Yesterday afternoon, Governor Cooper (D-NC) ordered mandatory masks in some pulbic interactions:
BREAKING: Gov. Cooper issues statewide mask mandate, effective Friday, and announces #NorthCarolina will remain in Phase 2 "safer-at-home" for at least 3 more weeks. #wral
— WRALJoe Fisher (@JoeFisherTV) June 24, 2020
This is occurring in the context of consistent 8-10% positivity rate even as testing has increased for the past couple of weeks and a 55% increase in COVID related hospitalizations over the past thirty days.
The goal of the masking order is to slow community spread.
It is also a reminder of the lags that policy and behavior changes have before we see any potential change in trends.
The order will have no effect on today’s numbers. Most of the positive tests that North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services will report at noon time today are from tests already administered but whose results had not been processed or reported before 11:00AM on Wednedsday. The number of positive tests administered on the same reporting day is small fraction of total tests newly reported on any given day. People who were tested on Wednesday will show up as new positive cases in the testing counts from Wednesday to this coming Sunday or Monday. Any changes in public behavior won’t affect these people. People who are getting tested today are likely to have been exposed to a risk of infection earlier this week. Some people who are feeling great and are consistently engaging in low risk behaviors will wake up and get tested because they have a medical appointment or just feel like it. BUt mos tpeople getting tested have at least a reason to suspect a risk of exposure. That exposure risk happened in the past.
Changes in public behavior will incrementally creep into the testing numbers starting today and dominating the testing by next week.
If we hypothesize that mandatory mask orders will lead to a change in aggregate risk profiles, we probably won’t see changes in trend show up in testing for at least a week, and probably longer just due to reporting and testing lags from potential infection events.
Each person who tests positive has a fractional possibility of being hospitalized. We know that hospitalizations lag by a week to ten days after symptoms start. Changes in behavior today won’t change the number of people who are currently infected and possibly ending up in a hospital. Those hospitalizations are going to happen irregardless of current and future public behaviors that change risk. Hospitalizations may start to be avoided against the counterfactual of no mandatory masking or other behavioral changes in ten to fifteen days. Until then, the hospitals are dealing with people who were infected in early to mid-June.
COVID has a lot of lags. There are few instances where an immediate change in public behavior leads to an an immediate reward of seeing improvement. Instead, we need to change behaviors and then wait. That wait can be for a week to see changes in infection trends, or it can be two or three weeks for changes in hospitalizations. The feedback loops require patience. They also require what seems to be early overreactions. States, regions, counties and cities that systemically change behavior through either explicit orders or unorganized individual level re-assessments of reasonable risk when there is still significant hospital capacity will have a very different experience in two or three weeks after the behavioral changes than regions that only change behavior when case trend is increasing and hospital systems are entering surge mode.
Edmund Dantes
“Irregardless” was that intentional? Not a word at all.
Otherwise, always great information.
Ohio Mom
The case numbers in Ohio are going up but we are still full speed ahead on opening things up.
I see that Governor DeWine is polling well among Democrats. I think you can add a lag in public disapproval to the list.
First DeWine got extra credit for being a Republican doing the same as what any sensible Democratic Governor was doing — he was graded on a curve. I thought, Okay, heap praise on him, whatever keeps him on track.
Now he is back to form as a Republican but he’s still being admired for the things he stopped doing.
It will probably take a lot of human misery to get his approval numbers in the basement where they belong.
schrodingers_cat
What is the reason behind the uptick in the infection rate in California?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Edmund Dantes: It’s a restaurant here, so we get a special dispensation to use it.
delosgatos
@Edmund Dantes: From Merriam-Webster:
Frequently Asked Questions About irregardless
Is irregardless a word?
“Yes. It may not be a word that you like, or a word that you would use in a term paper, but irregardless certainly is a word. It has been in use for well over 200 years, employed by a large number of people across a wide geographic range and with a consistent meaning. That is why we, and well-nigh every other dictionary of modern English, define this word.”
