Coronavirus

[Stebo]

7 minutes ago, chances14 said:

cases continue to drop substantially here in Michigan. I'm really curious about when we could actually start seeing the effect of natural herd immunity starting to affect case numbers in certain areas that were hit hard previously. obviously the amount of actual infections among the general population are far more than what has been reported, especially in the early stages when testing was woefully insufficient

My guess is this drop is directly tied to the closure of restaurants. It is the only place where it is very hard to stay masked up 100% because of obvious need for them off for eating.

[Hoosier]

59 minutes ago, Stebo said:

My guess is this drop is directly tied to the closure of restaurants. It is the only place where it is very hard to stay masked up 100% because of obvious need for them off for eating.

We are dropping in Indiana too though with restaurants still open for the most part (some counties have cut capacity though).  I admit I am surprised that the Midwest as a whole started dropping this early, especially since we have the weather working against us.  Could be a combination of factors.

[purduewx80]

15 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Was hoping for some follow up on that.  Maybe a link or something.  D-luciferin is a real thing... it actually exists.  But the odds of it being in the vaccine in that amount, lol

Google it and you'll see the dark web is in deep. Luciferin, btw, is responsible for bioluminescence in bacteria, lightning bugs, etc. 

Surprise, surprise - they did not have their facts straight. 1 g of D-luciferin is dissolved in 66.6 mL of a phosphate...all it does is literally allow them to track how vaccines help our bodies develop antibodies. 

 

[Hoosier]

Hospitalizations are up in IN.  I went back and looked and it was last Tuesday when we had the 1 day increase, so maybe it is becoming a Tuesday thing because of some weekend reporting lags.  Prior to recently, we were rising pretty much every day so it was not as easy to pick out any lags in reporting.

[mattb65]

There's so sugar coating how bad the current wave of infections is. A 7 day average of over 2,500 deaths per day is hard to conceptualize.

But as others have noted, all signs point to us beginning on what should be a long and sustained reduction in new infections and soon a reduction in daily deaths until the pandemic is finally contained.

Evidence is clear that new cases are reaching a plateau, hospitalizations also appear to be nearing a plateau, deaths are still rising but in 2-3 weeks they should start to decline. With vaccinations starting to reach nursing home residents followed by those over 75, the rate of decline in deaths should accelerate as we move into late January/February. Hopefully by that point the vaccination will become more widely available so that the rate with more people vaccinated combined with seasonal changes hopefully we see the numbers declining enough to start removing a lot of the mitigation restrictions.

 

I see a lot of reason for optimism despite the current terrible state of the situation.

[dan11295]

2 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Hospitalizations are up in IN.  I went back and looked and it was last Tuesday when we had the 1 day increase, so maybe it is becoming a Tuesday thing because of some weekend reporting lags.  Prior to recently, we were rising pretty much every day so it was not as easy to pick out any lags in reporting.

A few other states showed big jumps w/hospital numbers today, NY +300, NC +100. 

California - Hospital 18,961 (+602) ICU 3,861 (+105) - Surpasses NY State April hospital peak (obviously still less per capita though).

LA County - Hospital 6,460 (+236) ICU 1,258 (+35)

[fujiwara79]

it appears the 2020 life expectancy will go down between 2-3 years.  2019 life expectancy was 78.8...they are expecting the 2020 life expectancy to be about 76.8.  biggest drop since world war II.  we've also experienced the biggest increase in deaths since the spanish flu in 1918.

if doctors are supposedly just switching the cause of death to covid, in order to get more reimbursement, how exactly does that explain the above?  (don't answer...it's a rhetorical question for the conspiracy theorists)

 

[StormfanaticInd]

There will be a Christmas surge unfortunately 

[Hoosier]

3 hours ago, Angrysummons said:

The "fast" strain of Covid is whats behind the fall outbreak, not unusual for a Viral timeline. Its already here and has been here for months. I suspect the collapse in cases over the first 4 months of 2021 will surprise some people. fwiw, California is behind due to weather.

I think the UK strain is probably in the US (people like Fauci and Gottlieb seem to think so) but we simply don't know yet if that was also behind the rapid fall explosion in the US.  Some investigative work should be able to answer that.

[jm1220]

3 hours ago, dan11295 said:

A few other states showed big jumps w/hospital numbers today, NY +300, NC +100. 

California - Hospital 18,961 (+602) ICU 3,861 (+105) - Surpasses NY State April hospital peak (obviously still less per capita though).

LA County - Hospital 6,460 (+236) ICU 1,258 (+35)

CA would have to roughly double its hospitalization numbers to make it to NY’s per capita since CA has almost double the population. But of course the outbreak in April was largely focused down here in the NYC area and the rest of the state wasn’t affected as much. 

[Hoosier]

My mom's cousin has covid.  She worked in healthcare and retired like 5 years ago but came out of retirement because of the situation.  Unclear if she contracted it at work or somewhere else, but the good news is that she is virtually asymptomatic and quite a bit of time has gone by (she had more than 1 positive test so she almost certainly really has covid).  

At the risk of restarting the conversation about the overweight/obese risk factor... this woman used to be like 300 pounds but lost about 150 pounds in the past year+.  Makes me wonder if her course of illness would've been different had she not lost all that weight.  One of those things where you're glad to never know.

