COVID-19/Coronavirus thread

[The Beast]

2 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

The simple version is "we don't know everything but it looks like pregnancies are at high risk of some damage". In other words, Mike Trout has a kid due in a couple months, and he'd be very much justified in sitting out this season given the risks. There's a bunch of things that have come out over the last month about placental damage and infections being transmitted that you really don't want to risk.

She did mention something about placental damage, but I haven’t heard about infections. We will go with what the doctor says about her going back to work in the fall, but it would be great if she could work with her maternity plans. Of course we could also swing her being out of work if the doctor so ordered or they couldn’t accommodate her, but that is why we are taking it day by day and saving everything we can! And it is convenient that I work from home and handle the shopping and everything outside so it is unlikely for us to get anything. (I do wear a mask, we don’t go out and see people on occasion.)

[StrangeSox]

 

[knightni]

Starting Monday, states like Kentucky and Michigan are requiring businesses to refuse customers entry without masks on.

 

 

[Dick Allen]

5 minutes ago, knightni said:

Starting Monday, states like Kentucky and Michigan are requiring businesses to refuse customers entry without masks on.

 

 

Dictators.

[Dick Allen]

8 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

 

It's over. Trump defeated the virus. There will be little embers to put out here and there, but no problem. 99% of the cases are like a cold, if that.

[Chisoxfn]

13 minutes ago, knightni said:

Starting Monday, states like Kentucky and Michigan are requiring businesses to refuse customers entry without masks on.

 

 

Fantastic news.  

[greg775]

4 hours ago, NWINFan said:

She said HR talked down to her and didn't want to address the situation. She was tempted to go to the media because she didn't think that people should go to what could be a hot spot.

No, it is not going away. No, the summer heat is not killing it. 

Different topic, but this confirms my concerns about HR at some companies. Just another way for management to stay on top of people rather than help the employee. Glad she gave it a shot though. It was the right thing to do.

Your final two sentences are scary but appear to be true. Good health to all of us, knock on wood.

Edited July 10, 2020 by greg775

[bmags]

Illinois needs to go back to phase 3 immediately. 1300 cases today. 

The problem consistently with reopening is it signals that things are back to normal and people start taking bigger risks and taking off their masks.

[StrangeSox]

 

 

2 minutes ago, bmags said:

Illinois needs to go back to phase 3 immediately. 1300 cases today. 

The problem consistently with reopening is it signals that things are back to normal and people start taking bigger risks and taking off their masks.

Shut down everything indoors indefinitely.

You need the federal government to step in to mitigate the massive economic damage that this virus is causing. And that damage is going to be there whether we're stupidly enabling unchecked spread to the point everyone is too scared to go out anyway, or we proactively shut down to prevent the economic and health damage from unchecked pandemic.

 

[caulfield12]

5 hours ago, Chisoxfn said:

What disappointing me is there hasn't been more research done on the youth and impacts of the youth, both from an infection rate, symptoms, and their ability to pass on the virus. From what I have read, at younger ages, it seems to be far more likely to be no symptoms, but once you start getting into high school age, for whatever reason, the risks start to increase.  That said - everything has been limited and I don't get it - schools are vastly important in this country and the health of the students and teachers (which to be honest - I think that is where the real risk is and its why I'm surprised i haven't heard of Teacher Unions pushing back heavily) is key to that success and it seems like there has been so little effort done. 

I also am honestly am surprised there hasn't been a big private institution who has totally monopolized and came up with an absurdly better and more interactive way to teaching remote and just charged a flat fee for it (very on demand reading, writing, etc - and than create little pocketed portals where a child could discuss and share their work live with a licensed teacher - ensures a real efficient use of a teachers one-on-one interaction with the students).  I know at this point I'm evaluating all options for my kids because the experience I had with remote was just so poor. And I don't blame it on anyone - but it was the reality and from what I've heard from friends who teach in my district (or neighboring districts) it doesn't sound like there really is going to be a wholesale change to the approach.  

