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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Saturday / Sunday, June 20-21

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Saturday / Sunday, June 20-21

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34Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. 16 new cases: 13 from local infection comprising four Malaysians and nine non-Malaysians, three cases of imported infection in two Malaysians and a permanent resident returning from abroad. Total 8,572 cases.

    10 more patients recovered and were discharged from hospital, total 8,156 recovered or 95.1% of all cases. The number of active cases rose slightly to 295. Three patients are in ICU with no one on a ventilator.

    We’ve now had another week with no deaths. The total is still 121 deaths. Infection fatality rate is 1.41% and the case fatality rate is 1.46%.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    The Tube Tube is open at the top. You’d still be vulnerable to droplets drifting down from above.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    from the Statnews article:

    But throughout April, while a total of 85 South Koreans died from the disease, an average of more than 85 Americans died per hour. This divergence only widened as time passed.

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    But throughout April, while a total of 85 South Koreans died from the disease, an average of more than 85 Americans died per hour. This divergence only widened as time passed.

    It’s strange. Although right wing pundits want to insist on turning response to the pandemic into an ideological “both sides” issue, I do not see any coherent conservative perspective.

    It comes down to some perverse “the left is for killing the economy” vs “individual responsibility.” This is nonsense since pretty much every country in the world, with a few exceptions, went for some variation of lockdown.  And Sweden is not a right wing country.

    And in the US, Trump has simply lost interest in the pandemic and, like a sullen child, just wants to move on. However, red states that simply follow his lead cannot show that they are handling the pandemic well. It just comes down to them ignoring the increase in cases and deaths.

    It is just strange to see the right furiously defend their right to be killed by the virus as a result of official neglect of public health duties.

  5. 5.

    Shalimar

    Watching Florida news on PBS (recorded Friday).  New state budget year starts July 1st, and DeSantis has line’item veto power before he approves a $93 billion budget the legislature passed.

    “DeSantis compared the looming budget cuts to the “Red Wedding” scene from the HBO series “Game of Thrones”…”

    He’s particularly focused on cutting healthcare allocations he says we can no longer afford.  We are so screwed.

    Also over 4000 new cases, worst day ever.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: The Tube Tube is open at the top. You’d still be vulnerable to droplets drifting down from above.

    I figure I’d drape mine with a jaunty fabric covering, possibly sprayed with a pleasantly scented disinfectant, and decorated with tassels or crochet lace.  Like an antimacassar (which my Irish grannies used all their lives).

    Anybody tried to talk to me, I could point at my tube & mime that I couldn’t hear them!

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    The mention of Hawaii is somewhat misleading as “hundreds” may technically be true but it represents a 95%+ plus drop from the same time last year. Data (.pdf)

  8. 8.

    RSA

    @Amir Khalid: 

    The Tube Tube is open at the top. You’d still be vulnerable to droplets drifting down from above.

    Pop a giant foam cowboy hat on top and you’re good.

  9. 9.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: The tubes and plastic face shields both allow droplet inhalation. In hospitals the face shields are used with full mask, gowns and gloves; but non-medical people are wearing the shields because they don’t want to wear masks. People are idiots.

  10. 10.

    Chyron HR

    @Shalimar:

    “DeSantis compared the looming budget cuts to the “Red Wedding” scene from the HBO series “Game of Thrones”…”

    Do Republicans just not understand popular media?

  11. 11.

    Amir Khalid

    @Brachiator:

    Sweden’s herd immunity approach was popular among libertarians and the right because it eschewed enforced lockdown and was thus more liberty-friendly. We’ve seen since that that approach just leads to needlessly many deaths without yielding much herd immunity. The Sweden fans have been quiet lately.

  13. 13.

    p.a.

    @Brachiator: 
    The cons are using the ‘throw shit against the wall’ approach, as always: numbers overstated (underlying cause deaths shouldn’t count), cure-worse-than-disease theme, no-worse-than-flu theme (for the truly pig-ignorant*, numerically incompetent) combined at time with it’s an attack on tRump theme…
    *apologies to all actual pigs

  14. 14.

    New Deal democrat

    Arizona now has exponential spread. New daily cases per million have nearly doubled from 180 to 300 in just 5 days. At this rate Arizona’s outbreak will equal NY at its worst with over 500 per day (1 in every 2000 people infected each day) in just 5 more days.

