COVID-19 news & status

   

This is our headline today:

Ontario introduces legislation to extend emergency orders into next year, as province reports 112 new cases

As stated before, population is 14.6 million. Next year???? I want to scream!

Crap. Gov Dew(h)ine announced at his 2pm press conference that with the uptick in cases, Ohio has 7 counties, including mine which is Montgomery, that are starting a new round of face mask stuff tomorrow evening at 6. You have to wear a face mask when indoors in any kind of social setting. If you are at work in a private office, you don't.

Ontario, you scream from the north, I'll scream from the south

Rig I'm joining you in that scream from this part of the country. Heck we even have to wear them outside in a social setting if 6 feet cannot be maintained. Basically, just keep your mask on at all times.

We have officially entered the next stage. Now all restaurants, movie theaters, performing arts centers, etc are allowed to be open (with restrictions). Also, we can have indoor gatherings of 50 people, outdoor gatherings of 100. Gyms, personal training and sports are allowed to start back up.

Our current count is 2.8 cases per 100,000 people.

Ontario I sure hope your opening goes better than ours did.

And ours! Now they are talking about closing either the city or state again.

Pedi and NM...what are your case numbers like?

I understand everyone's huge frustration.  In NZ, our lockdown was very severe, but now that it's over, we are pretty much back to business as usual throughout the country.  

Covid is still turning up here from places like Pakistan, but then it encounters our strict border measures (I hope).  Everyone coming into the country is put into isolation for two weeks.  They are tested for covid on days 3 and 12 of their stay.  If positive they go into quarantine. There have been 71 cases located at the border, of which 25 are currently active. People who escape from isolation are punished. It's keeping the rest of us safe.

For reference, our population 4.8million.

According to the Official Texas Covid website:

Our county:

Population: 4,978,845 (yes almost 5 million in one county in Texas)
Total Tests through 7/13: 408,886
Positive Tests: 47,369
Deaths 466

Statistics:
11.6% of the total tests done are positive
0.98% of positive test die
8% of the population have a positive test
0.009% of the total population have died of COVID

CDC stats for week 27.
I've added a covid 19 weekly death column. Now limiting the display to the last 21 weeks of data so it isn't too big.

Comment: Sad to say my state and county is in the group that has put back on many restrictions. IMO, just truly an abuse of the public. And my goodness, the bandana I'm forced to wear while working at Wally World is far from being "highly effective" at curtailing the spread. Yeah, it doesn't fit snugly, it is loose at the bottom and has air gaps around my nose, but not surprisingly I can breathe easier in it than I can in a surgical mask, and that is the key for me. A guy I hear on the radio is soon going to be marketing a face mask made from mosquito netting. It will no doubt be acceptable and not much less effective than my bandana, and you'll be able to breathe freely with it.

Anyway, here is the chart:

Well so interesting news. Was talking with my neighbor yesterday evening, and she had been to a friends house with a few other people after going green here. I think she said there were about 12 people. Without thinking she had given the host a hug and he had returned it also with a kiss on the lips. A few days later he showed symptoms and tested positive for Covid. So of course everyone that attended the get together had to get tested. Everyone was negative including his wife. They still all quarantined for 14 days, but I find it surprising that no one caught it.

That along with the story of people who have not gotten tested, getting calls that they tested positive. I'm really starting to wonder about the reliability of the testing and/or those handling the information. Not sure what to believe, other than I know there is a bug out there that we are calling Covid, but is it only 1 bug or is it somewhere along the lines of the typical flu's that we get each year. So hard to know at this point.

Annie, I'm thankful that NZ has things set up as well as they due to keep new comers contained until they know they are healthy and it keeps the entire country safe.

Ontario our County has 1.62 million people
of that 82,578 have been tested
we have had 5364 cases and 199 deaths.

That's mysterious NM. All that kissing sounds a bit irresponsible, however the fact that everyone tested negative is strange. Maybe he contracted it AFTER the party? Weird.

Rig, the annual number of deaths for 2020 is very concerning, especially since it only goes to July 4th. By early July we have already exceeded most of the past 8 years, if I am reading the chart correctly.

NM, I have to agree with Annie about your neighbor being irresponsible, especially if she was out talking to you when she is supposed to be quarantining. She was probably very lucky. However if she had the quick test, I would probably get retested as some the quick tests have high false negatives.

On the problems with people being notified about results of tests they didn’t take, it is probably health departments being overwhelmed and untrained. Some places will handle this better than others. Smaller health departments will likely have more issues. Sadly it appears the Federal government has just walked away from assisting with testing and tracing. From my experience investigating Medicare and Medicaid health care fraud, most local health departments are spread very thin under normal circumstances, so now they must be really suffering.

Fortunately NJ is one of the states doing well at the moment after having a horrible start but we have had increases at the shore, where people seem to flaunting the rules. Yesterday we had 28 deaths and 423 positive tests. Total deaths are 15,582 with 175,915 known cases. Our population is roughly 8.9 million. We only have outdoor dining and takeout, masks in stores or other indoor public places and outdoors when you can’t social distance. People coming from states where the virus is out of control have to quarantine for 14 days.