I do think each district is hoping a large chunk opt for fully remote, because the more who do fully remote, the easier it is to do a hybrid program.  But this will skew / create more inequality because I guarantee the lower income schools will end up with higher in person attendance than those in more affluent eras.  For me my intention is, as long as I believe the risks are manageable, for my children to attend in person (but that also depends on level of infections in my area - and after months of that number being near non-existent, it is definitely not the case today as cases have been growing exponentially the past couple of weeks (and I live in a town that has had mask orders since May 4th).  

Yet another example where minority kids in inner city districts are disproportionately affected.

Access to healthy meals cut off if they don’t go, internet/online education limited if they stay home...when I worked in Kansas City, students were being paid $50-75 or so just for showing up to school, because the subsidies were so massive that it made economic sense to incentivize schools to operate in such a fashion.  And this was more or less 15-20 years ago.

I’m sure a limited number of teachers are providing “live/interactive” lessons with PPT’s.  The numbers are even smaller for teachers over 50ish.  Every lesson we did here in China was either 90 (ten minute break in middle) or 45 minutes long, and we were teaching something new everyday or having kids present through cam/mike to each other.  In addition, tons of graded supplemental homework.  We even taught an additional month into the summer (finished Friday) previewing senior year topics for the matriculating juniors.  Many students are also doing Pioneer Project research papers with American university professors, writing EE’s for IB or studying SAT/IELTS/TOEFL pretty much the entire summer, either online or offline.

After news about teachers getting sick or dying from professional development/school improvement meetings or required one or two week summer training classes in July or August, those are likely to be cut out as well.

PS:  Every Grade 6 and up (with creative editing) or at least high school student in the US should be required to watch Hamilton and write about what it means to them over this summer.  Of course, 1/4th to 1/3rd of US parents would threaten to sue schools claiming it was BLM propaganda without bothering to first watch it themselves and do some meaningful self-reflection.  (It does seem Chief Justice John Roberts is taking those lessons to heart, at least.)

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/21/how-some-school-funding-formulas-hurt-learning-and-make-schools-more-dangerous/

Edited July 10, 2020 by caulfield12

[Middle Buffalo]

9 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

I think it would be the opposite. I think if you lined up his Presidency and put OBAMA everywhere TRUMP is, the right wing would lose their minds.

No doubt.

[spiderman]

On 7/10/2020 at 3:26 AM, Dick Allen said:

Exactly what is Trump doing to make the US citizens safer re Covid 19?
 Once the calendar turned to May 1, he gave up and went with whatever Fox News personalizes working from home told him. Now he insists schools be open. Not because Kids need an education but because if they aren’t open their parents won’t be back at work, therefore the economy won’t be back to the level he needs for re-election. The countries he whines that opened their schools didn’t listen to Drs. Hannity and Carlson and Ingraham. That is why it is safer for them to open. Ignoring science is pretty ignorant, and that is exactly what the WH has done. 
 

What happened to the virus is going to go away when it gets warm?  You would think a self described germaphobe would wear a mask. Even that claim is fake. Listening to the WH will literally get you sick and maybe killed.

Obviously, we're still learning about the virus and how it behaves/spreads, but why would you get your health advice from Donald Trump when you have guidelines from the CDC and countless other medical experts? If you think that politics doesn't play a role in any of this, from Trump and his political opponents, I have a bridge to sell you. The initial lockdowns were for bending the curve, which many states did do - to allow for medical capacity to not be overwhelmed. Re-opening was always going to happen because you have to have a balance between economic and medical demands. Moving the goalposts now doesn't help your argument now.

There was at least optimism from doctors that warmer weather would suppress the virus. That has not been true and we have to abide by social distancing guidelines until there are improved medical options. 

[spiderman]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:25 AM, StrangeSox said:

Positive test ratio lets you know if you're testing enough, but it doesn't tell you overall what shape you're in.

What are we doing to stop the growth of new cases? Have we implemented robust contact tracing? How do we make sure that 500 daily cases doesn't turn into 1000 daily cases (oops) doesn't turn into 5k+ daily cases?

And how much of that is largely outside of Illinois' control thanks to policy failures in other states and especially at the federal level?

