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When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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Republicans in disarray!

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There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Monday-Tuesday, July 13-14

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Monday-Tuesday, July 13-14

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This sounds like a trial balloon (more patented Jarvanka marketing), but it’s one that needs to be shot down, set on fire, and the ashes buried in lead containers in the Marianas Trench:


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Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. Four new cases, none from local infection: three Malaysians and a permanent resident returning from abroad. Cumulative total 8,729 cases.

    Four more patients recovered and were discharged, total 8,524 patients recovered or 97.7% of the cumulative total. 83 active and contagious cases are in hospital for isolation/treatment; six are in ICU and two of them are receiving respiratory assistance.

    No new deaths, the total stands at 122. Infection fatality rate is 1.39% and case fatality rate is 1.40%.

  5. 5.

    trnc

    From the linked Nat’l Guard story:

    “HHS officials on Monday finalized a new data reporting protocol for hospitals, which will eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a data recipient, leaving health-care institutions to report information about covid-19 to a federal contractor or to their state, which would coordinate the federal reporting.”

    Obviously, DT wants to control the data. Also, what fed contractor hired by DT would be competent enough to follow HIPAA requirements?

  6. 6.

    gkoutnik

    Maybe we can talk about what role the National Guard 1) should have played from the beginning and 2) might play now that everything’s gone to shit.

    Seems to me they bring important resources to the table:

    1 – Full time man/woman-power under the direct authority of the Governor (OK, OK, not such a good idea in some states, but…)

    2 – Centuries of experience in organization, logistics, infrastructure, etc.

    3 – Mobility

    4 – Discipline

    If we are going to get this under control, what are the resources we will use?  Why leave the National Guard out?  Is it just because it was Trump’s idea (admittedly, a good reason to be skeptical)?

  7. 7.

    Xentik

    The low-end of the death totals in the estimates tweet are laughably small. If we just assume the exact same number of deaths as the last week for the next 2 weeks and 3 days, we’d have an extra 12k, which would put us at 150k. If your model is predicting no increases in deaths in the next two weeks, you don’t really have a model, you just have a terrible fitting algorithm *coughIHMEcough* Why anyone takes those models seriously anymore is beyond me.

    I’d be surprised, at this point, if we don’t finish the month in the 160-170k range for total deaths. Hell, I’d be surprised if we didn’t break 100k new cases a day before the end of month. I’m not sure how we get this under control before we break 300k at this point, and by “under control” I just mean back to where we were a few weeks ago..

    I hope the history books record clearly detail exactly how many people the republicans killed in their rush to boot-lick Hair Furor. The number isn’t going to be small.

  10. 10.

    Xentik

    @gkoutnik: Notice that he’s not actually suggesting they do anything with their expertise. He’s suggesting they do “data collection” for stuff that the CDC could do faster with a hotline and a mandate that all hospitals call in and report their supply/capacity numbers. But when the Nat’l Guard doesn’t do anything useful, he can blame the governors for failing, which matches his shitty manager MO of being there for the credit and absent for the blame.

  12. 12.

    terben

    From the Australian Dept of Health:

    ‘As at 3pm on 14 July 2020, a total of 10,251 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Australia, including 108 deaths, and 7,835 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19.

    • Over the past week, there has been an average of 216 new cases reported each day. Of the newly reported cases, the majority have been from Victoria.
    • Following the peak of cases at the end of March, there have been a relatively low number of new cases reported daily between mid-April and early-June 2020. Cases have increased since mid-June however they remain below the March peak of daily cases.
    • Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 49% have recent international travel history, including over 1,300 cases associated with cruise ships.
    • The overall proportion of cases under investigation in each state and territory is relatively low, indicating that public health actions, including case identification and contact tracing, is occurring in a timely manner.
    • To date, over 3,162,000 tests have been conducted nationally. Of those tests conducted 0.3% have been positive.
    • On 3 July, 189 historic cases reported in crew members on board a ship were classified as Australian cases and included in New South Wales totals.’

