Maybe “reopening” the economy without an adequate testing, tracking and tracing capacity isn’t such a good idea? Excerpts from a report in Forbes, “Dire Situation In Alabama Capital: ICUs Full, Coronavirus Cases Double In May:”
The mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, says the city’s health care system has been “maxed out” as cases of coronavirus have more than doubled in May—a sharp contrast to the slowing coronavirus spread that’s taken place across much of the U.S.—while city businesses were allowed to reopen May 11, even as it appeared that Alabama hadn’t hit White House reopening guidelines…
“Right now, if you are from Montgomery and you need an ICU bed, you are in trouble,” [Mayor Steven] Reed said, adding “we are at a very critical point in our health care system’s capacity to manage this crisis. They are at a capacity that is not sustainable.”
They’re not sure why the cases are spiking in that county, though some of the infections are linked. They’re flying blind. Vast swathes of the country are because there’s no national coordination, and the state-level coordination seems to be only as good as the state officials. Playing whack-a-mole with sudden spikes that overwhelm hospitals will probably be a thing for months.
The economic pain from the lockdown could have bought us time to put a federal program in place, but the numbers would have made Trump look bad, so here we are. What an insane situation.
scav
O! Their cute little stunned faces when the obvious happens.
Cheryl Rofer
Only gonna get worse as long as these fools insist on “opening up.”
On a more scientific note, people are observing that SARS-CoV-2 seems to cluster. “Sparks” that could start cases may just die out in some places and ignite a big cluster in others. No obvious correlations with anything so far. People are watching this.
pacem appellant
How does the current situation make Trump look good? I’ve never understood what’s going on in that little man’s brain.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So… ten days ago, since whatever social distancing was going on was called off. We’re still a good week from seeing exactly how bad the effects of re-opening could get?
Cheryl Rofer
Cheryl Rofer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep. The next two weeks are baked in.
Kay
The mayor said the main problem for Montgomery is people coming in from rural areas – which have few or no ICU beds. This was a huge driver of the planning DeWine did in Ohio. He knew there would be enough beds for Cleveland, proper, looking at just the city. What he had to anticipate was spikes in rural areas pouring people into Cleveland hospitals.
My county, for example, has 7 ICU beds and they only counted 5 as possible for COVID patients because they need to keep two open. This Montgomery situation was exactly what they feared.
Brachiator
The mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, says the city’s health care system has been “maxed out” as cases of coronavirus have more than doubled in May—a sharp contrast to the slowing coronavirus spread that’s taken place across much of the U.S.—while city businesses were allowed to reopen May 11, even as it appeared that Alabama hadn’t hit White House reopening guidelines…
The government can lie about the need for testing. Trump can lie about the efficacy of happy malaria pills. Trump can lie that an effective vaccine is just around the corner.
And worst of all, people can lie to themselves about the danger of the pandemic.
But you can’t lie about ICU’s getting maxed out.
And now Trump is on the hook for doing something. He keeps claiming that he gives the states all the beautiful equipment they need. Now, he has to put up or shut up. Well, he ain’t never gonna shut up.
And Alabama is full of idiots who wanted to liberate themselves from officials telling them to lock down. They got their wish.
@Kay:
Damn. People were clearly warned about this. They didn’t listen. And the most foolish insisted that rural areas were safer than the godforsaken cities.
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: Seems like there is so much we don’t know about this virus. Scary stuff.
Doc Sardonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We will have a better idea in probably 5-7 days maybe. However, the joker in the deck gets dealt this weekend with the holiday, so in around the next 3 weeks or so I expect the shit to hit the wind machine.
frosty
Nothing new to anyone, but Trump can’t say a single thing without qualifying it – a big tell for his lies. See Cheryl’s tweet. First sentence (phrase) is his definitive statement, the second is the tell. He couldn’t even say a month without immediately qualifying it:
We’re getting some very good numbers. It looks like the numbers are going to be very good into the future.
We’re going to be very strong starting with our transition period, which will be probably June, June-July.”
lee
I think it is plausible deniability. The GOP wants to at least be able to say ‘We had no idea’ when it is all said and done. I’m not sure that will work anymore. Too many people have access to information for that to work.
@Cheryl Rofer: I read the same or similar article. It is not enough to have an infection to start a cluster but just the right environment. The article I read mentioned a very early case in Florida that did not seem to have any subsequent infections.
Charluckles
It’s not just Trump. Republican ideology in it’s current version is not capable of responding to an international crisis of this magnitude. It just infuriates me that in all probability the Republican Party will be allowed to flush Trump down the nation’s memory hole after this sh**show concludes.
Brachiator
@Doc Sardonic:
We will have a better idea in probably 5-7 days maybe. However, the joker in the deck gets dealt this weekend with the holiday, so in around the next 3 weeks or so I expect the shit to hit the wind machine.
The worst thing for the economy would be erratic episodes of lockdown-then-re-open.
But Trump is vehement about ramping up the economy again. And people who think they are less at risk will want to get out and have summer fun even more than they want to return to work.
dexwood
What an insane
situationpresident.jc
What’s astonishing is how rational, science-based people keep stressing the importance of masks, testing and contact tracing — and yet guys like Trump *still* just ignore the message. It’s pathological: anything Obama would support, just do the opposite. Apparently Republicans have convinced themselves they really can create their own alternate reality, and by god, they’re sticking by their belief. Come on warriors, please resume shopping at the mall.
zhena gogolia
@pacem appellant:
He can’t think more than 10 seconds ahead.
Austin Bailey
Here’s a link the Alabama’s Covid-19 tracking page. All of the case averages 3/7/14 day continue to trend up. There has been no reduction in cases, just a steady increase. The more populous an area, the more cases. Who could have predicted?
HumboldtBlue
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency urged health officials in “all states and territories” to provide “daily” updates on ventilator availability for the novel coronavirus directly to the data mining giant Palantir, according to emails shared with The Daily Beast and confirmed by FEMA.
Palantir, co-founded by key Trump ally Peter Thiel, signed government contracts last month worth approximately $24.8 million to provide the Department of Health and Human Services with data-management software to track health-infrastructure deficiencies and forecast where future needs will emerge, through a platform known as HHS Protect. The company’s tools integrate a staggering 187 data sets containing information on everything from hospital inventories, medical supply chains, diagnostic and geographic testing data, demographic stats and more.
lee
@jc: The farther we get into the pandemic the more the GOP has become a cult. My FB feed is a disaster.
Mart
Lack of coordinated Federal response got us the worst possible outcomes over the past five months. A cratered service economy, and roller coaster waves of this horrible disease for the next 18 months (if we have a vaccine by then).
ETA: Heck of a job, Trumpy.
