Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Yeah, sorry, I don't use 100k as the threshold for "major country" and this is a classic example of skirting around the fact that many of Europe's big boys (France, Spain, Italy, the UK) all have death rates per capita much higher than ours. We know you want this to be about Trump, but it isn't. It's a nasty virus that is affecting everybody to varying degrees and there's more and more talk in the scientific community that we're dealing with a mutated, more contagious strand of the virus here in the U.S. than they had in Asia.

 

I used 100k as a very small threshold to show rarity of matching your claim. If you use much higher thresholds, i.e., higher than the population of Belgium, then I guess no "major" country meets your claim. Regardless, not cherry picking your data results in the per capita figures I provided, which shows that it hit here much harder than in the EU as a whole.

 

Here's an annotated animation of the spread of the virus in the USA. I found interesting that when a federal stay home recommendation was issued (March 17th), the southeast and east Texas did a poor job of adhering.

NYT is allowing free access to all their content with registration.

How the Virus Won

 

Of the states experiencing large increases in Covid-19 cases California is the only one with a Democratic governor. How about Florida and Texas, both states in which the governors (DeSantis and Abbot) are acolytes of Trump, not to mention some of the others states experiencing large increases in new cases like Arizona and Oklahoma, both of which have hosted Trump performances in which large numbers of unmasked fans were seated in close proximity in indoor venues, perfect environments for spread of the virus.

 

California I think got some undue credit early, because most assumed they would be the worst hotspot based on early cases and Asian travelers, and despite those fears they weren’t. Turns out New York had the most acute outbreak coming undetected from Italy.

My theory is the northeast got hit fastest because they have the most elaborate public transit, and packed subways and trains are surely the most efficient way of spreading the virus. California, Texas, Florida have metro areas with shitty public transit.

The rest of the country looked at the New York curve and thought the pandemic was in the rearview mirror, when in reality they had never seen their first wave of community spread in most of the rest of the country. If Newsome doesn’t contain it in his state then that is as much on him as it is Desantis. But regardless of state level politics and state level health department decisions, the person in the White House has been an abject failure to the point of actually being a net negative to public health. Not sure how “well, California is bad too” really explains that away. It really doesn’t, you are just engaging in whataboutisms to attempt a deflection.

 

Ultimately, regardless of governor it is still always going to be up to the people to be safe. To follow the guidelines, and really if the govt fails to set guidelines people should look past that and engage in common sense.

I’d never seen Newsome speak before this, but every time I’ve seen him he says the right things. Still, there plenty of fruit loops living in Cali just like there are in Florida.

 

Several hundred people protested outside Scottsdale City Hall against the mask mandate. At least they were outside, but they aren't wearing masks inside either. Guess they are also against seatbelt laws, illegal dumping laws, laws against wearing shoes and shirts for service, and dozens of other public safety laws!

The positive is when I saw this on the news, I got a real world example to explain the Darwin Awards to my kids.

 

Someone isn't doing something right.

 

Trump would describe that as "Quite frankly we've done too good a job"

 

United States succeeding in proving to the world how ignorant and selfish a broad swath of our population are!

 

Posted a Alaska week 1 report in the den

https://www.gatorcountry.com/swampgas/threads/ot-alaska-2020.475946/#post-11871834

 

Texas pauses reopenings amid COVID-19 spike

Hopefully it will help.

In Houston, hospitals are rapidly filling with new COVID-19 patients. Several major medical centers are already shipping patients to other facilities to create more space in intensive care units; Lyndon Baines Johnson Hospital said its ICU was over capacity, and the massive Texas Medical Center is operating at 97 percent capacity, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo (D) told reporters on Wednesday.

 

texas slows it down

Gov. Greg Abbott pauses Texas' reopening, bans elective surgeries in four counties to preserve bed space for coronavirus patients

 

That is the graph that shows how much we've struggle to get this under control relative to our peers. If you want to make the case that we're testing more, you can. But it doesn't explain how we are seeing 9 times the new cases per million population that is seen in Europe and Canada.

Texas is pausing their reopening today. Good luck waiting for Abbot to explain why they didn't follow CDC guidelines to actually do the reopening. Hope is not a plan.

We could have our President using the bully pulpit to urge mask wearing. If he did, you'd hear vocal echoing of it from law makers all over the country. But, he doesn't care and he doesn't get it. If we don't slow the spread, the economy isn't going to get going the way he wants or we want. You have to do the work.

November 3rd - vote.

 

Cancelling elective surgeries to conserve beds. Just one week ago our incompetent governor was telling the populace not to worry about the rising case rates because we still have plenty of beds. Who could have known that more cases would lead to more beds in use. What a surprise.

The incompetence is stunning.

When he was saying that a week ago, my wife's hospital was on divert status. They never go on divert status.

 

Another 1.5 million new jobless claims this week. That's three weeks in a row around that level. It was dropping each week, but is now we are just plodding along shedding the same number without much improvement. How many more weeks of 1.5 million job losses before the market says, hmmm.

 

so you would rather never hear positive news, plus, where are all the come on mans for the daily updates oklahomagator gives, he points out positives also, come on now, if my positives are spin, what are his?

 

he points out states with decreases in active cases, states with little or no deaths, declining death rates. all positives, yet you and others keep telling me i am spinning numbers, if you do not want to be fair, don't post at all.

 

guess we can now call him " sunshine pumper oklahomagator " for daring to be positive.

 

He reports numbers. He doesn't spin the worst day in the history of Covid cases in the US as "hey, death rate isn't too bad".

I am not a snowflake, I can handle facts.

I see and "like" positive news (advances in meds, promising vaccines....). I posted today on Texas Governor pulling his head out of his but and trying to get things moving in the right direction.
I don't need a fake pep rally for some agenda.