Hoosier

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.

What about possible differences in quality of care? It is penetrating into rural America more than ever.

Let's do it.

Yes. Now we are running 1 million tests or a bit more per day on most days, which is more than summer. Nationwide, current hospitalizations are about 70% of peak hospitalizations in summer. On another note... regarding halloween, it seems like towns around here are generally continuing with trick or treating as usual. I sort of break it down into 3 categories of risk: 1) door to door trick or treating with a parent/child: relatively low risk. Face to face interactions are a one time thing and brief. I guess the wild card is how much transmission can occur from touching contaminated objects and then the mouth (in this case candy wrappers) but this doesn't seem to be a major method of transmission. Maybe the bigger concern would be a kid touching a contaminated wrapper and then rubbing their nose/eyes. 2) door to door trick or treating in larger groups: more risk. Face to face interactions at each house are still brief, but the group of people will be near each other for an extended period of time. Outdoors helps of course. 3) indoor halloween parties. Highest risk category for obvious reasons of people being indoors for a length of time. That being said, still way more concerned about what happens with Thanksgiving if people hold their gatherings.

Good stuff... basically confirms what has been said about two way protection but more benefit in reducing outward transmission.

After seeing that, we probably are headed for a single day case record tomorrow.

Nice day after a not so nice start.

Yeah it has been a sharp rise in the past 2-4 weeks in the states you mentioned. On September 22, IN had 759 hospitalizations. On October 22, it has doubled to 1515. IN population: 6.7 mil IL pop: 12.6 mil TX pop: 29 mil

Hospitalizations statewide surpassed 1500 for the first time since late April/early May.

Over 2800 new cases in IN. Test positivity rate continues to trend up as well. Lately we have been having our highest case numbers on Fri or Sat, so worse is probably yet to come.

Yeah our "lockdown" was pretty tame compared to some other places. I would say some other places went too extreme. I don't remember the stay at home orders from spring being enforced to any great extent. I do remember reading about some cases in which they would tack on a charge of violating the order if someone was pulled over for something else (like drunk driving), but generally speaking they weren't looking to pull people over for no reason.

Went to the store to buy some zinc and they were out of stock. Every brand, every type, all gone. I have taken a zinc supplement for years and can't recall it ever being out of stock. I spoke to an employee and she said it has been gone for a while and she doesn't know when they will get more because of supply issues. I haven't had to buy zinc since the pandemic began so not sure if it has been this way all these months or if it is a more recent problem. Hopefully it won't be as hard to find as toilet paper was.

Does the rollback carry any fine for those places or is it pretty much toothless?

Share some of that wild October weather. Been a pretty benign month here so far.

The last 3-7 days or so appears to be the early onset of the increase in deaths nationally.

Indeed. The risk ought to be thought of as a continuum. If you are 10 feet away from an infected person in a relatively small/enclosed area for 2 hours, there's a significant chance of contracting it (especially if no masks).

Multiple brief exposures to an infected person can be a problem https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e1.htm#contribAff

Some updated numbers

There's multiple variables but I do think the change in weather is playing a role in the dramatic rising numbers in the northern states. People need to consider modifying their behavior to really get the numbers down. In those states, you may have been able to get away with going to the bar or having a gathering before, but now it's more likely you are going to encounter somebody who is carrying the virus.

As far as knowing more now than in spring, one thing that comes to mind is ventilators and how the harm outdoes the benefit sometimes. Out of curiosity, I went back through the hospital data archives for Indiana and you can see the downward trend in ventilator use. I am assuming that being on a ventilator for covid-19 means that a person is also in the ICU. Looking at the ICU and ventilator numbers, the percentage of patients on ventilator in the ICU was around or even sometimes well over 50% back in April. On October 20, it was about 34% (141 out of 412 on a ventilator in ICU).

Nationwide hospitalizations are closing in on 40k, which is what they were in Aug.

You know what's going to happen, right? Some of those people are just going to go to Cook county, which for now is still going to have indoor dining/bars. Interesting article here. Pritzker and Lightfoot are saying different things about the bars. Chicago is saying there isn't much spread coming from bars, while Pritzker says it is a significant source of spread in Illinois, and they are generally regarded as one of the highest risk places. https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/10/20/bars-linked-to-coronavirus-spread-across-illinois-state-officials-say-after-city-defends-indoor-service/

Fellow Hoosiers... Here was Gov Holcomb response when asked about the surging cases/hospitalizations... We asked Governor Eric Holcomb what it would take to reverse Phase 5, but the response wasn’t exactly clear. “We have the capacity to care. So, when that starts to become threatened, that capacity to care, then we’ll look at additional measures,” said Governor Holcomb (R). https://fox59.com/news/experts-say-indianas-surge-in-covid-19-cases-positivity-rates-and-hospitalizations-concerns-us/amp/ .......... So the question with that is what are the trigger points? How low would hospital bed availability have to get? Also, some areas of the state will run into trouble faster than others, so is it up to the local/county leaders to be on top of it and pull the trigger on restrictions?

Partly the weekend lag but 48 new deaths reported in IN. We were getting numbers like that in the spring.