COVID-19 Talk

[showmethesnow]

36 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

One essential requirement for "reopening" the economy- which we still don't have- is widely available, fast testing. IMO it would be very difficult to execute otherwise.

I think we are getting pretty close in that regard. And unlike the WHO test which needs to be sent to a lab to grow enough virus to test we will be seeing Johnny on the Spot testing where we can get results in hours if not minutes. Really think that will not be an issue when we do start ramping the country back up.

[jaydreb]

19 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Wow that is quite a bit different. Lets hope this is how it plays out in reality.

I hope so too.  One major caveat is that the model assumes complete social distancing through the end of May.  

[ravensrule]

1 hour ago, mappy said:

MD updates of 10am

seeing chatter online about cases being lower than the previous day. don't let this lure you into a false sense of security. confirmed tests are lagged due to the time it takes a test to come back with a result. numbers we see today are from those who were tested last week, if not longer. 

 

These numbers are beyond dumb. I know tons of people who have Covid-19 but haven't been tested. 

[Round Hill WX]

https://www.worldometers.info
 

Interesting data in this link. Scroll down to the health category...really puts coronavirus into perspective relative to other deaths, as well as the reaction relative to the destruction in the world economy. 

[Birds~69]

Is it me or when the host of major networks (CNN, FOX, MSNBC) ask a question to doctors, specialist etc much of the time when they respond the first thing they say is "That's a great question" "That's a good question"....it's as if they are stalling. 

[Rhino16]

2 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

Is it me or when the host of major networks (CNN, FOX, MSNBC) ask a question to doctors, specialist etc much of the time when they respond the first thing they say is "That's a great question" "That's a good question"....it's as if they are stalling. 

Maybe it’s to give the other people in the room, and everyone watching in general a good idea of what type of question to ask. Some people may be afraid to ask, and that little compliment may push the person that’s a little more shy to ask.

[NorthArlington101]

Is it me or when the host of major networks (CNN, FOX, MSNBC) ask a question to doctors, specialist etc much of the time when they respond the first thing they say is "That's a great question" "That's a good question"....it's as if they are stalling. 

As if you don’t need two seconds to gather your thoughts. I’d also argue that everyone at those press conferences makes similar statements acknowledging questions they like or dislike, but that’s as far as I’ll go on that note!

[jaydreb]

5 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

As if you don’t need two seconds to gather your thoughts. I’d also argue that everyone at those press conferences makes similar statements acknowledging questions they like or dislike, but that’s as far as I’ll go on that note!

Everyone does it.  From the doctors and politicians it’s usually “thanks for that question” or “good question.”   Sometimes it’s “that’s a nasty question.”  

[Inverted_Trough]

1 hour ago, showmethesnow said:

You are a lost cause. After this post I am pretty much done responding to you. Can't argue/debate someone that selectively chooses which facts he wants to believe and which they want to ignore all for the sake of their hatred for one man.

You're done responding because you can't argue anything that counters your political narrative.

1 hour ago, showmethesnow said:

China basically gave the rest of the world the big old middle finger with withholding this information on the virus a month+. And that is probably understating what they did considering we are talking 100's of thousands, if not millions of deaths can be laid at their door. This doesn't even take in account they have basically shut down a majority of the world for several months. And if reports of earlier cases in November are in fact true there is the potential that China was even aware of this problem upwards of 3 months before releasing that.

China's role in withholding information certainly needs to be investigated.  I prefer to see analysis and evidence, which as time goes on will come out.  You've obviously drank the Kool-Aid and have gone into conspiracy theory mode so I think you've lost all objectivity on this issue.  

My focus has been on what we did or didn't do to contain this.  Perhaps you can tell me how China

• Bungled our testing apparatus
• Made us complacent, believing "it's just the flu" for six weeks while the virus was spreading in the midst
• Responsible for our general lack of strategy, to the point where we couldn't even test-isolate-trace effectively (Public Health 101)

Since you won't be able to answer, I'l do it for you:  They had nothing to do with any of that.