Brachiator
A recent Congressional Budget Office report projected that GDP would see an annualized 38 percent decline during the second quarter.
And this was presuming an opening up of the economy, and did not take into account any surges in virus cases.
The full report is free and available here.
Some interesting details. The CBO report indicates that the sector with the largest number of job losses is the Leisure and Hospitality industry. This industry probably depended on having a good summer recovery and will be hit hard if people stay away because of surges in virus cases.
Fair Economist
@Cheryl Rofer: I’ve seen a couple papers recently indicating spreading of COVID is extremely variable by patient. Most patients never spread it. Some that do, spread it to lots. So if you don’t have one of these super-spreaders around, there’s no immediate crisis; but if a super-spreader manages to infect a few other super-spreaders an outbreak can get huge in a hurry.
The Forbes article about Montgomery AL said the cases were “epidemiologically linked” and I wonder what that linkage is.
In other news, the Kinsa fever report looks bad for CA today. I’ve become less convinced of the value of that report over the past month (Kinsa outbreaks don’t seem well correlated to COVID ones) but it’s still worrying.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@pacem appellant:
always an open question of how much of his own (and Fox’s) bullshit he really believes– If Laura Ingram does a segment with a doctor from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College that says the ‘Rona will die out in summer as soon as daily highs hit 85 or 90, I can easily imagine federal policy being determined by that segment.
Roger Moore
@pacem appellant:
I doesn’t. The underlying problem is that Trump- and much of the rest of the Republican Party- cares only about messaging, not policy. They build everything around winning the 24 hour news cycle rather than trying to solve long-term problems. That works surprisingly well when you’re only dealing with people, since manipulating their perceptions is often enough to achieve your political goals, but it is terrible when dealing with situations you can’t talk your way out of. It’s no coincidence that the Republicans’ worst political disasters of the past few decades have been the result of things like market crashes, natural disasters, and people in other countries, none of which are as susceptible to Republican flimflam as American voters.
TaMara (HFG)
Every fucking day with this guy. I hate, hate, hate that he’s turned me into a person who wishes ill on another human being. But he and McConnell can die attached to ventilators for all I care.
PenAndKey
@lee: And, like me, I bet you’re seeing a lot of “live and let live”, “we have a right to our opinion”, and “nobody saw this coming” comments? It’s also darkly humorous to see which extended social contact is going to try and scold myself or my many microbiology and medical staff friends today. Just this morning I got into it with someone because they tried to scold one of my friends on her own page for “not being professional” because she wasn’t bending over backwards to avoid making people who refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing feel bad about their idiocy.
I don’t know what it is, but having people try to gaslight the history of how this has all gone down, then having those same people try to concern troll anyone who criticizes them with more than a Susan Collins patented furrowed brow, pushes all my buttons. Luckily, I work in manufacturing and can tell them exactly what I (and my friend) think without worrying about hospital reputation.
Kay
This was yesterday:
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: This was my take and something I keep repeating.
We are in worse shape than when we shut down. More infections and deaths, though also more testing. And the infection rate will go down somewhat if we have widespread adoption of social distancing and masks (if not S-I-P). But the entire point of locking down was to either lock down hard and get cases to a minimum (failed) or slow the curve enough to prepare properly (we didn’t prepare).
We’re still at a much higher base of infection than we were when we closed down, and the infection rate will be a huge problem. It’s absolutely going to be bad, and the media isn’t really educating people about this. We have a ‘lull’ right now – it’s not the end of a wave.
Betty Cracker
I think this was covered in an earlier thread, but ICYMI, via The Atlantic:
So, even when states use data to justify reopening decisions, it’s data that is deliberately cooked. By the CDC.
Kirk Spencer
So I got into a longish discussion with someone knowledgeable about Texas emergency ops. Short version because typing on the phone.
Governor Abbot’s primary tool for deciding on measures is percentage of bed capacity in use, especially ICU beds. Capacity is by region not city or county, there are five regions.
Unknown is trigger threshold. The fact it’s lagging is acknowledged and allegedly taken into account.
The biggest thing in favor in my mind is it’s a clearer set of numbers. No arguments of which county or if various multiple infections are really covid. Not saying it’s good, but it’s interesting and I’m sharing fo the jacket knowledge pool.
Oklahomo
@lee: My mother’s FB feed has convinced us both to never attend a family reunion again. (If such things ever happen again). It would be a mini-MAGA rally instead of a reunion.
Cheryl Rofer
@Fair Economist: The article I saw didn’t settle on one particular factor. They included the possibility that some people are more likely to spread the disease than others, but there are many other possibilities for the nonuniform spread as well. Apparently this clustering is characteristic of coronaviruses; the flu is much more uniform in its spread.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Any attempt to understand our political response to the pandemic has to factor in that Donald Trump is heavily invested in the leisure and hospitality industry. He’s making decisions that he thinks will be good for The Trump Organization, not ones that are good for the USA.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
That spinning brain, always a couple of wheels spinning for his voters. Twenty bucks says we see an equally perfect sequitur from Covid testing to judges in Dale’s feed by the end of the week.
cope
Wack-a-mole: BINGO!!
Whack-a-mole is exactly what I thought when I read Ed Yong’s recent piece in the Atlantic yesterday. Atlantic…I know, I know, but he is an extremely respected science writer and the article is among those on the pandemic that the Atlantic is offering up outside their paywall. It’s long but thorough and if somebody else mentioned or linked to it previously, my apologies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/patchwork-pandemic-states-reopening-inequalities/611866
P.S. This is not the article Betty links to above.
gratuitous
It’s mind-boggling just how little an effect information has on these knuckleheads. There are simple, cheap countermeasures, but that’s become a cultural flashpoint. You wear a mask in public, and it’s like you’ve painted a target on your face. You insist to people to stay six feet away, and you get exasperated sighs and eye rolls, like you just told someone to go fuck themselves. I suppose if the proffered solution was a thousand dollar air purifier with fifty dollar filters that had to be replaced every other day, maybe that would spur some people to take this seriously.
Not to mention the laser focus of the media on the small percentage of angry, violent knuckleheads who want to put everyone else at risk. Yeah, they’re funny theater, but it really doesn’t help to showcase these idiots without identifying them properly. They’re idiots, not people who just happen to have a different opinion that’s every bit as valid as those medical eggheads and their high-falutin’ countermeasures.
But now it’s Alabama’s turn, where we have been assured they’re not California or New York. No, they’re going to be even worse off. If the virus took only the knuckleheads, I still wouldn’t like it, but I’d be more at peace with them courting their own demise. Instead, they’re going to infect several other people during their asymptomatic phase, other people who might not want to die for their “right” not to have to wear a mask to go to the Winn Dixie.
