estimate these days is perhaps just 2 times the number of positives who did not get tested.

 

My god. You can't even contract Covid-19 that way. Everyone sat their candy at the end of their driveway in our neighborhood. The lunacy around this virus astounds me. I don't think it is cold weather pushing people indoors either, as Florida has seen their new case rate more than double in the past month and for the most part hasn't experienced weather that would force the masses indoors. Hawaii's numbers are spiking too.

I don't pretend to know the exact reason, but I'd give a high likelihood to the virus mutating and adapting to human immune systems. Thus, becoming more contagious. There is also some science and data that suggest as this happens, the virus can lose potency on the symptoms side. Which would explain why we've only seen a meager uptick in deaths even though new cases have been averaging more than 50,000 a day for a month now and we've been well above 75,000 a day for two weeks now.

We'll know more in 3 or 4 weeks after all these gaudy 100,000+ days are fleshed out in the daily deaths, but don't be surprised when we top out at 1,500 deaths a day. Not a good number, but again, pretty close to the same number as people dying each day from smoking... for perspective.

 

So we say 20,000,000 people in the U.S. have gotten the virus then? That's what? About 1 in every 16 persons? So, chances of exposure over a period of several months are pretty high for almost everyone who is not sheltering 100% of the time. I would say 1 in 16 puts you in the probable category of being pretty close to someone at some point who had it at a grocery store, gas station, hardware store, protest, political rally, restaurant or various other businesses. You can add school and college to that list. Not to mention all the other various places where people come within speaking distance of each other.

 

should be criminal to knowingly expose others

 

Well, it depends on your definition of exposure. If you mean just being vicinity of infectious individuals, yes, I'm sure pretty much everyone has had that. If you're talking about high risk exposures where you can catch a pathogenic viral load, however, there probably hasn't been enough to make a difference to affect the R0.

 

That’s a pretty long rant against something I wasn’t even talking about. Which was large indoor parties. You think I was talking about trick-or-treating?

I’m not so sure the spikes in FL are unrelated to the cold weather up north, there are a ridiculous amount of snowbirds that come down to FL this time of year from the Midwest and northeast. This is generally when they start showing up. Some of them may be already infected due to spikes up there and seeding outbreaks in FL. Not so sure about HI as I thought they were pretty closed off, but if they are having visitors from the mainland that could be the source of their issues too. This would normally be the start of season for them as well.

 

Nice. That's what Trump wanted. Back in the early days he told people they could go to work even if they were sick. And that's what the herd immunity folks want too. They want more people to get sick, and therefore more people to die.

 

Total leadership failure..hope this makes trumpets happy. One time I wish I would have been wrong

Coronavirus updates: NY restricts bars, home gatherings; hospitalizations reach all-time high; Texas first to reach 1 million infections

U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations surpassed 60,000 for the first time Tuesday, continuing a steady rise that has seen hospitalizations more than double in less than two months, the COVID Tracking Project reported Wednesday.

The number of Americans hospitalized due to COVID-19 has risen almost 50% in the last two weeks. On Wednesday, the U.S. surpassed 240,000 deaths caused by the coronavirus, by far the largest number in the world. The U.S. has 4.3% of the global population but 18.8% of the reported coronavirus deaths.

 

I thought NY was following all of Fauci’s suggestions with respect to social distance and masks? Pretty much what Biden would have said to do.

 

We'll be getting back to 2k deaths per day pretty soon. But it's ok, because we'll be getting closer to herd immunity. Sucks for those who died, but they need to make that sacrifice for our economy.