Covid-19 #15 : It Ain't Over Until It's Over

[Fragile Bird]

Just a week ago we were shocked the US crossed 50 k new cases. I see Worldometer is reporting 64 k so far today.

It took 95 days for the US to hit 1 M cases, 43 days to hit 2 M cases, and now 28 days to hit 3 M cases. How many to hit 4 M?

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

BS. They got trillions of bailout money.  Much of it that should have gone to actual small businesses and individuals, who never got anything at all.

IOW you are saying only the poor wage laborer is supposed to suffer for this, not the people who actually created the disaster.

Restaurants did not get a bailout (not yet, anyway). At most, they may have benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program, but this assistance is contingent on maintaining pre-pandemic levels of staffing throughout the worst of the pandemic which is not feasible for restaurants since they were closed. Most restaurants did not use this program and even for the ones that did, it does nothing to help with fixed costs since the money thereby obtained may only be spent on employees (i.e. it's already gone).

As to the second statement, the people who created the disaster (to the extent that anyone created it at all) are surely not going to pay either restaurateurs or their staff so both of the latter will suffer.

[Larry of the Lawn]

12 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Restaurants did not get a bailout (not yet, anyway). At most, they may have benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program, but this assistance is contingent on maintaining pre-pandemic levels of staffing throughout the worst of the pandemic which is not feasible for restaurants since they were closed. Most restaurants did not use this program and even for the ones that did, it does nothing to help with fixed costs since the money thereby obtained may only be spent on employees (i.e. it's already gone).

As to the second statement, the people who created the disaster (to the extent that anyone created it at all) are surely not going to pay either restaurateurs or their staff so both of the latter will suffer.

This really depends on the restaurant.  Some that had a solid client base and to-go business were able to keep staffing down and profits up.  My brother manages one in Massachusetts that is trying to figure out how to maintain this after they are allowed to "reopen".  One of the local pizza places near me experienced the exact same thing.

Also, that's not the way those loans worked, you had to spend x amount (think it was 80%) on paying staff, and then you got to keep the balance of the loan.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Scrolling through one's Facebook is a bad way to sample things, but it seems like most of my friends, some of whom are highly educated, have just said fuck it with masks and social distancing when they can get together in "small" groups, i.e. cabin parties with 10-20 people. 

Ugh.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Scrolling through one's Facebook is a bad way to sample things, but it seems like most of my friends, some of whom are highly educated, have just said fuck it with masks and social distancing when they can get together in "small" groups, i.e. cabin parties with 10-20 people. 

Ugh.

Yeah, the whole "it's not harmful to younger people" messaging at the first of the pandemic really sunk in.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Yeah, the whole "it's not harmful to younger people" messaging at the first of the pandemic really sunk in.

I'm not even sure it's entirely that. I think a lot of people have the mindset that they need to apply all these new social rules when they're in public and/or around strangers. But it seems like the rules cease to matter when you're with friends you trust at one of your places. 

[Zorral]

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

71,000 reported new cases as measured by Worldometer site for yesterday's U.S. 24 hour period.

[Filippa Eilhart]

Luxembourg is being penalised by some countries for testing aggressively and it’s pissing me off.

https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1547685.html

Quote

Denmark, the Baltic countries, and Norway have all put Luxembourg on their "blacklists" - and it seems that more countries are banning Luxembourg residents from entering.

Luxembourg is currently carrying out 9,582 tests per 100,000 residents per week. Malta comes in second with 1,300 weekly tests per 100,000 residents while the Grand-Duchy's neighbouring countries only perform between 500 and 600 weekly tests per 100,000 residents.

 

[Zorral]

Quote

 

Gov. Cuomo, applauding most New Yorkers for heeding the COVID-19 protocols, announced Saturday that the state’s coronavirus hospitalizations and average three-day death toll just hit the lowest levels since mid-March.

The governor said the hospitalization number was under 800 for the first time since March 18, while the figure of seven daily deaths over 72 hours was last seen on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day.

 

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-cuomo-covid-numbers-20200711-twmfyaaxh5f4bm3wtyly2atvom-story.html

Alas though, he additionally states what I believe as well: we're soon to again experience rising infections and deaths, thanx to all the insane idiots out there.

Even worse

"COVID-19 Immunity: Lancet study suggests herd immunity may not be possible, antibodies found only in 5% of test population in Spain"

https://www.firstpost.com/health/lancet-study-finds-covid-19-antibodies-in-5-percent-of-test-population-in-spain-indicating-insufficient-prevalence-for-herd-immunity-8568331.html

Quote

 

Now, a population-based seroepidemiological study done in Spain (ENE-COVID), indicates that only 5 percent of the population in the country has antibodies against COVID-19. While no difference was found in the antibody levels of both genders, more people were found to have immunity against the disease in the hotspot areas of Madrid (greater than 10 percent) than those living in the coastal areas where the disease was not as prevalent (less than 3 percent).

The Lancet study suggested that the prevalence of antibodies in the general population is very low and not sufficient to provide herd immunity.

 

 

[Heartofice]

There is a train of thought that anti bodies are not the be all and end all in terms of immunity to Covid and that T Cells play an important role. I think right now we just don’t know enough but there is enough information out there to be optimistic 

[The Grey Wolf]

Me and two of my brothers got tested today. Waiting on results now.

[rotting sea cow]

16 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

There is a train of thought that anti bodies are not the be all and end all in terms of immunity to Covid and that T Cells play an important role. I think right now we just don’t know enough but there is enough information out there to be optimistic 

Yes, indeed. Antibodies naturally fade out. The ability of the immune system to make them anew is important. SARS1 patients retained immunity even 10 years after the infections.