[showmethesnow]

Pulled this from an article.

____________________________

Barrasso reacted to White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the state should be implementing stay-at-home orders.

“The tension between federally mandated versus states rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into, but if you look at what is going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that in their state,” Fauci said.

_____________________

I admit I LOL at Barrasso's response.

_____________________

“We do have a state of emergency in Wyoming. Anyone coming into our state, there is a 14-day quarantine. People are staying at home,” the Republican Wyoming senator told “Fox & Friends.”

“But remember that people are spread out here. We only have about five people per square mile. We have been socially distancing the entire 130 years that we have been a state,” 

 

[CAPE]

Looks like baseball season will start soon, just not here. Might be a preview of how things will go here later in summer, assuming things progress according to the latest model projections.

Can the U.S. return to sports soon? South Korea might offer clues

Quote

Today, the KBO is much more: a test case being watched by sports leagues around the globe. As seasons in almost all sports are postponed indefinitely, and as increasing numbers of people lock down to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Korean baseball is forging ahead with a plan to take advantage of its country's thus-far-successful response. Exhibition games between KBO teams are scheduled to begin April 21. Following six preseason games, the regular season could begin.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28998585/can-us-return-sports-soon-south-korea-clues

[Inverted_Trough]

17 hours ago, PhineasC said:

South Korea is radically different from the US. First, they are homogeneous. They all share the same culture. There are far less ethnic, social, and economic gaps in their society. Second, they are collectivist, and submission to the greater good is baked-in to the culture; way less of an independent streak than here. Third, they routinely wore face masks and practiced social distancing as a matter of course before this virus erupted; they remember SARS very well. Fourth, much, much smaller geographical footprint and the majority of the population concentrated in a few urban zones that can be closed off. Fifth, younger average population.

So the comparison is not good. We are more like a giant, more diverse Italy here.

I actually agree with most of your points.  But you forgot the most important one:  They embarked on a very aggressive test-isolate-trace strategy as soon as the first case hit.  Now, your post implies that it was easier for them to do this because of their cultural and societal characteristics.  And that strategy couldn't be employed here because of fissures and differences in our society.  Certainly that strategy is more challenging to implement here, but we certainly could have done it.  Had we done so, I think we'd be in a much better position than we are today.  At the end of the day, their country took it much more seriously than we did, and that's why they handled it much better.  

[Baltimorewx]

Well have been temporarily laid off from Baltimore County Rec and Parks..though they were nice enough to give 64 hours of “leave” time to any employee who’s worked the last 2 weeks so I can at least use that. Thought I had 2 pretty “essential” stable jobs with full time in the diesel truck /bus repair industry and the 2nd part time job at the county. Crazy times. 

[ErinInTheSky]

The COVID situation is improving right now thanks to very good social distancing. I'm looking at models now calling for 80k or so total deaths. Remember though: It's going to be a while before we can drop the shelter in place. Even with the United States shelter in place orders all over this country, this virus is the third leading cause of death for the last 5 days behind only heart disease and cancer. Allowed unrestricted, it would be truly catastrophic.

 

This week and next week will be tough - remember it takes 10-14 days after a positive test to usually die from this bug. Deaths are going to be really high for a while.

Then it'll take a month or so to come down to lower ranges, and we'll hopefully have a testing system in place to slowly come back off of the shelter in place guidelines.

 

Until we have a vaccine though, we'll likely see continued lockdowns, social distancing orders come back up from time to time.

[Baltimorewx]

22 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

That sucks!!  Sorry to hear.  I thought car/ truck repair shops would be ok for the most part during this  . Do you just work on school busses?

It’s a pretty big company, recent merged with another company so now there’s about 20-25 locations on the east coast. Each location has their niches but my location had a big contract with MTA and WMATA Buses. It wasn’t the whole business but I’d say maybe as much as 40-50% of it. Obviously with much less public transit going on, buses aren’t breaking down as often. It was a nice union job and I was relatively new (less than a year). They decided to lay off some new hires at my branch

[ErinInTheSky]

https://daily.jstor.org/jennifer-nuzzo-were-definitely-not-overreacting-to-covid-19/

 

Fascinating article about how vaccines may never work for COVID and we may have to entirely change how we interact for years.

