Hoosier

Not a whole lot of negatives with this setup. Really liking the potential, and added bonus for occurring during daylight.

New thread for today's severe weather:

Highs in the low 80s in what will be mid-August then. Oh the horror. Personally, June and July were summery enough for me. I don't care that much about how August turns out, but I doubt it will end up being that cold of a month in much of the sub.

Ok. I don't know what the hospital situation is like in Michigan, but if the numbers are good then maybe one could argue for limited opening of some of those places. Hopefully some good can come from all of this and people use it as an opportunity to try to get their health in check as much as possible. I supppement with vit D (especially in fall/winter when you can't really get adequate sun exposure), magnesium, and zinc for general health and to maintain healthy T levels. Been doing that long before covid came along but if it would help against that in some direct or indirect way, great. We have a ton of obese/morbidly obese people walking around in this country, which obviously doesn't help if you contract this virus. I check off a couple of the risk factor boxes myself... and they are not necessarily readily apparent when you look at me. I have been operating under the assumption that whatever I had in March was not this virus and am continuing to avoid higher risk situations to the best of my ability. Still have not physically been inside of a restaurant since February. I agree with the thinking that a majority of us will catch it (with many not realizing they had it) but my philosophy has been to try to delay it as much as possible. You never know if catching it down the road could alter the course of your illness (particularly for someone with one of the more severe cases if better treatment comes out) or possibly even save your life.

What is still closed in Michigan? Here's where we are in IN. Click the image if the print is blurry. We have been in what's called stage 4.5 for a while and my guess is it will probably be extended past August 27. Basically everything is open (or at least allowed to be open) with certain things at 50 or 75 percent limits.

Some D3 west of Des Moines...

Another 90+ at ORD

In terms of a singular event, I'd have to say the remnants of Cristobal is my personal highlight so far.

Anyone see the updated hurricane season forecast? Oof. Maybe we can get into the Greek alphabet again.

I think both places got the nursing home outbreaks under control. In general I know Sweden has had a more voluntary approach in dealing with the virus.

Really comes down to how much virus they are willing to tolerate. The infection rate there is low enough right now that it wouldn't surprise me if it takes a while to reseed enough for a big increase, but the counter to that the numbers can take off quickly in such a big city.

NYC schools opening may be beneficial in a way. Since that area had more widespread infection than the rest of the country, it may give a better idea of how prevalent that getting reinfected is. So far you hear some anecdotes here and there, but we should start hearing a lot more stories if immunity tends to wane within months.

After getting ravaged in the winter/spring, NY did a good job in beating it down. They have been running like 1% positivity rate there for quite a long time I think. It is the right decision to open the schools there, but obviously have to keep an eye on the data. Given what they went through, I would think they will have a hair trigger there if it trends too far in the wrong direction.

Bad timing as hardly any schools have reopened yet, outside of a district here and there. I saw that Chicago public schools will be doing all virtual learning. That will help keep the Illinois numbers lower than they would have been. Will be interesting to see what happens as we get into the fall and winter. There has been much speculation about the "2nd wave" as the seasons change. I think there is some merit to that, but a lot of the case trends with this are driven by how open a particular state is. Most states are going to be having in person schooling at least in parts of the state, so imo that additional "reopening" will be what sets off a 2nd round in areas that are currently at low levels.

Record daily number of confirmed cases in Indiana. Of course the positive percentage is important to look at as well. That has been hovering in the high single digits. Some states have gotten down to 1% or 2% positivity rate. Never really got it down as far in this state, but otoh, didn't spike as bad as some others. Been more of a slow to moderate burn.

In all seriousness, it shows the issues with the testing, particularly the rapid result tests. As a layperson, I am not sure if the technology is there to have highly accurate rapid result testing for this virus.

Well, one of them is right and one of them is wrong.

Valid concern. You'd need to be hypervigilant and not hesitate to shut it down. Online learning just isn't as good as in person. Maybe you can get away with that more for older kids... and that is assuming everybody has proper access.

It is walking a tightrope but I think you gotta try to open schools in areas where the virus is not currently out of control or on the verge of that, while allowing for a remote learning option.

Ohio governor tested positive but is currently asymptomatic https://www.whio.com/news/local/gov-dewine-tests-positive-coronavirus/TSZIR6U735GZBGCORZ3TQ2SH6Y/

Yeah, that doesn't make much sense. I had no idea that high school football was going to be happening because I have been reading stories of local schools cancelling contact sports. Perhaps my county is not representative of the rest of Indiana.

Wouldn't have stopped it, but there's pretty good reason to think we wouldn't be having 60k+ confirmed cases per day right now had some states been more careful with their reopening.

Was reading about the schools in Israel. Basically it sounds like they started out with precautions and restrictions on class sizes and then let up and fully opened schools.

We play with the cards we've been dealt.

Yeah I'm guessing those 2 studies are the reason for the change in position. In current hotspot areas where resources are already strained, it is pretty much a no brainer that you can't send the kids into school. Question is how to handle it in areas with less virus and there are no easy answers.