Mandalay
Biden should make a campaign ad around this soundbite…
sdhays
@zhena gogolia: And he has a warped sense of what’s important. He has never given even one shit about people dying, so obviously he’s not going to have a good read on what makes him look bad to normal people.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the summary of the call with Ukraine proves that he believes a lot of the things that one might normally assume was just an act for the rubes.
MisterForkbeard
@frosty: @Cheryl Rofer: What numbers is he talking about here? COVID? Economic? Polling?
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I miss church so much, but it is a perfect storm of terrible practices right now: crowding, talking, singing, hugging, eating the same bread and drinking the same cup.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
He didn’t believe it.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
Oh for crying out loud. Public masses? Hundreds of people sharing a cup? Are they nuts? I thought the Catholic Church was going light on services for health reasons (church services having been linked to one of the worst European outbreaks of Spanish flu, in Zamora).
lee
@PenAndKey:
I have seen that so many times. The ‘How dare you try to make me feel bad for endangering others’. I take to mocking them as well.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
He didn’t believe there was a secret server in Ukraine?
PenAndKey
@Oklahomo: My mother has MS and my son was born 3 months early. The “debate” over the ACA and pre-existing conditions brought me to that decision back then. It sucks, and I get a lot of flack for being the first person to announce the family split, but eventually you reach a point where you decide that blood isn’t enough to tie people together. Half of my family are a part of this death cult. The moment they vocalized the belief that people like my mother and son don’t have a right to life was the moment I cut ties.
It’s worse than that. Multiple times I’ve had to go out in public for shopping and had people try to crowd me while in line, and based on their comments their actions were intentionally inflammatory each time it’s happened. That’s right up there with the 5-6 year old kid and his parents that sneered at me at the grocery store for my mask. His parents sneered. Him? He actually pointed (when he didn’t think I was looking), and then asked his parent’s why I was wearing a “hippie mask”. That one just got an eye roll, because what else can you do?
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
I listened to a recent episode of the BBC Science and Public Statistics podcast “More or Less,” where a guest pointed to data suggesting that children may not spread the infection as strongly as adults.
However, it was also pointed out that scientists are still learning much about this virus, and many reports are not peer reviewed and may be subject to intense revision in the future.
People may be able to listen to the More or Less episode here.
ETA: In the UK, there is intense debate on when schools and colleges can be re-opened, so there is a lot of focus on the degree to which children might spread the virus to teachers or parents and other family members.
Cheryl Rofer
@MisterForkbeard: The numbers bouncing around in his head
Fair Economist
@gratuitous:
I know Ivey (and others) have been saying that, but Alabama has been worse than California since pretty early in the epidemic.
lee
@Oklahomo: Thanksfully for my family it is my age (54) and older that are the MAGAts. It seems most of the younger generation is significantly more liberal.
brendancalling
This is why I left Tennessee, which is right next door and which has taken an equally stupid approach.
I’m going back long enough to pack up the last of my shit, giving my housemate/bandmate a socially distant “it was great living/playing music together, but the dream is dead” farewell, and hightailing it to Vermont, where I’m starting my life over again.
It’s a real fuckin’ shame, because Nashville’s music scene was second to none, we recorded a great album with great players, and now it’s all over for so many of us.
MisterForkbeard
@HumboldtBlue: I have experience using Palantir. This is an excellent use of their software and basically what it was designed to do.
Seriously, Palantir is best used to combine disparate datasets and to perform weird and intensive analysis. You has nefarious uses but it’s excellent as an organization and relief tool. I have some stories about Hurricane Sandy that are really impressive, and the Clinton Foundation just loved the tool for disaster relief efforts.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Denmark has reopened its elementary schools, with distancing measures, without getting an increase in cases. Higher grades would be much riskier because they are more likely to have severe cases, and have more mixing in larger schools.
trollhattan
What if they gave a protest and nobody noticed? Just in case you wondering why the traffic in Klamath Falls was a little heavy on Tuesday.
Am impressed they ran the piece announcing the upcoming protest, the day after the protest. Also, too, instead of “fuck your feelings” shirts, do they wear “fuck your fish”?
Roger Moore
@PenAndKey:
I hope you told them exactly that. It’s really important that people be presented the real world consequences of their political stances in terms exactly that stark. Protections for people with preexisting conditions are some abstract argument; they’re about whether people like your mother and son deserve the same protection as the rest of society. Showing people the real stakes of what they’re saying is one way of waking them up to just how horrible their POV is.
Baud
@brendancalling:
Damn. That’s intense. Best of luck on your new life.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
I made exactly this point when their governor made a stupid tweet about how they weren’t California. At exactly the time she said that, California had a lower per capital infection and death rate, and we’ve stayed better than them ever since.
PenAndKey
The worst offenders were my two maternal aunts and their husbands. It broke my mother’s heart, but I took full advantage of my reputation as the family jerk and did, in fact, tell them exactly the exact statements they made that forced my hand. That was…. an uncomfortable Christmas for all involved.. Most of my generation ended up siding with me but my brother and I are really the only two who are vocal about it.
And, to be honest, I didn’t even intend to force a split. I was simply tired and frustrated with trying to keep the peace until one day I piped up and simply asked, “you do realize that the only reason your sister and nephew are alive and able to have health care in this country is the pre-existing conditions clauses in the ACA, right?”. I’ve long come to terms with the knowledge that many conservatives don’t recognize a problem until it affects someone they love. That was the point I realized that, even then, it’s often not enough.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
Always, what’s good for him?
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: The CBO report indicates that the sector with the largest number of job losses is the Leisure and Hospitality industry.
Not just Trump. I include sports in leisure and entertainment. Major league baseball, college and professional football, men and women’s basketball are huge industries anxious to resume.
And consider the movie industry. There are more summer and winter blockbusters queued up with nowhere to go than there are oil tankers sitting offshore waiting to go into port.
Yeah, Trump hotels and resorts will take a hit. But the larger industry segment is looking at catastrophic losses if the economy doesn’t recover. But even here, they cannot presume that people will put themselves at risk just because Trump ignorantly gives an “all clear.”
And while sports fans can still support their teams by watching them on TV and ordering sports merchandise online, who is going to go to the movies? Who is going to go to theme parks, stay at hotels?
BroD
@Brachiator: Church kills.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Fantastic ad
Kay
@Fair Economist:
One of the things our school district is looking at is mandatory masks. We don’t have the capacity to do social distancing and the idea of staggered classes sounds great, but is a nightmare logistically, with transportation.
I was thinking schools are already familiar with the complete failure of government to address safety issues because of our years of school shooter training.