Does irregardless mean the same thing as regardless?
Yes. We define irregardless as “regardless.”
@Edmund Dantes:
WaterGirl
@Edmund Dantes: It’s in the dictionary on my computer.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: Some guesses:
kindness
It’s funny how Trumpies don’t complain about No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service but whine like toddlers over having to wear masks.
@schrodingers_cat: People stopped wearing masks and started acting like old times. Newsome ordered masks in public again startling last Monday and most people where I live are wearing them again thankfully.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I think it’s a bit of a mix. California is a big enough place that you really have to treat it as the equivalent of several Eastern states. In the Bay Area, there has been an uptick in cases from reopening, though I don’t think anywhere in the Bay Area is really badly hit right now. In Southern California, LA county never got the outbreak fully under control, and we’re seeing a rise because we started to reopen anyway. The surrounding counties (Ventura, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino) reopened faster and are definitely seeing an uptick. The same with San Diego. Most of the rest of the state wasn’t hit badly early on and has resisted the control measures implemented in the areas that were. They reopened fastest of all and are now experiencing spikes from opening too fast and too casually. I also think some of the big agricultural counties are being hit by outbreaks among farm workers.
VOR
I was reading the news and commented to my son that COVID was on the rise. He asked “how bad?” I said “the Republican governor of Texas is telling people to wear masks”. He winced, and said “that must be bad”.
rk
I’ll never understand why these states learned nothing from New York or New Jersey. We went through a nightmare. These guys just had to look at us and plan, get everything together. They had time which we did not. Yesterday we had one patient in the hospital with COVID and all the tests I did last week were negative. So we seem to be o.k. for now (and I hope it continues this way. I don’t know if the governors of Texas, Arizona or the other states can be charged with crimes, but what they did should be a crime.
Roger Moore
@rk:
Because they didn’t want to believe it could happen to them. They looked at New York and New Jersey (and Italy, France, the UK, etc.) and said found all the things that make those places different from them and that might contribute to spreading COVID, and decided it was those things that were the reason the hard-hit places suffered. Once they had rationalized their good luck as being a reflection of their superior lifestyle, they ignored the lessons of those places because they had decided it couldn’t happen to them.
Jinchi
It’s always sounded wrong to me too, but it is a legitimate word. The really weird thing is it means the same thing as “regardless”.
scav
@Jinchi: Ah, welcome to English, home to inflammable and flammable, cleave and cleave.
Jinchi
And in counterpoint, ignoring state borders completely, (easiest to do by looking at county level maps), you can see a strong correlation between the surge in Arizona and southern California.
ant
@schrodingers_cat: I think weather is playing a roll. The numbers are increasing where it’s too hot for outside activities. People are gathering in indoor air conditioned spaces where the virus is spreading.
New Mexico is one place that’s bucking this trend.
I expect more problems when school starts, and also when it gets too cold to be outside comfortably later in the year.
I also think it was a mistake to close the public pools in my city (Apppleton, WI) for the summer.
Omnes Omnibus
@ant: I didn’t realize (or I forgot) that you were from Appleton. I went to college there.
JaneE
@schrodingers_cat: Pretty much all the standard reasons. Prisons and jails seem to have outbreaks reported fairly regularly. We have a large number of Republicans who may seem to feel that masking is a partisan issue. Meat and poultry processing facilities. Beaches and bars, both of which seem to draw crowds of unmasked patrons. To some extent, increased testing, but the infection rates are still too high. Protests and reopening simultaneously, both of which were expected to increase transmission somewhat. I give the average protest higher marks than the bars, gyms, and campgrounds for masking and precautions. The cases seem to be moving into the outer suburbs and more rural areas. Our hospitalizations seem to be going up more slowly than cases, but that could be a temporary illusion.
NotMax
FYI.