[ErinInTheSky]

"I think vaccines are not going to be a realistic solution for years. The 12-to-18 month timeline that you’ve likely heard assumes that the science works in our favor. But it will take years to get the quantities that we need. I don’t see vaccines being a viable solution for a long time."

[ErinInTheSky]

14 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

Someone mentioned earlier that the Md official # of cases of  around 4000 was really inaccurate with likely alot more  and I think most would agree this to be true . Some will argue that many of those potential additional positive cases are probably people showing minimal symptoms or none and simply don't report anything and  also that the testing isn't readily accessible every single place . I'm offering another possible significant variable and that's just from my personal experience which is I work in construction as some know here and I have roughly 25 sub contractor  people I routinely work around on a weekly to monthly basis that are carpenters,  hvac,  plumbers,  contractors, etc. The majority...say 15 of the 25 don't have health insurance and also mostly a direct result of that they only go to the DR. If there in real bad shape.  So you see the issue here . There will be many people who get real sick with corona but simply won't see a doctor nor take a test . Impossible to say how many like this situation are mounting up but I bet it's a decent amount.  Just a observation and thought I've been thinking about. 

It's almost certainly a lot more. Maryland is going to be in one of the best shapes of any state though because we closed schools much earlier than other states.

[WxUSAF]

57 minutes ago, supernovasky said:

It's almost certainly a lot more. Maryland is going to be in one of the best shapes of any state though because we closed schools much earlier than other states.

I didn’t vote for him, but I give Hogan a great deal of credit for how he’s handled this. I’m very impressed. Wish more people in his party in leadership positions acted liked him.  I think his response has saved lives.

[Inverted_Trough]

1 hour ago, supernovasky said:

https://daily.jstor.org/jennifer-nuzzo-were-definitely-not-overreacting-to-covid-19/

 

Fascinating article about how vaccines may never work for COVID and we may have to entirely change how we interact for years.

Agreed.  I'm pasting a snippet from the article that basically espouses what I've been saying:

Are there actions that we could have taken that might’ve changed the course we’re on now? Or was what is happening now—shuttered businesses and schools, stay-at-home orders— inevitable?

No, I don’t think it was inevitable. I think the fact that we are all sitting here sheltering in place is the result of a lack of preparedness and a lack of appropriate response once we saw what was happening in China. I mean we have a third of the population of China, and we had several months lead time. Yet we now have more cases than China ever had. In my mind, that’s failure.

And I think one of the huge limits in our response was that we waited too long to start testing in the way that we would’ve needed to. For a very long time, until just a few weeks ago, we were only testing people who traveled from China, from Wuhan specifically. If you didn’t travel to Wuhan, but you traveled to broader China, you had to be sick enough to be hospitalized to get tested. And we maintained these criteria even after we implemented the travel restrictions, even after China itself implemented exit restrictions.

[ErinInTheSky]

12 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

I didn’t vote for him, but I give Hogan a great deal of credit for how he’s handled this. I’m very impressed. Wish more people in his party in leadership positions acted liked him.  I think his response has saved lives.

Honestly I think he should have done the shutdown earlier but his early school closure was great.

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

Have been following this closely and the outbreak in Maryland looks very bad to me.  Cases in 81 nursing homes is a big problem.  Secondly, Maryland is reporting currently 26% of cases are hospitalized, which should be around 10% based on other states/countries. This suggests there are at least 2.6 times the number of reported cases.  Thirdly, our whole region was really slow on the testing. 

[ThePhotoGuy]

7 hours ago, jaydreb said:

Fairly dramatic shift on the model being used by the government, incorporating more recent data, with overall deaths in the US decreasing and peak dates for many states (including MD ans VA) moved up by nearly a month.  

