The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 3

[Resume]

From Worldometer:

Quote:

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,603,813
Deaths:
507,746

New Cases:
78,640
New Deaths:
2428

[newyorkguy]

The problem is the DOD doubts they have legal authority to make the vaccine mandatory for military members -- even those in high risk jobs such as healthcare, sensitive national security functions -- as they explained in an article on military dot com.

Quote:

DoD officials said discussions on the proposal [end voluntary use and make it mandatory] would need to be conducted between the Pentagon, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Congress. They said they would provide Congress with a copy of the legal authority they have interpreted to mean the vaccine must be taken voluntarily while it is being distributed under a Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization. Military.com link

Of course, this is being politicized as well.

Quote:

Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., a retired Army flight surgeon who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, objected to Kelly's proposal, saying that "full-blown research" needed to be done before "we saddled our warriors with an experimental medication."

Ironically, the Kelly that Green is referring to is Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss., a major general in the Army National Guard. Kelly is concerned about the virus' effect on mission readiness. He proposes to make vaccination mandatory, at least for certain military members. A voluntary vaccination approach, Kelly said during a Congressional hearing, "just doesn't make sense if we are saying the vaccine is safe."

[Bob001]

So is this guy making sense, or missing something big?

Quote:

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/well-ha...il-11613669731

[newyorkguy]

The guy is Mark Makary, a surgeon, a bestselling author, and a Johns Hopkins health policy expert. The article is in the Wall Street Journal and is paywalled. Is he making sense? Who knows? Makary is not an epidemiologist. In that regard, despite being a surgeon, he's really not an expert on infectious diseases. I'll wait and see what people who are epidemiologists think.

[newyorkguy]

Dr. John Sellick, the hospital epidemiologist for Kaleida Health (they're a non-profit operator of five hospitals in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls NY area), thinks this coming Fall is more realistic. He said in response to Makary's prediction:

Quote:

"I think if we plan for the fall and it winds up being sometime earlier, then we can celebrate," he explained. "But the thing that we don't want to do is tell people everything is going to be great by April or great by July, and then if it's not, then we have to walk that back and say, 'OK, what went wrong?' " Link to story on NBC affiliate in Buffalo

Mark Makary seems to be one of those people who is always 100% certain they're right about whatever it is they happen to believe. I'm not too keen on people like that. He may turn out to be right, but what's his point? People shouldn't bother to get vaccinated?

I have a feeling I've seen this movie before. And it didn't have a happy ending.

[Bob001]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

The guy is Mark Makary, a surgeon, a bestselling author, and a Johns Hopkins health policy expert. The article is in the Wall Street Journal and is paywalled.
.....

I was able to get to it without subscribing. Maybe try a different browser? Or try linking from a story about him?
https://www.mediaite.com/news/johns-...gone-by-april/

[slyjoe]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

Dr. John Sellick, the hospital epidemiologist for Kaleida Health (they're a non-profit operator of five hospitals in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls NY area), thinks this coming Fall is more realistic. He said in response to Makary's prediction:


Mark Makary seems to be one of those people who is always 100% certain they're right about whatever it is they happen to believe. I'm not too keen on people like that. He may turn out to be right, but what's his point? People shouldn't bother to get vaccinated?

I have a feeling I've seen this movie before. And it didn't have a happy ending.

Probably that you need an operation until proven otherwise.

j/k, sorta.

[Captain_Swoop]

Originally Posted by Elvis666

Each other's homes, illegal bars, churches, etc. What "tremendous authority" do you envision local governments using to keep them in their homes?

big sticks.

[Captain_Swoop]

Originally Posted by The Don

Our test, trace and isolate system is a shambles

But to be fair, it deed succeed in moving billions of pounds of taxpayers money to private business which was at least one of its aims.

[Resume]

From Worldometer:

Quote:

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,706,473
Deaths:
509,875

New Cases:
69,617
New Deaths:
1907

[newyorkguy]

We have passed the Fall/Holiday surge, no doubt about that.