“Nothing can be done”. As you know, that is almost the official motto of the United States now.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
The movies at least have some options with pay per view and streaming platforms. They’re holding off on their big blockbusters in the hopes the theaters can reopen soon, but if it looks like it’s going to be a really long time, they can try an online release. They can always do it for the smaller movies that don’t have as big budgets to recoup. It’s places that inherently require travel and/or crowds, like theme parks, hotels, and National Parks, that are in the biggest trouble.
CarolDuhart2
@Brachiator: Not surprising. They depend on people going and and assembling together. If people stay home, there’s no hospitality industry. Not only that, but it’s a sector that depends on disposable income. It’s the first thing that gets cut out of many a budget. Sure, there’s entertainment that can be done at home, and people may do takeout and delivery, but it’s the casual drop in to eat and sit for an hour or two that’s the bread and butter of the industry, as people who sit in will order several coffees and sometimes another dessert or two. Or upgrade from coffee to a full meal. And that’s not happening.
rikyrah
@Brachiator: I
I love movies. It’s my thing that I do with Peanut. Go back to a movie theater now?
in the next 6 months?
Hell muthaphuckin NO??
kindness
I recall when this whole thing started out in March, the idea of combatting the virus wasn’t all that political other than Trump being a dick which is his go to state. Then in April it became a rallying cry for the right wing nuts about telling them what to do and how to live.
Now it’s just plain ugly. Even when our side wins in November there is going to be 30% of the country that is going to try to monkey wrench us every step of the way because they wanna be Confederates again.
dmsilev
Further Annals Of Idiocy (California Edition):
Defying state coronavirus order, a thousand pastors plan to hold in-person services for Pentecost
Doug R
@Cheryl Rofer: Could it be that the European variant is more virulent than the Asian variant?
dmsilev
@Kay:
Mordant humor: This spring has featured few to none school shootings. Problem Solved!
Josie
@PenAndKey:
My middle son and I were comparing notes on how it feels to be unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I am over 70 and he has already had three stents at the age of 38. No one at his office is wearing a mask since they went back to work. He wears his mask, keeps his door closed, and works and communicates by computer. I’m sure people think he is strange, but, at this point, neither one of us cares. Luckily my daughter-in-law is still able to work from home and I am keeping the kids so no day care. We plan to be very careful for a long time, no matter what our stupid officials say (Texas).
Origuy
@trollhattan: I’ve been through Klamath Falls. Tractors on Main Street wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
Jeffro
Exactly. Their only 2 plays are tax cuts and racism. They don’t believe in collective action, nor do they believe that government can or should do any good, and why? Because IT’LL COST THEM MONEY and EMPOWER “THOSE” PEOPLE.
Jeffro
@TaMara (HFG): “Look at me, I’m such a cutie pie with words!”
I wish all kinds of ill on him and everyone in his administration, and I don’t hate myself for feeling that way, not one bit.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
I think it would be a good idea to test ideas like this in individual districts, accompanied by scientific-level tracking to see whether it actually works. In addition to testing symptomatics, you’d have some random testing, and sequence all cases to see who is giving it to whom. Natural experiments like the Denmark schools don’t give us enough information (could we extend it to high school, is it bad but Denmark is doing well enough to get away with it, etc.)
Edit: but how do they eat?
Cheryl Rofer
@Doug R: No. The variants are all the same regarding function.
Kelly
My wife just returned from the weekly curbside grocery pickup. There are streams of RV’s many towing boats or ATVs on Oregon 22 headed for the Cascades. The sort of flow we’ve seen on May weekends in the before times. Most private and many Forest Service campgrounds are open now. Memorial Day may result in a lot of new people to memorialize.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer:
Indeed, the Science article cited in the tweet is excellent:
There was some discussion about clustering on NPR’s “1A” today. I only caught bits and pieces about it, but they said they were surprised that bookstores did not seem to be associated with outbreaks (as people can spend hours there). If the issue is how hard people are working, how deeply they are breathing, etc., in addition to the duration, then it’s not surprising at all that bookstores seem to be safe. (Of course, self-sorting economic issues may be a big factor as well in that case.)
But we should still take this article with a grain of salt – gaining knowledge is iterative.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Origuy:
Same here. Not to mention, blink and “You are now leaving Klamath Falls.”
CarolDuhart2
@dmsilev: I don’t get the insistence on opening up church buildings at all. Isn’t God everywhere and anywhere, and can hear you even on a park bench? And isn’t the church/temple/shrine the people anyway? It would seem to me more important to keep the relationships than the building itself. And these days with technology, even the services can be held regularly.
Roger Moore
@Kelly:
Honestly, going camping in the woods seems reasonably safe from the standpoint of catching infectious diseases. As long as people stay in their family group, it isn’t especially more dangerous to be in a camp site or on a boat than it is to stay home.
dmsilev
@Fair Economist: At my university, we’re deep into planning a phased reopening, and mandatory masks are going to be one part of that. School will provide a couple of reusable masks per person, plus a (limited) supply of disposables for visitors and in case someone forgets theirs. Spreading people out as much as possible is another goal. Running classes into the late afternoon or possibly the early evening is one option that’s being looked at, for instance.
Quiltingfool
Virus report from Lake of the Ozark (Missouri) area: OMG. I do my shopping on Thursdays, but I go early. Today I went later. Early is better, but couldn’t be helped. JoAnn and Lowe’s were okay. Walmart. Not so much. I’d estimate maybe 15 to 20 percent mask wearers. Mostly older folk (or as I like to call them, “my people”) were wearing masks. However, I find that the concept of one way aisle travel is too daunting for many of the customers, and many lack awareness of their surrounding. They don’t seem to realize they are blocking the aisle so they can study the merchandise…I worked very hard on keeping a bland facial expression (easy with a mask) but I really had to control my “teacher look!” I found myself thinking, way too much, “Lord, give me patience or an untraceable handgun!” (hat tip to the show Mike and Molly and I would not shoot anybody for real, okay?)
Long story short, it seems that people think there is no covid virus in Missouri, and especially at the lake. That this state confers instant immunity. And they are getting ready for Memorial Day, I guess. Well, guess we’ll see what happens in a couple of weeks, and I can hope for the best, but my guess is it ain’t gonna be pretty.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
Eventually they will “call us home” i.e., back to the office and I will have far more qualms about using the elevators and bathrooms than I will being in the office itself. “Here’s a mask” will not quite cut it.
TBH I’m prepared to negotiate for continued telecommuting punctuated with necessary meetings in person. Am clueless on what the plan may be, or if there even is one yet.
dmsilev
@CarolDuhart2: It doesn’t make sense to me either, but it’s a pretty consistent theme all across the country. I think part of it is the “you can’t tell me what to do” attitude.
