Hoosier

The vaccine rollout should eventually have trickle down benefits even for this. Get the case numbers down, free up hospital space, and then it should be easier to get this treatment to people in a timely manner.

What could possibly go wrong

00z HRRR looks decent with the lake stuff. May have to renege and do a second call.

Sometimes a rural county grabs my eye so I'll pick them out and watch for a while. Lately I have been watching Benton county, Indiana. As said, it's rural with about 8700 people and a population density of 21 people per square mile. 2 weeks ago, they had about 400 total confirmed cases. Now it's up to 635.

In an alternate universe.

I'll say before February 15.

There are signals for a period of better convergence and organization. I don't know about that depiction though.

They might have to whip out their vaccine card.

lol, perfect gif The Gulf is cut off prior to that with not a lot of time for return flow, so that depiction sort of makes sense. It does become more of a precip maker along the front after that.

Here's the chart for IN from Covid Tracking. Had the decreases and then suddenly, boom, +157 (which is not plotted yet). Curious to see if the other Midwest states will also report higher numbers today.

First and final call here: DAB to DAB+

Hospitalizations are up +157 in Indiana over yesterday. That is a large jump for a state of this size and not something I expected to see after the recent decreases. Really stands out. Almost makes me wonder if there were some recent reporting delays or something.

Even throws a weenie amount of snow up here. Ha This is solidly in the shorter range now so let's discuss it in the December thread...

Got an escaped prisoner alert on my phone. Don't recall getting one of those before. Amber alerts, yeah. This guy was being extradited from Texas and somehow escaped custody despite wearing a belly chain, cuffs and leg restraints.

Pack in, as in 100% capacity? Tough to say as it could vary by state/location. I don't think stadiums will all of the sudden go to 100%. Probably start out with some capacity restrictions and then gradually increase attendance over time.

We may have to vaccinate all over again even without significant mutations. At this point we have no idea how long that protection from the vaccine will last. The trial groups that received it months ago will have to be monitored for decreasing immunity.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55308211

Interesting thought exercise to play out what 2021 may look like. Obviously would expect an overall downward trend (but painfully slow for a while) with more and more people getting vaccinated and then seasonality eventually helping out. This thing is very opportunistic though, so I wouldn't expect that we get through 2021 without some flare-ups in the US. A time to watch is if/when places lift the mask mandates and really fully reopen with more people returning to in-person work, fans packing stadiums, etc.

You're a mean one, Hoosier grinch.

Enjoy it while it lasts. It melts a few days later.

No idea how to find out, but I'd be curious to know if there has been any drop in indoor dining/bars in Indiana in the past few weeks. Like a self-imposed avoidance since they are mostly allowed to be at 100%. There are a few counties that have capacity limits though, like Marion (Indianapolis) and I think Allen (Ft. Wayne) so wouldn't be fair to look at those.

rt.live updated with new values. Here they are for the states you mentioned: CA: 1.16 IN: 1.02 WI: 0.98 MI: 0.96 MN: 0.96 IL: 0.95 Interesting to see the Midwest slowly dropping overall even with Thanksgiving (but it hasn't been enough to offset the rises in other parts of the country). Really makes you think about all the factors at play. More hunkering down? More mask wearing/hand sanitizing? Stricter admission criteria into hospitals? Some threshold being reached where enough people have already been infected and mostly taken out of the "pool" for now, thus cutting into transmission rates? Maybe a combination of things.

My cousin the hospital administrator is getting the vaccine in a few weeks. She had the option of getting it this week but opted to go in another group. It is being done in phases so as to not vaccinate everyone at once in case people need to take a day or two off of work. She gets the flu shot but even she is a little bit nervous about the covid vaccine. I think it's an understandable feeling with something that is new, even though vaccines in general aren't new of course.

I'm sure Detroit will beat their Feb 2015 storm total one day... because they have before. For Chicago the 2015 storm was great, but doesn't quite live up to the 2011 storm. I realize there are places where that is not the case. 2011 storm in Chicago: 21.2" (locally up to 24"), 60-70 mph peak gusts 2015 storm in Chicago: 19.3" (locally up to 22"), 40-50 mph peak gusts

I think even the east coast weenies would be impressed by GHD 2011 in Chicago. Legit ridiculous conditions with 60-70 mph wind gusts, hail, thundersnow, etc. Unfortunately, getting GHD and then GHD junior in Chicago only 4 years later is not a typical frequency of such huge snows.