COVID-19 Updates

Most of the high tech companies here in North Dallas Suburbs are letting their people stay home. Some for the rest of the year. My office building is still 90% empty. Somebody I know just had his Father in Law go to the hospital with the virus. He is self isolating at home for 15 days now. 

Yet in n Downtown Dallas the streets are filled with protesters with no masks and crazy people waving machetes. And the media says the Coronavirus thing is over now, time to talk about defunding your local police department. 

Nothing makes sense anymore. 

Dr. Peter Venkman : This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

Mayor : What do you mean, "biblical"?

Dr. Raymond Stantz : What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.

Dr. Peter Venkman : Exactly.

Dr. Raymond Stantz : Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Dr. Egon Spengler : Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...

Winston Zeddemore : The dead rising from the grave!

Dr. Peter Venkman : Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Mayor : All right, all right! I get the point!

Gotta hide all those bodies till after November. 

Zombies. Yes. Zombies. 

wvumtnbkr said:

It seems like everywhere that is mostly open is spiking.

 

Why can't people just wear masks and wash their freaking hands?

It's important to clarify that spikes in confirmed cases are what's most often reported, but those may just be due to increased testing regimens rather than actual new infections. If we want to track whether the virus is spreading, the important metrics that we need to look at are rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and in a couple of weeks, look for any change in the rate of COVID deaths.

Gotta love the use of nonsense metrics.  Our state (MD) has been massively ramping up testing and the chief metric that our governor is talking about?  % positivity. More and more and more tests, no doctors orders needed for one, of course that number is going down, the denominator is going way up. 

Why is it always raw numbers of cases in counties and not more like C/100k of population?

All the number crunching, backpedaling and pure shucking and jiving is worthless if the one guy who does have it slobbers in my face and infects me. 

Better to be safe until things are more clear. 

STM317 said:

wvumtnbkr said:

It seems like everywhere that is mostly open is spiking.

 

Why can't people just wear masks and wash their freaking hands?

It's important to clarify that spikes in confirmed cases are what's most often reported, but those may just be due to increased testing regimens rather than actual new infections. If we want to track whether the virus is spreading, the important metrics that we need to look at are rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and in a couple of weeks, look for any change in the rate of COVID deaths.

this. 

https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/2393.htm

we've been adding 6-8k new tests each weekday for the past 3 weeks. Sure, the overall number of infected has gone up. Duh. Test more, get more positives. But new cases and deaths have definitely plateau'd. 

The State of Texas hit a new record for people hospitalized, but then the Governor ordered all nursing home residents and employees in the state tested so that could be a lot of that number. My mother tested negative as did everybody else in her nursing home. I am relieved about that.

There is everything opening up on Memorial Day plus endless days of protests with people arm and arm, many without masks. Dallas County is offering free testing to all protesters. That may spike the number yet again. 

Still not sure if it is safe to go and where it is safe to go yet. Movie theaters are opening but with few first run movies. Not really interested in paying ten bucks to see previously released Harry Potter sequels. Virus or no virus. 

I'm reading that there are still 800-1,000 deaths per day, and hospitalizations are up in 9 states.  Florida being one of the nine. with Texas and Arizona.  So much for heat slowing it down.

If 5 airliners were crashing every day killing 800 people somehow i think there would be more serious attention being given.

I find this graph fairly alarming.  If you switch from Logarithmic to Linear, it takes on a whole new level of scary.

If this is truly what's happening, whatever you are doing in the States isn't working.

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I don't want to dilute mtn's thread too much with back and forth but I think it's important to look at the situation as honestly as we can with facts rather than fear. That in mind, "cases" isn't a great metric as you only know about "cases" if you test. The more testing you do, the more "cases" you find. If you've done no tests at all, you'd have zero "cases" but that certainly doesn't mean that there's no virus spreading, it just means you don't know what the truth of the matter really is.

Testing has ramped up significantly in many states in the US over the last month and a half. It was a big reason that many states felt more comfortable with lifting some restrictions. It's also contributing to a higher number of "cases" but that doesn't necessarily mean that the virus is spreading to the degree shown in your graph, it just means we're more aware of the spread that's always been there.

If the virus is truly spreading like that graph shows, and it's not just a function of increased testing, then it's also becoming less lethal:

As another example, this data is for my state (Indiana) which has been lifting restrictions in stages since May 4th, and has transitioned to the last two stages ahead of the predicted schedule:

Because we seem to have managed to reduce the spread of the virus over the last month, we'll be moving forward to "Stage 4" of the reopening plan a couple of days ahead of schedule, where restrictions on social gatherings will go from 100 people to 250 people. Retail stores and malls can operate at full capacity, restaurants can operate at 75% capacity and bars/nightclubs can reopen at 50% capacity. It's not as scary down here as some of the charts and data might have you think.

You guys can go ahead and hit the town, eat at restaurants, go see movies, go downtown arm in arm without masks for protests and kiss each other for all I care. I will stay home another six months and see what happens to you before I decide to stick my nose out the door. 

The worst that could happen is that I save a crap load of money and get a lot of home projects and car projects done. Or if things are as bad as I think, it could save my life.

Apexcarver said:

Gotta love the use of nonsense metrics.  Our state (MD) has been massively ramping up testing and the chief metric that our governor is talking about?  % positivity. More and more and more tests, no doctors orders needed for one, of course that number is going down, the denominator is going way up.

This isf useful for answering "Are we ramping up our rate of testing faster than the disease is spreading?" and "Do we have enough tests out there that we think we're likely to detect most cases?" Still, spending a lot of time talking up this metric does have a "Well, we're trying to find some good news here!" feel to it.

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I don't find that graph alarming at all. I find it useless.  The US has a big population. Aruba does not. Therefore Aruba is going to look small and US big on that stupid graph. If the Y axis was formatted as "cases per total population of the country" then I would have some useful information. Man I wish I could go back in time and slap every journalism major I've ever met.

You could start now, if you wanted to...

Isn't this GRM's forum?  Ya know, people who create content for a living?

Haha.

Snowdoggie said:

All the number crunching, backpedaling and pure shucking and jiving is worthless if the one guy who does have it slobbers in my face and infects me. 

Better to be safe until things are more clear. 

I DO really wish there would / could be a bit more common consideration for others.  A person may not worry for themselves or their family, fine.  Just, for F's sake, think of others who may care, and may be around others who are vulnerable (e.g. ran into a guy asking people nicely to stay away from him because he has his 89 year old mom at home).  Wearing a mask ect. should be a sign of respect for others.... not a huge thing for some though.

Simple measures, and simple consideration should do a very good job at, what I believe is, the stated goal here: FLATTEN THE CURVE.  We are not trying to eliminate it, that is not really possible practically until there is a vaccine.  I honestly think we will be fine, we just NEED to keep it away from the vulnerable.

I am also rather disgusted in the improper presentation of statistics.  This of course is nothing new and frankly the news doesn't give an F.  Much like movie makers can't be bothered to simply ask some car guy about their presentation of cars in movies (or planes, or technology.....) .

So some states are seeing a rise in hospitalizations but to me there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why? Does anyone know why some are and some aren't?

In reply to 93EXCivic :

I believe part of that is they are now admitting patients with lighter symptoms than before. Up until a few weeks ago, the only way you were getting hospitalized was if you were experiencing extreme symptoms and was literally life threatening. The flattening the curve was preparing for this to allow the hospitals to handle the increase over time. 

At least that was what I learned from the Holiday Inn Express stay. 

EDIT: Also, how do you add 3500 "probable" cases without verifying and stay with that? That's just bad science and horrible reporting.