Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

It would have been "He's a dictator and didn't need to shut us down".....

 

No Phase 3 set to start July 27... 30k patients to enroll.

 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt tests positive for coronavirus

 

I'd like to mention that the CDC reported deaths from the flu are a broad estimate. Actual reported deaths are on the order of 10-20% of those estimates. The reasons for this are due to reporting differences by state, lack of post-mortem testing, deaths at home, variations in coroner/medical examiner offces, other medical conditions, and so on. Furthermore, many of the deaths attributed to the flu are from pneumonia, which is an opportunistic infection that may occur without influenza at all. That is to say, we only KNOW there were deaths where the person had the influenza virus in a small fraction of what the CDC is reporting. I have read analyses that say in some years it can be as low as 500 people who die from influenza in the US in a year. It's a tricky situation.

That said, in the current pandemic, there is a lot of testing for COVID going on for each patient and death. It's not perfect, systems can get overwhelmed, reporting may be a little off or getting massaged, but I feel like the mortality numbers for COVID-19 are far closer to accurate than the numbers for the flu. I argued about this back in March when some people scoffed that there wouldn't be nearly as many deaths as the flu, then that argument faded. Now it seems to be appearing again. It's hard to know true numbers for the flu, but if the numbers are vastly lower than what is reported, does that change any minds?

 

Former CDC Heads write an Op-Ed and fire back at the Trump administration for trying to pressure the CDC into subverting scientific data:

Group of former CDC heads say no president has ever politicized the leading U.S. health agency the way Trump has

 

Adding the caveat that my comments are anecdotal based on observations from what I have seen on television, when California reopened a significant percentage of its residents ignored social distancing guidelines and didn't bother wearing masks. While the disease spreads more readily indoors than in outdoor environments, hundreds of thousands of residents of California visiting beaches and staying within very close proximity of each other, virtually none of whom wearing masks created a perfect environment for spreading the disease. Same with large numbers visiting bars and restaurants, ignoring social distancing guidelines and not wearing masks. Just a guess but I strongly suspect that if social distancing guidelines were observed and most residents bothered to wear masks when in public the incidence of the disease in California would not have exploded like it did.

 

Side note from the article:
Herman Cain still in the hospital with covid (2 weeks now)

 

Cain most likely acquired Covid at Trump's Tulsa MAGA rally and while the chances are that Stitt wasn't infected at the rally, there is fairly good chance that he may have been infected by someone who was originally infect at the rally.

 

Walmart becomes biggest company to mandate customers wear masks

 

Just posted this in the Never Maskers thread. I feel pretty bad for Walmart employees having to try to enforce this. What's the over/under on people stabbed/shot by unruly idiots?

 

They should ramp up their security to deal with MAGA idiots (but really in general, not just because of anti-maskers). It’s rediculous that in many places they probably have elderly greeters or teenagers expected to watch the front doors. They should have an agreement with police departments to help escort unruly or violent people off the premises promptly, their minimum wage slave staff shouldn’t have to get involved in that crap.

 

Yeah Walmart is like a magnet for the lowest common denominator in this country. MAGA country embodied in a store. It will be ugly. Lots of "muh freedom" fighters.

 

California began reopening in early May. They reopened the bars in early June, just like Florida. Cases steadily rose throughout June. At the start of June the 7 day average for new cases in CA was about 2500 per day. By the end of June it was 5781 per day. But even still, cases in CA are way less than FL on a per capita basis. And California has yet to have a day with more than 10k new cases. For FL, that's a regular occurrence, even though Florida has about 17 million fewer residents than CA does.

 

5 kids from 5 to 15. We love it. The only thing we miss is band for the older kids.

 

Talking about using masks this is confusing....

• Filter efficiency was measured across a wide range of small particle sizes (0.02 to 1 µm) at 33 and 99 L/min.
  • N95 respirators had efficiencies greater than 95% (as expected).
  • T-shirts had 10% efficiency,
  • Scarves 10% to 20%,
  • Cloth masks 10% to 30%,
  • Sweatshirts 20% to 40%, and
  • Towels 40%.
  • All of the cloth masks and materials had near zero efficiency at 0.3 µm, a particle size that easily penetrates into the lungs.
  • Another study evaluated 44 masks, respirators, and other materials with similar methods and small aerosols (0.08 and 0.22 µm).
    • N95 FFR filter efficiency was greater than 95%.
    • Medical masks – 55% efficiency
    • General masks – 38% and
    • Handkerchiefs – 2% (one layer) to 13% (four layers) efficiency.
  • Conclusion: Wearing masks will not reduce SARS-CoV-2.
    • N95 masks protect health care workers, but are not recommended for source control transmission.
    • Surgical masks are better than cloth but not very efficient at preventing emissions from infected patients.
    • Cloth masks will be ineffective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, whether worn as source control or as personal protective equipment (PPE).

“Masks may confuse that message and give people a false sense of security. If masks had been the solution in Asia, shouldn’t they have stopped the pandemic before it spread elsewhere


From the New England Journal of Medicine

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372

“We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic

Mask Facts - AAPS | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons


No wonder people have issues, I guess the "science" isn't settled?

 

Being in that mostly maskless crowd was about as intelligent as diving in a swimming pool hoping you won't get wet. What can you call it except stupidity?

 

Fair enough, kids as you know are all different many don't do well with online learning 1/3 of mine does well.
Many are just going onto online portals and putting test questions in aren't learning a bit of material.

 

Agree. It's going to be ugly.

 

Or going out with thousands of screaming mask-less protestors.

 

A lot if not most of the protesters at least wore masks. But that's just what I saw on TV. I wasn't there. I wanted to participate, but I had a prior commitment.