Oklahomo
@Brachiator: I commute to Fort Smith AR for work. There is a company here that prints most of the tickets for stadiums, events, play-offs — almost any kind of ticket you can think of. I’m afraid that this will completely destroy them; they are already laying off 125 people. If sports are going to start up with no audience, and there are no concerts and such, they are finished.
Mandalay
@Cheryl Rofer:
I fear so as well. It’s too soon to draw any firm conclusion, but the zigzag in the graph of Active Cases in Florida vividly shows an abrupt uptick shortly after DeSantis opened everything up.
germy
Off topic, but in a previous thread, some commenters mentioned the foggy glasses problem.
A few days ago, I saw this segment on Inside Edition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJR3Rmu09tw
Interview with nurses and other people with tips on keeping eyeglasses clear.
burnspbesq
@Mandalay:
that will turn up in a Lincoln Project ad soon, I would venture to guess.
The Thin Black Duke
@CarolDuhart2: Those collection plates won’t fill themselves.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
It makes at least some sense that deep breathing would be an important factor for a respiratory virus that’s spread by droplets and aerosols. Sick people who are breathing hard are more likely to generate lots of droplets, and healthy people who are breathing hard are more likely to inhale them.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay:
An interesting reversal of the R claim that the problems were brought in by people from urban areas. Only this one is true.
Roger Moore
@CarolDuhart2:
The shepherds have an easier time fleecing the flock when they meet in person.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Fascinating. That choir story has haunted me. People tend to shout in bars to be heard over the din. People tend to raise their voice to speak to some elderly folks who are hard of hearing.
I’ve read that the flu flares up in the winter because people are inside, not because of the temperature. Seems like that would be the opposite in hot places like Florida, where sensible folks stay indoors in July?
Roger Moore
@Oklahomo:
The printed ticket business was probably in trouble anyway because of print-at-home and phone based tickets.
sdhays
@Cheryl Rofer: YY_Sima Qian in the earlier COVID-19 thread had this interesting tidbit from China:
Just Chuck
@dmsilev: It’s more like “I MAKE POOPY” attitude. They do it over and over for attention. Some never grew out of it.
Matt McIrvin
@pacem appellant:
Ruckus
@pacem appellant:
Whatever is your worst horror film nightmare, the collection of bits and drabs of bullshit in shitforbrains head is far, far worse. You don’t want to know all the unconnected, unrelated, one tenth learned – 100% wrong bits are that are mired in the shit that occupies that orange tainted mess he calls a brain are. You think it’s bad now, imagine what it looks like from inside that. If you dare.
Just Chuck
@Matt McIrvin: It kills old people too. Not a good demographic to piss off. Rural Alabama doesn’t exactly trend blue either.
CarolDuhart2
@dmsilev: A cynical thought: Ecclesiastical double-dipping. The collection basket one week, the family bequests the next week, depending on the will.
PsiFighter37
@brendancalling: When did you leave Philly?
Kay
@Fair Economist:
If I were King I’d put a ton of effort into opening schools and get them open. I don’t think people realize how big a role they play – they provide the patch for so many holes in our safety net. They are, truly, “essential”.
I think they’re going to open anyway because they have to, so it’s really a choice between doing a horrible job opening them or a good job. Open they will. The alternative is worse. There’s no “stay closed” option unless we want to permanently harm about 10 million children. The bottom income 5th. They’ll pay for this.
rikyrah
rikyrah
@Kay:
Did you see what they are doing in schools in China?
The disinfecting process that each child must go through in order to enter?
They are serious.
We are not?
Just Chuck
@rikyrah: All truthful statements are a political hit job on T. Or is that factual? I forget which one is bad now.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
I find that comment deeply offensive.
Here in Florida we would never dream of using cooked data from the CDC. We do it without their help, thank you very much.
Aleta
Here’s an interesting model, from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. Shows counties (not all).
https://policylab.chop.edu/covid-lab-mapping-covid-19-your-community
yellowdog
@Fair Economist: There are wing-nut Catholics, too. Like Bob (Opus Dei) Barr.
CarolDuhart2
@brendancalling: If enough of you move up there, then the whole scene can be re-created without all of the regressive attitudes. I know it’s hard, and I wish you luck, but at least you will be somewhere where they care for the artists lives more.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): While I was preparing lunch, I had CNN on in the background and heard it. I went to Rupar’s twitter feed to confirm..
link I’m not a doctor but trump seems to be slipping in his thought process.
yellowdog
@rikyrah: I saw that and I don’t believe it. It would take hours to process every kid in the school like the video I saw. What are the other kids doing meanwhile?
sdhays
@JPL: If he wants to have a positive test so fucking badly, someone just go and cough down his gullet already.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Kids would wear masks and they already enforce handwashing because of the flu. In Ohio you can close a public school if 20% of the students are out with flu- we had two small rural districts close last year for 5 day stretches due to flu. That’s doable and they have SOME experience with it.
For schools I think the approach should be “essential- HOW to do it not whether to do it”. They have to open. That is how they’re approaching it here. There’s like a disclaimer- “depending on conditions” but they’re going forward with opening as the assumption. It’s harsh but it’s also true- they have to open.
PenAndKey
At this point? It’s a tribal virtue signal. At least in my neck of rural Wisconsin the anti-mask brigade treats masks the same way they ‘coal rollers’ do global warming. Evidence and logic don’t matter when people are basing their actions on ideology.
Aleta
@Kay: At Wuhan University (*) they had the administrators return first, then the teachers, and then the students.
*According to a friend who’s a guest teacher there. He says colleagues in Wuhan told him this.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
“Facts have a known liberal bias”
–Philosopher Steven Colbert
Gravenstone
@Betty Cracker: This has been my bugaboo since this whole mess started. When you say “test”, which fucking test are you referring to? To learn that the CDC (and by extension, at least four states who claim to be following CDC guidance) is conflating the tests is all kinds of bad news.
khead
I keep saying the next hot spots are going to be churches. This is not rocket surgery.
Kay
@Aleta:
Our administrators are already there. I went with my son yesterday to hand back books – today is their “last day of school” and the (masked) administrators were taking them. You drive up, put the books on a folding table, they wave and check your name off. I was thinking about how weird this is for the kids- what they’ll remember.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
No.
hitchhiker
With respect to church, some random observations from a former churchgoer who was always openly and happily agnostic:
The loss of that weekly gathering, for those invested in it in the way that I once was, is real and painful. Nothing replaces it. I know, because I felt it when I decided to stop going a few years ago. The sense of belonging and continuity is hugely comforting, or it is if you can be okay with lip service to theology that makes no sense. It’s an amazing thing to me still that our kids were able to grow into adulthood in a city where no blood relatives are within 1000 miles with a dozen authentic, warm, beloved families as part of their lives.