Oh and by the way, we're running out of PPE again. How, exactly, are we going to safely staff schools with no PPE available?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/health/coronavirus-masks-ppe-doc.html

We've wasted the last several months. Complete and utter failure by our federal government. And now they're cutting back federal testing sites in areas that need it most. Shameful.

Positive test ratio does tell you what type of shape you're in. If 20% of a specific geographic area are testing positive (as some parts of the South are) vs. 2-4% (as Illinois has for the past few weeks), that is indicative of the spread (or lack of) of the virus. Number of cases is often reported by the media and while the numbers show increases (from 20K to now over 60K) that grab headlines, that number wouldn't be as meaningful if the % of positive cases was much lower than where it is in several parts of the country.

Most states have not not implemented robust contact tracing and are still lacking enough to keep up with the spread and hired enough to keep up with the early demand that resulted from the initial shelters in place. As recently as a few weeks back, Illinois was still behind, but most of the country was (and is). The CDC has issues guidelines around this prior to re-opening, and many states are still behind and/or catching up now to the demands from re-opening that were not considered. Nationwide, there needs to be at least 200K+. In order to keep up with the spread, there needs to be high % of new cases traced within 24 hours. Some of that is due to privacy concerns, etc. around the technology. NY has more contact tracing, but in many cases, aren't able to get cooperation from people. Now that the disease is spreading in many area's though, while contact tracing can be helpful for new(er) outbreaks, it's not enough to keep up with the spread.

The Defense Production Act should be more widely used for more PPE . The increased cases and re-opening of the country are both conflicting and increasing the shortages that we're seeing in specific parts of the country right now. We continue to be at the mercy of other countries for our supplies without invoking more domestic production. I have no disagreement.

The federal government has allowed the states to deal with their own situations (outside of the CARES act). More money will be coming if politics can be removed from the situation, but unfortunately that ship sailed a long time ago. 

I appreciate your post. Thoughtful and legitimate criticism.

[spiderman]

On 7/10/2020 at 9:33 AM, BrianAnderson said:

The problem with Trump is he's the boy who cried wolf. He's done and said so many ridiculous things that he's lost all credibility & trust. And once that's gone it's hard to "lead" effectively. If we did this like a blind fantasy baseball test -- Player A did this. Player B did this. Who do you like? I have a sneaking suspicion that more people would be actually okay with the moves that Trump has made. The problem is he's made everything around him (by choice) a traveling circus. 

I remain in the camp that there are too many people in the US for a single president to actually make a difference - presidents are more the PR for country. Just guiding the ship gently and as a calming driving force, hopefully moving it forward. We could use that in time of a pandemic more than ever. 

The country is very divided. Trump didn't start that, but has definitely added to that. He doesn't have much credibility despite being the President largely because he doesn't tell the truth and is ignorant on government/policy. It's unfortunate that everything has to be so political these days and facts can be disputed. Regardless of policy, which can't be ignored in a pandemic, he is not the leader the country needs. Unfortunately, given our divide, I'm not sure who that would be.

[spiderman]

On 7/9/2020 at 10:48 PM, caulfield12 said:

It will likely be an all-out battle between Pence, Nikki Haley, Cruz, Rubio, Paul Ryan and those governors like Hogan, Baker and DeWine...maybe Kasich will jump back into the fray as well.

Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Niki Haley and Larry Hogan would be the most logical ones to watch, but others will throw themselves in for 2024. Long way away.

[caulfield12]

2 hours ago, spiderman said:

Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Niki Haley and Larry Hogan would be the most logical ones to watch, but others will throw themselves in for 2024. Long way away.

The Covid lunacy has doomed Paul to nothing more than a niche candidacy like his father, along with his unruly mop of hair and getting tackled by a neighbor.

 

Teacher says school reopenings would be 'epidemiological nightmare' as thousands sign remote learning petition

More than 25,000 teachers, students and parents want to continue distance learning this fall until U.S. coronavirus cases — 3 million and counting — subside for 14 days in their respective counties, according to a new petition that claims in-person school would lead to a health care disaster.

