COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[caulfield12]

 

“Even in a health crisis, the American people don't forfeit our constitutional rights.”  Mike Pence

So why don’t we then also celebrate those who give HIV or herpes to their partners, knowingly or unknowingly?   The number of 2017 HIV deaths per 100,000 was just 1.7, so where are the protestors fighting against wearing masks who also fighting for the freedom to never wear condoms as well?  After all, the long-term health consequences of being infected with Covid-19 can be just as bad or worse than with an STD diagnosis.

Edited June 27, 2020 by caulfield12

[Balta1701]

6 hours ago, bmags said:

I'm not that worried about travel. Community spread is enough to light it. Mostly worried about bars/restaurants being reopened indoors.

With what we saw in Feb and March, travel is a huge portion of the seeds for case explosion. Basically every case around me right now was imported from New York. With a lot of Louisiana stops in between. Whether we increase your spreading rate by 25% or 75%, you have to stop us if you want to stop the virus, it’s that simple.
 

Travelers to your state will stop at restaurants and gas stations. We are sending you carloads of it right now, you just don’t know which car out of the next thousand it is.

[Balta1701]

5 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

People are jam packed in a Mexican restaurant in Nashville and none of the patrons are even wearing masks as they walk in.  The south simply doesn’t give a fuck about this virus.

Is this still Rick Hahn’s fault?

[Chicago White Sox]

6 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Is this still Rick Hahn’s fault?

All he had to do was offer Machado a halfway decent contract, so yes I will blame him if I get COVID-19.

[caulfield12]

7 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

Is this still Rick Hahn’s fault?

I blame it on the high concentration of Cracker Barrel restaurants in TN.  That, and Waffle Houses.   Whenever you encounter this particular combination, along with at least one NASCAR track in-state, that’s where the invisible enemy will surely lurk.

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by caulfield12

[bmags]

8 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

With what we saw in Feb and March, travel is a huge portion of the seeds for case explosion. Basically every case around me right now was imported from New York. With a lot of Louisiana stops in between. Whether we increase your spreading rate by 25% or 75%, you have to stop us if you want to stop the virus, it’s that simple.
 

Travelers to your state will stop at restaurants and gas stations. We are sending you carloads of it right now, you just don’t know which car out of the next thousand it is.

Seems like the greater problem was opening up your restaurants with no restrictions and no public health requirements for masks.

I have no idea your obsession with gas stations.

But regardless we aren’t going to shut the border from Indiana Wisconsin or Missouri. People live and work crossing those borders daily and there won’t be an Northern Ireland checkpoint.

You need to deal with providing as safe an environment as possible and eliminating risks as if a case could arrive because it will.

[Dick Allen]

2 minutes ago, bmags said:

Seems like the greater problem was opening up your restaurants with no restrictions and no public health requirements for masks.

I have no idea your obsession with gas stations.

But regardless we aren’t going to shut the border from Indiana Wisconsin or Missouri. People live and work crossing those borders daily and there won’t be an Northern Ireland checkpoint.

You need to deal with providing as safe an environment as possible and eliminating risks as if a case could arrive because it will.

I think gas stations get overlooked. There has to be as many germs hanging around there as anywhere.  I definitely would not put gas in my car not wearing gloves. And would use hand sanitizer when I was done.  Their employees make close to minimum wage. I would not want to trust they keep up with disinfecting. At a gas pump, you have no idea what was there 5 minutes before you.

[bmags]

6 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

I think gas stations get overlooked. There has to be as many germs hanging around there as anywhere.  I definitely would not put gas in my car not wearing gloves. And would use hand sanitizer when I was done.  Their employees make close to minimum wage. I would not want to trust they keep up with disinfecting. At a gas pump, you have no idea what was there 5 minutes before you.

So it’s like any door? 
 

I don’t know why the minimum wage has any part of this. They often are only staffed with one person. They can’t just leave the register every 15 minutes to sanitize every pump.

Wash hands.

But surface transmission is a much smaller concern than preventing people getting together in indoor areas for long periods.

[NWINFan]

20 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

It starts right at the top of the food chain.

This is so true. Trump stirred up his base calling this the King Fu disease. Not only this is racist, he was making light of a situation where over 120,000 have died and many more on the way. And his base was cheering this nonsense. The times are only going to get tougher. And there is no guarantee that a change will come four and a half months from now.

[Jerksticks]

It’s starting to come out.

[bmags]

A strong day in Illinois.

Averaging 30k tests a day now. Cases down to 786 for a drop in % positive of 2.6%.
 

