Hoosier

Well this will be interesting. If you want to dine-in at a restaurant in Washington state, you will have to provide your contact info so they can reach you for contact tracing in the event that someone ends up getting sick. I have a feeling we are not going to see that policy in many red states. Just a hunch. https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/to-reopen-washington-state-restaurants-will-have-to-keep-log-of-customers-to-aid-in-contact-tracing/?fbclid=IwAR0XczlZRtJkXhb5l_EtwY1JDZMZHQzRxtZeamndkfAdEtFQyuVBeoNEToU

That's pretty good. I don't think IN has run more than about 6k-7k in a day (most days lower) and we have half your population.

Cook county always puts up big numbers of course, but it looks like the Rockford area shot up a lot percentage wise.

Saw a graph showing dine-in attendance at restaurants in some southern states that have reopened. The numbers are way down, even accounting for the capacity limits that are in place. Going to be important to thrive on takeout and outdoor seating, which obviously not all will be able to do.

Speaking of that, I may never go to the barber again lol. Have cut my own hair a couple times since this started and did a pretty good job if I must say so myself. Barber does cut it quicker but I think I would get more time efficient with continued practice.

Anecdote time but my aunt told me she witnessed an elderly woman with a cane being heckled for wearing a mask inside of a store. I mean really? That is the type of person who should be more concerned about this virus. Why is a mask triggering people?

So Lake county IN begins phased reopening tomorrow... joining most of the rest of IN which began last Monday. Still another week until restaurants can open for dine-in at reduced capacity here, but most of IN can start dine-in at reduced capacity tomorrow. City of Gary has a stay at home order until May 15, but let's be honest, it is not really enforced. There is not much to stop a Gary resident from traveling to a neighboring town to do something that they can't do in Gary. I have read a few stories from around Indiana about people being pulled over for a DUI or whatever and then having the stay at home violation tacked on, but that is more of an incidental thing as it's not the original reason for being stopped. Hope things turn out well. Based on what I have read in other states that have begun reopening, there are some businesses that are choosing not to reopen even though they can. Wonder if I will see the same thing around here.

Definition of pandemic is an infectious disease that spreads across multiple continents or the world. Based on that, I'm not sure how this doesn't meet the definition. It started in China and spread across much of the world. You could maybe argue that the seasonal flu is "pandemic", but generally it's not considered to be as it tends to appear simultaneously across regions and not originate in one place and spread out.

I have been monitoring my county's dashboard of cases and there are now only a couple towns without any deaths... and they are the least populated/rural ones (one has a couple thousand residents and the other only has a couple hundred residents). Even those towns have a few cases though. Not surprisingly, about 98% of cases are in the more populated northern half of the county as much of the southern 1/2 is rural.

Roy from Siegfried and Roy died.

Plan to reopen Chicago https://abc7chicago.com/coronavirus-chicago-reopening-plan-restore-illinois-protecting/6162864/

Yeah that is fairly surprising, at least to me. Especially with mask wearing in the South outpacing the Midwest. Not really sure why that would be. Maybe people there perceive a higher sense of risk since obesity and diabetes are generally more prevalent? I think some states in the South also started reopening some things earlier. Places in the South have been getting a lot of media attention for various reasons (New Orleans, Florida, Georgia) but there are areas in the Midwest that have been too (like Detroit and Chicago). Interesting.

Anecdotally I was noticing more traffic around here few weeks ago and then cell phone tracking data came out that backed it up (not just here but in much of the nation). People are being more mobile now. There is definitely stay at home fatigue.

Why am I seeing that the South Carolina stay at home order ended on Monday, 2 days ago?

Some of the early stuff that came out was actually suggesting that higher vitamin D could be a problem because of what it does with the ACE2 receptor. Vitamin D has so many health benefits though that imo you are better off getting a good amount than not.

Man these numbers just suck. Seems like it's going to take forever to consistently get under 1000 deaths/day in the US. Will we ever get there with things beginning to reopen?

Also noticed that ICU bed usage crept up. Not by much but obviously have to watch those numbers extremely closely, even on a county by county level.

On another note, Indiana put up one of its highest case numbers today, with a positive percent test rate still hovering around 18%. 2 days after starting to reopen so none of that would be accounted for yet.

Highly doubt 50,000 out of 180,000. You would expect NYC area to pretty much have the highest rate given the population density, mass transit, etc. and even their antibody percentage is only twenty something percent I think.

Maybe a bit more geographical (northern states doing "better" than farther south) but can see some political factors as well. Here's a map of governors

Novel virus that spreads easily. There could be a bit of a seasonal aspect but I think how we decide to live in the coming months is going to be the bigger factor in what happens. imo, having restrictions in colder temps vs having little or no restrictions in warmer temps would actually result in more cases in the latter scenario. I think any seasonal aspect just gets drowned out at a certain point.

https://news.yahoo.com/mutant-coronavirus-emerged-even-more-110046843.html

So the drunk driving comparison to covid-19 is problematic of course since drunk driving is not a contagious virus with potential for exponential growth, but it does show that we are willing to "tolerate" a certain number of deaths without banning cars. With many states reopening now or soon, the governors are getting to that point with covid-19. I was 100% on board with shutting things down, but even I think that it is time to start reopening where the hospital situation allows for it. How much and how fast to do it is the tricky part of course since cases can start increasing pretty fast. Personally for me in Indiana, I would've liked to beat back our curve more than we did before starting to reopen so many things at once, but it is what it is and we can only hope that hospitals can continue to handle the load without even getting close to being overwhelmed. Regarding the death toll, I am not going to argue that you can find deaths that were inappropriately labeled as covid-19. But you have to remember how this was spreading basically unchecked for a while in the US. In the final analysis I think we will find that we undercounted US deaths by thousands or even tens of thousands up to this point.

JB Pritzker apparently not a fan of Indiana reopening https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/id-rather-be-from-here-than-there-pritzker-on-indiana-reopening/2266349/

This is kinda interesting. Scientists at UW sequenced the virus and found distinctions between the virus circulating in Milwaukee and the virus circulating in Madison with limited mixing... so far. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/05/04/genetics-support-wisconsin-stay-home-order-find-coronavirus-clusters/3078539001/