Hoosier

Been contemplating some things about the vaccines. The timing of this phased rollout raises some questions going forward. First of all, nobody yet knows how long that protection from the vaccine may last. For the sake of argument, let's assume it becomes a yearly shot like the flu vaccine. Will they try to get people on a fall schedule similar to the flu shot? From a practical standpoint, it kind of makes sense. Obviously there would be less than 1 year between the time that people get the covid vaccine and fall 2021 though. There's been polls about Americans' willingness to get a covid vaccine, but one question I'd like to see asked is whether people will get it as soon as it becomes available to them or if they will wait until fall 2021. Could have people lie of course and say they will get it and then not follow through, but would be interesting to see the responses to that question.

On the plus side, the wet look that is familiar in La Nina. So you'd roll the dice and hope for the best.

We can always go to Alaska.

Good thing this is the CFS suck time of month. Plenty of time to cool off for January. Obviously you can get away with some warmth and still have a snowy month, but it just becomes a harder task the warmer the anomaly is. Would need to have great timing and not waste the cold when there is some.

Not much better here, but man, you really should be doing better.

Might finish in 3rd place for the whole year of 2020, and we've only really been counting since March.

0.0"? Not even light scraps?

rt.live has California with the highest Rt value in the country at 1.23. That no workie.

Today broke the streak of declining hospitalizations in Indiana. It was +25 though, so not really a huge jump.

Thanks for your thoughts RC.

Oh I know how it's probably gonna go down. On some level I do understand the concept of having a high profile person getting vaccinated as a play for the greater good, even though it may be better off going to someone else (say if LeBron James were to get vaccinated on camera). I hope we don't see like the entire NBA getting it in January though.

Fwiw, I generally agree with that Jan-Feb progression. Overall, temps and storm tracks may be more hostile in February.

300k seems like a stretch for this week. I do think this week is when we start seeing some 3000+ death days.

Cumulative December 2017-2019 stats at ORD: Temps: +3.8F Snow: 8.7" (avg amount in 3 Decembers: 24.6") And this was with a somewhat serviceable December 2017. 2018 and 2019 were just total disasters.

High correlation between bad hair dye jobs and contracting covid.

Yeah, I was talking about a reported number of 300k.

Hopefully the vaccines are rolled out and prioritized the right way. We all remember how pro athletes and other well-connected people had better access to testing early on. Would be even more infuriating if they get to cut in line to get vaccinated.

Now 300k is the new unthinkable.

Info on the hospital situation in northwest IN. Toward the end it mentions something that was brought up in this thread... sending people home with pulse oximeters and monitoring them remotely. https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-covid-indiana-hospitalized-st-1206-20201204-qhflvrxwpbdoxpgqa2pibiflfe-story.html?outputType=amp

For the majority of the sub, I don't see a whole lot to be excited about until at least Christmas. You can rarely shut the door entirely because it is possible to stumble into a snowstorm in the midst of a bad pattern, but yeah, it's not good.

That's kinda what I was getting at earlier. The volume of people getting discharged -- alive or dead -- starts to approach or even outpace the new hospital admissions. I think it's especially true where your rate of transmission value is like 1.0-1.1. If rate of transmission is too high, then new hospitalizations will tend to outpace the discharges since people with covid tend to be in the hospital for a while.

Here's the case and hospitalization data for Indiana, courtesy of Covid Tracking. Looking closely, we actually started plateauing and then slightly dipping in the days immediately before Thanksgiving. And then the bigger and probably fake "dip" on/immediately after Thanksgiving. But as you can see, we are now essentially back to where we were about a week to 10 days before Thanksgiving. If the upward trend in cases continues and does not result in the hospitalization numbers rising, then it would suggest something changing with the criteria for admission.

Last Saturday had a holiday hangover, so not really useful to look at. If you go back to Saturday the 21st, there were over 175k cases. Today will be over 200k.

Keep an eye on the number of new admits to the hospitals as well. Covid Tracking provides that data, but only some states report it. Ideally, that number would trend consistently downward. As I said yesterday, if the reason that the current hospital census is dropping in some states is because the number of deaths (you are released from the hospital if you die, of course) has reached the point that it is tipping the numbers, that is a hollow victory and only good from a capacity standpoint. Recent data on new admissions for IN: 12/4: 436 12/3: 382 12/2: 430 12/1: 406 11/30: 386 11/29: 303 11/28: 389 Recent data on new admissions for Ohio: 12/4: 392 12/3: 396 12/2: 436 12/1: 585 11/30: 357 11/29: 245 11/28: 302

If you set it at 1 in 5 since October 1 and add that onto the estimate ending September 30, it would mean an actual number of cases around/over 90 million.