Singing (behind barriers) now allowed at Oahu bars
WaterGirl
@rk:
I think they “other-ized” people. It was “those” people. Big city people, or older, or younger, or black, or “mexican”, or poor, or had poor hygiene, and maybe even the wrong political beliefs – all different in some way. People who didn’t matter, for one reason or another. People who are less worthy than you.
edit: I got distracted before hitting send, and then came back a few minutes later. Looks like Roger Moore and I had similar thoughts.
Capri
The deal with COVID is that is was the first time that being purposefully regressive and anti-science matters to the majority of the population. All the right-wing buzzword bloviating doesn’t affect it.
Up until now, the GOP feet dragging and resistance to following science when it came to medical issues only affected groups without much clout and zero profile like opiate addicts and AIDS sufferers. Ivory tower types connected GOP policy to things like decreased life expectancy in white males but it didn’t really penetrate into the mainstream as a cause and effect.
ant
@Omnes Omnibus: been here for 25 years. Appleton is a great place to live.
As a person with dark skin, I’ve had good experiences with the police here as well. I cannot say the same for where I finished high school up by the UP border.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Just so you’re aware of it, site was acting goofy last night (roughly 1 through 3 a.m. blog time). Pages were not loading/refreshing smoothly but in fits and spurts.
WaterGirl
@ant: Maybe, but the weather and air conditioning doesn’t matter if you are smart enough to be staying home and distancing.
That only matters if you are willing to be indoors in a public space, which brings us back to the real question – why are these people ignoring the information / advice / rules that would keep them more safe?
NotMax
@ant
A long ago but fondly remembered video essay by Charles Osgood on CBS Sunday Morning was “Tubin’ Down the Apple.”
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Not aware of it until now, thanks!
PsiFighter37
Ironic that NY/NJ are now requiring others to self-quarantine if they show up. That said, I’m not worried about a major rush of people coming to Manhattan anyways – all the things people would want to do aren’t open anyways.
rikyrah
@rk:
They were snide about New York and New Jersey.
They were better than those Blue States.
Edmund Dantes
@WaterGirl: I think Capri at 21 nailed it. The anti science, anti liberal, anti Dems stuff really comes home to roost with covid-19. As it just doesn’t care, and it has a high enough transmission rate that it easily spreads. We are literally it’s best possible Petri dish as a country.
Omnes Omnibus
@ant: My knowledge of the city really covered the LU campus and the stretch of College Ave from campus to around, let’s say, Cleo’s.
Cheryl Rofer
OTOH, the good news is that the demonstrations of a week or two ago don’t seem to have caused increases. I’m sure we would hear if there were any way to connect them.
Part of the reason that other parts of the country didn’t learn from others is that the guy at the top keeps telling us there’s no problem. That chimes with many people’s preference and political leanings, so here we go again.
Messaging is a big part of public health. Trump is utterly destroying that, and he’s got help in the form of MAGA governors and a bunch of people who want to be The Guy Who Got It Right. (And yes, it’s usually guys, although I can think of one exception.)
So we have the Silicon Valley types who can calculate an exponential and therefore think they’ve got a better understanding than the epidemiologists. And the mask second-guessers. Jeez, I saw another reporter doing it again last night on Twitter. I hate even to say it here because it has derailed so many threads. Move. On.
From what I’ve seen, the epidemiologists and virologists have a better handle on this than anyone. In any branch of science, you learn tricks of the trade (heuristics, in a fancier word) that help you to understand and produce useful work. And there isn’t going to be One Big Thing that solves all the problems. Just patience and hard work.
And
Wear your mask
Wash your hands
Stay 6 feet away
Dorothy A. Winsor
I went out for a walk and dodged out of the path of a bicyclist without a mask. I got about 10 feet past her and a guy slowed his car to ask her where her helmet was. I was so focused on the mask, I didn’t even notice the missing helmet. I guess if she’s that indifferent to her own well being, it shouldn’t surprise me that she was indifferent to mine.
