Hoosier

Cuomo's accusers are completely irrelevant for this thread. Keep it out of here.

IHME has daily average deaths not dropping below 500 until the middle of May. I sure hope it happens earlier but the backside of these curves has proven to not go as quickly as we'd like. For comparison, we were getting about 1500 deaths per day in mid-May 2020.

That says cumulative, so I believe it is adding up all of the hospitalizations to that point? Better comparison would be to look at how many people were in the hospital with the flu in the middle of March 2018.

I don't know. Based on the extremely low prevalence of flu this season, there is probably virtually nobody in the hospital with the flu now.

Thelawyercraig guy on twitter has started adding Michigan numbers due to their increase. This is a good example of when cases increase by a large enough amount, it is still going to result in more people going to the hospital, even though many older/vulnerable have been vaccinated. As time goes on and even more individuals are vaccinated, it should require an even greater increase in case numbers to result in higher hospitalizations.

Not going to comment on that specific case, but there have definitely been ramifications from calling this the "China virus." I have seen the argument that there is some history of naming diseases based on where the initial cases showed up, such as Lyme Disease and Saint Louis encephalitis. Then there's the big one -- the Spanish Flu -- which didn't even originate there. Perhaps we shouldn't have given those names to those diseases, but it's kinda tough to go back decades and undo that. It is difficult to ascribe any innocent motive to calling this the "China virus." It was never called that in an official capacity, and it is easy enough to just say coronavirus, covid, covid-19, SARS-CoV2. It's not some 20 letter word that is hard to remember.

Michigan is basically getting as many cases per day now as California, despite having 1/4 of the population.

Although your post wasn't directed at me, my answer is yes. Honestly, we are probably at the point where a ton of states could remove mask mandates and not have so large of a surge as to threaten hospital capacity (especially since a good percentage of people would still choose to wear a mask even without a mandate) but so many lives have already been lost and we are still losing 1k+ per day on average. Let's just wait another couple months.

The problem with what Dr. Paul is saying is that if you go on the honor system and let vaccinated people/those who have already had covid not wear masks in public, there will undoubtedly be people who don't fit into either category who abuse that and try to get out of wearing a mask. For now it's easier to just have everyone wear a mask in public.

If the spike in cases is large enough, it should eventually result in rising hospitalizations. Less sure about deaths though. It's interesting when you look at the numbers. People in their 60s are at least 20x more likely to die than people in their 30s, but the people in their 60s are hospitalized at only 3x the rate of people in their 30s. Basically, you have a non-trivial chance of ending up in the hospital even in your 30s, but you're way, way more likely to survive the hospital stay than somebody in their 60s.

Here's an age breakdown that shows vaccinations or scheduled vaccinations in Indiana. Pretty good rates in the older age groups. The 45-49 age group is already at 23% even though eligibility hasn't been open to everybody in that age group for more than a couple days.

Everyone 16 and older in Illinois will be eligible for vaccine starting on April 12. https://abc7chicago.com/illinois-covid-vaccine-governor-jb-pritzker-il-eligibility-opening-up/10428597/

Just to comment on yesterday for a minute... I would not call it a bust. IMO, that word is thrown around way too often in severe weather events. Perhaps it fell a bit short of the potential that it had, though. I can't find reference to it anymore, but SPC used to issue a high risk when they were expecting at least 20 tornadoes in a geographical area that is the size of Oklahoma without the panhandle. I believe there was also some threshold for the number of F/EF2 tornadoes but can't recall for sure. Very important to remember that not every high risk is going to produce 100 tornadoes or even 50 tornadoes. There are those days that are elite level... I would almost call those extreme risk days.

The big bad brown monster

Not a whole lot of snow reports on the northern side right now. One exception is around Quincy.

Sure, that's why I qualified my post. A small increase in cases may not translate into noticeably more hospitalizations. If it's something big like a 50% increase in cases, then it would be practically impossible to keep hospitalizations falling in that scenario.

