Hoosier

Yikes. My experience when going into places has been that almost everybody is wearing one (maybe I should check a Walmart for an apples to apples comparison ) but some people definitely aren't wearing them properly. By the way, Lake county's daily case number was higher than Marion county today, so I can't imagine what it would be like if I routinely saw 50% of people not wearing masks.

Spain announces new state of emergency as COVID infections soar MADRID, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced a new state of emergency on Sunday in an effort to curb soaring coronavirus infections, imposing local nighttime curfews and banning travel between regions in some cases. The measures go into force from Sunday night and will require all regions except the Canary Islands to impose a nighttime curfew and limit the number of people allowed to meet to six. "We are living in an extreme situation ... it is the most serious health crisis in the last century," he told a news conference following a cabinet meeting. https://news.trust.org/item/20201025140500-8md1q

Lockdowns should be a last resort, break the glass option. If we get to that point, it is our own fault.

This was a big problem to deal with, and I don't think anybody would've handled it perfectly. But even if you put aside the strategy/planning part, we have had frequent undermining of health officials from the top for months. That is an objective fact. It is easy to control your message.

The deaths are coming. The rise has already begun, and we'll probably be at an average of 1000 deaths per day in a couple weeks or so. It only goes up from there. The thing about it is that what may start out as an outbreak among the young doesn't stay there. This happened in the southern wave in the summer and it will creep into older/ more vulnerable populations this time too, aided by new factors such as kids returning home from college and holiday gatherings.

I know 7 or 8 people, but fortunately none became really seriously ill. A friend in Louisiana was diagnosed last week. She is doing ok but the sense of smell is like totally gone. She was making dinner and couldn't smell an onion that was right in front of her face.

I'd say most people don't personally know someone who died. So far it is something like one out every 1600 Indiana residents who have died.

It is no mystery why the Plains and Midwest have been spiking in covid cases. The weather has been changing and our restrictions in general are not as tough as a number of the northeast states. In some states, bars and restaurants are allowed to serve indoors at full capacity. Some don't even have a mask mandate and those that do aren't enforcing it as well as they could. Another thing is that it seems that people have developed this notion that a family member or close friend can't infect them... as if viruses work that way. My concern is that a lot of people will opt for smaller 5-10 person gatherings at Thanksgiving. Sure, you can't get 20 people sick all at once, but those gatherings are plenty capable of causing spread if one infected person is present.

Pritzker sounds like he's willing to get serious, but we'll see. https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/10/22/21528871/illinois-covid-case-record-high-deaths-pritzker-restaurants-oct-22

Obviously population and amount of testing have to be considered, but still, no country in the world has recorded 100,000 cases in a day. India has had some days over 90k. Friday November 6 may be a good candidate for the US to have 100k, but regardless, it appears to be an inevitable occurrence rather soon at this point.

Nasty trendline on hospitalizations in IN

1,280,000 tests came back yesterday.

Impressive

Hopefully the labs will be able to handle the increasing test load. I know there were some problems when the southern states surged bad in the summer. Running about 1-1.2 million tests per day in the US. What's going to happen if that goes up to 1.5 or 2 million?

I don't want to get too far into politics, but honestly, Joe Biden will only be able to do so much if he wins. From what I understand, it seems like a mask mandate probably cannot be enacted on a national level. So it would come down to convincing the governors to change course, and then you need to enforce it and have the population buy in. No easy task. As far as I am concerned, the horse is kind of out of the barn on masks. Maybe some people change their tune on masks if they get really sick or if someone close to them does, but that moves the needle at a snail's pace. The virus is going to be a substantial problem for a while, and I hope that people aren't under the impression that a change in president would suddenly make it all better.

Probably just me perceiving it wrong, but you almost sound giddy sometimes... lol Did you see Holcomb's comments the other day? He was almost setting it up as a binary choice between the current stage 5 and going back to March level closures/restrictions. Weird because it was just one month ago that we had some capacity limits on bars and restaurants. That is not ancient history. Anyhow, it tells me that nothing is going to be changing for a while.

Obviously we are still missing a good chunk of asymptomatic/very mild cases just about everywhere, but I think we could be missing even more than usual here in Indiana. I say that because something is not making sense. Take Wisconsin for example. They have been confirming an average of around 1.5x more cases per day than we have in Indiana, yet Indiana's current hospitalizations are almost 25% higher than Wisconsin. Unless there are some differences in hospital reporting, it is hard to figure why this is the case. Maybe it has penetrated into more of the vulnerable population in this state.

Another thing is immune health. It is not necessarily a static thing. It is something I have been wondering about. Say that the same individual person received the same viral load in the summer or winter (just to be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical situation that ignores immune memory to a previous covid-19 infection). Would they be more likely to have a more severe outcome in the winter, maybe because their vitamin D level or something else in the body is not as good as it was in summer?

The progged drastic drop in mobility in the next couple months is interesting. I wonder what is driving that projection? Is it that people will be taking it more seriously and choose to not move around as much or that stuff is going to close.

Indiana's hospitalizations are up by 137 over yesterday. The nationwide count has been rising by about 500-1000 per day, so that is saying something.

We officially pulled the plug on our Thanksgiving gathering. Normally have 20+ people sometimes closer to 30. I may get together with my mom and that's about it. Not even getting together with my sister and her family as they don't really follow the guidelines, but I have been seeing them every so often for the past several months so that doesn't really bother me.

Dang I wonder about the effectiveness of the lab produced antibody cocktails... Regeneron, etc. Similar concept but maybe not quite the same thing.

Eventually being the key word. It seems like it usually takes a while to see a meaningful impact since a lot of people live with someone else or multiple people. Sort of has to cycle through a household.

I didn't realize how much my county is spiking. I mean, I knew, but we are putting up daily case numbers that are in line with Marion county (Indianapolis) despite having half of the population. Not sure but I think Indianapolis still has the bar/restaurant capacity restrictions in place, so maybe that is why.

Bad The good news is that we have control over just how bad it gets. The bad news is that too many people aren't taking it seriously enough. The numbers are such that some of us here are going to lose a family member or friend to this virus this fall/winter. There are reasons for optimism the deeper we get into 2021 but it's going to be rough. Hopefully we at least have a good winter with lots of storm threats to help serve as a distraction. A ratter winter on top of a pandemic would be bad for the psyche of the board.