    There were 2 deaths in Victoria today which continues to have community spread occurring. Australia had a net increase of 271 new cases (+284/-13) of which 270 were in Victoria.

    There is a small outbreak in NSW which has prompted the leader of my state, South Australia, to postpone the opening of the border between the two states. This is a bummer for me, because I was looking forward to heading up to Queensland to visit my brother. Avoiding NSW adds another 700km to an already 2000km journey.

  13. 13.

    Mary G

    I find Trump’s wanting to deploy the National Guard allegedly to help get information sinister in the extreme. Maybe to help with contact tracing, but until the testing fuckups are solved that will be useless.

  14. 14.

    WereBear

    @trnc: It is exactly this kind of shenanigans which have led to me deciding that even if a vaccination program is announced for the US, I won’t even consider it until January 21, 2021.

    Too many lies.

  16. 16.

    gkoutnik

    @rikyrah: Testing, tracing. Patient transport. Field hospitals. Coordinate nationwide distribution of appropriate masking (public) and PPE (health workers). Coordinate transportation and distribution of medical equipment, remdesivir, sanitary supplies and equipment, because in a sane world the President would have activated the Defense Production Act. And a lot of other useful activities that I can’t think of immediately because I am not a professional in the field.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yesterday, China yet again reported zero new domestic cases (confirmed, suspect or asymptomatic). The last COVID-19 death I believe was in late Apr. There were 3 imported confirmed and 5 imported asymptomatic cases. The the confirmed cases were all reported by Shanghai, 1 Chinese national returning from the UK and 2 returning from the US.

    Hong Kong continues to see dozens of cases, 48 cases reported today (HK reports at 4 PM each day), 40 of which are from local transmission. Transmission chain for 24 of the cases are not yet identified.

  21. 21.

    cmorenc

    @trnc:

    “HHS officials on Monday finalized a new data reporting protocol for hospitals, which will eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a data recipient, leaving health-care institutions to report information about covid-19 to a federal contractor or to their state, which would coordinate the federal reporting.

    Trump wants to be able to cut off the media’s access to accurate CV disease statistics, precisely to shut down the daily stream of media stories about alarming rises of COV infections and deaths.  Make far more of the news cycle stories about something else and far fewer about COV.  And while they’re at it, massage and manipulate the statistics to present a far less alarming impression than what’s actually going on.  It’s all about putting on a show for Trump, and he desperately wants to change the subject to other distractions.

  22. 22.

    zzyzx

    @Xentik: I’d be surprised if we didn’t break 100k new cases a day before the end of month. I’m not sure how we get this under control before we break 300k at this point, and by “under control” I just mean back to where we were a few weeks ago..

    I’ll take the under on 100k cases a day and definitely will re 300k. I think we’re mostly past the exponential growth stage and now are at or close to the plateau for most of the worst states (e.g. TX/GA/FL), especially with California changing their rules. I expect the deaths to go up some for sure, but I’d be surprised to see us go back to 2k a day like we saw in March. 50k confirmed today is a much different world than 30k when we were barely testing.

  23. 23.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland’s results for the past 24 hours — no deaths attributed to COVID-19 for the sixth day in a row but more people hospitalised with suspected COVID-19 and an increase in the number of intensive-care cases from six to twelve. Only two new confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported.

     

    The case numbers on a Tuesday are usually larger than Monday’s numbers since some data delayed over the weekend is finally included. On Wednesday the National Records of Scotland should publish mortality data for the preceding week and that will report on the number of people who had COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificates.

  24. 24.

    Soprano2

    Our city passed a mask ordinance last night – the vote was 8-0, with one person abstaining saying she had a conflict of interest. On the mask side we had over 25 doctors, the local health department and other health professionals. On the no-mask side we had – a wedding planner, and a bunch of MAGAs who seem to think being asked to wear something on their body is a violation of their rights. I’m not sure how this will be applied in our pub, since eating and drinking is excepted. More people spending more time on the patio, probably. I’m just glad that most people will be wearing them in most public places, and that they acted as we’re on the precipice of it getting bad rather than waiting until we went over the precipice.

