Despite the wishful and much-amplified musings of one prominent citizen, here is the reality I'm reading about today - this is from Jim Geraghty's daily National Review e-newsletter:
New York City’s ICUs are expected to fill up by Friday. Governor Cuomo says the state’s hospitals are on the verge of running out of ventilators. Medical personnel in their 40s are succumbing to coronavirus. Virus testing lines are stretching down the block. Refrigerated trailers are being brought in to handle the number of corpses. What seemed unthinkable is now here; the city looks like something out of a zombie plague movie or video game.
New Orleans could well turn into the next epicenter after New York. One reason is the fact that the city went through with Mardi Gras — lots of people crowded together; other reasons are that “heart disease, respiratory conditions, physical disability, diabetes, and obesity — all risk factors for death from COVID-19 — are more prevalent in Louisiana than in other parts of the country. In New Orleans, many people live in close quarters, making social distancing almost impossible.”I don't know how the public health experts will discern when it's time to relax the disruptive measures, but I feel confident that we're a long way away from that day.
Update 3/26/2020 7:10 pm CDT: While I haven't built a mathematical model like Jack (nor even hunted up the daily numbers), I've observed that in my state, Illinois, the number of confirmed infections has been climbing steadily. For the week ending last weekend it was increasing at a pace of 100-200 per day, with a death every 2-3 days. Then, within the last week, that climbed to 200-300 new cases per day, with a death every 1-2 days.
Today, it was announced that, in the last 24 hours, 673 new cases were reported, and seven additional deaths. No details have been reported yet (as far as I know now), so we don't know whether the pace is increasing across broad expanses of the state, or if these represent clusters of cases, for example at nursing homes (there have been one or two homes that have been hit hard by the virus).
Public officials are pleading with people to stay at home, self-quarantine when symptoms indicate it, and maintain social distance. Are people doing that? I hope so. I'm stuck at home all day myself, so my opportunities for first-hand observation are few. Either people are cheating, or these social-distance precautions are ineffective, or the disease was ahead of the imposition of the precautions. My suspicion is that the first and third of these are accurate guesses. I hope the second isn't.
Update 3/27/2020 4:22 pm CDT: Also on the topic of the president and Easter, please check out this fellow doing his impression of the Commander in Chief. He doesn't look the part, but vocally and textually it's a little spooky.
https://digg.com/2020/trump-impression-coronavirus
This thing is exponential. Like Fauci said, the virus will determine when we can go back to business as usual. Easter is my favorite holy day, more than Christmas. If I have to make do without it this year, so be it.
ReplyDeleteGood article in Commonweal regarding quarantine.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/act-service
Thanks for the Commonweal link, Stanley. I can't believe Reno. If he doesn't value his own life, that's one thing. But what he's saying puts doctors and nurses lives in danger, in addition to the frail and elderly.
DeleteKatherine, I finally read that there's attention being paid to the fact that medical personnel are suffering disproportionally. I think it's viral load. They don't get just one shot but constant exposure. I think the psychological effects must be horrible. They lose people but this is like war. PTSD in the future?
DeleteSaw this Facebook share, "Nurses should have their student loan debt wiped clean after this!" I agree with that, and add doctors and anyone else who works with virus patients .
DeleteI should add: a co-worker in Florida tells me that beachfront counties there are chasing the spring breakers from the beaches - and they're simply relocating to other counties that haven't yet enacted restrictions.
ReplyDeleteAlso: in Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot went ballistic yesterday because the weather was mild and so Chicagoans mobbed the lakefront beaches and running and cycling trails. By the end of the day, she had ordered the police to get people out of the lakefront parks. I am sure she, and every big-city mayor, is looking at New York and thinking, "We can't let that happen here."
As we suburbanites enjoyed the same mild weather yesterday, I did get outside for a brisk walk around the neighborhood (this is permitted according to the terms of the governor's stay-at-home order). There were many walkers and runners, although didn't see any cyclists. I used the sidewalk and, when encountering another pedestrian coming the other way, stepped off onto the parkway or into someone's front yard and made a wide detour around them. Some of the oncomers did the same -and some didn't, which is just mind-blowing.
I really think that, if we don't succeed in containing the spread of the pandemic, the young and fit who are not taking it sufficiently seriously will be a big reason why.
Florida is Balkanized by county. Some are almost as shut down as New York, and some are untouched by the pandemic or governor's orders. So, you fly into West Palm Beach from New York, and you are quarantined for 14 days while we natives go out and about at a social distance. The gov thinks there is no Covid-19 where none is reported. But testing remains spotty. In other words, there are no restrictions where nobody has found himself or herself to have with the virus. The smartest local experts think we may be two weeks behind New York.
ReplyDeleteIf so, all hell breaks loose here on Easter, and your bonnet is a face mask if you can find one.
Well, Fauci said The Don was being aspirational about Easter. But his boys must be telling him he ain't making any money because so many of his properties are shuttered.
The New York Times now has an interactive post on this topic
ReplyDeleteVariables include the amount of time of the social distancing, its severity, the possible effect of warm weather, and assumptions about infection rate, percent requiring hospitalization, percent of deaths.
Seems to me the obvious strategy is to shut down as much as possible until we see effects emerging, and once they do substantially, then open things gradually as the weather weather.
"as the weather warms."
ReplyDeleteJust found out that our pastor is in self quarantine because he crossed the state line a few days ago. The governor is recommending that anyone who spent time out of state, even if it was short, to self quarantine.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if there's any random sampling testing going on. This would be a better map of spread and severity than people showing up in hospitals. It would be a way to get ahead of the curvd.
ReplyDeleteSouth Korea tested vigorously to find out where it was. We have been waiting to see where it will turn up. As it will.