Charts below are from November 15th to present. They illustrate how the contagion ramped up after Thanksgiving and Christmas. By mid-January new cases were declining, with the number of fatalities remaining high for a couple more weeks. Worldometer link

[newyorkguy]

An interesting story in The New Yorker about Molly Burhans, 30, a cartographer and environmentalist. The article is mostly about Burhans' work designing interactive digital systems to monitor and promote good land policy, but her bout with Covid-19 is mentioned, too. Last March Burhans was about to fly to Rome on business when Italy announced a national quarantine. Burhans was in California and she decided to return home to Connecticut. The flight was almost empty but another passenger, sitting near her, was coughing and perspiring heavily. Six days later she began to develop Covid-19 symptoms.

Quote:

She was sick for three months. Characteristically, she mapped her condition, in an interactive graphic containing more than six hundred and fifty points of medical data, organized in a dozen overlapping layers. Her COVID map documents her symptoms: a temperature that rose above a hundred degrees for weeks; a heart rate that spiked at more than two hundred beats per minute; a blood-oxygen level that occasionally fell below eighty per cent after physical exertion; more than a week without eating; the loss and restoration, twice, of her senses of taste and smell. The map contains a photo log of dermatological changes, the results of all her medical tests, and a day-by-day chronicle of her mental state. There are also screenshots of her Google search history: her memory was so impaired that she kept forgetting what she’d been thinking about.

She was never admitted to the hospital or given supplemental oxygen, but doctors monitored her remotely. “At one point, a doctor sent an ambulance for me, to take me to the emergency room,” she said. “I didn’t think I was that sick, but when the E.M.T. saw me he looked like he was having a panic attack, and I thought I must be dying.” Her COVID map is, in effect, a physiological information system. “If you did this for multiple patients and combined them,” she said, “you might see that so-called ‘long-haul’ COVID is actually an underlying condition, or maybe it’s some other festering infection, totally unrelated. It would be useful for differential diagnosis, because there’s so much going on with this disease and so much that we don’t know.” New Yorker link

The highlighted part is what I think is important for all of us to remember. This virus has been around just over a year. We're still learning. We need to focus on 'learning' instead of 'knowing.'

[Solitaire]

Originally Posted by Bob001

So is this guy making sense, or missing something big?

I think he makes the wrong assumption.

Quote:

We’ll Have Herd Immunity By April by Marty Makary

Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million
doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

This part seems way too ambitious.


The CDC so far has 60 million people vaccinated. I really doubt
they will add 90 million more people vaccinated in about a month.

Assuming a one million vaccination rate per day, I can generate a model
of the curve for an aspect ratio of 6.5 infections to 1 reported with a 0.15325
daily new infection rate and removal rate of 0.1 per day.



Daily Cases


Total Cases


This model doesn't have quite the tight fit on the backside of the data set
as I like. But I can understand why. Trying to fit both the frontside of the
model while at the same time fitting the backside requires quite a bit
geometrical maneuvering.

Given January 15, 2021, I get the number of total infections at 153 million,
greater than the CDC estimate of 83 million, a high ratio of 1.84, implying
179 million people exposed and 151 million people sheltered from the virus.

I expect from this model 6,000 new cases at the start of April and 1,000
new cases at the end of April with vaccinations. Removing from the model
vaccinations, I expect 15,500 new cases at the start of April and 4,800 new
cases at the end of April.

The last case day will appear at the start of August with vaccination and
at the start of December without vaccination. Case totals will reach 188
million infection with vaccination and 200 million infections without vaccination.


P. S. A little extra on what's happening.

Four Reasons Experts Say Coronavirus Cases Are Dropping In The United States by Reis Thebault

[newyorkguy]

This is from a Washington Post article from a week ago, with health officials explaining why they think we're seeing the drop in cases and why they don't expect to see "life getting back to normal by April."

I can't provide a link because I accessed it through a New York Public Library database. It requires a login and card number.

Quote:

"While it's great that we've made progress, and we certainly should acknowledge that, this is not the time to be spiking the football," said James Lawler, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "Our case counts are still what they were in early November, which at the time we thought was horrendous." Covid-19 hospitalizations peaked nationally Jan. 6, with 132,000 patients. That figure has dropped below 80,000 in recent days. The favorable trend follows a sharp drop in new infections. On Thursday, every state recorded seven-day average infection rates at least 30 percent lower than four weeks earlier.

There are multiple potential explanations for the improved numbers, starting with the disastrous scale of the winter wave that by January was killing more than 3,000 people a day. Such a wave inevitably crests. Vaccines probably played a limited role, experts said. The calendar may have been the biggest factor: As expected, holiday-season gatherings contributed to spikes in hospitalizations, although not at the catastrophic levels that some public health experts feared. Those holidays are now an increasingly distant memory.