Regarding herd immunity. I saw something today about the possibility to have it with ~20% of the population infected, but I'm too tired (and somewhat drunk) to look for it.

Finally, I just want to report a worrisome personal perception. I've meeting a number of people during this week, both online and offline. A good fraction of them know someone who got COVID-19 or even got it themselves. All of them had very mild cases with some complaining that they got worse colds. Most of them understand statistics and trust the science, but even some of them expressed doubts about the COVID "fuss".  If these experiences are more widespread, I wonder whether it will create problems to make the population to comply with some measures.

 

[Zorral]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html?searchResultPosition=1

Quote

 

Federal materials for reopening schools, shared the week President Trump demanded weaker guidelines to do so, said fully reopening schools and universities remained the “highest risk” for the spread of the coronavirus.

The 69-page document, obtained by The New York Times and marked “For Internal Use Only,” was intended for federal public health response teams to have as they are deployed to hot spots around the country. But it appears to have circulated the same week that Vice President Mike Pence announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would release new guidelines, saying that the administration did not want them to be “too tough.” It is unclear whether Mr. Trump saw the document, nor is it clear how much of it will survive once new guidance is completed.

(The cover page of the document is dated July 8, 2019, an obvious typographical error since the novel coronavirus did not exist then.)

What is clear is that federal health experts are using a road map that is vastly different from what Mr. Trump wanted.

 

 

[KingintheNorth4]

5 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

71,000 reported new cases as measured by Worldometer site for yesterday's U.S. 24 hour period.

Sadly, a lot of people here in the U.S. are scientifically illiterate and are proud of it.

I talked to my sister in Arizona the other day. She's fine despite the spike in cases over there.

[Clueless Northman]

6 hours ago, Zorral said:

Even worse

"COVID-19 Immunity: Lancet study suggests herd immunity may not be possible, antibodies found only in 5% of test population in Spain"

https://www.firstpost.com/health/lancet-study-finds-covid-19-antibodies-in-5-percent-of-test-population-in-spain-indicating-insufficient-prevalence-for-herd-immunity-8568331.html

I don't see what's bad here. It's been known for 1 month that less than 6% of Spanish people have antibodies. The lockdown made sure that only the main hotspots would have many people who'd been infected, that's why you didn't have 300K dead across the whole country.

Herd immunity through antibody would require months and an insane amount of sick people - tens of millions sick for a couple of weeks, millions seriously ill with possible lasting side-effects, hundreds of thousands of deads. Considering the casualties in Spain (or Italy, or even NYC for that matter), it's obviously we're very far from having enough immunity to hope for herd immunity.

The key issues are: how long do antibodies last? Is there another layer of immunity (as said above, T-cells for instance) that would provide immunity far longer than antibodies do?

Worth noting that the peak of the pandemic is fresh enough for the bulk of infected people to still have antibodies around, so the large-scale testing should be quite close to the real situation.

[The Anti-Targ]

The thing with immunity is with circulating antibodies any virus will be quickly neutralised and so a person won't even get infected. With absent antibodies, but with immune memory in the T-cells a person will become infected, but the immune system will fairly quickly make antibodies which will normally mean the infection won't go long enough to either cause the person to be contagious or get symptoms.

The trick to seeing if there is long term immunity is once a bunch of people who have recovered for a while so their antibody levels diminish then continual monitoring of a big enough group of those people while the epidemic is still ongoing should lead to occasional spikes in antibody levels without illness as these people get re-exposed to the virus.

[Zorral]

In the US that will be a very long time from now: 

"Coronavirus update: Florida shatters single-day infection record with 15,300 new cases"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/12/coronavirus-update-us/

Other states -- West Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, California, Montana, Idaho, etc. -- are surging like this too, every day more new cases than the day before, and the hospitals are overwhelmed.  Death rates spiking now too.

~~~~~~~~~~

Plus, you know, the general idiocy of about 50 percent of US citizens.

'I thought this was a hoax': Patient in 30s dies after attending 'COVID party'

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/i-thought-this-was-a-hoax-patient-in-their-30s-dies-after-attending-covid-party

Quote

 

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (WOAI/KABB) – A patient in their 30s died from the coronavirus after attending what's being called a "COVID party," according to a San Antonio health official.

Chief Medical Officer of Methodist Healthcare Dr. Jane Appleby said the idea of these parties is to see if the virus is real.

"This is a party held by somebody diagnosed by the COVID virus and the thought is to see if the virus is real and to see if anyone gets infected," Dr. Appleby said.

According to Appleby, the patient became critically ill and had a heartbreaking statement moments before death.

"Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said 'I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it's not,'" Appleby said.

 

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

If these COVID partygoers could only attend, contract and then perish, I would heartily support such activities as a great way to uphold the Darwinian tradition of thinning the herd. However these bastards are also likely going about and spewing their infections onto the innocent in the community and that's unfortunate.

Maybe a locked arena they could all go to and stage a mass death by covid event. As long as no one is allowed out once they enter it would likely cull large amounts of the so called super spreaders in nice fell sweeps.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Posted this bit of positivity in the other covid thread, it's relevant here as well imo.

Here's more from Live Science on UV lights potential against the coronavirus.

https://www.livescience.com/uv-light-kill-coronavirus.html

From the article-

There are ongoing conversations in the field about installing UVC units in ceilings to decontaminate circulating air, Kohli said. And others are researching another wavelength of UVC called UVC-222 or Far-UVC, which may not damage human cells, she added. But that will require more research, Kohli said.  Still, it's clear that "used accurately and responsibly, UVC has enormous potential."