Hoosier

If you want a laugh, pull up the Euro gust maps. There are pockets of 70-80 mph on there. But the gust products are to be used with caution given what I mentioned above, in addition to them tending to be overdone in shallower/more questionable mixing regimes.

Euro has quite an impressive wind event. But it is deeper with the surface low and thus has stronger wind fields than other models, so not sure we will see something of the magnitude that the Euro is suggesting (which would be widespread 60-70 mph gust potential).

AstraZeneca may have been caught trying to inflate their vax efficacy rate. Unfortunate if true.

Hospital numbers are up over 1200 in the past 2 days. I'd like to think that the lag coming off of the weekend is a big part in that.

Pfizer Begins Human Trials of New Pill to Treat Coronavirus https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/pfizer-begins-human-trials-of-new-pill-to-treat-coronavirus/ar-BB1eSHnp

It's getting close. 970k fully vaccinated, so about 15% of the state.

I think the optics on this may end up not looking great. I would bet a penny that we will be rising with cases in IN in 2 weeks when the mandate is set to expire. Of course there will still be plenty of mask wearing beyond 4/6... the question is how much of a dip in mask wearing will there be.

Yes indeed. -All Hoosiers 16+ are eligible for vaccine starting 3/31 -Mask mandate becomes a mask advisory on 4/6, though masks will still be required in schools. Local officials can still keep a mask mandate.

Michigan has over 1600 hospitalizations now, up from around 900 just a few weeks ago. I don't have any hard data to back this up but you'd think that the average age of those hospitalized would be lower now than in the past, so hopefully any potential rise in deaths there down the road is very limited.

Gov Holcomb is going to be giving an update about the future. Will be interesting to see if any significant piece of news comes out.

Ok, so let's say it's well over 2 million. That could be more than 1 in 150 man, woman and child in the United States who has been hospitalized with covid. Obviously the numbers would look worse if you only look at the adult population.

Got me thinking. We focus on daily hospitalization numbers, but cumulatively, how many people in the US have been hospitalized with covid? Gotta be around a million, plus or minus, right? Over a half million dead but probably a non-negligible number died without ever being in the hospital.

Some of this may be semantics. I don't think we'll get a sharp rise/wave that goes crazy, but I think the case numbers go up before they go down. Right now we are averaging just over 55k cases per day.

At this point I don't think we can vaccinate fast enough to avoid a rise in cases nationally. A number of states have been rising lately with the national numbers generally plateaued. We saw the scenes out of Miami on spring break, but that is only a glimpse. People are letting their guard down and you throw in more transmissable variants and it is set up to see a rise. Now, it won't be as deadly this time because so many vulnerable have been vaccinated, but we just have to get through the next month or two until more vaccinations and summer type weather sets in in more of the country.

lol America

I can't even remember the last time we had 1 death. Maybe back in summer or very early fall. Although it is unusual to only see 1 day of deaths in the update (in this case 3/18)... usually it's a range of days. We have been relatively plateaued on cases in Indiana for a while, but now the positivity rate is also showing signs of plateauing. We're at a crossroads... do we stay like this or start to go up as is happening in some other states.

The CEO of Texas Roadhouse committed suicide. When I first saw the story I figured it was because of financial problems due to the pandemic, but it is being attributed to his long-hauler covid symptoms. This could be an issue going forward (in addition to suicides brought on by the difficulties from the pandemic), as there are many people out there with long-hauler covid. Interestingly, there are some anecdotal reports of the covid vaccines helping to alleviate some people's long-hauler covid symptoms. Not sure what the mechanism would be for that (maybe "recalibrates" the immune system somehow?) but it deserves more investigation.

I think it depends. If you're running errands around town, perhaps you don't want to keep putting it on and taking it off. I have left it on in the car sometimes when doing that. If you're driving on the interstate by yourself, yeah, no reason to have it on.

Lots of stories about the 2nd shot causing more of a reaction. I don't remember reading any accounts of the 1st shot causing more side effects than the 2nd.

There's something I've been wondering. It's a bit nuanced but maybe our resident doctor can answer. The vaccines have shown to be tremendously successful in preventing severe disease/hospitalization. But this would largely be in a world with mask wearing and other precautions, such as social distancing. Sometime in the future, let's say someone who has been vaccinated is in church and near someone who wasn't vaccinated and is carrying covid and singing. Neither party is wearing a mask. Would being exposed to a higher viral load make it harder for that person's vaccine-acquired protection to deal with? Is there sound logic behind the idea that an initial high viral exposure may be more likely to make a vaccinated person seriously ill?

Yes they are.

Got a link? I wonder if the guy was vaccinated. Would greatly improve his odds of avoiding a serious case.

What Brazil is experiencing now is the equivalent of about 4k deaths per day in the US, when adjusted for population.

40+ becomes eligible for vaccine in Indiana on Monday. I wonder if the next move will be 35+ or open to all adults.

I do think it's trickier when it comes to talking about the variants. I follow this stuff fairly closely and I can't tell you what numbers the Brazilian variant goes by. You have Fauci and other medical people still sometimes referring to the variants by country.