I have nothing but contempt for the way trump is trying to capitalize on his phony christian base, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t churchy people just longing to go back to what is, for them, home.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think about that a lot — what kids will remember about this weird time. In retrospect, I now realize I grew up in an impossibly idyllic time.
pamelabrown53
@hitchhiker:
If “grievance performance art” isn’t yet in our lexicon, it should be.
Aleta
I wonder if it’s about money. Some abundance doctrine preachers have insisted on taking out big loans to buy or build fancier buildings. I wonder if in-person services are better for pressuring congregants to write another check, increase their tithe, fund raise for new pews. Could be harder to say ‘no more’ to your pastor when he’s in your face with your community all around you?
Kelly
ATV people are very social and very Republican. I suspect much beer will be drunk around shared campfires while they yammer “this virus thing is overblown”. The boaters may be OK. The RV folks will have their own bathroom which is a big plus. I’d be surprised if the folks running the grocery stores in the mountains are using masks or keeping separation. The further you get from town the Trumpier it gets.
tam1MI
@Roger Moore: Some of my work mates are camping over the long weekend. They said their plan was to pur the RV somewhere where they have at least one space on either side, to take masks along (just in case), and to maintain social distancing. Seemed like a reasonable plan to me. It’s the beachfront bacchanal crowd that causes the problems.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: Please explain how we’re going to keep the teachers alive. I have not seen one word about that.
Aleta
@hitchhiker: That’s a good point. Church gatherings and groups matter a lot in the social life of some of my older neighbors here, especially those living alone. Especially since the shutdown ended their other outings.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Choirs are often people packed close to each other with their mouths open for extended periods of time singing. In bars, maybe, more snatches of loud talking. But a noticeable lack of social distancing and more face to face conversation.
Yep. And more relatively close contact and sometimes relatively poor ventilation, or more desire to circulate stale warmed air.
jackmac
Southern Red Staters are going to be quite displeased when the second wave of COVID-19 kills off both grandma and SEC football this fall.
Nobody could have predicted.
sdhays
@Aleta: Ding ding ding. This. Also, don’t forget that regular pastor’s salaries are paid for by donations too. If donations are way down…
surfk9
@Kelly: That’s been my observation. The ATV crowd is often load obnoxious and to hell with the rules. My wife and I took our trailer up to the foothills between Yuba City and Grass Valley this last weekend. It was the first weekend the park was open as Yuba county was one of the first two that were allowed to reopen. The park was full, lots of kids running around, no social distancing for the most part. There were some masks.
The park was much nicer come Monday when the crowds had gone home. A herd of Mule deer wandered around the park nibbling on the foliage. The quiet was great.
Brachiator
@BroD:
A former coworker is a Jehovah’s Witness. They moved very easily and very quickly to having congregation meetings via Zoom. No muss, no fuss, no controversy.
They are very tech savvy. All the literature they try to pass out can be accessed online, as are a number of institutional activities.
trnc
@Brachiator:
Hate to tell you this, but this story won’t move the needle for DT and his supporters. Montgomery is ovewhelmingly African American.
glory b
@CarolDuhart2: It’s the money. Attendance is steady, but donations have fallen off considerably. The pastors figure that peer pressure pushes donations, they need in person services to survive.
Doc Sardonic
@Betty Cracker: That’s why we sometimes have that nasty ass “summer cold/flu” around July/August ‘round heah.
Brachiator
@trnc:
This story will repeat all over the country.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
You maybe being over generous in your concept of his “thinking.”
tam1MI
@trnc: But the rural areas flooding the ICUs aren’t.
MisterForkbeard
@Mandalay: The Biden campaign should make a campaign out of that comment. Fucking yikes, man. That’s a seriously bad quote.
You can just replay that with a variation on the following: “Donald Trump is happy with everything he’s done and is wouldn’t have changed anything. He could have saved Americans but didn’t want to.”
Ruckus
@TaMara (HFG):
You wouldn’t be normal if you could think that there is nothing wrong with someone trying to kill you, either actively or through shear ignorance. And don’t forget ¿Porque no los dos?
FelonyGovt
@dmsilev: Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again
LuciaMia
Well, he can deny federal aid to Alabama untill they somehow get the numbers to look better.
Mike in NC
The expert scientists (known as “sneering elitists” to Republicans) warned us about a probable Second Wave. Maybe it’ll wash Fat Bastard back down the sewer he crawled out of.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Just got Gov. Ivey’s newly released Safer at Home order. High/lowlights:
– Entertainment venues limited to 50 percent capacity
– Team athletic activities limited to conditioning, skill drills, etc.
– Effective June 1, schools reopen subject to social distancing, face coverings, etc. Also youth and summer camps.
I predict that we’re fucked.
Subsole
@PenAndKey: That tracks with what I am seeing here.
Conservatism has no plan. It has no faith. It has no ideology. It has no belief.
It is a shrieking, pinch-faced, kick your feet and roll on the floor temper tantrum.
That’s it. Literally everything they do is signaling that they are sooooo not mad about you making them feel inadequate. I mean quite literally everything.
The Moar You Know
@trnc: Correct. Almost 60% AA. And Montgomery only has about 600 beds. Huntsville, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa have over 4000. This will be, as my grandmother said, a “colored people’s problem” until the hospitals in the north part of the state fill up.
I was the first member of my family to be born outside of Alabama since the late 1700s. My dad ended up “stuck” jobwise in San Diego, so we never returned save for infrequent visits. I got so lucky.
LuciaMia
@rikyrah: Drive-movies!
Ruckus
@PenAndKey:
Conservatives want to conserve the past. Usually it’s a past that truly didn’t exist so they want to preserve the picture they have in their heads of the past. And the past in most countries will include all forms of bigotry, so that’s in there. Liberals take the now and look to the future, hoping to make it better. It’s such a difference in perspective that to me it’s amazing that it’s taken this long to develop into a total mess that I don’t see how it can be changed easily or without looking back at what was, where we are and where we should head. The liberal side of the aisle has for a long time not wanted to look back but it’s important to do that because that’s the only direction nearly half the country looks.
Gravenstone
@Matt McIrvin:
Dear dog, if that isn’t some industrial grade projections from the Fear Mongering Party, I don’t know what is…
sxjames
@trollhattan:
Well, I was born and raised in K. Falls, and I wish it was that easy to leave it behind :). I took off as soon as I could after graduating college but it was only a few years ago that we finally got my Mom up to the Portland Metro area.
Its been mentioned before, but the issue with cities in rural, red, areas is that anyone with any smarts or gumption eventually leaves, leaving behind…well, not the best of humanity. What really sucks is that far to many *good* folks end up trapped by circumstances, to be ruled by petty/self-important/ridged people who just want to hang onto power and (it seems to me) make sure that everyone around them is as miserable as they are.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
I would almost risk catching the Rona to see the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie in a theater.