    Utah and the entire rest of the Confederacy ex-VA are in the 80 to 160 range, and rising.

    The States of the Northeast megalopolis and upper Midwest seriously need to consider forcing all interstate travelers from the South to go into quarantine for at least 7 days upon entry to the State – and yes I do mean posting police at the VA-NC border and at the Ohio and upper Mississippi River crossings. Otherwise new outbreaks will be seeded, undoing much of the responsible States’ hard work.

    The only bright spot is that deaths continue to decline. It may just be a lag in the data, but it probably also involves better hospital treatment and even more importantly shutting down nursing home spread.

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: 

    I do not see any coherent conservative perspective.

    “Doing anything visible to avoid spreading COVID-19 makes you a pussy.” That’s the entire perspective. It’s the macho perspective of the school kids who’ll laugh at you if you wear a coat in freezing weather.

  17. 17.

    Cameron

    @Brachiator: Trump has now given the official response: ignore it and it will go away.  I for one am fully prepared to choke to death with lungs full of crap if it makes Donald MFing Trump’s numbers look better.

  18. 18.

    p.a.

    @New Deal democrat: 
    I wonder if it’s statistically discernible if RI’s hold on NY travellers when it was a basket case had any effect. Hard to judge cause/effect of what did not/may not have happened.

  19. 19.

    Chief Oshkosh

    So the estimate is that 70-99% of US Covid deaths would’ve been prevented if Trump was competent. Deaths have topped 120,000. That’s 84,000 to 119,000 killed Americans that Trump is directly responsible for. And getting worse. The only way out is to enact the confirmed strategies of mask wearing, social distancing, testing, and contact tracing. With his little, tiny get-together last night, Trump broadcast, yet again, that he is against any of that.

    Shouldn’t the mainstream media be calling for Trump to resign? Shouldn’t we all?

  20. 20.

    Obdurodon

    @Amir Khalid:
    I think the Swedish example did enormous harm to the US. At a critical time, huge numbers of lockdown opponents were *relentlessly* using Sweden to muddy the policy waters. That surely had some effect on when those lockdowns got implemented, or how strict they were. Now they’re all really quiet, and would probably deny ever having even mentioned Sweden.

    They know they were conclusively proven wrong. (Even Anders Tegnell came as close as someone like him ever will to admitting error.) They know they’re guilty of making an argument that led to harm. They’re hoping everyone will have forgotten, the next time they trot out their tired old arguments about we’d all be better off if we eliminated government from every part of our lives.

  21. 21.

    Soprano2

    @Shalimar:  But I’ve been told only blue states run by Democrats have budget problems because of the pandemic *rolleyes* It’s amazing to me that even in the face of so many red states having dire budget problems Mitch refuses to do anything. Do they think people in those states just won’t notice?

  22. 22.

    Aziz, light!

    @Chief Oshkosh: So the estimate is that 70-99% of US Covid deaths would’ve been prevented if Trump was competent.

    I don’t buy this at all. Had President Hillary Clinton launched a timely, prudent, thorough, expert-driven nationwide response to the virus, a great many freedumb-loving Americans would have refused to cooperate, just as they are doing now. They and their rethug leaders would be braying that she is a constitution-hating dictator.

  23. 23.

    Soprano2

    My stepson sent us pictures of the completely empty beaches where he lives in Maui. I cannot imagine the damage the economy in Hawaii is enduring right now. Even if it results in some good things long-term, it’s gotta be bad right now. I think their only advantage is that it’s easier for them to keep people from other places in quarantine, and there are relatively few people coming there from other places. Who wants to pay $400 a day to sit in a hotel room for 2 weeks?

  24. 24.

    terben

    From the Australian Dept of Health:

    ‘As at 3:00pm on 21 June 2020, a total of 7,461 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 102 deaths and 6,896 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19.

    • Over the past week, there has been an average of 20 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.
    • Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 62% have recent international travel history, including over 1,300 cases associated with cruise ships.
    • To date, over 2,041,000 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.4% have been positive.’

    25 new cases today, 19 from Victoria. The other 6 cases were travellers in quarantine, as were 4 Victorian cases. There are 15 cases in hospital, with 2 in ICU.