OTOH, on a narrow part of the path, I approached a guy who was maskless. I put mine on but I didn’t really need to because he stepped well out of my way. I thanked him and he cheerily wished me a good day. That’s how it’s supposed to go. You look out for me. I look out for you.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: @Roger Moore: To add to Roger Moore’s points, we have opened inappropriately in addition to prematurely, with neither public hygiene measures (masking) nor effective test-and-trace. Opening proceeded even when blatantly in violation of the state’s official standards (which were never met anywhere except a few rural counties which didn’t get a first wave.) Even when things went wildly offcourse openings continued (notably Riverside/San Bernadino and some of the agricultural counties).
In addition there is active and intentional defiance from nutcases and death cultists.
ant
People are stupid. Bars are open, and doing a brisk business outside of the Wisconsin cities where they are allowed to be open. Menards requires masks, and grocery stores has peer pressure for everyone to mask up, cause it’s socially considered a safe indoor space, but the only other place you see masks is on Asian people. They are not worn anywhere else except employees that are forced to.
But yet, we are not having increased transmission in Wisconsin.
I believe it’s because it’s nice outside. YMMV
PsiFighter37
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Personally, I do not get hung up on runners and bikers without masks – as long as they are going out of their way to not be mingling with other pedestrians – but to each their own.
FlyingToaster
Lessons y’all should be learning from the Northeast:
Masks work to slow the infection.
Covid 19 isn’t going to stop.
Masks and hand sanitizer and distancing are not a panacea. They are each contributory to slowing down your spread, so that your healthcare facilities and municpal health departments can cope.
Track, test and trace. Massachusetts is currently lowest in most measures other than total cases and deaths; we have 1000 state Covid-19 tracers and ~ 500 full-time municipal tracers (plus the 1500 municipal health department employees). We have pop-up testing for protesters (generally lagging large protests by a week). We only have 2 hospitals state-wide that are without extra ICU capacity.
New York and New Jersey, with larger populations and more severe impact, are doing the same damn thing. Connecticut, RI in southern New England are finally on their way down the slope. Northern New England seems plateaued, but was never as badly impacted.
Shared indoor spaces are particulary fraught: churches, long-term-care-facilities, lecture halls, prisons, dorms, apartment blocks, waiting rooms are places you don’t want to spend your time.
If you’re leaving your property, bring your damn mask. Put it on when you enter a building or can’t stay 6ft away (Charles River Greenway, for instance).
NotMax
Suppose it’s inevitable? Nevertheless I’m extremely leery about it.
gene108
@scav:
Worse is “incomplete” and “in complete”.
A fifth grade teacher told us to write a paper “in complete” sentences, and I registered it as “incomplete” sentences.
I handed in my assignment, with a bunch of sentence fragments, as I thought we were instructed to do.
When I got my bad grade, I – in all sincerity – told the teacher, “but you said to write incomplete sentences”. She was not amused.
MisterForkbeard
I had a joke about how no one can trust Roy Cooper because he’s the governor of the DNC, but honestly I can’t even pretend to partisan idiocy this morning. Just tired of this whole thing.
Doesn’t help that I finished a game last night (Horizon: Zero Dawn) that has a significant story component of just waiting for the world to end, and I found entirely too many parallels >_<
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: I really can only speak for my corner – wealthy beach town, SoCal. California contains multitudes. The massive uptick in San Bernadino is not something I could ever explain, as it is as different from the place I’m sitting as Utah.
That being said, the state/San Diego county “started reopening” on June 1. Restaurants restricted to 25% capacity, social distancing and masks still mandatory. Took a drive up restaurant row down at the beach on June 2.
Every place was open at 100%+ capacity, no distancing, no masks. Everyone assumes “it’s over”. If I drive up there in a few hours I will see the same thing: 100%+ capacity, no distancing, no masks, lines out the door. Now, I know some of this are the usual out of state (Arizona) tourists we suffer through every year, but most of them are locals and they know better. They’re just done giving a fuck. And I get it, I really do, I am NOT dealing well with no gigs and no social life and none of my favorite food stuffs, but for me – personally, it’s obvious not everyone is wired like this – none of that shit is worth dying for. Or killing someone else for.