The rate of decline is really slowing down now. It would seem to me that the projection of rising national case numbers may indeed come to pass in the coming weeks. If the rise in cases is big enough, then hospitalizations would probably rise as well. If a rise in cases is very subdued, then perhaps we could avoid a rise in hospitalizations.

I'm 37 and only briefly experimented with cigarettes and dip as a teenager, so yeah, different risk profiles between us. I can't say I'll always get a covid vaccine every year or two or however often it will be recommended, as that will depend on how dangerous the virus is in the future, but I personally feel it's the right decision this time.

Yeah, I would think the covid vaccine rates in the <50 age group could be higher than they are for flu vaccine in that age group. How much higher is the question. I am just one person, but I can tell you that I am strongly leaning toward signing up to get it as soon as I become eligible, and I may be eligible as soon as next month at the rate things are going. Originally I was thinking about waiting until fall, in advance of what I anticipate will be an uptick in cases then, but this thing is just mentally tiring. Sick of masking and so much hygiene. Somebody like me *probably* wouldn't get a severe covid case, but you just never know. It would be nice to have some peace of mind knowing that a vaccine would tilt the odds even more in favor of a milder case should I get sick. I am a little particular about what I put in my body. Have never gotten a flu vaccine and haven't had a vaccine of any kind in about 15 years. I don't even take ibuprofen for a headache unless it gets pretty bad lol. I have no problem watching what may be about 150 million Americans receiving this vaccine before me. That is a tremendously large sample size compared to a few tens of thousands. The only thing that would have a shot at swaying my mind back toward delaying it would be if cases drop to incredibly low levels in the next month or two... I'm talking like a dozen or two statewide per day, but I don't expect that. I'm not even sure we'll get it that low in the summer.

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL 231 PM CDT TUE MAR 16 2021 ..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON... ..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE.... ..REMARKS.. 0300 PM NON-TSTM WND DMG SIBLEY 40.59N 88.38W 03/15/2021 FORD IL EMERGENCY MNGR THE FORD COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY RELAYED THAT AT LEAST 90 POWER POLES WERE SNAPPED OR PUSHED OVER IN A NARROW ZONE FROM JUST NORTH OF CHATSWORTH TO SIBLEY TO GIBSON CITY TO FISHER, INCLUDING ALONG A CONTINUOUS 4 MILE STRETCH. THE EMERGENCY MANAGER ALSO RELAYED THAT A ROUGHLY 75 FOOT COMMUNICATIONS ANTENNA WAS ALSO BENT OVER, HITTING A NEARBY WATER TOWER. THE DAMAGE WAS BELIEVED TO BE CAUSED BY THE COMBINATION OF ICE ACCUMULATION AND STRONG EAST WINDS, SOMETIME AFTER 2:30 OR 3 PM.

Covid cases have been going up in Michigan and now hospitalizations are starting to rise there, in contrast to most of the rest of the country. Obviously the impact will be less than if we weren't vaccinating at the rate we are but it is a sign that we better keep our foot on the vaccination gas pedal to avoid the same trend on a national scale.

3k new cases in Michigan, the highest daily number there since mid January. It sounds like there is a little blame game going on, with some blaming youth sports and others blaming other activities.

Real possibility that spring break travel helps spread the UK variant more across the country, so gotta keep our foot on the gas in terms of vaccinations. Will be paying attention to college campuses later this month and into April to see if there are outbreaks. They will offer some clues since almost no college age students would've received a vaccine yet. If we do see increased spread at college campuses, then hopefully the spread out into the community is mitigated by the number of vaccinations that have already occurred.

How long are we doing this drop the age by 5 years thing? At what point will it open up to people 16 or 18 and older? At least a couple states already have it that way.

We've been Spartman'd at 500 millibars. Show me the moisture return. It is often an issue at this time of year. Getting systems in close succession would help in that regard because it would make it less likely that moisture gets shunted extremely far south in between each system.