    As for the situation in Sweden, it was a shitshow from the start and only gets worse. If there were justice in this world, Anders Tegnell’s head would be on a pike. He is living proof that the safest place to be in a pandemic is as far away from an epidemiologist as possible.

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    @Soprano2: I was listening to Marketplace on the radio on Friday and heard a couple of reporters (WSJ, WaPo, I think) discussing the national COVID-19 response with Kai. The WSJ reporter, I think, was saying that she didn’t know if there would be another stimulus/rescue bill because “Congress can’t agree” on the numbers.

    Made me almost have a screaming fit, it did.

    No mention that the House passed a $3T bill on May 15 and that Moscow Mitch has been sitting on it ever since.

    Every time I think that maybe I’m too hard on Marketplace and maybe it does has some value, I listen briefly and remember why I turn it off.

    Grrr….

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    Xavier

    I attribute New Mexico’s results to mask wearing. In my limited outings, mask wearing in Albuquerque is nearly 100% .

  27. 27.

    Shalimar

    @Soprano2: DeSantis wants these cuts.  This is an excuse for him to gut things he doesn’t like.  He even bragged that by doing it now they won’t have to talk about the budget again until after the election.

    Their strategy is to do all the damage now and hope people forget by November 3rd.  And in and other year, that depressingly might work.  They are so fucked this year.  Everything will be even worse in 4 1/2 months.  No one is forgetting.

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced that Yakima County is now under orders to wear masks. That county is in “red” Washington, east of the Cascades, and they’ve had a recent surge in new cases. They have moved into second place behind King County and ahead of Snohomish and Pierce, and their numbers are approximately the sum of those in Snohomish and Pierce.

  29. 29.

    Xavier

    @Soprano2: (re Hawaii’s economy) there is no ” the economy.” There’s “an economy.” The real function of any economy is to provision society. Right now the people of Hawaii need to be kept fed and healthy until it’s safe to start doing tourist things. If Hawaiians are being kept fed and healthy then the economy is doing its job.

  30. 30.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Aziz, light!: There would be some resistance, as there was all over Europe. But most US cities/urban/suburban areas participated heavily in the lockdowns, even in red states. High-density areas are key. People rose to the occasion when asked by leaders to do so. Unfortunately, and mainly because of Trump, leaders in red states dropped all of that.

    So here we are.

  31. 31.

    CindyH

    @Aziz, light!: it says “if Trump we’re competent”. Maybe if he’d have responded competently, those same ignoramuses would have listened to him and would have stopped the exponential growth

    we know they wouldn’t listen to a Dem but they probably would have embraced wearing masks etc if he told them to

  32. 32.

    jonas

    @Amir Khalid: I never got the “herd immunity” argument. Every epidemiologist I’ve listened to has said that you need about 60-70% of the population to be “innoculated” (i.e. infected and recovered or vaccinated) to achieve herd immunity. In Sweden, that would mean about 6-8 million people getting infected and around 200,000 deaths. That’s insane. No responsible government would let that happen. Their intention was to keep infections/hospitalizations *below* a level that would overwhelm the public health system, but *above* a level requiring a complete economic shutdown. In a sense, it worked. But at a terrible human price. Now it could be if there is a horrible second wave later this year that carries off a bunch of Germans and Danes and forces an even worse lockdown to contain it in those places, Sweden’s approach may be vindicated because it’s better position to ride things out. But if there isn’t, then the early/stringent lockdown with ongoing test/trace approach will have been vindicated.

  33. 33.

    Jinchi

    @Chyron HR: Do Republicans just not understand popular media?

    They understand it. They just have a different opinion of who the bad guys are.

  34. 34.

    Jinchi

    @jonas: Now it could be if there is a horrible second wave later this year that carries off a bunch of Germans and Danes and forces an even worse lockdown to contain it in those places, Sweden’s approach may be vindicated …

    I think the theory was that we were all going to catch this anyway, better to get it over with quickly.  That way they wouldn’t have to worry 6 months later and the economy could recover. But their theory was wrong. If handled correctly, most of us will never catch coronavirus. Sweden won’t be any better off than other Europeans, because, despite letting the pandemic run free, they’re still far below the percentage needed to establish herd immunity.

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