COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US) (5 Viewers)

[faceman]

At what point here does hospital/ICU space become an issue in the states?

I could recall the panic button being pushed within a couple of weeks during the first outbreak phase, yet this time around, it does not seem to be as big of a focus.

I spoke with my daughter earlier. she is a RN at a Gulfport hospital. If you need emergency treatment, paramedics will take you to Hancock county. This ain't no joke my friends

 

[Super44]

I posted about this a number of months back, with regards to what a hospital was doing within their ICU. There was a concern for patients with the virus exhaling the aerosol droplets thru the intubation process and the virus spreading thru the ventilation system of the hospital. Now some experts say, it has been a concern since early on from anyone that has it and the virus being spread mostly in poorly ventilated areas, regardless of the 6 foot social distancing and sanitizing of hands...etc., due to the spreading of the virus by aerosol droplets.

While there has been no real testing (purposely infecting healthy people) and the fact this is only from laboratory experiments, it is still a valid concern. A study by professionals conducted on a choir in Portland, where one choir member unknowingly who had the virus was amongst the choir, where everyone wore masks, maintained a 6 foot spacing, many members still contracted the virus, may help support the results from the laboratory experiments. There is still disagreement amongst many expert medical professionals.

When you step back and look at the evolution of the conflicting and early on opinions, on having people wearing masks and their benefit/non-benefit, I think this aerosol spread disagreement, will end up being valid across all expert opinions. With some evidence that supports the spread thru aerosol droplets (exhaled air) from people that have the virus, wearing a mask still helps prevent the spread of the droplets, but is NOT a proven method that will 100% guarantee no one individual may still contract the virus.

The NBA bubble may actually be another test of the aerosol concern. We’ll see.

 

[B4YOU]

Ten out of the 12 hospitals in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are now full

"We are now at the point of grave concern," said the CEO of one hospital system in deep South Texas as local hospitals began diverting patients away from their emergency rooms amid a crush of COVID-19 infections.

www.texastribune.org

Texas not looking so good.

 

[Saintaholic]

With some evidence that supports the spread thru aerosol droplets (exhaled air) from people that have the virus, wearing a mask still helps prevent the spread of the droplets, but is NOT a proven method that will 100% guarantee no one individual may still contract the virus.

The NBA bubble may actually be another test of the aerosol concern. We’ll see.

Don't believe this is breaking news. In fact, for those paying attention and not looking for information to help feed a thirst for confirmation bias, this is exactly the way it has always been intended to work.

We wear masks to protect others, not to protect ourselves. And certainly no one has ever said wearing a mask is 100% full proof in any situation; it's simply just one of several mitigation measures aimed merely at helping - the other main ones being social distancing and consistent hand-washing/sanitizing.

You can literally get the virus through your eyes, so no, the mask was never intended to be to 100% protect ourselves.

 

[superchuck500]

Florida with another 5-digit day on 18.5% positive.

 

[superchuck500]

Thread about the school reopening (Ms. Ranny’s thread, not Mr. Roner’s)::

 

[gboudx]

Thread:

This article may have already been posted but piggybacking off the Twitter thread so the concept of pooling surveillance testing can be explained.

Federal Officials Turn to a New Testing Strategy as Infections Surge (Published 2020)

Millions of additional coronavirus tests may be processed with “pooling,” enabling widespread surveillance as the country struggles to reopen.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Devildog]

Ten out of the 12 hospitals in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are now full

"We are now at the point of grave concern," said the CEO of one hospital system in deep South Texas as local hospitals began diverting patients away from their emergency rooms amid a crush of COVID-19 infections.

www.texastribune.org

Texas not looking so good.

They just have to do it bigger and better than anyone else, even if it's in the stupidity department.

 

[St. Widge]

Thread:

Pool testing is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more information from virologists and epidemiologists on how well it works when compared to traditional testing. I mean, the guy that wrote the thread is a Professor of Economics at NYU. I'm sure he is a very good economist, but I'm not sure whether he understands the medical and epidemiological issues involved with pool testing. Maybe he does, but I'd like to hear from experts in other fields more closely related to containing viruses.

One concern I have is if contact tracing isn't working, then how are they planning to track down all the people who were in the testing pool to test them again? I guess if they all go to a single school it works, but probably does not work for the general public. My other concern would be that it might not actually save money depending on how wide spread the virus is. And, even if it does save money, is it really the best way to do it? Is it just being pushed because the Feds refuse to spend the money necessary to do individual testing and/or didn't ramp up production of test kits fast enough? Is this just the next best thing we can do because we messed up so bad not making more tests and the Feds won't fund testing?

What I found concerning was the idea that we know that contact tracing isn't working. It was supposed to be one of the big pillars to build on to get the economy back open and now we are learning that it's basically impossible to carry out.

 

[superchuck500]

Pool testing is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more information from virologists and epidemiologists on how well it works when compared to traditional testing. I mean, the guy that wrote the thread is a Professor of Economics at NYU. I'm sure he is a very good economist, but I'm not sure whether he understands the medical and epidemiological issues involved with pool testing. Maybe he does, but I'd like to hear from experts in other fields more closely related to containing viruses.