The situation in Los Angeles County, where last month there were severe oxygen shortages and hospitals teetered at the edge of rationing care, has eased since the aftermath of the winter holidays. California had more than 22,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients every day a month ago, and that has dropped to about 11,000. Nicholas Testa, chief medical executive for Dignity Health's southwest division, which operates four hospitals in Los Angeles, said that although numbers have improved, doctors' caseloads are as elevated as they were during the summer coronavirus wave that struck the Sun Belt. "Even if you look at the national trends, nationally we are still double where we were in July, and as you remember, people were freaking out in July," Testa said.

Roger Lewis, who leads the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services modeling team, attributed the turnaround to compliance with restrictions, the administration of 1 million vaccine doses in the county and "partial herd immunity" - a conjecture based on projections showing 1 in 3 county residents may have already contracted the virus and developed some natural immunity. "The biggest threat is an ill-placed perception that continued decline is inevitable, leading to complacency," Lewis said.

A number of epidemiologists are concerned that, far from seeing the pandemic be over "by April," instead we may see a Spring surge. "I am really quite worried that we'll have another surge," said Albert Ko, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Medicine.

[Resume]

From Worldometer:

Quote:

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,765,423
Deaths:
511,133

New Cases:
57,198
New Deaths:
1245

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

We have passed the Fall/Holiday surge, no doubt about that.

Charts below are from November 15th to present. They illustrate how the contagion ramped up after Thanksgiving and Christmas. By mid-January new cases were declining, with the number of fatalities remaining high for a couple more weeks.

I would not call it a Holiday surge. In the U.S. it began in the upper Midwest where it peaked around the end of the first week of November, well before the holidays. It appears to have spread out from there where it then hit the larger cities sometime after the holidays. It certainly looks like it would have been about the same whether there were any holidays during that time or not.

There is a small spike that happens in almost every State around the first week of January that is very likely related to Christmas. But that is just a small peak on the much larger wave.

[newyorkguy]

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

I would not call it a Holiday surge...There is a small spike that happens in almost every State around the first week of January that is very likely related to Christmas. But that is just a small peak on the much larger wave.

With all due respect, you may not call it a holiday surge but what are your qualifications to make that assessment? What do you base it on? Public health officials did and do call it a holiday surge. Below is a quote from Crain's New York Business, published December 27th:

Quote:

Current and former U.S. health officials took to the airwaves Sunday to warn Americans of a potential jump in Covid-19 cases after the holidays. “A surge upon a surge” may be on the way after the Christmas and New Year’s period, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease doctor, warned on CNN’s State of the Union. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief, said on CBS’s Face the Nation that “we have a grim month ahead of us” after a recent increase in cases, with hospitalizations rising on a lag of a few weeks. Crain's link

A small peak. Below are charts from the Cayuga County and Onondaga County Health Departments, two upstate New York counties. Do those really look like small peaks? I understand some of the states in the upper Midwest did not see the holiday surge, but why was that?

[DevilsAdvocate]

Here's a challenge. Guess which state lifted almost all covid restrictions about a month ago.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

Here's a challenge. Guess which state lifted almost all covid restrictions about a month ago.

That will be an interesting map come the post TX disaster surge. Where is the image from? I can't read the fine print on it.

The John Hopkins county map look a little different but yours is more fun.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

[Solitaire]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

A number of epidemiologists are concerned that, far from seeing
the pandemic be over "by April," instead we may see a Spring surge.
"I am really quite worried that we'll have another surge," said Albert Ko,
an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Medicine.

Absolutely. We will definitely see a spring surge - small one though - as
the crowd that runs into Florida for Spring Break, like they did last year,
push the numbers up for April.

I don't expect the 150 million people who live an almost quarantine lifestyle
will run down and join them. Instead they'l wait for their turn at vaccination
and then spend a nervous Autumn worrying about the disease anyway.

The virus has reached a point (182 Million / 188 million = 96%) where
the little red light on the dashboard has turned on, if the 6.5 to 1 infections
to cases is to be believed.

182 million infected. Really? Hm.