As for LA, I can only assume that it’s doing what everyone in LA knew was coming – it’s burning it’s way through the largest homeless population in the United States. That’s going to happen here in San Diego very soon. I think we have the second largest population. The Bay Area is going to get to deal with that too. Their homeless problem is beyond imagining (it’s one of the big reasons I left twenty years ago and it has only gotten worse).
Every Californian knew this state was going to get it bad at some point. This may be the time. If not now, well…it’s coming.
Edited for emphasis: I am really not doing well with this. Was fine up until last week. Oh, I’m getting shit done around the house and I’m still working full time, but FUCK. Just FUCK. I am fucking going crazy here. I had a life outside of work and drudgery around the house and it’s fucking GONE and I am not dealing well with that anymore.
jonas
Summertime, nice weather. People being idiots. Some of it is also cluster infections, particularly in prisons and among migrant farm workers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@PsiFighter37:
I usually don’t either since it’s outside and we’re all moving. But this one make zero effort even to stay on her side of the path.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. You do a great service for us here.
Virginia is doing great in the data in rt.live and we’ve been “opening up” at a steady pace over the last few weeks.
But…
I just got back from walking Ellie. We went through the local park and saw about a dozen kids and parents being very close to each other, none wearing masks. Yeah, it’s outdoors, but still. It makes me nervous. :-(
Reporting on infections really needs to do a couple of things:
You’re right that the lags cause problems, and of course we need to know more. But we know a lot already and it’s been clear for a while that masks, distancing, and staying at home whenever possible help a lot in reducing new infections. The RWNJ-governed states didn’t have to wait until this week to figure out what they needed to do…
Cheers,
Scott.
Bruce K
Apologies in advance for the dumb question: does anyone know how long it takes before an exposure to SARS-COV2 becomes visible in a swab test? Asking out of concern for my parents and brother, who arrived in Athens (Greece) from New York on Monday and are worried about having been exposed in transit. They’re scheduled to get tested tomorrow; I’m hoping that’s enough lead time that if they were exposed, it’d show up in a swab test.
Eunicecycle
@WaterGirl: I believe there were Republicans, including Trump, openly making the argument it was happening in blue cities and states because they were so poorly managed, not because it was in high population areas.
Barbara
@The Moar You Know: This is where we are all at. My brother in law does plan to invite people to his farm over the Fourth of July, and we will go, but it says a lot that I have seriously considered canceling. This would be the first social event I have been part of since the beginning of March. Having said that, nothing could tempt me to stand in a long line to enter a restaurant or bar where people are not wearing masks. Restaurants should be limited to reserved guests to limit casual transmission like this.
gene108
@PsiFighter37:
You are younger, and have fewer health issues than DAW.
The fear people have about contracting COVID19 is directly related to if they are in a high risk group due to age, pre-existing health conditions, and/or immunocompromised.
catclub
@Jinchi: flammable and inflammable
UncleEbeneezer
CA still has our share of assholes who resent being told they can’t do something. Even in LA and other big city areas. Our Gov has been trying to do the right thing, but there has been a lot of constant griping from smaller counties (and in big counties too, just to be clear) about the need to Reopen. Unfortunately, our public officials are probably getting more angry calls from those people than they are from people who want to err on the side of safety. And in situations where we are still trying to figure things out and information and understanding of Covid-19 is constantly evolving, even the most liberal and science-believing public officials can be pressured into moving too slow (or too fast) by the assholes. With the exception of NY/NJ and WA (who really got hit before we even knew the best way to handle it), I think the story is probably much the same everywhere else. We can’t do the right thing because Deplorables and selfish non-Deplorables (Dems/Independents etc.) won’t stop fucking complaining about getting a haircut, re-opening schools, etc.
gene108
@Bruce K:
I got tested in April, prior to hospital admission for a biopsy, and had the cotton swab up my nose test.
