Hoosier

HRRR even has mid-upper 60s here tomorrow... warmer than other guidance but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it entirely. Have seen many times when early season warmth overperforms, whether it is due to the lack of vegetation or whatever.

It's "is it allergies or covid" season pretty soon. Kind of on that subject, I just went through about a 5 day period of pretty bad fatigue and minor sinus issues. Nothing changed with my sleeping habits or activities -- I do full body weight training 3 days a week and usually some very light dumbbell or band movements on the in between days. It went away on its own but I don't know what the hell it was. I was on high alert for any other symptoms especially any change in smell/taste but that remained perfect. Just the way life is in the covid world.

69% of adults have or intend on getting vaccinated when it becomes available to them. Good, but maybe not enough for true herd immunity. That survey doesn't include kids, who generally won't be able to get a vaccine for quite a while. https://news.yahoo.com/u-embraces-covid-19-vaccines-223658707.html

Sad that we're in a situation where 1500+ deaths per day is looked at in a favorable way, but it looks "good" since the peak was so high. Would almost never see a daily average like that for the flu, except for the once or twice in a lifetime flu pandemics.

Not discounting a sharp drop... I just don't think it will be enough to hit the IHME scenario. We are in a cruel math game where you can take the number of hospitalizations and multiply by a certain percentage (or range of percentage) and come up with approximate deaths per day. Perhaps the formula won't work as well going forward as the 65+ age cohort may start to account for a lower proportion of the hospitalization numbers compared to the past year (if you assume a higher percentage of that age group will take the vaccine compared to younger people). My guess is we are looking at 600k by the end of June, but would be happy to be wrong.

IHME updated with a relatively optimistic projection of 576k deaths by July 1. Considering where we are now, it would take a sharper drop in deaths than what we've been seeing to not exceed that total. Probably going to average over 1000 deaths per day for another few weeks, then hopefully dropping below that. And I think it won't be until a couple weeks after hospitalizations drop below 25k that we'll get average daily deaths down to around 500, so still a ways off for that.

Not exactly true. In the trials, the vaccines are near 100% in preventing hospitalizations/deaths, but there have been some "severe" covid cases in those vaccinated people. Of course I would think a severe covid case would require some hospital time, so I'm not sure how they are classifying that. I totally get not wanting to get a vaccine back in December/January, since rare side effects can slip by in the trials (which we saw to some extent with the anaphylaxis reactions that didn't really show up in trials) but I think the fear of the "unknowns" about the vaccines becomes a harder position to stand by with the passage of time. That being said, I do think it should still be a personal choice to get one, with a strong public education campaign to try to get as many as possible to take it.

The safety data from most age groups seems pretty well-established at this point. Your side effects are generally going to show up in hours/days, maybe in certain cases weeks later but very unlikely beyond that. While we're on this subject, the vaccine is apparently good enough for Trump, who reportedly got vaccinated in private a couple months ago. If we take that to be true, why do it like that? Him taking it in front of the cameras would've been a powerful message to skeptical people. The only reasons I can come up with are that he wishes he had a more muscular looking arm or that he likes perpetuating the divide, since a disproportionate number of the covid vaccine skeptics are from that side.

Never totally eradicated the strip of D1 in IL/IN over the course of winter. Look at that coverage out west though.

Today is the 60 year anniversary of the March 4, 1961 tornado that tracked across the south side of Chicago (the track was a bit north of the infamous 1967 Oak Lawn tornado). This is one of the more noteworthy tornadoes in the city's history as it caused quite a bit of damage, injured over 100 people and killed 1. It is the earliest in a calendar year that a tornado has been documented in Chicago, and it managed to track all the way to the lake despite the time of year and what would've been a cold water temp. Here is a report that was co-authored by Dr. Fujita. The way it is put together is sort of a product of the time, but there are some good damage/eyewitness descriptions in there... flipped/tossed cars, ears popping, etc. There are no known pictures of the tornado but there were multiple sightings of a funnel. https://swco-ir.tdl.org/handle/10605/261774

Well, if it is based on "extensive social science research with partners and the public", then I'll wait to pass judgment. People like us are a very small slice of the public. If the changes help with the messaging for the masses, then that is a good thing.