One concern I have is if contact tracing isn't working, then how are they planning to track down all the people who were in the testing pool to test them again? I guess if they all go to a single school it works, but probably does not work for the general public. My other concern would be that it might not actually save money depending on how wide spread the virus is. And, even if it does save money, is it really the best way to do it? Is it just being pushed because the Feds refuse to spend the money necessary to do individual testing and/or didn't ramp up production of test kits fast enough? Is this just the next best thing we can do because we messed up so bad not making more tests and the Feds won't fund testing?

What I found concerning was the idea that we know that contact tracing isn't working. It was supposed to be one of the big pillars to build on to get the economy back open and now we are learning that it's basically impossible to carry out.

I was actually posting her thread, not his. She uses his as a launching point for the school discussion. I haven’t actually read his yet.

 

[DaveXA]

Pool testing is an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more information from virologists and epidemiologists on how well it works when compared to traditional testing. I mean, the guy that wrote the thread is a Professor of Economics at NYU. I'm sure he is a very good economist, but I'm not sure whether he understands the medical and epidemiological issues involved with pool testing. Maybe he does, but I'd like to hear from experts in other fields more closely related to containing viruses.

One concern I have is if contact tracing isn't working, then how are they planning to track down all the people who were in the testing pool to test them again? I guess if they all go to a single school it works, but probably does not work for the general public. My other concern would be that it might not actually save money depending on how wide spread the virus is. And, even if it does save money, is it really the best way to do it? Is it just being pushed because the Feds refuse to spend the money necessary to do individual testing and/or didn't ramp up production of test kits fast enough? Is this just the next best thing we can do because we messed up so bad not making more tests and the Feds won't fund testing?

What I found concerning was the idea that we know that contact tracing isn't working. It was supposed to be one of the big pillars to build on to get the economy back open and now we are learning that it's basically impossible to carry out.

I remember us discussing here that because of the sheer size of the country, that contact tracing would become impractical once community spread gets beyond a certain point. Pretty sure we're well beyond being able to get the most out of contact tracing at this point.

 

[St. Widge]

I was actually posting her thread, not his. She uses his as a launching point for the school discussion. I haven’t actually read his yet.

Sorry. I guess I clicked on the part that brought me to his thread. It is actually an interesting read BTW. Not sure I think pool testing is the way to go without more information, but it's an interesting idea.

Edit: Anyway, I looked at her thread, the idea that maybe kids can't spread COVID or aren't big spreaders is interesting, but I think we need a lot more research on that and at what age this strange transition to being a non-spreader takes place. Also, I noted that she cites a Reuters article saying that Denmark has not seen a rise because they opened schools. But, I don't think that's actually true. They are seeing a rise is their R rate that coincides with them opening schools and I know they are watching that very closely to see if it's a problem. And, the Danes have pretty much so crushed the virus in their country so it's certainly less of an issue to open schools when there is very little virus around than in the situation the U.S. is in. But, I do agree with her that opening schools should be driven by science. But what is really driven by science in this country anymore?

 

[St. Widge]

I remember us discussing here that because of the sheer size of the country, that contact tracing would become impractical once community spread gets beyond a certain point. Pretty sure we're well beyond being able to get the most out of contact tracing at this point.

Yeah, but this kind of sounded like even on a small scale it's a problem because people either refuse to be interviewed by contact tracers or when they do get interviewed don't give them any information, whether because they don't recall or because they don't want to "rat" anyone out, I don't know. But, I suspect some of this has to do with a stigma attached to getting the virus.

 

[jasonsw]

Ten out of the 12 hospitals in Texas' Rio Grande Valley are now full

"We are now at the point of grave concern," said the CEO of one hospital system in deep South Texas as local hospitals began diverting patients away from their emergency rooms amid a crush of COVID-19 infections.

www.texastribune.org

Texas not looking so good.

2 weeks ago 7 day average was 3100 roughly. Now it is over 6900. this week there was 50000+ new cases of covid in Texas. In Over a month that would project to be 200000 plus new cases. the latest seem to be doing nothing to slow the virus down. At this point it seems it is too big to stop.

 

[Sun Wukong]

Thread about the school reopening (Ms. Ranny’s thread, not Mr. Roner’s)::

She asks a bunch of questions she admits there are no answers to, then proposes a bunch of things that will never happen because of the reality of budgets.

Not criticizing you sharing it, but this just underscores my belief that no one has any idea what they're doing re: school reopenings. The Advocate had an article yesterday about how no one in the state is quite sure how to interpret the guidelines on student face mask wearing the state provided, and at the district level parents are falling into "must wear masks or they're not going," "who cares?" and "must not wear masks or not going" groups.

We're going to have a massive clusterfork on our hands come August. There's no way around it. Everything I see indicates a total lack of preparedness.

 

[Sun Wukong]

That 10.6% positive test rate is ominous. We're adding about a thousand a day now and trending upward.