@Roger Moore:
The studios are thinking hard about what the best move might be. They had relied on IMAX and 3D and the big screen experience to help goose revenue. Conventional box office revenue evaporates with a streaming model. A household buying a ticket is much less than movie tickets sold.
And going all in on streaming kills conventional movie theaters and displaces all the workers.
Smaller movies are already moving to streaming services. Or they don’t get made at all.
The Bond movie. The Top Gun and Wonder Woman sequels. The new Christopher Nolan film. I cannot really imagine the first run of these movies being relegated to a small home screen. And it would be damned hard for the studios to recoup their costs.
A hell of a dilemma.
trnc
OK. Where is that happening? I was just referring to the linked article about the city of Montgomery.
trnc
@Brachiator: Where movies get screened may not be much of an issue for a while if there’s no movie to screen. Seems like a lot of filming must be stymied by the social distancing requirements. That love scene with the N-95 masks probably won’t cut it unless it’s for the inevitable spoof about making movies during a pandemic.
germy
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
The same way we’re keeping all the other essential workers alive. It was never, actually, a “lockdown”.
J R in WV
@CarolDuhart2:
Everything you say is quite evidently true, but you leave out a detail.
Preachers at evangelistic churches aren’t on a payroll, they depend upon a cut of the collections each week for their income. Unlike an Episcopal priest, who is on a payroll with regular benefits, health care for the family, a retirement, Holy Roller preachers get a piece of the take.
I learned this after a good friend who is an Episcopal priest sat beside a Evangelistic preacher on an airliner, obviously there was some shop talk. Preacher asked priest “What’s your percentage?” and priest didn’t know what preacher was talking about.
Holy Roller preachers are more like a carnival barker getting paid a cut of the admissions to the side show they are selling.
So nothing can be more important than reopening their churches so their cash can resume flowing into their hands. If people get sick, that’s sad, but as long as they kick in $50 or $100 into the collection plate first, it’s all OK with them.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Me too, I could ride my bike downtown, with my dog, drop the bike on the sidewalk outside the bookshop, go in, buy a book for $0.35, go back outside, dog and bike were still there, ride 2 miles back home. Or stop for a hot dog for $0.25, and get one for the dog, too.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’m idly wondering whether the math used by epidemiologists is up to the task of modeling very low numbers of infecteds, specifically extinction probability for a seeding event, e.g. in a SEIR model. (agent based simulation models get around this.)
Any suggestions anyone for a compact text or tutorial on such math?
J R in WV
@trnc:
Yes, it is, so is Bombingham (Birmingham) African American. But here’s the hitch… those hospitals in the city are already full of urban patients. When the rural white folks get sick, there will be no ICU units available to them. Nothing open, no room at the inn!
They will notice that, when grandma or Aunt Karen comes home in the ambulance. And stays home until they die. Full is full at a hospital. No beds means don’t unload that ambulance here! Take ’em back home. No vent even if there was a bed!
Tim C.
@The Moar You Know:
High School teacher here in a deep red school district. They hate us. Us dying is a feature, not a bug.
MomSense
@TaMara (HFG):
Come sit six feet away from me. I loathe him like I’ve never loathed another person before.
Ladyraxterinok
@CarolDuhart2:
See Jim Bakker with guest commentator Drew and Mario Murilla. Closing churches is 1st step in silencing Christian, making it impossible to share in public ‘God’s message ‘ of anti-abortion and homosexuality as an abomination.
2020 election action is war between God, ie pro Trump, and devil, ie democrats
Aziz, light!
@Kelly:
No, the Forest Service sites are not. That agency is my employer. On the Mount Hood and Willamette National Forests, all campgrounds and most other recreation sites are still closed. The boaters have some options but the campers do not.
JustRuss
@tam1MI: On Memorial Day weekend you can get a campsite with an empty spot on either side? Where the hell do you live?
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
So much this. The past Conservatives really want to protect is their hazy recollections of their childhood, back when everything was so much better than it is now. They would never in a million years consider that the thing that changed was their understanding of the world, not the world itself. Nope, things were genuinely better when they were kids, and we need to go back to those good old days so they can live the same carefree lives they did when they were children.
artem1s
@J R in WV:
hate to tell you but part of the grift is getting granddad and memaw to ‘remember’ god in their wills. some of these vultures are rooting for deaths.
Kelly
@Aziz, light!: Yes, my mistake FS campgrounds are closed today. This lists FS campgrounds that open tomorrow.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/willamette/home/?cid=FSEPRD712877
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
Paper. My TL;DR: Loud talking is found to be a mortal threat in areas with a significant percentage of possible (unmasked) asymptomatic or lightly symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. Shush, you psychopaths! :-)
The airborne lifetime of small speech droplets and their potential importance in SARS-CoV-2 transmission (Valentyn Stadnytskyi, Christina E. Bax, Adriaan Bax, and Philip Anfinrud, May 13, 2020)
Highly sensitive laser light scattering observations have revealed that loud speech can emit thousands of oral fluid droplets per second. In a closed, stagnant air environment, they disappear from the window of view with time constants in the range of 8 to 14 min, which corresponds to droplet nuclei of ca. 4 μm diameter, or 12- to 21-μm droplets prior to dehydration.
(To be clear, it describes droplet sprays, not proven transmission. Close enough for me. :-)
So mask up, and continue to attempt to encourage The Unmasked to mask up, and attempt to influence influencable governments (including local) to issue masks-in-indoor-public-places orders, and make where feasible, make it clear to stores that unmasked customers means no you as a customer. (No masks, no customer.)
Have said it previously; In NY State, mask/face covering order from Cuomo, people effortlessly comply with mandatory masking, with extremely high compliance. It’s about as time consuming as locking the car and can be a lot less time consuming that finding a parking place and parking.
NotMax
@Bill Arnold
Which in a roundabout way brings up a (minor) question for the make-up users to which I cannot hazard an answer. Have you essentially ceased using lipstick since masking became necessary?
James E Powell
@Kay:
I’ve been urging all my students to be observant, keep diaries, and take photos of this time. I told them years from now, you’re going to be telling your children about this.
J R in WV
@artem1s:
Of course they are. Nothing I said contradicts what you have said.
We’re aligned together with the liberal Democratic party, and the Cristo-fascists are stealing everything they can get away with, under cover of phony religion they don’t believe in at all~!~
Bill Arnold
@JPL:
You know, Mr Trump, rather than trying to redefine what “negative” means in a test for the presence of a virus, you could simply test positive. The explanation would sound less stupid.