The Change.org proposal was written by Harley Litzelman, a history and economics teacher at Skyline High School in Oakland. Alameda County, where Oakland is located, has more than 7,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Friday data. According to Litzelman, resuming in-person classes would “glorify the endless sacrifice of American teaching,” as he explained in a June 30 article on the website Medium calling for support of the petition, which uses the hashtag #14daysnonewcases.

“We refuse to return to campus this fall until our counties report no new cases of COVID-19 for at least 14 consecutive days,” reads the petition. “Let it be known that this is not simply a petition, but a statement of intent, a pledge not to return until it is safe.”

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/teacher-school-reopenings-epidemiological-nightmare-thousands-sign-remote-learning-petition-215709113.html

[StrangeSox]

2 hours ago, spiderman said:

Positive test ratio does tell you what type of shape you're in. If 20% of a specific geographic area are testing positive (as some parts of the South are) vs. 2-4% (as Illinois has for the past few weeks), that is indicative of the spread (or lack of) of the virus. Number of cases is often reported by the media and while the numbers show increases (from 20K to now over 60K) that grab headlines, that number wouldn't be as meaningful if the % of positive cases was much lower than where it is in several parts of the country.

Most states have not not implemented robust contact tracing and are still lacking enough to keep up with the spread and hired enough to keep up with the early demand that resulted from the initial shelters in place. As recently as a few weeks back, Illinois was still behind, but most of the country was (and is). The CDC has issues guidelines around this prior to re-opening, and many states are still behind and/or catching up now to the demands from re-opening that were not considered. Nationwide, there needs to be at least 200K+. In order to keep up with the spread, there needs to be high % of new cases traced within 24 hours. Some of that is due to privacy concerns, etc. around the technology. NY has more contact tracing, but in many cases, aren't able to get cooperation from people. Now that the disease is spreading in many area's though, while contact tracing can be helpful for new(er) outbreaks, it's not enough to keep up with the spread.

The Defense Production Act should be more widely used for more PPE . The increased cases and re-opening of the country are both conflicting and increasing the shortages that we're seeing in specific parts of the country right now. We continue to be at the mercy of other countries for our supplies without invoking more domestic production. I have no disagreement.

The federal government has allowed the states to deal with their own situations (outside of the CARES act). More money will be coming if politics can be removed from the situation, but unfortunately that ship sailed a long time ago. 

I appreciate your post. Thoughtful and legitimate criticism.

Your discussion of positive test rate is flat out wrong. It tells you if your testing capacity is overwhelmed or not. It doesn't tell you where you're likely heading. We could be testing 2M per day with super low positive test rate, but if we're not tracing and isolating it's pretty meaningless. If you're sitting at 1000k cases per day, you're primed to lose control very quickly. Our positive rate is trending back up, anyway.

 

The federal government leaving states to fend for themselves is a massive failure of the federal government and the White House specifically as the feds have a lot of tools, including public persuasion, that states don't. Especially monetary/budget. Unfortunately the President has completely politicized the response every step of the way.

Edited July 11, 2020 by StrangeSox

[Kyyle23]

15 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

The Covid lunacy has doomed Paul to nothing more than a niche candidacy like his father, along with his unruly mop of hair and getting tackled by a neighbor.

 

Teacher says school reopenings would be 'epidemiological nightmare' as thousands sign remote learning petition

More than 25,000 teachers, students and parents want to continue distance learning this fall until U.S. coronavirus cases — 3 million and counting — subside for 14 days in their respective counties, according to a new petition that claims in-person school would lead to a health care disaster.

The Change.org proposal was written by Harley Litzelman, a history and economics teacher at Skyline High School in Oakland. Alameda County, where Oakland is located, has more than 7,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Friday data. According to Litzelman, resuming in-person classes would “glorify the endless sacrifice of American teaching,” as he explained in a June 30 article on the website Medium calling for support of the petition, which uses the hashtag #14daysnonewcases.

“We refuse to return to campus this fall until our counties report no new cases of COVID-19 for at least 14 consecutive days,” reads the petition. “Let it be known that this is not simply a petition, but a statement of intent, a pledge not to return until it is safe.”

