Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I would think this is fairly obvious. Our idiot governor (the one who didn't know the virus could be spread by asymptomatic people) opened up our state this past week and I guess that translated to the Dawg crowd as "Hey, all danger has passed, we are good"

 

We used to be doubling the number of new cases every few days. Now we are increasing linearly rather than exponentially. That's a win in this fight.

Unless we lock down everything, we won't stop the spread. We aren't willing to lock down everything, so we won't stop the spread. But we have dramatically slowed it down.

 

Usually. The government gets to set some rules too.

 

As you note, the issue of wearing/not wearing facial protective gear is nuanced. I don't buy your question above though about "if I'm not opening my mouth." It's an unrealistic suggestion. As for masks, I'm keenly interested in the phenomenon, partially because my wife is Taiwanese. In hers and other Asian cultures, wearing a mask is common. There are many reasons that it has become more common in places like Taiwan, China, Japan, etc. Some are medical (experience with the SARS virus, protection from respiratory illness due to pollution) and some are for different practical purposes (protect identity, did not have time to apply makeup in the morning).
While you might be worn out by blanket suggestions to wear a mask in public during this particular pandemic, I'm worn out by many Americans' reluctance, misunderstanding, and lack of tolerance (not portraying this upon you). There are plenty of good reads on this topic, so if you're interested in knowing more about it, there is readily available information. Here's a good starting point. It addresses social and medical aspects: Why Face Masks Are Encouraged in Asia, but Shunned in the U.S.

This short piece summarizes some of the reasons people from Asian cultures wear masks. Why do Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai People Wear Surgical Masks?

This is a really good piece, imo. It appears to be partisan at the outset, but I think it's pretty informative. Face Masks Are In

I won't try and convince you one way or another here. Wearing a mask is your choice. And I know this doesn't answer your previous question (again the mouth-closed suggestion is unrealistic), this summarizes the practical reason for wearing facial protective gear in public:

 

Would like to see some support for this suggestion; it's completely foreign to me.

 

Looks like Florida's peak in new cases was exactly a month ago on 4/3, this is encouraging as FL has done much more testing since then and still hasn't passed the 1.3K daily new case peak. Almost half of the positive cases yesterday were those who had already tested positive one or more times already. The positive % was only 6.88%
Experience

 

True on the mutations. As far as tracing the virus, the Nextstrain community is pretty amazing with what they can due today that wasn't even possible not too many years ago.

The experts have to err on the side of caution, at this point. Probably what concerns them most would be if COVID-19 somehow mutated to be more like SARS, or God forbid MERS, in the fatality rate. There have been 4 small outbreaks of SARS since the original outbreak in 2003 so COVID may behave likewise.

 

I have no issue if required to wear a mask...but I live in a pretty densely populated area...My city isn't huge, but the geography is small and 350k +/- people live fairly close.

Maybe 30% of people are wearing masks. Yet we have been virtually unaffected here. At last report zero people in the hospitals and less than 5 deaths.

So I think like everything else, it just depends on where you are.

 

I could possibly see trying to derive something from that but everyone is not using the same test and they all have different ratios of false readings, etc. My question is what do these people, who have COVID symptoms, actually have? They are testing negative for the flu and negative for COVID. My gf is a nurse practitioner in South Florida and her positives have been around 15% of those she has tested. People with the same symptoms as the few who tested positive but yet only 15% of hers actually tested positive.

 

Some of it could be it working its way through the larger family households. I would think that would be pretty much done by now or fairly close.

 

I'm not talking about forcing companies to do anything.

The U.S. government has the ability to provide tax breaks and other incentives to U.S. companies. We should be providing a lower tax rate to companies that manufacture in the U.S. than to the rest of the companies and industries. (Trump would never do this unless real estate could be classified as manufacturing.) We could increase that tax break for companies that manufacture medical supplies and other critical things to our economy. That can provide a tremendous motivation to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. These companies could still have some overseas operations if other countries use financial deals to make it attractive to do so (or they can get a good price on their products in those countries), but they would pay a higher tax rate on that income when they tried to bring the profits back to the U.S. These tax breaks would not be enough to bring back undesirable manufacturing jobs, like basic clothing manufacturing (requires too large of a workforce). But the manufacturing jobs you do want, with automation and advanced technology, would come back.

 

Alabama man has a great discovery of an island in central Florida ("a tropical paradise") and camps out there during coronavirus outbreak. Only one problem--the island already belongs to someone else. He claims he was unaware that he was trespassing . . . I wonder if he discovered the Great Hunting Grounds nearby: "there was an animal kingdom unlike anything I had ever seen, and the animals were delicious!".

A man was found camping out on Disney World's abandoned Discovery Island park during coronavirus shutdown. He told police he didn't know he was trespassing.

 

There are at least dozens of viruses which cause similar symptoms, chances are they have one of those. Also note that sensitivity of these tests are not great, so there are lots of false negatives.

I'll be honest, when I first heard about this virus in December I just rolled my eyes. The reports of viral pneumonia of unknown etiology just didn't do it for me because I see those all the time. I'd say 80-90% of all pneumonia cases I've seen do not have an identified causative organism, and probably 50% of the apparently viral pneumonia cases don't either (usually we test for the flu, and if that's negative we don't test further since it won't change management).

 

Most of the hospitalizations in New York are in the 45-64 age group, and the number of deaths are about equal between the ages 45-74 and 75+. About 4-5% of the deaths are in the 18-44 age group, so they are clearly not immune.

Younger adults are getting seriously sick and ending up in the hospital because of the coronavirus, and it's alarming doctors

 

They often update past days as they get more details. Same with worldometers.

it’s not misleading as much as it is not an absolute because the underlying death numbers are subject to change

As an aside I don’t believe that @ this late date I should have to point this out to everyone...but maybe I do...but we should take caution in interpreting any of these numbers because they are subject to change

 

Which of those groups are likely to buck social distancing guidelines and not take this seriously? Hint: those that think they are invincible. I see them moving in packs all day in my neighborhood.

2 weeks ago I got into with a bunch of the neighbor kids(15-19). They were vandalizing our property. For about a week or so they kept egging and smashing fruit on our building. One morning I was out with my dog when a barrage of eggs and fruit came flying over the fence. It took everything I had not to flyover the fence and beat them to death. But being older and wiser, I was able to bait them to come to the fence and hurl obscenities at me and admit they did it. (All on camera). Called the cops and they dealt with it. Their mom was not happy about cops showing up at their door at 7 in the morning.

PS: Don't know why I chose your post to rant about those damn kids.....sorry

 

if you practice social distancing 100% then there is not reason to wear a mask.

Let me see if I understand...the kids next door, realizing how dangerous it must be for someone your age to go out to the grocery store in this day and age to get food, delivered food to your house free of charge and you called the cops. geez