Ongoing coronavirus happenings

Everywhere should be doing this before they even think of opening up, but currently it would bottleneck pretty fast. What a patchwork with the federal government asleep at the wheel!

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cuomo-reminds-mcconnell-new-york-pays-more-kentucky-state-bailout

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/luxury-hotel-executive-biggest-winner-of-small-business-relief

Updated on April 23, 2020

(Updates with Trump donation in sixth paragraph)

Bennett donated $150,000 in the last six months to a fundraising committee for Trump’s reelection campaign and for Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also gave to Trump in 2016, and has made donations to prominent allies such as House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and Senator Lindsey Graham.

Well of course he did.

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North Carolina’s briefing is ongoing now.
The current plan is to lift the current stay at home on May 8th based on:
Covid-like symptom cases over 2 weeks
Test-confirmed cases over 2 weeks
Positive tests as a percentage over 2 weeks
Number of people in hospital with it.

They’re also considering testing numbers, PPE availability, etc.

General info:
Doubling time has gone beyond 11 days.
Our curve is lower than the US as a whole.
ER cases for covid-like symptoms are down.

No decreases in % of positive tests but we’re holding stable there.
Hospitalizations are also holding fairly level.

That person up-thread may want to take a look at this post if they’re still around. There are those metrics you wanted :slight_smile:

The general guidance for reopening:
Decrease in cases with covid-like symptoms.
Decreasing or sustained level confirmed cases.
Decreasing positive test %.
Decreasing or sustained level hospitalizations.

Testing on the order of 5-7k per day
500 people doing contact tracing (double the current number.)
At least 30 days of PPE in reserve for all types of PPE (we’re currently lacking gowns and masks.)

They’re accepting sustained level (no increase) rather than decreases for some cases because there has been no spike and the healthcare system hasn’t had much of a problem handling the load (there are fewer than 500 people in hospital with symptoms statewide.)

If these are met by May 8th, then we enter phase 1 of reopening:

  • General retailers are allowed to open with screening, enhanced cleaning, and social distancing requirements.
  • Gatherings of more than 10 prohibited
  • Closed parks will reopen.
  • Certain places still restricted.

Phase 2 a few weeks later if numbers still look good:

  • Restaurants, Bars, etc. allowed to reopen as long as they keep social distancing requirements
  • Larger gatherings allowed
  • Vulnerable populations recommended to stay at home.
  • Remote work encouraged.

Phase 3 (4-6 weeks later):

  • Vulnerable populations considered safe to leave home
  • Larger gatherings.

If it starts looking bad at any point, they’ll roll back to previous phases.

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When 

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interesting.

wncn was reporting it was still rising as of monday:

and… it almost looks that’s not doing 7-day averages, instead they’re determining a positivity rate by averaging across all tests. ( the main nc health site doesn’t seem to provide the data in a way that’s easily to figure that out either. )

so if it’s going up, i’d imagine its really going up.

cross posting to this –

where at least nationally, we may be still in a situation where our testing capacity increases aren’t exceeding the infection increases.

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I believe in the presentation they were doing 7 day averages and it looked more steady than in that graph. Hopefully NCDHHS or someone else will be posting the slides and contents of the press conference.

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Market driven analysis is always playing up how “the death rate may be lower”, as if it’s the only thing we should be looking at with health outcomes.

(The numbers are an important data point, but it’s always interesting the emphasis different news outlets want to put on what it means or what the takeaway should be.)

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Trump just suggested treating covid by “bringing sunlight inside the body.” :astonished: WTF? I have read about something like this as a medieval torture/execution thing, but as medical treatment? Wow…

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Great. Now I’ve got an image somewhere between blood eagle and demon core kun, bouncing around in my head. Good thing it’s nowhere close to bedtime.

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The actual death rate is certainly lower than 7%. That still leaves a lot of room for some very scary possibilities.

For death rate, there are few if any false positives, and likely they are missing a bunch, from looking at increase in overall mortality, rather than just confirmed cases.

Bearing that in mind, if this antibody study is an accurate sample, that gives an actual case fatality rate of ~0.8-1.5%. This is broadly in line with other similar estimates from other places, and is still terrifying. If we did a “herd immunity “ strategy over the whole US, that would be 3-4 million people dead.

So this doesn’t really make the situation any better than what we already knew.

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Yup. 7.4% fatality rate is just slightly lower than playing Russian roulette with one bullet in two guns. (8.3%)

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I’m sure he was just riffing on how the Krebs Cycle run backwards is so similar to photosynthesis, so that’s his in-joke way of suggesting that us animals should keep ourselves in good nutritional shape by consuming more plants.

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Yes. Also with the findings that some some are testing lower than expected in antibodies, herd immunity is even being questioned.

Then there is the whole discussion about outcomes where people do survive, and future medical issues from complications, that gets swept under the rug.

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Sounds like he’s taken on another spiritual advisor?

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