[Resume]

From Worldometer:

Quote:

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,826,307
Deaths:
512,590

New Cases:
59,257
New Deaths:
1374

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Solitaire

Absolutely. We will definitely see a spring surge - small one though - as
the crowd that runs into Florida for Spring Break, like they did last year,
push the numbers up for April.

I don't expect the 150 million people who live an almost quarantine lifestyle
will run down and join them. Instead they'l wait for their turn at vaccination
and then spend a nervous Autumn worrying about the disease anyway.

The virus has reached a point (182 Million / 188 million = 96%) where
the little red light on the dashboard has turned on, if the 6.5 to 1 infections
to cases is to be believed.

182 million infected. Really? Hm.

182 million in a country with 330 million? Someone earlier claimed similar numbers.

No, half the population in the US has not had COVID.

[alfaniner]

(This is maybe a more personal or medical post, but I feel the fault lies in the US Politics handling of it, so I'm posting it here.)

I don't know why the media I'm watching lags behind some of the reporting in this thread, but the general report is that

Today the United States passed 500,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Flags have been set to half-staff and there is a National Memorial remembrance service soon.

So far, no one very close to me has been affected, even severely, and certainly none of those have died. I find the number inconceivable and impossible to get my head around. I often feel traumatized by major events (terrorist bombings, tsunamis, etc) where so many people die. Perhaps it's been the gradual inevitability rather than having all those happen all at once that makes me somewhat numb to the staggeringly large number. I know that even one person close to me getting hit with it will be devastating as I may be feeling it all at once.

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

(This is maybe a more personal or medical post, but I feel the fault lies in the US Politics handling of it, so I'm posting it here.)

I don't know why the media I'm watching lags behind some of the reporting in this thread, but the general report is that

Today the United States passed 500,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Flags have been set to half-staff and there is a National Memorial remembrance service soon.

So far, no one very close to me has been affected, even severely, and certainly none of those have died. I find the number inconceivable and impossible to get my head around. I often feel traumatized by major events (terrorist bombings, tsunamis, etc) where so many people die. Perhaps it's been the gradual inevitability rather than having all those happen all at once that makes me somewhat numb to the staggeringly large number. I know that even one person close to me getting hit with it will be devastating as I may be feeling it all at once.

I think there are a few reasons it doesn't seem quite as stunning. The "gradual inevitability" is probably the biggest. In the beginning, I think we were more staggered as we saw the death toll rise in New York, but that basically became the new normal. At that time, no one day toll was truly awful, and then it just kept coming.

The fact that it turned out to be not as bad as expecteyyd also matters. That seems hard to believe, but I remember writing about expected waves of death. I didn't imagine anyone would get away unscathed. So far, the only non-celebrity that i knew that died from it was my brother-in-law's father in law. (Work it out)

Also, as much as it pains me to say it, more than half of the dead are old people. 1000 grandfathers and grandmothers is a big deal, but it's not as big or a deal as 100 mom, dads, brothers, sisters, or, especially, children.

It's still too many, and since it's the politics I will blame the politicians in charge when it happened, especially the one whose name I wish to consign to the dustbin of history.

Speaking of politics, I did compare death rates in Michigan versus the rest of the country. We aren't doing nearly as bad lately as the country at large. I also note that in this state, when I go into the grocery store, mask wearing is very close to universal, and has been for months. I talk to people who live elsewhere and they say there are still an awful lot of holdouts in their areas. I think our governor has done a very good job. We got blindsided at the beginning and had a huge death toll, especially in Detroit, but she stayed the course and it shows.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by alfaniner

(This is maybe a more personal or medical post, but I feel the fault lies in the US Politics handling of it, so I'm posting it here.)

I don't know why the media I'm watching lags behind some of the reporting in this thread, but the general report is that

Today the United States passed 500,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Flags have been set to half-staff and there is a National Memorial remembrance service soon.

So far, no one very close to me has been affected, even severely, and certainly none of those have died. I find the number inconceivable and impossible to get my head around. I often feel traumatized by major events (terrorist bombings, tsunamis, etc) where so many people die. Perhaps it's been the gradual inevitability rather than having all those happen all at once that makes me somewhat numb to the staggeringly large number. I know that even one person close to me getting hit with it will be devastating as I may be feeling it all at once.

First, we passed 500K a week ago. How did you not know that?

And second, I don't understand your point. Sorry, aging brain and all that. It was stunning long before we reached the half million mark.