    I keep wondering what is going to happen when winter comes and it won’t be that easy to get people to wait outside anymore.

  25. 25.

    bluefoot

    @trnc:

    This is insane.  It’s the CDC’s job to do this, and they have infrastructure to do this.  And the data is supposed to be public, which is also part of the CDC’s mandate.  Even if this weren’t nefarious, a contractor will only make things worse.  Who’s the federal contractor?  Cambridge Analytica?  And how are we supposed to fight this without accurate data?

  27. 27.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @bluefoot: I am sure it will be a shop that Trump and associates/sycophants have financial interests in, via shell entities. The Trump administrations really is turning the US into a banana republic. I have heard academics compare the current US to late stage USSR, or the late Qing Empire.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @Soprano2:

    On the no-mask side we had – a wedding planner, and a bunch of MAGAs who seem to think being asked to wear something on their body is a violation of their rights.

    I presume that these MAGAs you speak of would not dream of violating their local law against indecent exposure.

  29. 29.

    Amir Khalid

    On the Trump vs Fauci thing: it seems to me that Trump sees the good doctor as a political rival. Fauci is, in Trump’s mind, competing with him for popularity by appearing on media and contradicting what he says. (Never mind that these appearances are part of Fauci’s job and his duty to a public that trusts his expertise and honesty.) That’s why his administration has been handling Dr Fauci as though he were Joe Biden.

    Only it’s not working. The public isn’t buying the feeble, obviously ginned-up criticisms of Fauci.  The Trumpenvolk are staring at the bleeding hole in their collective foot, and wondering what to do next.

  30. 30.

    bluefoot

    @Laura Too:  You know it’s going to be someone like Cambridge Analytica if the administration does this.  There were/are deep Trump administration ties to CA.  And how is the CDC supposed to do its job without accurate data?

  31. 31.

    bluefoot

    @YY_Sima Qian: It actually amazes me how quickly the US is falling apart or rather, essentially being dismantled and sold off for parts.  But I’ve been saying for literally decades that what keeps the US functional is our expectation that it is functional.  That is, governance norms, cultural norms.  The minute we stop expecting functional and fair government, we start descending into corruption and banana republic time.

  32. 32.

    Laura Too

    @bluefoot: That’s the thing, isn’t it? They have been working for decades to chip away at our trust in government. No new taxes, starve the beast, defund education, etc. A lot of people bought into it and Fox just amplifies it.

  33. 33.

    Lacuna Synechdoche

    Steven Dennis via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    This chart is amazing. You have to watch it until the end. Wait for it…

    Brazil: Hey, US, we’ve passed you in daily new CoViD-19 cases.

    US: Huh. Here, hold my beer.

  34. 34.

    Soprano2

    @Amir Khalid: No, they wouldn’t. I’m encouraged by the fact that the comments on the article about the ordinance passing on FB mostly has favorable comments, and people who are complaining about it are being roundly mocked with such comments as “You wear a shirt and shoes into the store, right? Is that the government taking away your freedom?”.

  35. 35.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    I have to confess, I simply am unable to conceive of anyone thinking that Covid-19 couldn’t be spread by children. I remember seeing that children tended to get very mild cases, but I don’t remember hearing any idiocy about kids being *immune*.

    I suppose it might come down to one of the many questions that require splitting hairs. One question asked was “is asymptomatic transmission possible?” The hair that needed to be split was, whether there was true “never had, never will have, symptoms” asymptomatic transmission, or “I have no symptoms, but within 48 hours will develop at least *some*, even if mild” “presymptomatic” transmission.

