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

@flack

If UK had cumulative 3 million cases in mid March, then does that mean that there have been by now at least ... I dunno... 6 or 12 million?

12 million would mean about 18% of us have had it, right?

And then the mortality rate could be as low as what, 0.37%?
=44k/12 million (if I haven't flubbbed the math).

CDC data (collated by Johns Hopkins in the US, from official government sources for each country) suggests 305,000 confirmed cases for the UK. 91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?fbclid=IwAR30qEvzq11I78qY5WyPOXUOtjUmZdzQL3d-k9gtDLrG6SMyl5EwD0lWmmU

CDC data is giving our cumulative mortality rate as 14% (but this is based on confirmed cases, so is likely to be a very pessimistic upper limit).

This of course will be less than the number actually infected, because confirmed cases are (I think) those actually tested, and there will be many more out there in the community - but how many more? 10 times? 20 times? 60 times? (There would have to be 60 untested cases for every 1 confirmed to reach your upper estimate of 12 million).

There's been a recent study done on antibodies in donated blood which (according to a friend in public health) is probably the closest you can get to a decent, unbiased, randomised estimate of how many people in the population have had it, and it comes out at about 1 in 15 (6.73%)
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/28may2020

One in 15 would be about 4 to 5 million of us having had it. (And would bring the actual mortality rate down to closer to 1%).

I live in the Southern US. Our Nextdoor site is full of people refusing to wear masks because it infringes their constitutional rights, it is Sharia Law (apparently), and if we wear a mask we will die of carbon monoxide poisoning, or will be infected by breathing in our own viruses and our immune systems will shrivel up and fail. I tried politely explaining but to get people to understand that humans exhale carbon dioxide and surgeons wear masks all day every day without keeling over would take a psychiatrist with a cattle prod and about a litre of demerol. It is worse than the anti-Vaxxers. One guy refuses to believe COVID is anything to worry about because he doesn't know anyone infected, a neighbor pointed out that her BIL had just died of it 'Oh but that's just one person' was the reply. It is truly stupid up in here.

The state health department just told our local community pool that staff members exposed to COVID could go to work as long as they tested negative, completely overlooking that they may test negative now, but could easily test positive in a few days once the virus has really started spreading in their bodies. They did reverse that advice about three days later, after the staff had spent a weekend breathing over everyone at the pool. So we aren't even getting common sense from the supposed professionals.

We are all going to die.

Texas Children’s Hospital begins admitting adults as Coronavirus cases surge

thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/504062-texas-childrens-hospital-begins-admitting-adults

This is where things start to get very stressful indeed.

“Just like that - in Houston we, the pediatricians at Texas Children’s Hospital, will now start seeing adult patients. I’m up for the challenge, but please help us out. #Wearamask and stay home. I guess it’s time to retire my giraffe reflex hammer…,” Shubhada Hooli, a doctor at Texas Children’s Hospital, tweeted Monday night.

Sasha is Johnson’s pimp 😁

I'm in the Southern US too TheMysteriousJackelope Some of my relatives here are convinced 'The Rona' is a kind of democrat scam to try to get rid of their beloved Trump. Tried to point out that the whole world has it, but apparently their stupid is too powerful to be overcome with reason or facts So they're all running around as normal and laughing at anyone who wears a mask or wants to stay six feet apart.

So yeah. We are all going to die.

We’ll not know the true picture in the US as Trump has ordered the slow down of testing as he doesn’t want the spikes in cases to be released. Why are idiots turning up at his rallies in States with increasing numbers of cases?

@HalfBearOtherHalfCat

I'm in the Southern US too TheMysteriousJackelope Some of my relatives here are convinced 'The Rona' is a kind of democrat scam to try to get rid of their beloved Trump. Tried to point out that the whole world has it, but apparently their stupid is too powerful to be overcome with reason or facts So they're all running around as normal and laughing at anyone who wears a mask or wants to stay six feet apart.

So yeah. We are all going to die.

Probably hit trump supporters much harder. Darwin's law.

Trump can slow down testing but that won't make any difference to the numbers of people requiring hospitalization

Trump can want less testing but he can't make it happen.
The state I live in has free testing that anyone can access regardless of immigration status and Trump has no control over that.