[Pixel42]

ISTR Trump saying something about how he would have done a good job if he managed to keep the death toll under 100,000.

What happened to the poster who made the avatar bet that it would not exceed 80,000? Haven't seen him around recently.

[Roger Ramjets]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

The fact that it turned out to be not as bad as expecteyyd also matters.

Not as bad as you expected perhaps, but I never expected we would do this poorly.

Quote:

Also, as much as it pains me to say it, more than half of the dead are old people. 1000 grandfathers and grandmothers is a big deal, but it's not as big or a deal as 100 mom, dads, brothers, sisters, or, especially, children.

This attitude is part of the reason we are in this mess. "It's not that bad only old people are dying" is a very bad message to send. I am not a grandfather, but I am old enough to be. Don't tell me my life is worth less because I am 'old'! And if you are younger, don't think us 'old' people can't infect you, or that you won't die!

Quote:

It's still too many, and since it's the politics I will blame the politicians in charge when it happened, especially the one whose name I wish to consign to the dustbin of history.

Yes we should blame them, but the 74,216,154 people who thought they were doing a great job should share the blame too - along with every person who didn't take the virus seriously.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by Meadmaker

I think there are a few reasons it doesn't seem quite as stunning. The "gradual inevitability" is probably the biggest. In the beginning, I think we were more staggered as we saw the death toll rise in New York, but that basically became the new normal. At that time, no one day toll was truly awful, and then it just kept coming.

The fact that it turned out to be not as bad as expecteyyd also matters.....

Like hell. WTF did you expect?

Or maybe you are saying that with the incompetent mentally ill Trump we should have expected it?

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets

Not as bad as you expected perhaps, but I never expected we would do this poorly.

This attitude is part of the reason we are in this mess. "It's not that bad only old people are dying" is a very bad message to send. I am not a grandfather, but I am old enough to be. Don't tell me my life is worth less because I am 'old'! And if you are younger, don't think us 'old' people can't infect you, or that you won't die!

I see a pretty major typo in my post. I compared 1000 grandfathers to 100 dads. That wasn't my intention, and could have given a really bad impression, but one that a lot of people really hold.

I will say that your life and mine really are worth less than a young person's, but not 10 for 1.

Not that you can quantify that sort of thing anyway., but I note that some time back the US lost more dead in this one year to Covid than we did in all combat deaths in WWII, and yet, when we look back at this year, it won't be remembered as being as bad as the war years. As one of my friends noted on turning 50, "I just realized that I'm too old to die tragically young."

Quote:

Yes we should blame them, but the 74,216,154 people who thought they were doing a great job should share the blame too - along with every person who didn't take the virus seriously.

Indeed. In a democracy, do you blame the politicians, or the people who elected them, and especially those who would even have reelected He Who I Will Not Name?

[Meadmaker]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Like hell. WTF did you expect?

Or maybe you are saying that with the incompetent mentally ill Trump we should have expected it?

What did I expect? I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't think a million deaths would be an outrageous estimate, and I didn't expect them to be as concentrated in the upper age groups as much as it was.

No one was really sure what was going to happen, and at the very beginning, I didn't think I would spend a year working in my basement, so I thought more people would get it, and the early figures suggested a 3-4% mortality rate, instead of the roughly 1.5% that we seem to be running at now.

[Trebuchet]

The lower house of the North Dakota legislature has passed legislation prohibiting communities from requiring masks. Guess which state has more cases per million than any other!

[newyorkguy]

Originally Posted by Trebuchet

The lower house of the North Dakota legislature has passed legislation prohibiting communities from requiring masks. Guess which state has more cases per million than any other!

No surprise. Below is a brief excerpt from a story by writer Atul Gawande in the current New Yorker magazine, "Inside the Worst-Hit County in the Worst-Hit State in the Worst-Hit Country," about Minot, North Dakota. Last October a Minot Alderwoman proposed a mask mandate -- Fargo, North Dakota had just instituted one -- and one of the Aldermen was immediately opposed. His name was Tom Ross, a 56-year-old farm equipment salesman.

Quote:

“Obviously, since I’m the only one up on the dais without a face mask, I’m going to speak to the other side,” Ross said. “What’s the goal of this? I hear it time and time again—to slow the spread, to slow the spread. So we want to extend this until when? New Yorker link

The Minot council passed the mandate -- with no penalty attached -- by a vote of 5-2. Tom Ross, of course voted against it. Then, just a few days later, he began developing symptoms of what turned out to be Covid-19.