 

[bmags]

1 hour ago, Jerksticks said:

It’s starting to come out.

Sorry shouldn’t we be at 100% infection rate by your calculations? I’m confused.

[Balta1701]

8 hours ago, bmags said:

Seems like the greater problem was opening up your restaurants with no restrictions and no public health requirements for masks.

I have no idea your obsession with gas stations.

But regardless we aren’t going to shut the border from Indiana Wisconsin or Missouri. People live and work crossing those borders daily and there won’t be an Northern Ireland checkpoint.

You need to deal with providing as safe an environment as possible and eliminating risks as if a case could arrive because it will.

I can't be the only one who goes inside to use the restroom and buy a Dr. Pepper, am I?

[NorthSideSox72]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

I can't be the only one who goes inside to use the restroom and buy a Dr. Pepper, am I?

Dr. Pepper sucks.

?

[NorthSideSox72]

So, we (myself, wife, 11 year old, 8 year old) still have all our flight, hotel and car reservations for our summer vacation. 6 days or so seeing the parks and monuments in Southern Utah (Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase, etc.). Flying in and out of Vegas. Early August.

Having a hard time deciding whether to go or not. I'm not overly concerned about our time in the parks, which is most of the trip (as long as we avoid Angel's Landing). And we can manage the hotel rooms and rental car with a major wipe-down upon arrival, then they should be fine after that. Can eat at places outside where possible, keep social distance, etc. I am keeping an eye on the stats for Southern Utah for infections - they have been staying pretty low, almost as low as Illinois in rate, though a slight uptick lately.

My big scaries are the plane ride (4 hours each way), and on our last night we are supposed to stay at the MGM Grand in Vegas which also scares me. We could always cancel the Vegas hotel and get a place outside of town somewhere for that night I suppose, in some smaller town or whatever, since our return flight isn't early. But the flight is what it is and I can't control how full it is, or whether or not people will mask up (airlines are starting to get stricter on that which is good). We will probably make our decision in mid-late July. Good news is we can get full credit for the flights still, and should still be able to get most if not all our hotel deposits back.

What would y'all do?

 

[Balta1701]

12 minutes ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

So, we (myself, wife, 11 year old, 8 year old) still have all our flight, hotel and car reservations for our summer vacation. 6 days or so seeing the parks and monuments in Southern Utah (Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase, etc.). Flying in and out of Vegas. Early August.

Having a hard time deciding whether to go or not. I'm not overly concerned about our time in the parks, which is most of the trip (as long as we avoid Angel's Landing). And we can manage the hotel rooms and rental car with a major wipe-down upon arrival, then they should be fine after that. Can eat at places outside where possible, keep social distance, etc. I am keeping an eye on the stats for Southern Utah for infections - they have been staying pretty low, almost as low as Illinois in rate, though a slight uptick lately.

My big scaries are the plane ride (4 hours each way), and on our last night we are supposed to stay at the MGM Grand in Vegas which also scares me. We could always cancel the Vegas hotel and get a place outside of town somewhere for that night I suppose, in some smaller town or whatever, since our return flight isn't early. But the flight is what it is and I can't control how full it is, or whether or not people will mask up (airlines are starting to get stricter on that which is good). We will probably make our decision in mid-late July. Good news is we can get full credit for the flights still, and should still be able to get most if not all our hotel deposits back.

What would y'all do?

 

How high risk are you?

Do you have good health insurance if you do get it? 

What airline?

Are you ok with a lot of the park features being closed or unavailable? Like even the basic ones like visitor centers and guest shops?

When you get back, can you do a 7 day quarantine before heading back to school/work? Stay away from grandparents, etc.? No runs to the grocery store for something, no housekeepers, no friends over, nothing where you might pass it on and create a chain if someone gets it and is asymptomatic?

We just had an article today in the local paper about how Big Bend National Park has created an outbreak in the small rural community around it, even with the visitor center being closed, just from people driving in wanting to drive through the park when it's 115 degrees. If it were me I wouldn't go, but that's because I'm about to lose my health insurance and I'm in a high risk group medically for more than 1 reason. Take those issues away for you and maybe you can decide differently.

[caulfield12]

4 hours ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

Dr. Pepper sucks.

?

Dr. Pepper doesn’t taste like sugary prune juice or cough syrup, it’s the greatest soft drink ever invented.  And no, servers/wait staff out there, you can not just arbitrarily decide to substitute Mr. Pibb and think it won’t be noticed, as it definitely will.

