Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

I'm posting a thread to share some of the interesting things people have written about the virus. Stay tuned - will be up in a few mins.

 

I know where they go.

 

Gotcha.

 

Record spikes in new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations sweep parts of U.S.

 

There’s an old meme, “not sure if trolling or stupid”. The problem with some of the more infamous posters (and this is probably true on any forum) is they keep posting the same wrong information over and over. People are entitled to their opinions, but when you spam a forum with counterfactuals and clear misinformation, it comes off more as trolling. IMO.

Maybe their beliefs were genuine, the fact the one guy got butthurt tells me maybe he was actually serious. I don’t remember Louisville from the ‘16 election, I don’t remember him spamming the board with topics. He was wrong often on the virus, but i don’t remember him being out of line. But I know I’m not the only one that thought the other guy was actually not a real person, but was possibly a spambot during the ‘16 election. How can a person literally ONLY post misinformation? There were days where just about every topic on the front page was started by just 1 or 2 posters (and it’s not like this is a dead forum). So before we even got into the spamming of fake news on coronavirus, a pattern of spamming the forum with twitter fake news had already been established.

 

This weeks sojourn. Great Falls National Park, which is actually right in the suburbs of DC. The eastern end of the park is only a couple of miles from the beltway, and halfway between the city and where I live.
In today’s “new hikers suck” category, we have the guy pissing against a tree as I walked by. So that was awesome. The park also had more trash than I have ever seen. I mean how hard is it not to litter? Especially when you must know staff is down and it isn’t as likely to get picked up? I always pick up one or two things when I hike, if everyone did that things would be spotless. It was also crazy crowded for a Monday.

 

here are some numbers for those of you worried about the spikes in positive cases. took them from covid tracking, so their overall numbers are behind, but a daily total is a daily total.last 10 days 4,701,000 tests, average of 470,000 a day. 190,186 positive results, average of 19,002 a day. deaths 7,200, average of 720 a day. the overall positive % for the 10 days was 4.1%, well below the current 8.75%.seeing real declines in previous hot spots, the ny,nj area, louisiana, michigan, hell, washington which was at the forefront at the start is off the map, so to speak, so when, and it will be when, the current hot spots get under control, imo, numbers will begin a steady drop.

 

I would certainly consider hell a hot spot.

 

I'm not clear on what you mean here, is the 10 day positive % 4.1% and today's positive % is 8.75? That seems concerning.

All other things remaining equal

 

no, the 10 day positive is 4.1%, the overall total positive is at 8.75%, was over 18% about 6 weeks ago, so you see the improvements. last 3 days with 1,600,000 tests a 4.3% positive.

 

You are comparing today's positive rate, which is rising from what it was a few weeks ago, to the overall positive rate, which includes a huge number of cases from March and April when testing was pretty much limited only those who were very sick.

 

i am showing the more you test, the more you find are negative, do you think that is a bad thing? you and i will never agree that increased testing will show dramatic numbers of negative results compared to the positive ones, is that, after all, the idea of testing?

 

it also shows that what safeguards put in 6 weeks ago are indeed working, thus the 90% plus negative % so far.

 

Geography and demographics play a part when looking at national numbers. For example, there are over 1 million people who live in NYC than the entire state of Arizona. NYC is fortunately on the downside when it comes to positive percentage of tests. But here in Arizona, positives have going up, with a peak of 12% last week, but a steady trend climbing every week.

This is why nationwide trends aren't the best indicators. I'm not saying the overall trend is bad, just adding some perspective to show that there are still several hot spots that show there is still big risks.

 

You are comparing apples to oranges. We had a big testing shortage early on. So those who were tested then were more likely to be sick. Now testing is much more available. Compare the positive rate now, when testing is widespread, to a month ago, when testing was also widespread. In many places, like Florida, the positive rate has gone up.

By the way, there were more than twice as many new cases in Florida yesterday than there were in NY and NJ combined. That really tells you the direction things have gone: much better in NY/NJ, much worse in Florida. Why do you think that is?

 

for may the average daily tests were 346,300, about 125,000 less than the last 10 days, and the positive % for the month was about 6.6%, compared to the 4.1% over the last 10 days, so, even with new math 4.1 is less than 6.6, you are just unwilling to admit increased testing is showing positive dividends in a greater drop in infections %.