Coronavirus: Miles away from ordinary.

but then what happens when someone from Reno or Las Vegas goes into Bum Fuck, Nowhere? That's where the issue arises. They could bring COVID with them, and start infecting people in a town where there otherwise are no cases or symptoms. And before you know it, now everyone in that town has it, because the mask wasn't mandatory for the person who arrived there.

 

So things are fairly sedate in most of Australia with few cases except in Melbourne which has had a spike of cases including community transmission. I almost got stabbed for another month of helping in the hotels except they realised that both people in my section would have been gone for the next month without any time for a handover.

 

So I finally found some of the numbers I was looking for yesterday. Here in Indiana from coronavirus.in.gov we had a total of 43,140 cases, and 2,386 deaths. From the John's Hopkins site we had 32,152 recovered cases, which leaves us with 8,602 active cases of Covid-19. You could make an argument that the active cases should be doubled for those with no symptoms who haven't been tested (or whatever multiplier you think is more accurate) but that only lowers the mortality rate by X (since we don't know total cases and we are at 10% positive test results with mainly only those who think they have it, have symptoms, or who have been around those who have it being tested). 91.9% of reported deaths have been over 60.

I know we aren't the most populous state, though to go anywhere (driving) you pretty much have to cross through, so in our case this does not appear to be horrible. yes 52.3% of our ICU beds are in use but only 10.5% for Covid and only 3% of our ventilators are in use for Covid. Next week we'll be back to fully open or what they called stage 5 and while some counties have seen an increase in new cases overall the state has been trending down since May. There does appear to be a small uptick at the end of our graph for the last week but we are not close to hospital capacity.

I'm still wearing a mask for grocery shopping, though in stage 4 that is optional, because I don't want to see any spike that pushes us back down to say stage 3 or delays us opening up. Besides, as little as that mask is likely to do, it's a small ask to wear a mask in public. I don't think this is over but from the numbers I've seen it is much less deadly than we all feared at first, not that I want to catch it.

Just thought I would share something that I think is positive.

 

Li'l Bandit got tested again, and came out negative.

How is that possible? He lives with his grandmother, who has/ had the virus, so shouldn't he have gotten it by now?

Is he immune?

 

Agreed. I had a lasting cough for 3 weeks in early March and wonder if that was it. The med center near my house is doing drive up testing but it's $125 and not sure if I want to know that bad. #cheapass

 

Sorry, didn't specify that was for the antibody test. Technically the test was free but the $125 was for the "office visit". The office being my car.

 

the doctors I know don't like to do antibody tests because they are so unreliable that there's basically no point. I've heard anywhere from 1/6 to 1/4 of them are a false positive or false negative.

 

My wife, myself and a handful of people we know, all of whom have been tested and it was negative, have all felt very lethargic, mild to severe headaches and our sense of smell and taste dulled lately. A few of us have had low grade (below 100.4) temps for short periods of time. Again, everyone experiencing these symptoms has been tested, the one that takes a few days to get the results not the rapid test, and they’ve all been negative. We’ve all recovered from this in roughly a week or so; I’m still experiencing some lethargy.

I told my wife I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a mutation that was less “powerful” so to speak and didn’t show up on tests yet. Anyone else experienced anything like this? Of course it could all just be placebo with us being in the thick of it (Texas) right now and we’re just thinking about it so our bodies are reacting.

Edit to add: could also be possible Texas just got a bad batch of tests. Regardless, anyone who experiences symptoms, regardless of test results, quarantined until several days after the symptoms stop

 

I saw numbers from our offices in California today, rather frightening. There's been a huge spike in people cancelling or wanting to reschedule (That ain't happening) their appointments because they don't feel well.

 

well it did work, people and politicians just fucked it up afterward though and now we’re back to square one

 

I feel like you guys are worse off then square one.

Mid March people were mostly inclined to believe that shutdown and isolation was the way to go.

Now you have the "It failed so why bother?" crowd to deal with.

And the most important election of America's life coming up.