Another important point, we Dr. Pepper addicts like the fountain taste at Sonic Drive-In or Chick-Fil-A as much as any chain or franchise.   And definitely prefer in an aluminum can (Big 12 logo) or glass bottle to the plastic twenty-ounce variety.

Edited June 28, 2020 by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-woman-double-lung-transplant-chicago/
 

There is another story I’ve found about a 19 year-old, and, in this case, another twenty-something woman needing a double lung transplant due to their lungs being completely destroyed by Covid.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Something to keep in mind about Zion is that it's one of the busiest parks and you have to rely heavily on the park shuttles to get around unless you're on bikes. Pretty much any trail is going to be crowded by 9 unless you're way out in the back country. Springdale will likely be packed, too.

 

E: looks like shuttles restart on July 1st and require advanced reservation. They'll probably be limiting the number of passengers if I had to guess, which could me long wait times for an available one.

 

Bryce is also really just one big drive with lots of stops of scenic viewpoints. There are some trails but not a ton, and it'll be pretty crowded probably. At least it was in early June when were there a few years ago. Now that I think of it though, there probably won't be as many tour company buses of international tourists.

 

I wouldn't go, but I'm at let's say an 8/10 on precautionary scale for this thing right now.

Edited June 28, 2020 by StrangeSox

[caulfield12]

14 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

Something to keep in mind about Zion is that it's one of the busiest parks and you have to rely heavily on the park shuttles to get around unless you're on bikes. Pretty much any trail is going to be crowded by 9 unless you're way out in the back country. Springdale will likely be packed, too.

 

E: looks like shuttles restart on July 1st and require advanced reservation. They'll probably be limiting the number of passengers if I had to guess, which could me long wait times for an available one.

 

Bryce is also really just one big drive with lots of stops of scenic viewpoints. There are some trails but not a ton, and it'll be pretty crowded probably. At least it was in early June when were there a few years ago. Now that I think of it though, there probably won't be as many tour company buses of international tourists.

 

I wouldn't go, but I'm at let's say an 8/10 on precautionary scale for this thing right now.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2020/06/26/road-trip-coronavirus-safety-tips-gupta-vpx.cnn

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/reopening-coronavirus/travel_vacation.html

 

Texas and at least five other states -- Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah -- reported the highest single-day totals of new Covid-19 cases, according to the state's health departments. Florida, seen possibly as the next US epicenter, reported its highest one-day total of new cases on Saturday with 9,585 cases.

But only between 5% and 8% of Americans (roughly 20 million) have been infected with the virus, with the numbers varying by region. That means 90% or more have not been infected and are susceptible to infection, highlighting the need to act aggressively to combat rising infection rates, Dr. Robert Redfield said.

“The average length of stay for a 30-year-old with COVID in the hospital is two weeks,” Dr. Kavita Patel said. “It’s not like they’re just healthy and out the door. There’s a 5 percent mortality rate if you’re 35 years old in Florida and get hospitalized. We’re definitely in a very scary area in this phase.”

www.cnn.com

Edited June 28, 2020 by caulfield12

[greg775]

3 hours ago, NorthSideSox72 said:

So, we (myself, wife, 11 year old, 8 year old) still have all our flight, hotel and car reservations for our summer vacation. 6 days or so seeing the parks and monuments in Southern Utah (Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase, etc.). Flying in and out of Vegas. Early August.

Having a hard time deciding whether to go or not. I'm not overly concerned about our time in the parks, which is most of the trip (as long as we avoid Angel's Landing). And we can manage the hotel rooms and rental car with a major wipe-down upon arrival, then they should be fine after that. Can eat at places outside where possible, keep social distance, etc. I am keeping an eye on the stats for Southern Utah for infections - they have been staying pretty low, almost as low as Illinois in rate, though a slight uptick lately.

My big scaries are the plane ride (4 hours each way), and on our last night we are supposed to stay at the MGM Grand in Vegas which also scares me. We could always cancel the Vegas hotel and get a place outside of town somewhere for that night I suppose, in some smaller town or whatever, since our return flight isn't early. But the flight is what it is and I can't control how full it is, or whether or not people will mask up (airlines are starting to get stricter on that which is good). We will probably make our decision in mid-late July. Good news is we can get full credit for the flights still, and should still be able to get most if not all our hotel deposits back.

What would y'all do?

