ErinInTheSky

2 day drop in total hospitalizations in Maryland. Cheering on 14 days for a phase 1.

Might do another hike today and bring the kiddo. I have a trail next to my house that has virtually 0 traffic even on nice days like today.

Phin’s still going on? At this point it’s pretty clear what all of our opinions are on this. I don’t get the rationale to arguing over it. Public health experts are doing a decent job with what they’ve got, and if we want to get back to a normal we can tolerate (both economically and disease wise), there are 3 words: test, trace, and isolate. I saw there are potential plans for a 120,000 person contact tracing army being voted on in Congress. Hogan secured enough testing. Until we put the pieces together, things will be tough and no matter what governmental decisions happen, as you see in Georgia, people are going to stay away.

Flight path for the Blue Angels/Thunderbirds this weekend

My recipe of the day is Jambalaya. Cooking it up nice and spicy. What's everyone else munching on?

Exactly what I've been trying to say. People think "reopen" will bring back the economy roaring, and that the lockdowns are keeping the economy dead. In reality, all reopen is going to do is get people spreading again without much of an economic benefit.

Honestly it’s a good sign Georgians are still social distancing, it shows that the population has internalized the message enough to minimize the damage done by early reopening s in some states.

One week in, Georgia's reopening appears to be doing nothing. Most restaurants still closed, nail salons opening are not getting customers, etc. I've heard some reports on NPR and have seen a lot on social media about this (I do social media monitoring as part of my job).

I was going to go over the protocol and how they define it but... its just not worth it.

True enough. Annapolis rock was slammed this last weekend. I noped the heck out of that place and found a nice more relaxing and empty trail.

Now I think y'all are saying the same thing.

Oh lord. So many of those restaurants are walk up-wait in lines. I can imagine if it gets crowded on the beaches, there will be a LOT of people lining up and crowding the concession stand style restaurants there. At least if I'm remembering correctly from my one time there. At least that won't happen until phase 1, which we are still probably 14 days from assuming hospitalizations start dropping like they did today.

You're all over the place today Phin. Within the span of one hour, you said: - Not being on lockdowns does not increase the transmissibility, look at Denmark. - Being on lockdowns is not enough to lower the transmissibility and we will reach herd immunity on lockdown, look at us. They're mutually exclusive. Also there's no way on earth you get to herd immunity while on lockdown, that would take forever.

Yeah. % positive is an important metric to watch. Fauci was talking about it yesterday, how South Korea got theirs down to 3-5%. It's not going to be used as a metric for reopening though. Hospitalizations will be the main one, which went down today. However... given that what you said is correct re: percent positive, it makes me wonder if we're not about to see total hospitalizations go up in coming days as people got a bit lax this last warm weekend.

Yup. Total currently hospitalized dropped by 43 beds though which is promising!

Ah, didn't know that. Yeah, I think it's well known that any country doing massive testing, contact tracing, and isolation can reopen much better than countries that don't. Test, trace, isolate is the one, 3 word solution that has worked best for any country adopting it.

I think quote a few people have said it will take longer than a couple weeks to see any changes. It depends on what kind of habits people actually return to. Take Georgia for instance. They "reopened" but businesses, restaurants, etc are still dead and people are still mostly sheltering in place. It'll take a while for people to return to any semblance of normal economic activity, assuming they even do in the middle of a pandemic.

On that same note, I JUST got a message from my eye doctor basically begging people to come in, saying how safe they are being and how it's time for my annual eye doctor appointments. I think a lot of medical/dental/vision places are suffering pretty hard right now.

Its funny a few of us have noticed that. I think docs/hospitals are hurting because a lot of us are, understandably, quite nervous to enter into spaces where medical care is being given right now.

Side note: my son’s pediatrician is pushing reallllllly hard for people to come in for well visits. Like my kid needs his immunization shots before school but why the heck would I go in now instead of later?

Doesn’t surprise me that a few hospital administrators are speculating and trying to get their hospitals reopened. I have noticed that hospital systems are losing a ton of money. I still am paying attention, though, to public health experts.

1.42" in my part of Germantown. Meh.

You know what, I have one of those cookie doughs in a cans. It's getting made right now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com./local/new-coronavirus-cases-despite-shutdown/2020/04/30/a8e5685e-8566-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html?carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F28e6cf5%2F5eab2ef5fe1ff654c2c83708%2FYXJlZWQ0NC5sc3VAZ21haWwuY29t%2F8%2F57%2Fee333c6251089c09c108eea02af7d0a1&utm_campaign=wp_afternoon_buzz&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_buzz Very fascinating WaPo article on how transmission is still going on weeks into lockdown. Basically... essential workers, daycares for those workers, taking it home to their families, and general small family/small group transmission. Interestingly there seem to also be people getting infected with no known source of exposure, who have stayed indoors at almost all times and the few times they ventured out, wore masks and were very vigilant.