Osterholm's latest take is that only 5% of the US has been infected and he thinks it will take a couple of years to reach the magic 60-70% that would trigger a noticeable slowdown in transmission. He also discouraged 'happy talk' about vaccines and thinks the timelines of herd immunity and vaccine implementation will be similar. All in all, he said it's going to be a 'rough couple of years.'
We got the school plans for DS2 for the fall. They are already planning on a hybrid semester where they will split the student body in half and each half will attend every other day. That will decrease the number of people in the school to help 'de-densify' the building. (I gotta admit I love all the new COVID vocabulary lol. ) I wonder how long it will take to get the required number of school days in? DS1's college is taking the race-to-the-finish approach. They will start earlier in August, go straight through to Thanksgiving with no days off, then start winter break early. I'm curious to see which approach works best.
On the flip side: DB lives at the shore and said it was packed this weekend. It wasn't just the beach either. He lives in Pt Pleasant and said the boardwalk and local streets were also packed and no one was wearing a mask. He's actually decided to move up his timeline for moving out of NJ and is leaving in 3 weeks.
Ah, the mask. I find it hard to breathe with the mask on and hate it. Just me? Why do we assume it is a neutral practice for our individual health?
We seem to know it's bad for those who are sick to wear the mask because they are potentially inhaling exhaled virus deeper into their lungs.
Why is it required of children when from what I last read, there have been no accounts or studies of real transmission from children to adults?
I'm open to learning something concrete, beyond Taleb's absence of evidence//evidence of absence catchphrase. Fool me once...
ETA: From N.N. Taleb
My own review is "Ioannidis mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence /recommends to buy insurance AFTER the harm when we now have evidence".
As the Pacific Seafoods outbreak in Newport is winding down, Oregon is marking its second rural infection outbreak. Over 100 cases in Union County, population 27k, half of whom live in the county seat of La Grande. At the current positivity rate of 14%, there's probably another 50 cases awaiting in unprocessed tests. This time the outbreak may be related to church gatherings rather than an employer.
Not coincidently, today marked the highest ever count of new infections at 184.
2 new cases in NZ after weeks of nothing. When I first saw I was thinking WTF is going on! Then found out that they are both returning NZers from the UK who are stuck in quarantine after arriving at the border. Thank goodness. So its nothing to do with any virus here. They will be in quarantine until its gone. This will continue to arise as NZers return to NZ from overseas.
It does show that we cant reopen the borders anytime soon. Not if we want to retain our virus free economically stuffed paradise.
Ah, the mask. I find it hard to breathe with the mask on and hate it. Just me? .
I find it hard to breath with a mask on and am fine with that. The whole philosophy of this place is that bearing a little pain now pays off in the longer term.
The Atlantic on COVID-19 "long haulers." Focus of the article is on multi-month cases with extreme fatigue but no hospital admission, mostly young folks.
Just read this. DH and I are early 60s so not young and we do not have the severe persistent symptoms that this article mentions but we recognise the dilemma of many of them in getting ill in mid-March, not having the standard symptoms and not having a formal diagnosis. When we started showing symptoms we did not have a fever (or certainly not enough to qualify according to NHS advice at the time) but we did have an unusual and persistent cough, flu like symptoms and (me) a killer lower back pain and loss of taste/appetite. These last two were not mentioned as symptoms in March, so for first week we did a 'is it?/isn't it?' seesaw. Fatigue was severe and we just slept (and recovered a bit and then overdid things and went back to sleeping - for weeks. We are retired so we _could_ sleep, rest and take care of ourselves. Had I been working this would not have been the case and I imagine things could have been a lot worse. DH is still coughing (only occasionally now) in a COVID way. What do I mean? Its that slimey feeling of something rising and falling unproductively in the back of the throat that we both associate with the recovery stage.
This is 12 weeks after first symptoms so not usual and so I am inclined to believe that some - likely only a small minority - who have had the virus mildly, have found it difficult to shake off. Including this guy (quoted in the Atlantic article) https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/p ... aul-garner.