 

Zion is life-changing. I've been there. It's so peaceful at night. Hope you are staying in one of their lodges. As far as the trip ... tough call. I'd get out of the MGM now. First of all it'll take forever to check in that huge monstrocity. I always like to stay somewhere like Monte Carlo where check in is in the back by the parking and right where the cabs let you out. Since you are probably flying SWA I'd wait until 10 days out and see how Vegas and Utah are doing with the virus. The flights? I would think obviously planes are an awful place for a person to be with the virus prevalent. However, I bet it's also one of the best places in terms of it getting scrubbed down beautifully. Also mom and dad can sit next to each other in the same row with one child on the aisle and the other in another row. At least right next to you will be safe.

Personally I think I'd scrap the trip this year because of the flights and being in Vegas and the fact 2020 is the year from hell. But I also think if you go you might return COVID-free. If you go let us know if Zion is still awesome. Be careful on the trails. There were a couple spots one slip would mean plunging way far down than you want to plunge.

p.s. Like somebody said, if it's hard to get a shuttle and different gift shops are closed ... might be best to just scrap this year's trip and go some other time. I really don't want to go in the hospital two weeks and possibly die or have my lungs ruined forever. Best wishes to everybody as we try to avoid COVID.

Edited June 28, 2020 by greg775

[caulfield12]

3 hours ago, greg775 said:

Zion is life-changing. I've been there. It's so peaceful at night. Hope you are staying in one of their lodges. As far as the trip ... tough call. I'd get out of the MGM now. First of all it'll take forever to check in that huge monstrocity. I always like to stay somewhere like Monte Carlo where check in is in the back by the parking and right where the cabs let you out. Since you are probably flying SWA I'd wait until 10 days out and see how Vegas and Utah are doing with the virus. The flights? I would think obviously planes are an awful place for a person to be with the virus prevalent. However, I bet it's also one of the best places in terms of it getting scrubbed down beautifully. Also mom and dad can sit next to each other in the same row with one child on the aisle and the other in another row. At least right next to you will be safe.

Personally I think I'd scrap the trip this year because of the flights and being in Vegas and the fact 2020 is the year from hell. But I also think if you go you might return COVID-free. If you go let us know if Zion is still awesome. Be careful on the trails. There were a couple spots one slip would mean plunging way far down than you want to plunge.

p.s. Like somebody said, if it's hard to get a shuttle and different gift shops are closed ... might be best to just scrap this year's trip and go some other time. I really don't want to go in the hospital two weeks and possibly die or have my lungs ruined forever. Best wishes to everybody as we try to avoid COVID.

Progress!!!
 

The trend lines are daunting. From May 23 through Tuesday, the total number of confirmed cases more than doubled in the counties centered on Austin (Travis), Houston (Harris), and Dallas; nearly doubled in Fort Worth (Tarrant); and roughly tripled in San Antonio (Bexar). In Maricopa County, Arizona, which comprises Phoenix and its sprawling suburbs, the total number of cases more than quadrupled from 8,151 on May 23 to 34,992 yesterday. In Florida, daily new cases in Miami-Dade County rose from 113 on May 24 to 947 on June 22. The map of cumulative cases maintained by the Georgia Department of Public Health is a soothing shade of blue across most of the state—except for the bright red marking Atlanta and its sizable surrounding suburbs of DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett counties. Statewide, both Florida and Texas announced more than 5,500 new cases yesterday, a record for each. 

Public-health experts expect the numbers to continue rising for weeks. In Arizona, “we are experiencing a second surge after an early-May plateau,” Joe Gerald, a professor at the University of Arizona College of Public Health, told me. “This surge is much larger than the first one and basically our foot is still on the accelerator. It is going to get worse before it gets better.”

In Texas, Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, described the situation in equally ominous terms. “I’m extremely worried,” he told me. “I sometimes use the word dire because the numbers are just accelerating so dramatically. If you look at the curve [of case growth], it’s very much an exponential curve.”

Both Gerald and Hotez, like Adler, told me that if the current trend is not slowed, hospitals’ capacity in their areas will be overwhelmed in the next few weeks. “The implications are: We’ll see in Houston what we saw in New York City in the spring, which is a surge on intensive-care units and hospitalizations, and we’ll reach or exceed capacity,” Hotez said. “You don’t want to do that, because that’s when the mortality rates start to climb.” Yesterday, Houston’s massive Texas Medical Center projected it could exceed its intensive-care capacity by as soon as today. Coronavirus hospitalizations in the Houston area have nearly tripled since Memorial Day, the Houston Chronicle has reported.