I got results back in 24 hours.
scav
@gene108: Now that’s a story worth a bad grade over! Not at all the same caliber, but I was once told to repeat an oath audibly but heard oddly. Luckily, I mumbled,
frosty
@The Moar You Know: I am not dealing with it well, either. No social life at all, no playing guitar with friends, no open mics.
The only time I’ve been out, other than errands and bike rides, was last weekend. My sister had a party with us, my brother and his wife for her twin sons who graduated this year. I figured it would be safe enough as an outside barbecue with masks. It ended up being indoors with no masks. I’m counting days now.
zzyzx
I’m a runner. I am so because I’m a diabetic, exercise increases insulin sensitivity, and there are signs that insulin resistance is a factor in making Corona worse. I do so without a mask because otherwise I wouldn’t run at all, but I also go out as early in the morning as possible, use very low traffic side streets, go into the road and/or cross the street whenever I do see another person, and do my very best to avoid everyone.
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@Bruce K: generally 5 days, but is documented up to 14, which is why mandatory travellers’ quarantines are that long.
VeniceRiley
@The Moar You Know: I fell you. I’m in the OC and I don’t go anywhere other than work (at a covid drive thru site, no less) and home. I am encouraged that Disneyland cancelled their re-open date though. And I hope the effin Supervisors for the county and their Rethuglican bully buddies are sorry our health director resigned because of death threats about her mandatory mask order just a few days ago. Bastar….
But I am coping with the help of WhatsApp, and my future wife’s promotion in back on for Aug1st. And our new rental home is amazing. And I can see my future. I think that might be key to my mental health: Being able to envision with perfect clarity what my life will be like in as little as a year from now.
A lot of everyone’s anxiety and frustrations stem from the uncertain future, and I think that’s why they’re all “F it” in denial.
O. Felix Culpa
@ant: I’m afraid that we’ll see an uptick in cases in New Mexico soon. We’re getting a lot of plague-carrying tourists from Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas now. Of course they ignore the mandate to wear masks. The governor has a press conference announced for this afternoon, perhaps to address this situation.
japa21
@ant: @Omnes Omnibus: Love Appleton. Lived there from 3rd grade through Junior High. OO, I assume Lawrence?
Used to swim at the pool at Erb Park. Not even sure it’s still there as that would have been, let’s just say multiple decades ago.
zzyzx
@frosty: @The Moar You Know:
Yeah, I’m not going to judge those who can’t deal with this because I’m a hermit and I’m starting to go insane. My wife and I have opposite sleep schedules and she works 5 nights a week as an essential employee so I have a lot of time home alone with just the cats.
The last time I did anything fun (other than a road trip to go on a hike (by ourselves) last Sunday which then scared me because no one was wearing masks in the gas station we stopped at for a snack in rural WA) was in early March. The last in person conversation I had with someone I know was back in February. This is not sustainable but since my social life mainly revolves around seeing live music and I’m not really in anyone’s bubble, it’s going to have to stay this way probably throughout the year.
Bruce K
@gene108: @FlyingToaster (Tablet): Thanks for the answers. They’ve taken all kinds of precautions in transit – they were all going crazy from being cooped up in an apartment in New York for almost three months. They’re all getting tested tomorrow, with results hopefully on Monday. (They should have been tested at the airport upon entry, but apparently somebody at the airport who’d been told to give them physical assistance on debarkation decided that they’d had so much stress already that they didn’t need the additional stress of the swab tests…)
CliosFanBoy
@delosgatos: I like it and use it in my academic writing. I also like to sneak in “nonetheless” and “moreover.” No many time, maybe 1 or 2 times each. I amuse easily.