V: A clarification on how to look at the data shown:

The chart is week by week, so you are comparing each week of 2020 against the same week in previous years. So each week, the numbers shown are pertinent through that week, they are not full year numbers for previous years.  With an increasing US population, the number of deaths should rationally go up some each year, that is reflected in the linear regression forecast column, which is calculated for each week using the prior data from 2012-2019. As I've noted before, the CDC death data gets adjusted each week, going back into 2019, so there will be changes to 2019 and 2020 data each week for prior weeks, with more adjustments to recent weeks data. The latest week death numbers are significantly lower for week 27 than what will show next week, as more stuff gets processed through the system.

Given that we are in the "worst ever" situation with the whole country under various levels of restriction, one would expect the deaths to be dramatically higher. They are higher, but not extremely so. As a reference on normal deviations, note the current week deaths in 2013-2016. Note also that the last column, the "other" deaths, has the reported covid deaths backed out.

My basic, maybe overly simplistic assumption is that if all the data is dead-nuts accurate, we should see 2020 total deaths to be about equal to the regression model forecast plus the covid deaths, which are a new, incremental group not seen in prior years.

Full year death data:
2012  2,521,854
2013  2,587,315
2014  2,664,285 (53 weeks)
2015  2,693,027
2016  2,725,761
2017  2,804,306
2018  2,831,836
2019  2,845,773
2020  2,922,612 (forecasted)

You can see how the death data changes wk by wk if you check my post on 7/7 where I've posted a chart showing the data as received from CDC each week.
wkly death chart

Rig, thank you for the clarification. That makes much more sense. It is still concerning though. I look at but don’t pay too much attention to modeling to be honest because it is such a fluid situation and they contain the bias of the modeler. Good common sense will tell us that certain areas are in trouble, especially hospitals.

My forecast column has no bias except whatever is built into LibreOffice's calculation, with no assumptions, data adjustments, etc:
for week 13 for example:
K13 (forecast) =FORECAST.LINEAR(2020,C13:J13,$C$2:$J$2)
where c13:j13 are the data points for wk 13 in 2012-2019, $fields are the column header fields and I don't remember why they are needed in the formula.
The only quibble could be whether a linear regression yields the "best fit" to the raw data. I dunno, seemed like way too much effort to prove it out, and the regression yielded decent looking data to my eye.

V - my neighbor was only out because she had finished quarantine the week before I saw her, so no she wasn't violating her quarantine due to the exposure. And those getting calls who where not tested, that is just strange. I can't see how that has anything to do with overwhelmed offices, because there should not be their name connected to a test in anyway.

This is pertinent to many of us who live in areas that have very few cases. It made me laugh....

It’s nothing like that at all.

ekba wrote:It’s nothing like that at all.

It certainly is where I live.

No. For the analogy to make any sense everyone would already need to have been infected (=already pregnant).

This is certainly not the case where you live.

The funny graphic is saying:

The mask wearing would have been prudent at the beginning of the outbreak when the chance of infection was highest - much like wearing a condom during sex is the most probable time of causing conception.

That's the point.

I'm tired of the fear mongers holding everyone else hostage. I'm tired of the lack of common sense and critical thinking the general public seems to have. I'm tired of being the one attacked and shamed for NOT wanting to wear the mask. I'm tired of my opinion being less valuable then the self-righteous opinions of the mask wearers. I see the ridiculous actions of many mask wearers. If they TRULY thought it helped they would wear them properly, change them often, and wear an appropriate mask type. I'm not willing to be "nice" about this anymore. MY opinion counts. My rights count. My choice of medical freedom counts. I refuse to be shushed and controlled. And I'm certainly not apologizing for my thoughts or words or actions.

It still makes no sense. You can’t get pregnant while pregnant. You can still get infected with Covid when the local caseload is low. The caseload was low everywhere six months ago. It just takes one infected person in a restaurant, bar, party to start the spread again.

I just got home from my PT job and have a cracking headache from wearing my <BLEEP> mask for my full 6 hour shift. Lowered oxygen inside that puppy, dontcha know. I can't stand it much more, and I'm about at the end of my tolerance for the on-going restrictions in my county, which were extended another week. And Wal-fart and Kroger have announced that all stores will soon require shoppers to wear masks. I'm just so excited.

In regard to Ekba's post: It also helps to boost the caseload counts when testing facilities positive rate gets reported and counted in the "official" totals as 100% when it is dramatically less, as has happened several times in Florida.  BS counts

That goes along with the piece of fruit that was tested and had covid,Covid fruit

The WHO has an advice on masks document, released in June. It can be downloaded  here: WHO mask advice

From that document:
"According to the current evidence, COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people via respiratory droplets and contact routes. Droplet transmission occurs when a person is in close contact (within 1 metre) with an infected person and exposure to potentially infective respiratory droplets occurs, for example, through coughing, sneezing or very close personal contact resulting in the inoculation of entry portals such as the mouth, nose or conjunctivae (eyes)."

If you can manage not to stay close to your lone wandering covid case in the bar for several minutes, don't let them sneeze or cough on you, and stay more than 1 meter apart, you should be good.

Rig D wrote:
If you can manage not to stay close to your lone wandering covid case in the bar for several minutes, don't let them sneeze or cough on you, and stay more than 1 meter apart, you should be good.

That does not seem realistic. It is not working out for the US South. Or maybe today’s 35,000+ cases were just false positives and pieces of fruit that got tested.