Likewise, the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in Maricopa has more than doubled since late May, and just 12 percent of the state’s intensive-care-unit beds were available as of yesterday. The pressure on local medical workers is growing so intense that Ross Goldberg, the president of the Arizona Medical Association, told me the state may soon need to ask for volunteer health-care professionals from other states, as New York did earlier this year. “Obviously there is going to be a finite amount of space and a finite amount of staff,” Goldberg, a surgeon in Phoenix, said. “Is this a time where we start looking for help elsewhere? That is something we need to be considering.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-sun-belt-spikes-could-be-a-disaster-for-trump/ar-BB15Y4tT

 

 

[StrangeSox]

17 hours ago, greg775 said:

Zion is life-changing. I've been there. It's so peaceful at night. Hope you are staying in one of their lodges. As far as the trip ... tough call. I'd get out of the MGM now. First of all it'll take forever to check in that huge monstrocity. I always like to stay somewhere like Monte Carlo where check in is in the back by the parking and right where the cabs let you out. Since you are probably flying SWA I'd wait until 10 days out and see how Vegas and Utah are doing with the virus. The flights? I would think obviously planes are an awful place for a person to be with the virus prevalent. However, I bet it's also one of the best places in terms of it getting scrubbed down beautifully. Also mom and dad can sit next to each other in the same row with one child on the aisle and the other in another row. At least right next to you will be safe.

Personally I think I'd scrap the trip this year because of the flights and being in Vegas and the fact 2020 is the year from hell. But I also think if you go you might return COVID-free. If you go let us know if Zion is still awesome. Be careful on the trails. There were a couple spots one slip would mean plunging way far down than you want to plunge.

p.s. Like somebody said, if it's hard to get a shuttle and different gift shops are closed ... might be best to just scrap this year's trip and go some other time. I really don't want to go in the hospital two weeks and possibly die or have my lungs ruined forever. Best wishes to everybody as we try to avoid COVID.

SWA is still not flying full planes and strictly enforcing mask requirements.

 

If we can analogize to train travel, which has the caveat of length of time on board, it might be safe. Tokyo subways are jam packed with little or no transmission because everyone wears masks and no one's really talking. Per an episode of TWiV podcast (infectious disease and virology experts), airplane viral spread is mainly in the area around the person who's infected and not recirc air spread. Still gotta go through O'Hare or Midway though.

I still wouldn't get on a plane right now. I'm supposed to be in a family vacation right now that we called off. 

 

@NorthSideSox72 if you do go either now or in the future, you could mirror the second trip we took to Zion last spring where we day a (long) day trip from Las Vegas to Death Valley. Incredible place. I'd say Bryce could be a day at most unless you want to go out to Dixie national forest or something.

Like Greg said, Zion is an incredible place. The Narrows is the best hike we've ever done. And it hurts to lose a year. Your kids will never be 8 and 11 again (ours will never be their ages). But Zion will still be there next year. At the least, like you said, keep an eye on infection rates both here and in Nevada and Utah. If you could take an extra couple of days and make a road trip out of it, that might really reduce some risk.

[caulfield12]

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he would "settle" for a Covid-19 vaccine that's 70% to 75% effective, but that this incomplete protection, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they won't get a coronavirus vaccine, makes it "unlikely" that the US will achieve sufficient levels of immunity to quell the outbreak.

With government support, three coronavirus vaccines are expected to be studied in large-scale clinical trials in the next three months.

"The best we've ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "That would be wonderful if we get there. I don't think we will. I would settle for [a] 70, 75% effective vaccine."

A CNN poll last month found one-third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against Covid, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.

In an interview Friday, CNN asked Fauci whether a vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy taken by only two-thirds of the population would provide herd immunity to the coronavirus.

"No -- unlikely," he answered.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/health/fauci-coronavirus-vaccine-contact-tracing-aspen/index.html

 

Edited June 29, 2020 by caulfield12

[Chicago White Sox]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he would "settle" for a Covid-19 vaccine that's 70% to 75% effective, but that this incomplete protection, coupled with the fact that many Americans say they won't get a coronavirus vaccine, makes it "unlikely" that the US will achieve sufficient levels of immunity to quell the outbreak.

With government support, three coronavirus vaccines are expected to be studied in large-scale clinical trials in the next three months.

"The best we've ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective," said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "That would be wonderful if we get there. I don't think we will. I would settle for [a] 70, 75% effective vaccine."

A CNN poll last month found one-third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against Covid, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.

In an interview Friday, CNN asked Fauci whether a vaccine with 70% to 75% efficacy taken by only two-thirds of the population would provide herd immunity to the coronavirus.

"No -- unlikely," he answered.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/health/fauci-coronavirus-vaccine-contact-tracing-aspen/index.html

 

Gotta love this country!