[RyanDe680]

57 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

My mom's cousin has covid.  She worked in healthcare and retired like 5 years ago but came out of retirement because of the situation.  Unclear if she contracted it at work or somewhere else, but the good news is that she is virtually asymptomatic and quite a bit of time has gone by (she had more than 1 positive test so she almost certainly really has covid).  

At the risk of restarting the conversation about the overweight/obese risk factor... this woman used to be like 300 pounds but lost about 150 pounds in the past year+.  Makes me wonder if her course of illness would've been different had she not lost all that weight.  One of those things where you're glad to never know.

All the more reason to keep working out during this... or start a new regime!  

[StormfanaticInd]

Hospitalizations seem to be surging again which is not a surprise given California 

[dan11295]

Fist sign California's case numbers may be stabilizing: Today's cases came in less than last Tuesday (a number which was artificially low due to delays in lab reporting). If there is no big dump of cases like last week they may close to peaking in cases. Note that in cases per capita, they are now about where Wisconsin was at peak. Obviously tracking cases is not going to be very reliable shortly with Christmas and New Years next two Fridays.  Better to watching the hospital numbers.

[Hoosier]

Hospitalizations are up again in IN.  That is the first time in almost a month that there have been 2 consecutive days of increases.

[StormfanaticInd]

New York at almost 7k hospitalizations

[IWXwx]

It's been released that Indiana positivity rate has been under-reported by 2-3% from the beginning due a to computation error. The state's current 12.3% rate is probably 14-15%.  It brings to light what has been discussed concerning not trusting the numbers due to different jurisdictions computing statistics differently. Another case of the Feds not providing a common operating picture.

https://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20201223/state-positivity-rate-in-error

[StormfanaticInd]

Just now, IWXwx said:

It's been released that Indiana positivity rate has been under-reported by 2-3% from the beginning due a to computation error. The state's current 12.3% rate is probably 14-15%.  It brings to light what has been discussed concerning not trusting the numbers due to different jurisdictions computing statistics differently. Another case of the Feds not providing a common operating picture.

https://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/20201223/state-positivity-rate-in-error

Wow

[StormfanaticInd]

We seem to have a perfect storm brewing with this cold air outbreak just in time for Christmas and a potentially more contagious strain. 

[StormfanaticInd]

LA COUNTY WITH 16,525 CASES. 

[dan11295]

1 hour ago, Angrysummons said:

Not that impressive. Pretty clear they got so infected in the spring, the big surges are over there and just weeding out the remaining victims is all that is left. California is gonna plunge in January and by March, cases will be below 100,000 nationally.

I think California has hit their peak case level, which should allow for hospitalizations to stabilize in 7-10 days. I mentioned before per capita it was about the same level where Wisconsin peaked. Unfortunately we going to see some ugly numbers there for a while due to the large size of the population. The combination of the current wave ebbing combined with vaccinations ramping up should result in declining CFR after January and steadily declining cases. Unfortunately given the high caseload across the country combined with reporting delays another 100k+ deaths are probably baked in.

Not that alarmist over this "new strain" it may already be here as we doing do much genomic testing compared to the UK (May very well be why they found it first).

[dan11295]

7 minutes ago, StormfanaticInd said:

LA COUNTY WITH 16,525 CASES. 

There are about as many hospitalized now in LA County as NY State by the way.

[Hoosier]

Sounds like the African strain may even be more contagious than the UK one.

[A-L-E-K]

Sick

[StormfanaticInd]

We now have 119,463 hospitalizations. 

[dan11295]

Tomorrow should be fairly normal reporting wise, of course then Christmas and then New Years messes with a lot of the numbers. EDIT: Already see some states (I.E. MI) aren't reporting tomorrow.

Comparing summer cases/hospital peak to now, in summer 7-day cases average peaked 2-3 days before 7-day hospitalized average. Right now hospital numbers are still rising steadily despite an apparent case peak 5 days ago.

7-day hospitalization changes: 12/23 (+6,185) 12/16 (+6,573) 12/9 (+5,950). Our 7 day case average is now the same as 12/11. with an apparent 12/18 peak. Nationwide positivity has been basically flat per John's Hopkins. Would have expected hospital numbers to really plateau by now

[dan11295]

California Hospitalizations: 19,771 (+410) ICU 4,069 (+124)

LA County Hospitalizations: 7,000 (+180) ICU 1,364 (+38)

[Hoosier]

Another cousin of my mom has covid.  Has a fever, bad cough and loss of smell/taste.  He is late 60s and in a LTC facility.  He went into the hospital for a procedure in fall 2019, ended up having a lot of complications and spent months in the hospital before going to live with his daughter for a while until she just wasn't able to take care of him anymore.  He is in a better condition to fight covid now than he was a year ago but it's still kinda concerning.

[StormfanaticInd]

There is going to be a huge backlog dump next week or the week afterwards 

[dan11295]

20 minutes ago, StormfanaticInd said:

There is going to be a huge backlog dump next week or the week afterwards 

for sure.  Even hospitalizations numbers are a bit unreliable for this weekend. the California numbers are missing 9% of beds in LA County, for example.