COVID is getting worse

[Icarus]

One week straight of daily cases surpassing 100,000 and yesterday's 142,000 cases was a record high.

And the 7 day moving average of daily death counts has surpassed 1,000 again.

I remember during the spring doctors were saying we were able to handle a maximum of about 60,000 COVID cases before it became a burden on the system, and our peak was 59,000 over the past nine months. Until now. Hospitalizations have risen to a record high 62,000.

This is all particularly disturbing because I thought we were doing pretty good with the whole mitigation thing. Everywhere I go, people are wearing masks. It is hard to imagine the death toll had we never done that.

[Philo Sofee]

Relax, the Mormons will do a yet third world wide fast, and God will then wake up and sup the coffee realizing he needs to at least do something about the mess he has made.....

[Res Ipsa]

Worse, indeed. Our first peak, that caused us to partially lock down in Washington State, was 500 new cases a day. They were concentrated in the Tacoma-Seattle-Everett corridor, and hospitals ran out of PPE and almost overran their capacity. Our second peak, in July, was 1000 cases per day. It led to freezing our reopening plans. It was driven by cities in the Eastern part of the state and the fruit harvests there. At least one City had to start shipping patients to other hospitals. Yesterday, we had 2000 new cases, with no sign of slowing down. The hotspots are again in the eastern part of the state, including cities and rural areas. The cases are more spread out geographically, so the hospitals have been able, so far, to accommodate the patients. But that will end soon. New cases per day doubled in the last two weeks. We can't sustain a two-week doubling of new cases. Deaths increased 50% over the same period.

Our first outbreaks were in elder care facilities, so our early case numbers skewed heavily toward the elderly. That trend has changed dramatically. Now, 40% of our total cases have been in folks aged 20-39. Hospitalizations still skew toward the elderly, but 44% have been people under 60. Deaths skew even more heavily, with 50% over 80 and 90% over 60.

Our overall unemployment rate has increased about 3.7% overall since the start of the pandemic. But the effect isn't uniform. A couple of counties have less unemployment. Counties dependent on tourism have been hit hard. As we see hospitals start to overrun, the economy will get worse as people start to hunker down. The economy won't get fixed until the lower and middle classes have money to spend. That's our economic engine. And the service part of our economy will not recover until the disease is controlled. Cuz nobody really wants to kill grandma over going out for pizza.

[Icarus]

Correction, hospitalizations are above 65,000 which is nearly 10% higher than the previous peak during the Spring.

With over 142,000 new cases for a second straight day and today's death toll nearly 1,500, I'd say we're definitely heading in the wrong direction.

Seems like this is all CNN and MSNBC are talking about, too. Weird, seeing how Trump assured us no one would talk about it after the election.

[ajax18]

And here it comes. Ok Res Ipsa, I'll admit that if this is where we're headed I'm very unhappy. We're going to waste a tremendous amount of money only to delay the inevitable. I can't believe you communists are so focused on the 0.04% that you're forgetting the collective good. A notional lockdown will be no more effective than state lockdowns were. Weren't people quarantined when travelling between states anyway?


Joe Biden Coronavirus Adviser Urges National Lockdown for ‘4 to 6 Weeks’

An adviser to Joe Biden on coronavirus has floated the idea of a nationwide lockdown for “four to six weeks.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm was appointed to Biden’s 12-person Covid advisory board on Monday.

On Wednesday, he appeared on CNBC and attempted to rationalize a national lockdown order.

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” he said.

“If we did that, then we could lock down for four-to-six weeks.”

Osterholm claimed that would help get the virus under control, “like they did in New Zealand and Australia.”

In August, Osterholm said the state-led lockdowns did not go far enough.

“The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota deemed 78 percent of its workers essential,” he wrote in the New York Times, along with Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari.

“To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive and strict as possible.”

Biden said during the campaign that he would be open to a national lockdown if that is what the “scientists” told him to do.

In August, World News Tonight anchor David Muir predicted coronavirus and the flu would “combine” in January.

[ajax18]

This is all particularly disturbing because I thought we were doing pretty good with the whole mitigation thing. Everywhere I go, people are wearing masks.

lol. It's a virtue signal and wearing a mask is about as much as we can do. Surely you understood that it didn't make much of a difference. Well maybe not.

It is hard to imagine the death toll had we never done that.

No it's not. The death toll would be about the same as it is now.

[Icarus]

Uh, no that wasn't the point. It did make a huge difference. Death counts would've been astronomically higher without them. Each state is different though. Georgia has been more disciplined than Florida, for example. It is no coincidence that cases skyrocket after restrictions are lifted and superspreader events take place, particularly Trump's rallies.

Your assertion that masks have had no effect on deaths is about the dumbest thing I've heard all week. You're a disgrace as a doctor, and should have your licensed pulled.