Is Judah using something other than 1981-2010 averages? I'm not saying the map below is perfect, but it is significantly different.

You'd have to be living under a rock to not know that obesity is a major risk factor for serious illness from covid. Then again, perhaps I shouldn't underestimate the general obliviousness of the population.

So when you look at numbers per million, Florida has a higher death rate than California but California has more cases. I don't know for sure but I am going to guess that Florida has a higher percentage of senior citizens in their population than California, which doesn't help in this situation.

In some ways the deaths that occur in the next month or two are the most tragic. Help is here or on the way very soon but it's not going to get to everybody in time. I'm not sure what will happen with the statewide numbers in the states that are ending the mask mandates (will the declines slow or will the numbers actually go back up) but I do know it is a silly decision to make at this point. A finish line of sorts is in sight. It has been shown multiple times that areas with greater masking tend to do better than areas with less masking... this has even been demonstrated at the county level in certain states where mask counties have less transmission than non-mask mandate counties. Less masking ends up putting the community at higher risk and despite the progress, we are not at the point where all of the more vulnerable who want a vaccine have been able to get one. It does sound like local/county officials will have the ability to enact masking/other restrictions in Texas. If that's the case, that is a bit of positive news.

I would've gone with that grade if we had that longevity of snowpack here, but we didn't, despite not being all that far away.

I'd go with a B. Had 2 double digit storms and a pretty epic several week stretch. Usually that would be good enough for a higher grade, but I have to penalize the incredibly slow start in December and into January. It wasn't simply a mediocre start... it was terrible. A big late winter storm could still raise the grade a bit, but not really counting on that.

Scientists inch closer to explaining the mysterious 'brain fog' symptom of COVID-19 As larger numbers of people recover from COVID-19, researchers are learning more about "brain fog" in those affected by the virus. For months, doctors and researchers have been aware of a range of longer-term symptoms afflicting people after recovering from an active COVID-19 infection. One such symptom, generally referred to as "brain fog," can take the shape of confusion, difficulty thinking and concentrating, short-term memory loss, and in severe cases, has even been reported to cause delirium and psychosis. While scientists still don't know for sure what causes brain fog, they're zeroing in on a few theories. Mainly, scientists increasingly believe brain fog happens when cells that are involved in response to an infection make their way to atypical places, such as the brain. A key finding emerged when researchers autopsied brains of COVID victims, discovering certain cells that shouldn't have been there. These large cells, known as megakaryocytes, might be taking up precious space, leaving less room for blood to pass to the brain. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-inch-closer-explaining-mysterious-brain-fog-symptom/story?id=76184080

We'll be able to compare the states doing away with mask mandates to the others in coming weeks. Whether or not they actually see a spike, if their decline slows down more than the mask states, then we'll be able to point toward the mask mandate removal as a likely reason.

It's fabulous that the metrics have gotten a lot better since the peak, but there is virtually no downside to keeping the mask mandates in place for another month or two. We have been in this for a long time, so let's see it through. The vaccines look to be available to every adult by the end of spring. Even if a governor/state doesn't want to wait all the way until then, there are still plenty of 65+ year olds in this country who have not been able to receive a vaccine yet.

Spring break cometh

I wonder what will happen first. 20 Republican governors ending their mask mandates or the first Dem governor ending it. Kidding

Those numbers seem high even when accounting for larger population. More contagious variant going around there?

At this time of year, I almost always look at dewpoints first to see whether it is worth spending much time looking at a setup. And, well, they're not that great in this sub as you pointed out. The other thing is mid-level lapse rates since great mid-level lapse rates can compensate for lower dews, but the lapse rates don't look that great at this point. Would like to see a setup like this a little later in the season, but oh well. I'll probably watch it anyway since nothing else is going on. Even a lower end threat would be better than nothing to hopefully serve as an appetizer for better days to come.

Texas had lower hospitalizations in the fall than what they have now. So why didn't they withdraw the mask mandate in fall?