    There’s no longer any question about whether a person about to develop symptoms can spread the virus. But from what I know about biology, I can’t see how a person who just doesn’t have significant symptoms could be prevented from spreading the virus. That said: there’s a lot of data that Covid-19 is “dose dependent” – the time you’re around an infected person is one of several determining factors of the risk. It might be that a person who is asymptomatic (never had, never will have, symptoms) is carrying a lower viral load, thus, is shedding in lower amounts, and is therefore *less* infectious… but I wouldn’t kiss someone in that state!

    I have to confess: in my situation, where I’m on disability leave from work, and my fatigue makes me a natural introvert there’s a certain fascination with learning about this threat. For example, I realized why surface transmission is such an important question. Before you can be sure surface contamination occurs, you’d have to have two infected people, one of whom was infected by the other, and, where the only contact between them was a surface they both touched.

    It’s not very common to have that happen; there are phone booths where I work (without phones – they’re for making private (cell) phone calls, or remote meetings, etc.), and if two people were in different departments, and both used the same booth, and, we know they didn’t meet (not even in the cafeteria or break room, etc.), then we’d know surface contamination was the likely route. But how would we be sure?

    That said, the same thing is how they became confident that food was safe. If not, with the millions upon millions of cases, there should be at least one person whose only reasonable vector was a food service worker that never came within 2 meters. They haven’t found one. NOTE!!!!! Viruses mutate; tomorrow, we could find that some new(er) strains do allow food borne transmission.

    Since food borne transmissions aren’t known, it’s likely that surface transmission doesn’t occur either. This is a gross thought, but just *breathing* can put out tiny droplets that could carry virus, and it would be surprising if you could put something with some viral load in your mouth, and it wouldn’t infect you, but rubbing one’s eyes, picking (“yes, I know, you had an itch; we won’t speak of this further…”) one’s nose, etc., would. Of course, I’m a mathematician and database guru – lots of stuff about biology can surprise me!

    This does raise a question, though. There *are* educated Republicans out there. And, here’s a thing: the reason I think Trump is a moron isn’t that he thought “oooh, disinfectants kill this thing *fast* – maybe we could use them as a treatment?” The reason I think Trump is a moron is, anyone with any mental discipline at all would have the “wait – if you could use disinfectants as a treatment, someone would have tried it, on mice, or something. And didn’t I hear something about how antibiotics don’t do diddly for the flu, and the only treatment *might* reduce its symptoms?”

    (In point of fact, I heard it said on this blog, and had it confirmed by a nurse, that “disinfectant” automatically means “you can’t put this crap on (or, obviously, in) people; it’s too strong;” the stuff you can use on a person is called an “antiseptic”. )

    Okay, back to my point. (Well, one of the many points I’m babbling about today :-) .)  I’m no great shakes. I mean, I’m a genius, but never was interested in the wet sciences. If I’d been wise, I’d have gone into physics (this is great if you love tackling tough applied math problems) or engineering (ditto); instead I went into math (which is more interested in showing you the theories behind the actually *interesting* stuff you can do with physics or engineering). But the information is out there, and digestible.

    I can get not wanting to bust on the President – but why aren’t there well educated Republicans spreading sound information to people like, e.g., governors? Are we really at the stage where the inmates are in charge of the asylum, with the staff in the padded rooms and in four point restraints?

  36. 36.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    BREAKING: Trump administration is getting ready to ask governors to consider sending in the National Guard to hospitals to help collect data about coronavirus patients, supplies and capacity.

    If you follow the link, you’ll see Trump is trying to cut the CDC out of the loop.

    I feel funny saying this, but the immediate first thought I have is, “he thinks the Guard will be better at helping him cook the books.” Thing is, unless certain aspects are met, aren’t the Guard troops under the command of the governor? If the President says “do this, in spite of the express orders, and implicit desires, of your current-CinC”, is that not grounds to ask for written orders, to protect one’s ass when responding “with all due respect Mr. President, go pound sand”?

  37. 37.

    J R in WV

    @bluefoot: 

    And how is the CDC supposed to do its job without accurate data?

    You obviously don’t understand… the CDC has no job anymore!!! So accurate data is no longer helpful, at all~!!~

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