COVID-19 news & status

Ontario, I don’t understand your point.

OK, how about some  humor/lighter stuff:
COVID Mosquito Netting Anti-Mask (A Novelty)
"This item offers no protection whatsoever against any bacteria, virus nor other airborne contaminates.  This is a costume/novelty item only."
https://ruralsurvival-life.myshopify.com/products/covid-19-mosquito-netting-anti-mask%E2%84%A2-a-novelty

And this to feed all the super secret covid denial conspiracy theorists out there in the crowd, and to curl the hair (if any) of those on the other extreme.
https://oneradionetwork.com/all-shows/dr-tim-oshea-covid-19-wheres-the-sciencewheres-the-epidemic-where-are-the-patients-july-21-2020/

Rig, the Dr. O'shea piece makes me cringe a little.

?-just a little?

NZ: now over 100 cases in Auckland, with about 10 in hospital, including three in intensive care.

City to stay in lockdown till Sunday, and the rest of us on Level 2 till 6 September. At least.

Annie, curious, is Auckland’s population dense or are people spread out?

Nothing new to report on Covid on this end.

Week 34 Stats:

Here we go. Schools are back in September 14th with all sorts of social distancing, masks, face shields, groups that are cohorted together, etc, etc. The teachers are putting up a stink about Covid and teaching. Why do they have to complicate an already tenuous situation? There are tens of thousands of REAL front line workers who have been working this entire time. They are given nary a thought but the teachers.....well, hey, they're special. This is from a news article:

Also on Monday, the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party is asking businesses to treat education workers as front-line workers.

Steven Del Duca said retailers and institutions have made life easier for front-line workers during the pandemic.

He said he would like to see teachers, caretakers, bus drivers, principals and support staff have special shopping hours, discounts on products and services, and increased childcare.

Teachers, it's always the teachers in Ontario. Ontario teacher's unions are always sticklers. I know that many teachers around the world work hard and put in an honest day's work. But Ontario teachers are always complaining. Where is the special childcare and special shopping hours for the city transit drivers, the grocery store clerks, the garbage men, the gas station attendant, all of whom have been working throughout Covid.

Hopefully we actually have teachers in the classroom on September 14th.

Teacher here do a lot of complaining too, even without Covid. Yes, they do have a thankless job much of the time, but they are not the only ones and they chose the profession. There are many people working thankless jobs doing it just to feed their families because they could not get anything else.

In other news we have the report from the CDC that of all the deaths marked Covid, only 6% of said deaths were due to Covid alone. Just like the flu and other illnesses, if you have other issues, you're more likely to have complications and death, which were the case with the other 94% of the deaths, with the exception of those do to accident or self inflicted.

Only 6% !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Only 6% of the death certificates show Covid as the sole cause of death of people with no co-morbidities. This is not at shocking or some sort of conspiracy. We already know that Covid is more deadly in people with co-morbidities so it is not surprising that they have other contributing factors to their death. Many people who have cancer listed as a cause of death actually die of other things, sepsis or organ failure but it is still counted as a cancer death. If you have a death certificate available to look at, I bet there are multiple factors listed as the cause of death.

Sadly, based on the actions of this administration, the FDA and CDC, I don’t think you can trust anything coming out of them.

V - both my husbands and both parents only had one cause of death listed. For my husband it was ALS, Dad was dementia and Mom was listed as pancreatic cancer even though it wasn't cancer.

I do understand that the flu etc all are worse for co-morbidities and not trying to promote any kind of conspiracy, just that the media just loves to try and make it sound like it's all that.

And like you I'm not sure what, if any numbers from any place at all are even close to being correct.

Whut? You guys don’t believe all the numbers?
Check your credulity with the Chinese data.
From China CV data

This takes the cake. This is what will happen to a school student if anyone in their class has Covid. WHY do they have to stay home and self-isolate if they get a negative test? Why bother with testing if "they" do not believe in the efficacy of the test?

This is from cbc.ca. It is in reference to this article:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid19-case-school-ontario-student-teacher-plan-1.5706191?fbclid=IwAR25Fno0jOJFdPKQzKyCZrAvqLiWg-OBQKvHfDL6LCn1-rEIQWliEhzbnYY

Everyone considered at high risk of exposure will be directed to self-isolate, and will be encouraged to get tested for COVID-19. However, even if they test negative, they are still to self-isolate for 14 days from the last contact with the confirmed case.

What is the point of testing then?

All the testing data is highly suspect at this point. The antigen test has been shown to be worthless and the PCR test is not being applied uniformly. I don't know the test mechanics, but each sample goes through test cycles. The number of cycles it takes to get to a significant amount of genetic material is critical. If it takes a lot of cycles, the person is not at risk of spreading the disease. Some labs are doing up to 40 cycles. There doesn't seem to be any agreement, but many people think that if you don't get results after 30 or so cycles you are not "positive." See this article for more information(you will need a NYTimes account, you can set one up free):
NY Times PCR Test

CDC does state that the death numbers are CV19 "involved," not "only." It is the press that provides the hype about it being all CV19. All the co-morbidity stuff makes things extremely messy. That's why in the weekly stat sheet I show here I use the Keep It Simple approach, by using the historical data from pre-CV19 years 2013-2019, I generate a forecast number of deaths for each week that is a straight forward projection using linear regression assuming there is no CV-19. Then by looking at the actual deaths recorded, you can make some assumptions on the effect of CV19. Of course, this assumes AOTBE (all other things being equal), like there is no major flu virus, or sudden surge in other death categories.

Week 35 Data:

Thank you for sharing once again. It's nice to see it on a spreadsheet nice and neat like.

I did a similar data analysis for Ohio total deaths and our numbers for ytd through the end of August are:
83,174  2018 Actual
82,281  2019 Actual
86,641  2020 Actual
84,421  2020 Forecast  (linear regression of data from 2011-2019, pre covid)
 2,220  Over forecast
 4,165  Official State of Ohio Covid deaths.
If you subtract the Official Covid deaths from total deaths, you find that the last time we were this low in total deaths was in 2016. So you can reach your own assessment on how good is Ohio's death count from Covid.

But Gov "De-Whine" says he'll lift mask requirements ASAP, but "we've got a long way to go." Yeah, why am I not a believer?

Week 36 data, week ending 9/5

Thanks for doing all these stats Rig, it really puts everything in perspective.

Gov De-Whine in his presser y'day said that Ohio is going to start in with the the antigen test as a main part of our covid testing program. WTF is that about? The antigen test is not a good test, has been shown not to be a good test. The only thing that will happen is our positive tests will escalate and we can stay in masks even longer. Heck, when Trump was here Dewine couldn't go to the big rally because they gave him an antigen test and it was positive, the next day they gave him a PCR test and it was negative.

Rig - I just don't get it other than to have more reason to push mail in voting.

Pedi - Oh wouldn't that be wonderful to go back to factory settings?