It “has been like nothing else on Earth,” said Paul Garner, who has previously endured dengue fever and malaria, and is currently on day 77 of COVID-19. Garner, an infectious-diseases professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, leads a renowned organization that reviews scientific evidence on preventing and treating infections. He tested negative on day 63. He had waited to get a COVID-19 test partly to preserve them for health-care workers, and partly because, at one point, he thought he was going to die. “I knew I had the disease; it couldn’t have been anything else,” he told me. I asked him why he thought his symptoms had persisted. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s happening in my body.”
Its such a strange virus and little is known about those who are ill and not in hospital (which is probably most that have it).
I find it hard to breath with a mask on and am fine with that. The whole philosophy of this place is that bearing a little pain now pays off in the longer term.
Presumably you like me are only wearing one intermittently, when outside the home or in a place of business, etc. How would you feel if you had to wear one all day? What about those who work in non-hospital settings and who are required to wear them all day?
Why are temperature checks not mandatory instead? What is the rate of asymptomatic/presymptomatic spread?
The IHME forecast has been extended from Aug 1 to Oct 1 2020. (At this point predicting 175k-275k US deaths)
Looking at the graph, some social distancing assumption (and possibly others) seems to have been wired in around mid August which creates a new wave that is ultimately bigger than the first starting a couple of weeks later. Given this kink in the graph and the exponential nature of the spreading, once it's let loose, much depends on how fast mobility increases---here it's just assumed to go linearly back up to normal over the next few months---so the timing here could easily be off by weeks. The bigger point is that capacity is predicted to be exceeded again IFF there's no second lockdown OR people increase their distance again on their own. The only "stable" solution is to not go all the way back to the way things were. Maybe widespread mask usage will be accepted by then.
Yeah, I noticed that assumption too. I think it is rather optimistic. Question is whether cell phone movement is bigger factor than mask-wearing and other such short-distance-between-any-two-given-individuals methods. I wonder if average proximity of cell phones could be tracked?
The govt has stuffed up border control in NZ. We are no longer virus free. Two women who returned from the UK were allowed to leave quarantine on compassionate grounds and not propely checked first. More than a week later they tested positive for the virus. I wonder how many people they have infected in the interim. What a monumental cock up. We might have a second wave here. So pissed off!
Meanwhile it looks like numbers in Australia seem to be rising again.
Masks will be required for indoor public spaces in populous Oregon counties and some hotspots beginning Jun 24. Guess it's time to lay in a larger stock of masks.
I can't tell if this falls under the "coronavirus is over" or "some things are more important than social distancing" narratives. But, regardless, easy come, easy go on the intelligent/numerate people worrying about this thing.
ETA: at the risk of beating a dead horse, more like easy go, easy come, easy go. In January and February the smart money was on this just being the flu which Trump was using to justify some travel ban racism. I'm gonna say there has been at least two flip flops on the same topic in less than six months. Cool beans.
NZ GDP results for first quarter out. God ridiculously slow. Its the lowest GDP in 29 years. 1.6% drop. The decline is expected to be much bigger for quarter 2.
So... on the economic front Sweden seems to be winning.
I can't tell if this falls under the "coronavirus is over" or "some things are more important than social distancing" narratives. But, regardless, easy come, easy go on the intelligent/numerate people worrying about this thing.
ETA: at the risk of beating a dead horse, more like easy go, easy come, easy go. In January and February the smart money was on this just being the flu which Trump was using to justify some travel ban racism. I'm gonna say there has been at least two flip flops on the same topic in less than six months. Cool beans.
I'm not sure "smart money" ever didn't realise the worst case was 1% deaths. That's a lot, three million in the US. But survivable. Most in the US are willing to kill 3 million strangers for their political faction to win big, especially those under 55.
38000 new cases in the US yesterday and the moving averages are now surpassing April's. The #positives/#tests are increasing again in many states; primarily the sun belt whereas the north east still has decreasing numbers. The difference is that this time most of the new positives are younger which keeps the pressure on the hospitals/death rates lower than in April.
People in areas that have not experienced big outbreaks have been letting down their guard.
For more detail, I like https://covidactnow.org/?s=56070 which shows nowcasting R0, #positives/#test, ICU%, and contacttracing%.
DS1's college is taking the race-to-the-finish approach. They will start earlier in August, go straight through to Thanksgiving with no days off, then start winter break early. I'm curious to see which approach works best.
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