 

Yea, shits getting fucked up here. They went back to disallowing elective surgical procedures again. Governor hotwheels is eating shit because he's the one who pushed for the reopening too quickly and too soon. And theres this weird backlash against wearing masks, like its for weak bitches or something. A lot of people on the right taking some weird antivaxxer approach claiming that it infringes on their rights. Something about bodily autonomy which is real rich.

 

I just took a new job in response (great timing, fuckface!), so I haven't been as tapped into this as I was earlier in the year.

My chief nerd says we are either in, or about a week or two away from exponential growth, ie where we were in March where the 5000 cases today turn into 25,000 cases in 2-3 weeks. The testing is better (far from great), the supply chain is more stable, so with effective interventions, we should be able to avoid....oh, right. God damn it.

Current projections on the low end is 200k dead by Halloween, high end as many as 800k. I need to reiterate here how fucking insane those numbers are: accidental deaths in 2020, from all of the collective fatal stupidity in our country, has been exceeded by COVID-19 in less than 4 months. On a 12-month timeline (ie, March 2020 to March 2021), this will be the leading cause of death for Americans, even considering the data nightmare. The only question is the margin of "victory".

I only have one staff member deployed to NRCC and they are STILL trying to complete a hand-off to HHS, and that was supposed to be complete Memorial Day. Keep in mind, this kind of effort is not what they are used to doing, so it's not going well.

AZ, CA, FL and TX are the major places we're monitoring, and we have a lot more focus on LA, MS, AL, GA, SC and NC for hurricane season....all of which seem to be trending in the wrong direction. Houston, LA county and Miami are showing some strain in terms of ICU beds. I should reiterate that the occupancy of ICU beds is always pretty high: there aren't many to begin with, they are expensive, and it's easy for them to be overwhelmed by a relatively small local event (say a building fire). We have resources ready to respond should they get truly overwhelmed, but there's a lag time. So, 100% of ICU beds being occupied in a given zip code or even metro area is a big deal, but it's not hard to do. Remember, about 6600 hospitals, most of them with far fewer than 20 ICU beds nationwide, so for a place like Houston, you're talking 300 ICU beds max. At 5000 cases a day....

Basically, the narrative is between May and July 4th, you had some states re-open too soon, refuse to impose countermeasures like masks & social distancing and now....back to skyrocketing cases, with deaths to follow in a few weeks. After the 4th, I imagine there will be some sanity restored, but too little too late. In my office, it's seen as extremely unlikely there will be a reversal of the federal abdication, and there's no political will for further lock downs. So, these cities and states are left to deal with this on their own, with us sending the equivalent of care packages, should their hospitals get inundated. We had a discussion on how bad it would have to be for the federal role to expand, or for us to resume nationwide lockdowns, and the general answer was....simply not going to happen. The buck has been passed, no take backsies. Within a week or so, you'll see Trump blame the resurgence on Christ knows what, assuming the position of "it's your problem to solve".

My neighbor had to drive to Florida to attend a funeral, and reported a 4 hour line to get into Florida, with the hold-up involving a temperature check and some half-assed questions. It does functionally nothing, and as far as I know it's not suggestions we or HHS/CDC are pushing, it's a local or state initiative. Given some of the laws on restricting interstate commerce/travel, that may be fleeting.

Florida is kind of a linchpin for this, because of the seasonal flow of people to/from. If Florida can get it's spread to stop or reverse the current trend by the end of July, we can hope to see diminished impact. If not, then the ebb/flow of people throughout the year will result in duplicate outbreaks. Right now....I'm betting the under.

I beg of all of you, please remember this in November: this was avoidable with competent leadership that takes it seriously. The WH is trying to shake up CDC/HHS to deflect blame, but the mis-steps started with the WH task force back in March, and haven't stopped yet. The issues we are confronting are all derived from the politicization of this virus, and that cannot be forgotten.

I hate to be the voice of doom/gloom here, I wish there was more cause for optimism. This feels like a bad dream, and it's far from over.

 

Do you know if they use the “nostril test” here (I guess it’s the ONLY kind)? We’re still being careful at our house so we are in no rush to get tested, and wifey doesn’t exactly like the idea of someone shoving a Qtip up her nose.