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

Not sure if there is a way to go back to previous "model runs" or not but I did take a couple screenshots before of the previous update for Maryland.

Peak Changed from April 29th to April 18th

Peak Deaths Per Day Increased From 53 deaths (April 28th) to 138 deaths (April 19th)

Total Deaths Increased from 1,766 deaths to 2,326 deaths

 

Pretty big increase for Maryland 

 

 

 

[CAPE]

52 minutes ago, Inverted_Trough said:

Agreed.  I'm pasting a snippet from the article that basically espouses what I've been saying:

Are there actions that we could have taken that might’ve changed the course we’re on now? Or was what is happening now—shuttered businesses and schools, stay-at-home orders— inevitable?

No, I don’t think it was inevitable. I think the fact that we are all sitting here sheltering in place is the result of a lack of preparedness and a lack of appropriate response once we saw what was happening in China. I mean we have a third of the population of China, and we had several months lead time. Yet we now have more cases than China ever had. In my mind, that’s failure.

And I think one of the huge limits in our response was that we waited too long to start testing in the way that we would’ve needed to. For a very long time, until just a few weeks ago, we were only testing people who traveled from China, from Wuhan specifically. If you didn’t travel to Wuhan, but you traveled to broader China, you had to be sick enough to be hospitalized to get tested. And we maintained these criteria even after we implemented the travel restrictions, even after China itself implemented exit restrictions.

Yeah, I think we got it. Like the first 9 times you posted this.

And..most of us here already knew and acknowledged all this, without you saying it ad nauseam.

Got anything else?

[Scarlet Pimpernel]

55 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

I didn’t vote for him, but I give Hogan a great deal of credit for how he’s handled this. I’m very impressed. Wish more people in his party in leadership positions acted liked him.  I think his response has saved lives.

This echoes my exact thoughts. I didn't vote for Hogan either but he has handled this crisis admirably. Credit where it's due and he deserves that. Maybe it's because he is a more "moderate" Repub in a heavily Dem state, but regardless he's done well here and I feel as though he has presented himself as trustworthy in this situation. Definitely more so than many in his party.

[WxUSAF]

My wife filed for unemployment soon after the schools closed. We got the tax withholding form and it said no work contacts were required, which is exactly what the webpage says. Now she gets a letter today saying “circumstances changed” and she has to do 3 per week? Wtf?? Anybody have some insight on this?

[SomeguyfromTakomaPark]

9 minutes ago, Always in Zugzwang said:

This echoes my exact thoughts. I didn't vote for Hogan either but he has handled this crisis admirably. Credit where it's due and he deserves that. Maybe it's because he is a more "moderate" Repub in a heavily Dem state, but regardless he's done well here and I feel as though he has presented himself as trustworthy in this situation. Definitely more so than many in his party.

Absolutely, he’s been very visible and was quick to pull the trigger on closing the schools which is one of the most important factors. 

[nw baltimore wx]

1 hour ago, supernovasky said:

Honestly I think he should have done the shutdown earlier but his early school closure was great.

I’ll echo the kudos for Hogan. I wonder if he thought people would be smart enough to know the seriousness of the situation, but too many people kept gathering forcing his hand.

eta: I deleted my previous post. As much as I enjoy reading the political positions of those I feel I have come to know over the years, I understand this isn’t the place for it. Just know that reading your positions, helps me define my positions. Whether I agree with them or not,

[nj2va]

Hogan has been much better than Northam I think.  Granted I didn’t vote for Northam but I still don’t think he’s been particularly good.  

[Inverted_Trough]

1 hour ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Yeah, I think we got it. Like the first 9 times you posted this.

And..most of us here already knew and acknowledged all this, without you saying it ad nauseam.

Got anything else?

Not much else for now.  Once things calm down some, and the it's-just-the-flu crowd comes back with a vengeance to talk about how we over-reacted and didn't need to enact any of these measures, I'm sure I'll have to shout them down again.