Hoosier

Less D0 and D1 overall compared to last week

Will be interesting to see what grocery stores and the like decide to do now. Do they drop the mandates very quickly or keep them a little while longer...

CDC came out with new guidance that vaccinated individuals can stop masking indoors in most situations. This could put businesses in a tough spot. If they keep a mask mandate, then people who are vaccinated aren't going to like it. If businesses drop the mask mandate, then there will be unvaccinated maskless people who are pretending to be vaccinated.

That's kinda been my feeling as well... don't drop mask requirements until everyone (or at least everyone besides the youngest children) has had an opportunity to get a vaccine. What I said in my other post is just my experience in my corner of my state. I have heard from others in my state that the amount of masking doesn't seem to be quite as good. We are still running slightly over 5% positivity rate in Indiana and the case/hospitalization numbers have been stubborn. It's fair to wonder if things would've been lower had the statewide mask mandate remained in place.

Being in a state that had a statewide mask mandate for many months and then ended it 5 weeks ago, I feel like I can chime in on this. Once the statewide mask mandate ended, many stores/businesses around here maintained a mask policy. There has been tremendous compliance. In places that have a mask policy, I have only seen 1 adult not wearing a mask in all of these weeks. Even in the few places I have been in that don't have a mask policy, most people were wearing one. This was encouraging to see because I did not know what to expect when our statewide mask mandate ended. Wasn't sure if I was going to suddenly see tons of maskless people indoors. I was even more nervous about how it was going to play out since our cases/hospitalizations were starting to rise right before the statewide mask mandate expired. It may not go the same way where you are, but don't be surprised to still see a lot of masks even after they are no longer required.

I'm moving to Ohio Ohio to give five residents $1 million each in vaccine lottery https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ohio-lottery-covid-vaccine/

Is there a way to do those plots for a whole season or year?

Not sure this is a great thing. One aspect I have been interesting in finding out is whether the vaccine at least prevents long hauler covid in the subset of individuals who develop mild breakthrough infections. CDC narrows monitoring of breakthrough COVID-19 cases https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/cdc-narrows-monitoring-of-breakthrough-covid-19-cases.html

Airmass aloft tonight is not quite as cold as last night, so that seems like a pretty reasonable call. Not completely out of the question that it manages to dip to freezing around here (we are only starting off in the upper 40s and should have some hours of prime radiational cooling conditions) but I'd give it maybe a 20-30% chance.

Yeah, looks like widespread frost. Unlike last time when I was (correctly) bullish on getting below freezing imby, I don't think it happens this time. Radiational cooling setup is pretty good but the airmass aloft is a bit warmer than last time, so it should mean temps stay at least a degree or two above freezing locally. Would not be surprised to see the typical coldest spots dip below freezing though.

I calculated the average number of tornadoes per year for the 6 state area of IL/IN/MI/WI/OH/KY a while back. I can't recall the exact number but it was around the 160-170 range.

An inferior model leads the way sometimes. Not saying it's the case this time though.

Op GFS was brutally dry iyby.

See, this is a tricky one, and it may depend on how one defines the Midwest. Going back over, say, the last 10 years, I don't really see a signal for less severe weather regionwide. Maybe if you pick out certain states or look at certain seasons, but that would take some time to look into.

Don't know, but I would hope anybody coming into the hospital with those symptoms would get tested for covid.

Seemed like it took forever to get under 35k, but now it's a decent amount below.

Seems like it's more nuanced than you portray. Not everybody who had covid is the same.

My brother in law's aunt got the vaccine and is now in the hospital with a 104 fever and low oxygen (84%). I am trying to find out exactly when she got the vaccine to see how much of a temporal relation exists. Has anyone heard of that combination of side effects (high fever AND low oxygen) from the vaccine? It sounds more like actual COVID.

Yeah I'm curious to find out why there are discrepancies of that magnitude. In theory, the official averages being higher than xmACIS would actually make it a little easier to obtain colder than average months going forward.

Could be various reasons for that. Maybe less of them are driving and it's not as easy for them to go get it. I'd like to see a more detailed breakdown of the 75+ group... like 75-84, 85-94. 75+ is anybody from 75 to like 115 lol

The circumstance where I can understand living cautiously after you've gotten the vaccine is if you're compromised/have reason to think the vaccine won't work well inside your body. I don't know for sure, but it seems like the more severe breakthrough cases/deaths are occurring in people who are older/compromised. If you're older/severely compromised and concerned, I would think it may not be a bad idea to get an antibody test after being fully vaccinated to get an idea of how well the vaccine took inside your body.

I went to IHME for the first time in a few weeks, and needless to say I was shocked when I saw them projecting 948,000 US covid deaths by September 1. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=cumulative-deaths&tab=trend I noticed the number before I read the paragraph at the top. Basically, they changed their methodology to not make a projection for reported covid deaths, but to include covid deaths that are unreported. You can read about it here: https://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess-mortality-due-covid-19-and-scalars-reported-covid-19-deaths They believe that there have been just over 900k covid deaths in the US to date. It's a stunning number that initially struck me as too high. But contrary to some who have been arguing that covid deaths are inflated, it's quite likely that the opposite is true. We just don't know by how much. I'm sure more estimates will emerge as to how many people died from covid in this time period. But whether it's 700k, 800k, 900k, it's all bad. However much that US deaths are underreported, some other countries are WAY worse with underreporting.

I went to IHME for the first time in a few weeks, and needless to say I was shocked when I saw them projecting 948,000 US covid deaths by September 1. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=cumulative-deaths&tab=trend I noticed the number before I read the paragraph at the top. Basically, they changed their methodology to not make a projection for reported covid deaths, but to include covid deaths that are unreported. You can read about it here: https://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess-mortality-due-covid-19-and-scalars-reported-covid-19-deaths They believe that there have been just over 900k covid deaths in the US to date. It's a stunning number that initially struck me as too high. But contrary to some who have been arguing that covid deaths are inflated, it's quite likely that the opposite is true. We just don't know by how much. I'm sure more estimates will emerge as to how many people died from covid in this time period. But whether it's 700k, 800k, 900k, it's all bad.

Not sure if we mixed in flakes at some point overnight. There was some visibility drop at a nearby reporting site roughly between 4-5 am, so if there were flakes, that's probably when it would have been.

Even now, there isn't complete consensus on a changeover to snow around here. This is a real hanging by a thread setup, but overall, I think I am in the favored corridor to change over. LOT radar has been showing a persistent bright band pointed right in here for some time. In the meantime, it's been raining nicely. If I wake up in the night and don't hear anything, then I'll know it's flipped.