Anyone following what’s happening in the United States?

[Redolent]

A lesson in how not to reopen.

20 states are seeing significant increases. Some like Arizona, Florida, California and Texas are breaking records of positive cases and covid hospitalizations. ICUs almost full in Texas. Indoor-dining restaurants and bars have been open for a month or so in some of these states. This is still the first wave for them ...

Will be interesting to see if they lock down some states again. It seems inevitable for Arizona (26% of those who had a Coronavirus test today were positive, which is insane).

Info from NYT:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

An open window provides air changes. Recirculated air is currently not advisable. Filters are only as good as the person who changes them.

then we will see BLM in a fortnight

Figures would be starting to show and early signs are hopeful.

The CDC have been tracking this using cellphone data and showed social distancing decreased during the protests as people (other than protesters) tended to stay home so in fact, there were fewer people out and about during the protests. I can only find a daily mail link to it which I won’t post but if you goggle you’ll find it.

Al Jazeera have reviewed protests v cases in states and find no effect. www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2020/06/nationwide-protests-led-spike-coronavirus-cases-200608052743621.html

In some places, protesters were asked to get tested and they found no difference in Covid cases v general population. Worth mentioning that efforts at distancing were made, masks were encouraged, handed out, organisers were making people aware and passing round sanitizer. I expect there will be some who became infected at the protests but it wouldn’t account for the surges we’ve seen.

An open window provides air changes.

But if you are downwind of an infected person, it doesn’t matter if that air is fresh or recirculated, the particles will transmit.

Recirculated air is currently not advisable. Filters are only as good as the person who changes them.

This is the case whether there is Covid or not. The fact is, we don’t generally see airborne infections in sealed buildings these days. The advice is precautionary rather than reactionary.

@lljkk

South Korea (poster child country for perfect covid response) had huge outbreaks in nightclubs. I was shocked they had crowded nightclubs open prefectly legally. I don't imagine people were masked up inside.

South Korea really ballsed up here. Their response is often commended, but they opened nightclubs before schools. Then when they saw outbreaks in the former, they delayed all their school reopening plans...

Happy to be corrected if anyone knows more,

Regarding the protests, according to the person in charge of contact tracing in my state the other day, 12% of recent new cases had attended a protest.

Since the protests cases have dropped consistently here. Most new cases have been either in care homes or in one food processing plant.

The big protests here were June 2-6.

I think I already posted the Wired story about whether protests led to infections but here it is again anyway.

www.wired.com/story/what-minnesotas-protests-are-revealing-about-covid-19-spread/

Houston hospitals stop sharing data after they hit 100% base ICU capacity.

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-hospitals-hit-100-base-ICU-capacity-15372256.php

“After reporting numerous charts and graphs almost daily for three months, the organization posted no updates until around 9 p.m. Saturday...

When the charts reappeared, eight of the 17 original slides had been deleted — including any reference to hospital capacity or projections of future capacity.”

4,877 new cases reported in Arizona today... with a population of 7.3m . Maybe Fauci’s prediction that the US would have 100,000 cases per day will come to pass.

Horrifying isn't it? Interesting and good that people are starting to pay attention to Fauci again.

Our population is 1.3m, so 1/6 of Arizona's. We have 41 new cases today, but they are more widespread than previous cases, so the Maine CDC is watching carefully and considering delaying some reopenings next week.

@Derbygerbil

4,877 new cases reported in Arizona today... with a population of 7.3m . Maybe Fauci’s prediction that the US would have 100,000 cases per day will come to pass.

Positive test percentage in Arizona’s batch today is 28%...insanely high.

Even without the 4th July things are looking very worrying.

Maine reopened to some additional states today - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (already open to Vermont and New Hampshire).

Who'd have thought two months ago that we'd be opening to those states for Independence Day, based on low infection and positivity rates?

Trump is holding a huge 4th July fireworks celebration at the White House - 300,000 people forecast to attend. Masks will be given but not mandatory to wear. Watch out for another spike in cases in Washington.

Yeah there were tens of thousands forecast for his rallies too and that didn't happen. 300,000 sounds optimistic

I try not to follow what is happening in America, because I'm not a fan of horror stories.

Republicans have been a risk factor for coronavirus since the start of the epidemic. slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/polls-republicans-coronavirus-spread.html This is partly a racist bias, they thought it was only going to affect people of colour.

Sky News are reporting from a hospital in Texas. Patients are critical of the Governor and President

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-houston-doctor-says-were-heading-to-pure-hell-as-covid-19-cases-spike-in-texas-12020307

@parker231 that's scary reading.

It can all appear abstract until you see stories of overstretched and exhausted doctors 😔

Every hospitalized patient requires so much hands on care, and the doctors/nurses are just people too. It gets worse if they go off sick/ have to quarantine. Because once your health service can’t cope there’s no recourse but for another lockdown.

Another editorial from a doctor in Arizona :

www.newsweek.com/arizona-covid-19-doctor-frontlines-i-am-scared-you-should-too-1515095

@Parker231

Sky News are reporting from a hospital in Texas. Patients are critical of the Governor and President

They can be critical but they can also use common sense and have done what they needed to anyway. Our county judges tried to make masks mandatory a few months back with fines for disobeying but the local police wouldn’t enforce it and the governor said no. He’s changed his mind now and guess what? We have mandatory masks and fines for disobeying. If people didn’t put so much stock in these ‘leaders’ we wouldn’t be in this position, but ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, and all that jazz

He should have cracked down hard months ago

@Parker231

Sky News are reporting from a hospital in Texas. Patients are critical of the Governor and President

However, later on in the news piece it says they are trying a combination of new treatments which are "a game changer" and results seem really good. Hope it continues 👍

From The Guardian
Officials in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas announced single-day-high case numbers for Tuesday. The Covid Tracking Project said that the US’s seven-day average for new daily cases has doubled since 13 June, and that hospitalizations jumped by the highest number since 21 April.
The European Union confirmed on Tuesday it would bar Americans from non-essential travel.

It seems inevitable for Arizona (26% of those who had a Coronavirus test today were positive, which is insane).

Surely to that depends on who they are testing - whether it is people who think they have it, or a random sample of the population. Of course a high number of people having a test who think they have it may have the virus. Given that the employment situation over there is so unstable, I think people wouldn't have a test unless they really needed to and strongly thought they had the sympyoms. I wouldn't have one here in UK unless I felt I definitely had symptoms as it would mean OH taking unpaid time off while awaiting the results. What criteria do they need to meet in order to get a test in the USA?

It does seem that in some states it's business as usual, although I haven't really looked at what is going on in the US as it is hard enough keeping up to date with the UK. I suppose the peak period would last a lot longer there given the population size and they haven't acknowledged this. They are still behind us for deaths per million at the moment.

A high percentage of tests coming back positive would indicate that most people with the virus are not being tested and the infection rate is actually a lot higher.