Quote:

For ten days, Tom lived in his basement. But he’d already been contagious for days. His entire family—his girlfriend and his two sons, ages eighteen and twenty-one—got infected. He was fatigued, but most of all he was frightened. He had a pulse oximeter that hooked up to his phone and monitored his pulse and his blood-oxygen level. On his first day of isolation, his oxygen level read ninety-five per cent; by the second day, it was eighty-five per cent. “So I’m running into the bathroom every five minutes, looking at my lips to see if they’re blue,” he told me. “There’s so much anxiety. . . . You’re always going, ‘O.K., this is day five. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get over the hump, and I’ll feel better. Maybe the next day, maybe the next day.’ ” This was not just the flu. A friend of Ross’s who was about his age had been the first person in Minot to die from COVID-19. Ross feared dying right there in his basement, or not getting well enough to return to work, which seemed just as bad.

'

Ross no longer seemed too enthusiastic about 'taking one' for the good of the economy.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

That will be an interesting map come the post TX disaster surge. Where is the image from? I can't read the fine print on it.

The John Hopkins county map look a little different but yours is more fun.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

The map is from here:

https://www.kcci.com/article/covid-1...ry-22/35587116

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

The map is from here:

https://www.kcci.com/article/covid-1...ry-22/35587116

Thanks.

That's the annoying site that thinks if you have to click twice to close their popups you will somehow be more inclined to pay them and let them track your location.

Easy enough to click twice.

[newyorkguy]

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

Here's a challenge. Guess which state lifted almost all covid restrictions about a month ago.

The link provided is to an Iowa TV station, so I'm guessing the state is Iowa? But according to the New York Times, and other news sources, the restrictions weren't lifted about a month ago but less than three weeks ago on February 5th.

Quote:

Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, removed a statewide mask mandate, along with certain gathering restrictions, in February.
Open

• Retail Retail stores, malls
• Food and drink Restaurant dining; bars
• Personal care Medical spas, tanning salons; salons, barbershops, tattoo parlors, etc.
• Houses of worship
• Entertainment Libraries; movie theaters; museums, zoos, aquariums; casinos; outdoor venues; bowling alleys, amusement parks; indoor venues
• Outdoor and recreation Campgrounds; gyms; pools; playgrounds, skating rinks, skate parks

New York Times link

Originally Posted by DevilsAdvocate

The map is from here:

https://www.kcci.com/article/covid-1...ry-22/35587116

I couldn't really make out much of anything in the original map image that was posted. Below is a screen cap from the Des Moines TV station page showing current case density in Iowa county-by-county. Note that it is stated on the map that the information is from John Hopkins. [Click to enlarge and I added the name 'Iowa' in the upper right corner.] Next to the TV station's John Hopkins map is a New York Times (via Google) map of daily new cases since March 2020. The state does seem to be doing much better than average. They peaked in mid-November and seemed to have missed the whole Christmas/New Year's surge.

My question: DevilsAdvocate, what is the point you're making here; what does this tell us? Do you think it was appropriate to lift the restrictions when Governor Reynolds did so; too early; too late?

[Resume]

From Worldometer:

Quote:

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,897,718
Deaths:
514,996

New Cases:
71,054
New Deaths:
2404

[newyorkguy]

In looking again at the original map I realize that it's possible to see -- just barely -- the outlines of the United States. Below I'm attaching a similar map, but from the New York Times which may be more viewable. Click to enlarge.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

The link provided is to an Iowa TV station, so I'm guessing the state is Iowa? But according to the New York Times, and other news sources, the restrictions weren't lifted about a month ago but less than three weeks ago on February 5th.

I couldn't find the exact date and gave up looking and went with "about a month ago".

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

I couldn't really make out much of anything in the original map image that was posted. Below is a screen cap from the Des Moines TV station page showing current case density in Iowa county-by-county. Note that it is stated on the map that the information is from John Hopkins. [Click to enlarge and I added the name 'Iowa' in the upper right corner.] Next to the TV station's John Hopkins map is a New York Times (via Google) map of daily new cases since March 2020. The state does seem to be doing much better than average. They peaked in mid-November and seemed to have missed the whole Christmas/New Year's surge.