Barbara
@O. Felix Culpa: I find this kind of amazing. My son’s boy scout trip to New Mexico was canceled because the state did not approve its request to open with various protections in place, e.g., single person tents and whatever else they had proposed to implement. If you read the state’s website, anyone coming in is supposed to quarantine for 14 days, which obviously must be a joke. They can only do so much, I suppose, and this is just going to be the story of our lives for quite a while now. I am angry because legitimate needs, like reopening of schools, are being held up and one reason is that a bunch of people in search of basically frivolous diversions are making it impossible to bring the rate down to a manageable level.
Fleeting Expletive
Last night I had a grim thought (not my first!) about the last Orange Whip at the mega Dreamland Church or whatever it’s called. With 3K+ souls in attendance the air conditioning had to have been cranked to the max in that venue. What one does in such situations sometimes is to set the AC to “recirculate” so the air remains cold. If that were the case, recirculating all that nice cold air among the maskless horde would be just hunky dory for making sure any virus reaches each and every breathing pair of lungs. Air handlers and filtration measures, have those been analyzed for disease vector potential?
By the way, Tulsa says that the Secret Services handles all venue contracts, and that they paid $450K for the use of the BOk center on 6-20-2020.
planetjanet
@PsiFighter37: I have been wearing a mask while I ride and can breathe fine. On some long hills I will pull it down for a little bit. Overall, it actually helps me because it keeps my throat moist.
Another Scott
@Bruce K: There isn’t much about the timeline for optimum RT-PCR testing for COVID-19 that I’ve been able to find. The CDC says for influenza, the ideal time is within 4 days after symptoms onset, but since COVID-19 often has no obvious symptoms, that doesn’t seem very helpful. :-/
You probably should ask a physician or maybe your health insurance company has a call in number to speak with a nurse, etc.
HTH a little.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: We’re seeing small case increases just now in Minnesota and DC, and that might in some degree be the effect of the protests, but it seems like it’s a week or two too late to be fully attributable to that. (Test positivity is not dramatically up in either place, so it may be the result of increased testing motivated by the protests.)
Also, they’re smaller than in nearby states where the protest activity was not as intense. And there’s nothing in New York, where some of the biggest protests and unrest were. That all says to me that the effect of the protests is at best inconclusive, and small if it exists.
Ohio Mom
Bruce K and Flying Toaster: When I asked a doctor if Ohio Dad should get tested as soon as he gets back from his two-week long business trip to Nevada, she said it we couldn’t be sure of accurate results for two weeks, that he would just have to quarantine for that period of time.
I said, it’s a small house. I can sleep in the guest room and leave the master bed and bath for Ohio Dad but I don’t think he can stay in the bedroom 24/7. She amended the quarantine to “at least a week and no smooching!”
In Ohio, the tests are free. I don’t know if there is a limit though. I’d like to get Ohio Dad tested twice, once after a week and once again a week after. Something I’ll be looking into.
NotMax
@Fleeting Expletive
As it was billed as a reelection campaign event, the campaign organization will, I’m sure, reimburse the Secret Service in full.
Promptly on the day after the 12th of Never.
//
Matt McIrvin
@VeniceRiley: Disneyland’s reopening is indefinitely postponed… but not Disney World’s, which is just bizarre. I’m hoping they’re just holding off on announcing it.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
Because they’ll lose their jobs and won’t get unemployment if they stay home from work. Reopening was never just about getting the economy working, whatever that was supposed to mean. It was about forcing good-for-nothing working class people to go back to serving their betters rather than staying home being safe.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: Yup.
“Why should we pay people more to be on unemployment than they would get if they were working??!!1”
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
UncleEbeneezer
As I was saying, we have our share of a-holes in CA…
https://voiceofoc.org/2020/06/ocs-lack-of-enforcement-on-coronavirus-masks-could-block-oc-from-state-bailout-money/?fbclid=IwAR2fuEslA1upR49xeJxLkBq6JbHo4zaZXVGdiAe0ChtWeaFEL7YvKyjxAmk
Sloane Ranger
So Bournemouth Council has declared a major incident in relation to the crowded beaches there and in surrounding areas. Dorset Police report gridlocked roads, fights and illegal overnight camping with refuse crews being subjected to “abuse and intimidation”.