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/teacher-school-reopenings-epidemiological-nightmare-thousands-sign-remote-learning-petition-215709113.html

I don't think there is any scenario where Rand Paul is anything but a niche candidate.  He is just an awful person and senator

[spiderman]

8 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

Your discussion of positive test rate is flat out wrong. It tells you if your testing capacity is overwhelmed or not. It doesn't tell you where you're likely heading. We could be testing 2M per day with super low positive test rate, but if we're not tracing and isolating it's pretty meaningless. If you're sitting at 1000k cases per day, you're primed to lose control very quickly. Our positive rate is trending back up, anyway.

 

The federal government leaving states to fend for themselves is a massive failure of the federal government and the White House specifically as the feds have a lot of tools, including public persuasion, that states don't. Especially monetary/budget. Unfortunately the President has completely politicized the response every step of the way.

Positive test rate is an indicator of how widespread the virus is. A state with a high percentage of positive tests could eventually lead to increased hospitalizations, but obviously, that is a function of total cases identified, the demographics and the symptoms being present

States will have more demand in area's with higher positive rates, but states are adding more capacity to test. Illinois is now up to 35K+ - it wasn't long enough that Illinois was under 10K tests per day. They continued to ramp up testing locations as percentage of positive tests were 20%. 

[spiderman]

20 minutes ago, Kyyle23 said:

I don't think there is any scenario where Rand Paul is anything but a niche candidate.  He is just an awful person and senator

He always receives some initial attention because he's an outlier and creates some attention for himself with his style. He is never going to be a national candidate.

[greg775]

1 hour ago, spiderman said:

He always receives some initial attention because he's an outlier and creates some attention for himself with his style. He is never going to be a national candidate.

It's funny how no matter how many times the mods warn us, politics creeps back into the thread and the board. Not complaining just chuckling a bit how much politics rules our minds.

[StrangeSox]

1 hour ago, spiderman said:

Positive test rate is an indicator of how widespread the virus is. A state with a high percentage of positive tests could eventually lead to increased hospitalizations, but obviously, that is a function of total cases identified, the demographics and the symptoms being present

States will have more demand in area's with higher positive rates, but states are adding more capacity to test. Illinois is now up to 35K+ - it wasn't long enough that Illinois was under 10K tests per day. They continued to ramp up testing locations as percentage of positive tests were 20%. 

The high percentage told you that you weren't capturing nearly the whole scope. The lower positivity tells you that you are testing enough. 

But testing enough isn't the only thing that matters. Testing doesn't stop the spread directly. You need to get results to people quickly enough, and you need rapids contact tracing in place to smother the spread. So raw totals are still very, very important. The more cases you have, the harder it is to contain any individual cluster even if you have low positivity rates.

 

Let's say we tested 1m per day in Illinois, but our results weren't rapidly available and we weren't sufficiently contact tracing. Our positivity would be well below 1% even if we had 10k and growing new cases every single day. The raw count still tells you if you're primed for this to spiral out of control exponentially. That's where Illinois is sitting today.

[knightni]

[caulfield12]

A potential housing crisis is on the way for millions of Americans whose mortgage and rent deferrals are about to sunset.

Evictions loom as the end of state and local moratoriums will no longer protect homeowners and tenants unable to make payments because of COVID-19 lockdowns. A minority of U.S. states have already expired orders against evictions, and a host of others across the country are set to expire over the next two months.

Once they do, residents are facing a possible flood of non-payment legal actions. The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project (CEDP) predicted recently that by the end of September, more than 20 million U.S. renters —many of them Black and Latino located in big cities — will be at risk for eviction.

According to data released on Friday by mortgage tracking firm ATTOM Data Solutions, homeowners most at risk for foreclosures during the second quarter were those in metropolitan markets along the East Coast and in Northern Illinois, with clusters of troubled borrowers in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

“There are millions of Americans now unemployed due to the pandemic with greatly reduced means to keep up on their mortgages,” Todd Teta, ATTOM’s chief product officer, told Yahoo Finance in an email.

“At some point, banks are going to need mortgage holders to pay what they owe and go after those who don't,” he added.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/renters-homeowners-face-new-phase-of-coronavirus-crisis-evictions-172940378.html

 

 

[Balta1701]