My question: DevilsAdvocate, what is the point you're making here; what does this tell us? Do you think it was appropriate to lift the restrictions when Governor Reynolds did so; too early; too late?

I thought it was rather obvious in the map that I posted that right in the middle of the country there is a big red blotched shaped exactly like Iowa.

The map I posted is on that web page. It takes a while for all the maps to load. I've gone back to that page a few times and sometimes it shows a different map and sometimes it shows the map I posted but it is all grey. The web site seems pretty wonky.

My point was that they opened too soo. I was looking at World-O-Meters for trends in the upper Midwest. I noticed that Iowa had big spikes in February but no other state had that.

I went looking for why that would be and found articles bout Iowa lifting restriction several weeks ago, shortly before the big spikes. One of those articles had a U.S. map showing the 7-day rolling average of new cases by state. Iowa was way at the top with 137. South Carolina a distant second at 41. Most other states at around 8 or 9.

I wanted to see if that was just one part of the state or just the cities or if it was leaking over into other states. I managed to find this county map. At first I thought because it was an Iowa TV station that they had somewhat greyed out the rest of the county to just highlight Iowa. Then I started looking at the county numbers and realized that was the actual map. Iowa is basically completely red right up to the borders with the surrounding states all grey.

That clearly shows the effects of the restrictions and what happens when they are lifted. New cases where they are lifted go up dramatically.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Originally Posted by newyorkguy

In looking again at the original map I realize that it's possible to see -- just barely -- the outlines of the United States. Below I'm attaching a similar map, but from the New York Times which may be more viewable. Click to enlarge.

OK. There's something screwy with the Johns Hopkins data for Iowa. They are showing 27,302 new cases for Feb 19 and none for the other days. It looks like that is a putting a week or two worth of cases all into one day. That seems to be throwing things off. I'm seeing different charts for Iowa even though they both says they source is John Hopkins. I'm not sure what is going on.

Still, using the World-O-Meter numbers there have been a very high number of new cases per capita in Iowa for the past couple weeks compared to other states. I think... Even that data looks weird. Big spikes from Feb 4 to Feb 18. But then dropping way down with one day with no new cases and a few days that are lower than in last June. Something strange is going on there.

ETA: John Hopkins is showing a huge spike in just one day, which is clearly wrong. World-O-Meters is showing big spikes over two weeks. New York Times is not showing any February big numbers at all. Doesn't make any sense.

ETA: It appears Iowa has had data glitches causing problems with the numbers before according to this Des Moines Register article.

Quote:

“It’s just horrifying. We have no idea what’s going on, really,” said Jones.

I'm not sure if the problem now is from Iowa or the other agencies.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Fauci was right. There was a “surge upon a surge”…in some areas. The Cayuga graph is a bit difficult to work with. It is clearer in the Onondaga graph.

That big wave you see in both graphs is not a holiday surge. In that brown section, that peak around Dec 15 is the Thanksgiving spike. That big red spike on top of the curve around Jan 5 is the Christmas spike.

Look at the daily trends for the upper Midwest states: ND, SD, NE, MN, IA, WI, IL. They all had a big wave that peaked around the end of the first week of November. In the surrounding states, the peak hit toward the end of November or mid-December. For the rest of the country (including NY) the wave peaked around the first week of January.

This was a big wave that moved from the upper Midwest to the rest of the country over a period of two months. That is rather curious, because when this started a year ago the opposite happened. The early big hits were on the East coast, New York and New England, and Louisiana. That spread inward reaching the upper Midwest about a month later.

I can’t figure out what started that wave. I think I post about it in the Science thread because it is probably a science question rather than a politics question. But it certainly looks like a wave that start before the holidays and moved out to the rest of the country.

Virtually all states show a Thanksgiving and Christmas spike with each lasting about 7-10 days. It is a spike rather than a surge because it just goes up and comes back down to the normal curve after a few days; with a few exceptions like Kentucky. I can’t find it now, but there is a website that shows the daily numbers for the U.S. or individual states and creates a smooth curve and highlights the dates that there are anomalies.

The November spike was about 7 days and peaked around December 8. The Christmas spike was about 10 days and peaked around January 8. If you look at almost any state you will see spikes around those days. Those are in the Onondaga graph (although the Thanksgiving spike is a bit later than normal).