I'm in the Southern US too TheMysteriousJackelope Some of my relatives here are convinced 'The Rona' is a kind of democrat scam to try to get rid of their beloved Trump.

This is why “it was a decent crowd for a pandemic” in Tulsa just doesn’t wash. His base don’t believe there is a pandemic, why would they stay away?

My state long ago gave up on getting help from the federal government with testing and just developed their own capacity with a local company.

33% of tests in Arizona yesterday returned positive for covid. That’s approaching NYC levels of bad. The situation there is going to get truly frightening. Even another lockdown right now wouldn’t lead to a plateau for at least 2-3 weeks.

The purpose of the rallies is for his followers to prove to him that they I have total faith in him, for them to demonstrate their absolute loyalty to the dear leader.... It's a version of 'drinking the Kool-Aid'

I think Arizona will not be like New York. Much less densely populated and more knowledge about the virus.

@Redolent

33% of tests in Arizona yesterday returned positive for covid. That’s approaching NYC levels of bad. The situation there is going to get truly frightening. Even another lockdown right now wouldn’t lead to a plateau for at least 2-3 weeks.

I think the problem with the USA is they really only had one localised outbreak in NY and NJ, which they dealt with a severe lockdown, but the rest of the country only seemed to be in light lockdown, keeping the virus low, but not eliminating it.

Now they have relaxed, the virus is doing what the virus does.

They need a hard lockdown countrywide for a month to get things under control. That's not going to happen.

So I think the USA can look forward to local lockdowns here there and everywhere for the foreseeable.

It's a disaster.

I wasn't in a light lockdown in my bit of the Midwest, it was much more stringent than the UK and started earlier.
We are opening up but indoor mask wearing is compulsory everywhere including schools when they reopen in August.
The USA can really only be looked at State by State.

A US based friend sent me the attached. She isn’t impressed with how Trump has and continues to deal with the crisis.

Trump is a disaster, fortunately the States can operate without him.
That doesn't mean that strong central leadership wouldn't have helped, of course it would but the states are used to managing without it by this stage.

There's a great thread on twitter about how Trump machine monetises people who attend the rallies (tickets are free). This is the actual point of the rallies, to milk the attendees afterwards for money.

I wasn't in a light lockdown in my bit of the Midwest, it was much more stringent than the UK and started earlier.

Indeed, ours was earlier than the UK and just as stringent. The main difference was that we were allowed to drive places to go and exercise - so that people weren't all crowding into a few small areas.

They need a hard lockdown countrywide for a month to get things under control. That's not going to happen.

In my state, where we started reopening more than a month ago, our case rate is lower than in the UK, where reopening has not yet begun. Not sure why a US countrywide lockdown is needed?

I do think we'll continue requiring visitors from certain states to either quarantine or provide a recent negative Covid test.

I noticed that NY, NJ and Connecticut have just started requiring visitors from states with high infection levels to quarantine.

endlessginandtonic it's good to hear the midwest states are being sensible. DD is due to go back to college in Illinois in 2 months.

@endlessginandtonic

I wasn't in a light lockdown in my bit of the Midwest, it was much more stringent than the UK and started earlier. We are opening up but indoor mask wearing is compulsory everywhere including schools when they reopen in August. The USA can really only be looked at State by State.

The UK was in a light lockdown.

No where near as heavy as many European countries.

I think the problem with the USA is they really only had one localised outbreak in NY and NJ, which they dealt with a severe lockdown, but the rest of the country only seemed to be in light lockdown, keeping the virus low, but not eliminating it.

Can you explain how the NY and NJ lockdowns were more severe than those of every other state?

Illinois was aware it was vulnerable to C19 and has worked hard to limit the impact, to be honest Chicago in particular. I'm not sure rural Illinois has been particularly engaged.
The lockdown seemed between the UK and some of the more stringent European countries.
I have friends in southern states whose lives have been barely touched whereas ours have been severely limited for months.

DD's going back to Evanston, which is just outside Chicago but certainly not rural. From talking to people locally, it sounds like they're opening up a bit more quickly than the city of Chicago itself, but still being very careful.