[ajax18]

Uh, no that wasn't the point. It did make a huge difference. Death counts would've been astronomically higher without them. Each state is different though. Georgia has been more disciplined than Florida, for example. It is no coincidence that cases skyrocket after restrictions are lifted and superspreader events take place, particularly Trump's rallies.

Your assertion that masks have had no effect on deaths is about the dumbest thing I've heard all week. You're a disgrace as a doctor, and should have your licensed pulled.

How high? Like the 2 million deaths your models first predicted with 20% of the population left disabled. NY and CA aren't much better off than Florida.

The cloth masks most thugs wear make little difference and your own data proves it, though somehow Covid only spreads at Trump rallies but never at BLM protests. You won't be able to stop protesting and looting long enough for a lockdown to work.

Icarus you don't even think I am a doctor, remember.

[Some Schmo]

Icarus you don't even think I am a doctor, remember.

If it's any consolation, I haven't forgotten that you're probably not a doctor. I'll admit, however, that that's mostly a wish for humanity in West Virginia.

[Res Ipsa]

And here it comes. Ok Res Ipsa, I'll admit that if this is where we're headed I'm very unhappy. We're going to waste a tremendous amount of money only to delay the inevitable. I can't believe you communists are so focused on the 0.04% that you're forgetting the collective good. A notional lockdown will be no more effective than state lockdowns were. Weren't people quarantined when travelling between states anyway?


Joe Biden Coronavirus Adviser Urges National Lockdown for ‘4 to 6 Weeks’

An adviser to Joe Biden on coronavirus has floated the idea of a nationwide lockdown for “four to six weeks.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm was appointed to Biden’s 12-person Covid advisory board on Monday.

On Wednesday, he appeared on CNBC and attempted to rationalize a national lockdown order.

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” he said.

“If we did that, then we could lock down for four-to-six weeks.”

Osterholm claimed that would help get the virus under control, “like they did in New Zealand and Australia.”

In August, Osterholm said the state-led lockdowns did not go far enough.

“The problem with the March-to-May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country. For example, Minnesota deemed 78 percent of its workers essential,” he wrote in the New York Times, along with Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari.

“To be effective, the lockdown has to be as comprehensive and strict as possible.”

Biden said during the campaign that he would be open to a national lockdown if that is what the “scientists” told him to do.

In August, World News Tonight anchor David Muir predicted coronavirus and the flu would “combine” in January.

Ajax, I don’t think this where we’re heading. I read the reactions of infectious disease specialists to this comment, and they seem to think it’s over the top. He’s only one of 12, and Biden can’t do anything until late January.

I can promise you this, though, if the current trend continues, you are going to be unhappy in late July anyway. I don’t understand how a guy with a medical education doesn’t understand that the cost of disease is far more than the death rate. You keep pretending, on the one hand, that the costs of the disease are zero. And on the other hand you make wild, fact free claims about the cost of disease prevention. I find this profoundly unsettling in a health care professional.

The big lie you seem to have swallowed here is that everybody has to get infected with this disease. That is profoundly false. They don’t. It’s not inevitable. We could well have an effective vaccine approved in 60 days.

Doing it your way, this is what will happen. COVID patients will overfill hospital capacity. Then hospitals will become sources of spread. Increasing numbers of health care workers will die because they are subject to very high levels of viral load. People who need hospital care will avoid going because of the COVID risk and they will die. You’ll see that in the excess death numbers. And, at some point, people will start to panic. Businesses will have to close as people hunker down and employees don’t show up for work. Your patients will stop coming because who wants to risk serious illness or death over an eye exam.

We know what letting this sucker rip through a population looks like, because we all watched it happen in Wuhan. That’s what you want for America — Wuhan. And, your way, we all do get infected. Because the disease doesn’t just magically disappear at whatever percentage herd immunity is at. It keeps infecting people as the rate slowly falls until everyone gets it.

The other thing I can’t fathom is your complete disregard for your fellow health care workers. They are literally putting their lives on the line for those who get sick. And because they are repeatedly exposed to high levels of virus, they get seriously ill and die. Have you read any of their stories of what this has been like for them. We treated them as heroes for what, a week or two? And now you want to reward their hard work and sacrifice by throwing as many infected people at them as we possibly can all at once?

Our healthcare system does not have the capacity to handle this many sick people at one time. When your local hospitals are overfilled and one of your kids gets appendicitis, how are you going to feel when their appendix bursts because the hospital couldn’t get there in time? Because that’s the consequences of what you are suggesting we do.

It’s just math, Ajax. Look at a graph of our rate of exponential growth. And do some math. If our hospitals overrun, the cost to our economy is going to make lockdowns look like pocket change.