The photographs show the beach so full of people the sand can’t be seen as far as the eye can see. And not a mask among the lot of them!
I really don’t care about these ignorant, selfish people. It’s the innocent they’ll infect I feel sorry for.
At least the forecast looks like the weekend will be rainy so that might be a blessing!
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: You’re absolutely right about that. I should have been more clear that I am talking about the people who are voluntarily putting themselves into public situations that are not safe.
I am livid that people like rikyrah and MomSense have to go to work every day in an environment that puts them at risk. Don’t even get me started on the places that are requiring people to come back to work even though they could continue to do their jobs from home, because reasons.
There’s a lot of ugliness on display these days, so it’s a good thing we are also seeing things that give us hope.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Retirement homes and skilled nursing facilities have also been hit very, very hard. Here in Pasadena, over 50% of the cases and close to 90% of the deaths have been in long-term care facilities. It seems really obvious to me that there’s been a major failure in the way those facilities are run and regulated.
ant
@japa21: Erb park pool got rebuilt. It’s a wonderful pool and facility.
Again, it’s a mistake to close it.
Betsy
@scav: Enjoin, and enjoin.
Ohio Mom
I spend many moments glaring at people not wearing masks, and rolling my eyes when I hear things like a bunch of downtown hot spot bars have staff who have tested positive (implying that there are also many patrons who are also positive, now at-large).
But then I remember that the problem is less these turkeys and much more our elected officials who threw away MONTHS of lockdown by NOT DOING A DAMN THING.
They had all that time to put in place the essential testing and tracing programs, and many models from other countries upon which to build.
We could have given away masks, could have had a media campaign to educate and build buy-in and morale. But Nooooo.
That’s where our deepest anger should be directed.
dnfree
@The Moar You Know: my daughter was actually a full-time musician with groups of varying sizes. Weddings, charity events, business functions, restaurants—all gone. And no idea when anything like that will be possible again. It’s very hard.
FlyingToaster
@Ohio Mom:
The range around here seems to be 5-14 days; most of the popups are running on Wednesdays and Thursdays, aiming at people protesting the previous week. And they do ask before they test you.
None of the local (to Massachusetts) places are requiring payment, but since we’re all on Romneycare* they do want your insurance info.
* What Obamacare was based on; it’s pretty much unchanged from 2006. State-run exchange plus private insurers with no junk insurance allowed.
Betsy
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The helmet-shaming is more about blaming people riding bikes than saving lives. A helmet protects against head injuries, but not the massive trauma that a typical 3000-pound car causes. The focus on “wear helmets” is a desperate effort by traffic engineers to divert blame away from their dangerous streets and roads, where people walking or riding bikes are killed at a rate that makes vehicular homicide the second leading cause of death.
Drdavechemist
@Betsy: It’s also really easy to fall on a bike, and a helmet can help prevent a serious brain injury (concussion). Yes if you get hit by a car when you’re on a bike you’re in serious trouble, but fewer than 1000 people were killed in car-bike collisions in 2018 according to NHTSA. The helmet isn’t there to help you in that rare circumstance; it’s there to help prevent a minor mishap from becoming a life-altering event.
Betsy
@Drdavechemist: I don’t disagree. That’s all fair. The helmets are there for just that.
But the helmet-SHAMING is there to displace and distract blame from the real source of death on our streets: drivers operating 3000-pound machines on streets and roads designed for cars and unsafe for everyone else.
There are entire countries where almost NO ONE wears a helmet and there are almost NO cases of cars slamming into pedestrians and people on bikes. It’s all about their street design, and driver education/penalties. Not about the helmets.