I wonder if DJT ever read The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, 1952. Seem like the sort of thing he might have been fed (and skimmed, ’cause he’s lazy) as a kid by his father. Perhaps a condensed version. (It’s an early self-help book. Bit related to prosperity gospels.)
jonas
@Fair Economist: Sigh. There was a letter to the editor in my paper this morning from a very devout individual complaining that it was so unfair that people get to go to the grocery store, but not to Mass. After all, isn’t food for your soul just as important? I was yelling at the screen “you dipshit — you’re not going around the grocery store singing and giving everyone a kiss of peace and drinking from the same cup!!”
You can handle a Bible study with your friends over Zoom for a few more weeks. And pray for those who haven’t been so lucky.
NotMax
@jonas
No, no it is not.
But thanks for playing, letter writer, and here’s a copy of the home game.
JeffH
@Bill Arnold: I believe it’s been documented that this is some sort of connection of Trump’s family to Peale. (Same church maybe?) So I suspect you’re right on some of the origins of this word salad.
jonas
Funny thing — I recently had a conversation with my mother — who’s roughly Trump’s age and beside herself with his malignant maladministration — about how he *must* have been exposed to Peale’s ideas at some point in his life. She said her own father and some other relatives had read it and developed this bizarre attitude about everything that if you simply talk something up and believe it, it becomes true. Is your business tanking? Simply say it isn’t and it won’t! Are people around you saying negative things like something you want is a bad idea? Get away from them! Tell them they’re crazy or lying!
This is Trump in a nutshell.
Another Scott
@jonas: I hadn’t made that connection before, but you’re right – it fits.
“Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That’s it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do.”
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
New wingnut meme: staying home is actually what makes COVID kill you. (Proof: Cuomo mentioned that most new cases were people who stayed at home.)
LongHairedWeirdo
Had a chilling moment today.
My favorite site for tracking the daily bad news of Covid-19 showed me something that makes things a bit scarier.
I was tracking “Total Cases” versus “New Cases” to watch for exponential growth. Then, I realized “duh; recovered cases *probably* can’t spread the virus (though some test positive – it’s probably viral fragments, but WE DON’T KNOW – not for sure).” So I then started looking at *Active* Cases, and “this just got real”. There are plenty of 2-3% growth states – states where their active cases are increasing at 2-3% of the previous day’s.
Why is that a big deal? A cute math bit is the “rule of 72”. If something grows by 8% a year, how long until it doubles? Well – roughly, 9 years ,by the rule of 72; 72/8 = 9; so an 8% growth per period means doubling in roughly 9 periods.
Why does this work? It deals with functions on your calculator that an adult either knows, or (probably) doesn’t want to. Basically, because exponentiation in regular numbers is multiplication or division of logarithms of the corresponding numbers, and 2e^-1 is roughly .74. Why not “the rule of 74”? 72 is divisible by 12, and the difference isn’t large, so 72 is used for greater convenience.)
Key point: a 2% daily growth means doubling every 36 days, give or take; 3% is every 24 days. Florida (who we know is trying to cook the books) is showing 1204 new cases so far today, on 38,800 active cases – that’s a 3% growth rate, right there. Yesterday was similar.
And I just saw some morons praising the Florida governor for opening up.
And again, all I can say is, this reminds me of the run up to the Iraq invasion, where people would say and do things so indescribably, colossally, stupid that I figured *I* must be missing information. “Why are *they* claiming the aluminum tubes are for centrifuges, when the IAEA says they couldn’t be? No one would risk being so conclusively, stupidly wrong, so… well, maybe they know something.”
It never would have crossed my mind that the GOP would close ranks so *tightly* around someone proven so incredibly wrong. (Then Abu Ghraib came along, and the GOP was all-in on torture, and I realized how wrong I was – and why I’m not surprised they went all-in on Trump.) I no longer assume any Republican “must know something”, and I’m really terrified for the people of Florida, and a lot of other places.
And now? Well, the President’s son-in-law wanted a secret, no-oversight, back channel to Russia. If he wanted that for lawful reasons, he was stone cold, dyed in the wool, objectively, unquestionably, and irredeemably *stupid*. He thought he could go up against Russian intelligence, without backup, and come out on top. Of course, I don’t think he wanted it for lawful purposes – which doesn’t mean I’m convinced he’s *not* that stupid, mind you!
The GOP really can’t be legitimately surprised at this point if Trump handed over the nuclear codes; that Kushner was not only that stupid, but so stupid he also got caught, should have been an absolute stopping point: no way does that person get a security clearance, because he could give up too much to Russia – possibly without even realizing it. He has a security clearance, and even gets to advise on pandemic preparedness (and gets to swear that he did *great* – I thought the GOP didn’t like participation trophies!).
Seriously: I’m worried. This isn’t just a joke or rant. The modern Republican Party seems to care more about results they can spin, not results that are good (for anyone but their uber-wealthy donors), and don’t seem to have the ability to evaluate dangers. They seem to think a death dealing pandemic can be spun – that the results won’t be obvious.
I could be wrong. I’m not an epidemiologist… just a humble math geek with deft techie skills who knows the joy and horror of exponential growth. But I suspect we’re going to learn something in the future.
I suspect, in the future, they’re going to say that Covid-19 doesn’t actually spread as *easily* as we thought; I think we’ll find it spreads so *invisibly* that it’s a great danger. And bear with me: the reason this matters is, if people think “one person in a church = whole congregation infected” they might think it’s spread much further, and much more widely, than known, and we could end up being rescued by “about 80% of cases are mild,” and the build up of (at least temporary) herd immunity.
If it only spreads to 2-5 people in the church, who then spread it to others, then it’s not spreading nearly as easily, you see? And, if that’s how it works, that means the samplings we’re seeing, with around 5% having been exposed/infected is probably accurate; meaning we can still have horrifyingly huge outbreaks. And I hope the Republican Party finally learns that “reality is that stuff where, even if you don’t believe in it, it continues to exist,” but I mourn that the cost will be in other people’s lives.
Which is a long winded way of saying, “we might be in for a bigger disaster than we thought, even though we’ve been dreading and expecting a big disaster.”
Gvg
@Roger Moore: restrooms. Also travel to and from and not knowing you can expect every service stop on the way to have nice considerate people.
i like camping but not camping rough.
work is planning to resume. We’ll stay in our own office mostly. I can take lunch and get a mini fridge and microwave. But the restroom issue is a problem there. Basically I ‘m like, I have shown you my job works fine remotely, there is no benefit in bringing me back. Only a few front desk counselors would really do better, and they would be safer if there were fewer others.
Brantl
@jc: I wish Obama would send him a message that Obama is virulently opposed to drinking bleach, disinfectant, lye, and live UV bulbs.
The Lodger
@Bill Arnold: He attended Peale’s church in Manhattan in his younger days, so he either read the book or had it read to him.