Hoosier

Incredible

Rural areas can get lost in the shuffle since the numbers aren't big, but something jumped out at me today. Warren county, which is just about the most rural county in Indiana, had an increase of 7 cases since yesterday. Doesn't sound like much, but it sticks out when the total number of cases in the county goes from 65 to 72 in a pandemic that has been around for over 6 months.

Quite cloudy. May put a lid on the top end wind potential unless it thins.

Unsurprisingly, another record case day in IN. Also starting to get some days of 30+ deaths, which was happening more often in spring.

I think you're onto something. In a weird way, if a really dire situation is inevitable, we should hope it gets really bad prior to Thanksgiving so that people modify their behavior before then.

May have to go fire chasing URGENT - FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Chicago IL 924 PM CDT Fri Oct 16 2020 ...DANGEROUS FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS LIKELY SATURDAY... ILZ023-032-033-039-INZ001-002-010-011-019-171030- /O.CON.KLOT.FW.W.0002.201017T1500Z-201018T0100Z/ Kankakee-Livingston-Iroquois-Ford-Lake IN-Porter-Newton-Jasper- Benton- 924 PM CDT Fri Oct 16 2020 /1024 PM EDT Fri Oct 16 2020/ ...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM CDT /11 AM EDT/ TO 8 PM CDT /9 PM EDT/ SATURDAY FOR SIGNIFICANT FIRE WEATHER RISK FOR PORTIONS OF EAST CENTRAL ILLINOIS AND NORTHWEST INDIANA... * Affected Area...Lake IN, Porter, Newton, Jasper, Benton, Kankakee, Livingston, Iroquois and Ford. * Winds...South 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. * Timing...Late Saturday morning through early Saturday evening. * Relative Humidity...As low as 22 percent. * Impacts...The combination of strong winds, very low relative humidity, mild temperatures, and exceptionally dry fuels will likely promote extremely dangerous behavior of any fires on Saturday. Any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly. Outdoor burning is not recommended. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now....or will shortly. A combination of strong winds...low relative humidity...and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior.

Difference between now and the summer is that it was basically 4 or 5 states really driving the big increase back then. Now it's more states.

I think I read that either North Dakota or South Dakota was down to 1 available ICU bed or something like that.

Had a nice looking rainbow a little while ago. Couldn't get a good shot of it because I was driving and there were some obstructions.

I think the only thing that could prevent us from having 100k case days in the coming weeks is if testing capacity stays about the same. Right now we are running around or sometimes a little over 1 million tests per day.

10,000 new cases in Italy. They were consistently under 2000 per day as recently as 3 weeks ago.

Did you notice on that same guy's twitter page, there's a link to a study that throws cold water on various treatments, including Remdesivir? That is disappointing. CONCLUSIONS These Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir and Interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on hospitalized COVID-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation and duration of hospital stay. The mortality findings contain most of the randomized evidence on Remdesivir and Interferon, and are consistent with meta-analyses of mortality in all major trials.

Recall that Chicago has never recorded back to back Octobers with measurable snow. Seems like it's going to be put to the test this year.

Just kinda tired of the arguments about masks and herd immunity. One of the anti-mask talking points is that 'well, Dr. Fauci said in March...'. Let's say you were told not to expect much of a refund on your income taxes, but then it turns out that you are getting $5,000. Will you accept it or turn it down because of what you were told earlier? As far as herd immunity, it doesn't take an epidemiologist to understand how that is not really an option. Some assumptions still need to be made about this particular virus due to its relatively short existence, but it seems plausible that immunity wears off after a period of months. That would more or less be in line with other coronaviruses. It does not appear to be like the chickenpox where if you get it once, you are just about guaranteed to not get it again (do have a risk of developing shingles later in life though). In order to try to execute a herd immunity strategy for covid-19, you'd have to get a tremendous number of people sick within a relatively short period of time before the immunity starts to wear off. Doing so would overwhelm hospitals, because non-trivial numbers of people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s need hospital care, even though they are very, very unlikely to die. Also, the more people that have the virus, the more likely it will inevitably spread to older/more vulnerable people no matter how hard you try to protect them. This has already been observed in the summer wave in the US, when the cases started out biased toward young people but then crept into the more vulnerable. So unless we are ok with needing widespread field hospitals (never mind the extra staff that would be required for that) and a large amount of needless deaths, herd immunity is not a sound strategy.

It was a larger statement on some of the tired arguments we have had to endure for months.

2300+ cases reported in Indiana today, which is a new record.

Sometimes, you just can't fix stupid.

LOT hitting the fire danger, especially for Saturday.

Thanksgiving, and especially the post-Thanksgiving period, is a looming disaster if people don't get creative with how to celebrate it or outright cancel plans. Particularly concerned about rural areas as they don't have as many medical resources to deal with outbreaks, and the advantage of being rural gets lost when gathering in groups. Some people will cancel the big gatherings with extended family, but I have a feeling that it will be replaced by a lot of 5-10 person gatherings. These are not as bad as larger ones in that you can't get 20+ people sick all at once, but the smaller gatherings are plenty capable of causing spread.

Italy rising very dramatically as well.

Except when this happens

A big 4k spot in Illinois cases today.

lol

I wonder how bad the Spanish flu fatigue was back then. I'm sure it existed, but I feel like people as a whole are more impatient now. Of course there were things going on with the Spanish flu that would've really been frightening, like having so many young/healthy people dying. Plus it was hard to keep up with the amount of deaths... there were literally bodies piling up in some instances. My great grandma -- who I don't even think was 30 at the time -- and her baby died and were buried in the same casket.

Statewide, we will be at April level hospitalizations/ICU numbers soon at the rate we are going. Right now it is at mid-May levels.