DeleteWithout testing, how can Trump declare counties low, medium, or high risk? In Michigan, what's going to happen is that if there are no reported cases in, say, Presque Isle County, and it is declared low-risk, everybody in high-risk counties is going to rush up to to the beach where it's "safe," and spread the disease around.
DeleteWith gas at $1.60 per gallon, there will be a lot of summer travel around the state.
Why are people still insisting warm weather is going to kill the virus if Louisiana, which has been in the 70s and 80s, is getting hammered?
Since it would take heat of around 160° F to actually kill a virus, which would also kill us, I'm going to guess that the reason flu season abates in the summer is due to something else. Maybe the increased daylight? Or peoples general health being better when they can be outside more?
DeleteOf course that's speculation on my part. But one can hope summer will buy us a little time before the next round. Because if it behaves anything like other viruses it will be cyclical. In time we will have weapons. I just hope not too much time.
Dr. Fauci said somewhere yesterday that it's probably not the heat so much as people getting out and about from the confined spaces in which they spend their winters. He added that we can't be sure Covid-19 will act like other coronaviruses.
DeleteOf course, Florida and Louisiana are not doing a whole lot for either version of he heat treatment theory.
With respect to heat, I guess we should consider that our bodies are at 98.6°F and OUR DNA and proteins don't break down. However, and Katherine could weigh in, heat does foster chemical reactions and these could be inimical to viruses. What chemical reactions, I have no idea.
DeleteI don't know of any chemical reactions harmful to viruses that would occur at a non-lethal (to us) temperature. But production of interferon, which is one of the body's defenses, does ramp up during a clinical fever. The bad news; the fever and increased interferon are part of what makes us feel so rotten during an illness.
DeleteAmazon is still shipping, though a little delayed. I had ordered a package of specialized tissue paper for an art project. It arrived a couple of days ago. Husband said jokingly that we could use it for toilet paper if we ran out. I said, "Not unless you want a rainbow tush!" The colors are guaranteed to run, that was the whole idea.
ReplyDeleteI actually did score a 9-pack of Charmin yesterday at Dollar General. I drove straight home, didn't want my car to be broken into. It was my lucky day, a Facebook friend said I should have bought a lottery ticket.
On most days my husband and I take a 2-3 mile walk through the neighborhood, which includes a couple of parks. In recent days, with so many working from home, the numbers of people out has escalated as fast as the numbers of cases in the US. Suddenly the sidewalk is crowded. Now we mostly walk in the street in order to maintain the approved distancing. In the parks, we often have to step into the grass (and mud - it's been raining a lot) to avoid a close passing. Yesterday it was nice, for the first time in a week or so, and the kids were also out in force, riding bikes, shooting baskets in driveways and in the park, etc. Lots of kids on the play equipment in the two parks.
ReplyDeleteSo - when we see someone coming who is 60+ or so in age, we observe that they watch us to see if we will move aside or if they should. Many have resorted to simply walking in the street, as we have. Fortunately it is a suburban neighborhood and the traffic is lower than normal- no soccer and baseball practice in the parks in the afternoons, no rush hours.
There are often clusters of under 60s, especially of under-50s - parents chatting away on the sidewalks while their kids play. Couples walking together - who don't look like they live in the same household - often two or three young women dressed in their gym clothes. Well, the gyms are mostly closed, so the sidewalks it is. Then there are the groups of 13 year old boys, and 12 year old girls meeting in the parks to hang out.
Our house backs to a wooded area with a small stream We used to walk there regularly until lyme ticks became a problem (I had embedded lyme ticks a couple of times - we see deer most days right behind the house, and sometimes in our back yard, in spite of a fence). Lately I have seen more people walking the woods behind our house. Maybe we will have to go back to risking the lyme ticks instead of the people. At least we can spray ourselves with OFF before venturing out to discourage the ticks. Nothing wa can spray to discourage the close encounters with other humans.
Anne, I like the idea of OFF for humans - I think there is a business idea there :-)
DeleteGod, I would use OFF for humans most days! For us misanthropic introverts, isolation is a lot less onerous. Only things I miss so far are lattes, marketing (we're using a shopper, bless them!), and seeing The Boy.
DeleteNot so easy for Raber. He misses being at work, making money, and going to Mass. Today he called the village about yard waste pick-up and talked at Doris for about 20 minutes. They're not busy down there.
He seemed giddy at the prospect of going to the laundromat. Lord knows what diseases are walking in and out of there. Only hope the washer and dryer kill everything.
One time I used deer repellent on my shrubs. Definitely could work as a human repellent except we're humans, too.
DeleteNeighborhood park update - the area with all the play equipment now has yellow tape around it - the kind we associate with crime scenes. No use of equipment. No gatherings of more than 10. No contact sports.
ReplyDeleteChatted briefly with the husband of the woman who was one of my closest friends for more than 35 years. Until she voted for Trump. Her husband is a stock market whiz who quit a regular job at 55 to simply manage their investments. He is now 81 with Afib but otherwise in ok health. When he walked towards us as we were passing his house I reminded him about distancing. He didn’t know what the recommended distance is. Then he started to talk about how we need to get the economy going again. At which point I told my husband that we needed to finish our walk.
More tips to keep coronavirus out of your house.
ReplyDeletehttps://tinyurl.com/sx8emmx
Anne, I see that is the same video that my niece who lives in Boston forwarded around. Of course they have a pretty bad outbreak there. It does appear that about three days is the most that the virus remains on a surface. Unless you're on a cruise ship. So if I can find a place to stash the nonperishables for that long, and then put them away, that would be an added layer if protection.
Delete