Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bark louder, little dog.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Everybody saw this coming.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

This blog will pay for itself.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

In my day, never was longer.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday/Saturday, August 14-15

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Friday/Saturday, August 14-15

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*We* could’ve done this, but…

… In addition to the fact that many of these countries have dealt with epidemics in the past, Ramamurti says, “Prevention is much cheaper than curing a disease. These countries have strong public health systems, but they might not have the resources to treat people who are seriously sick, so they have to nip the outbreak in the bud.”

“In the U.S., we start with the assumption that people are going to get sick. We think we have enough doctors and equipment, so we think if people get sick we can fix it,” he says.

But, as McGloin points out, “We’re running thin on that luxury in the U.S.” …


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Develping stor(ies):

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Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    Mary G

    Orange County says their figures are now up to date. Improvement continues slowly. 683 new cases, 20 deaths,
    Testing Positivity Percent
    7.2%
    CDPH Threshold: >8%
    Hospitalizations down considerably.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. 26 new cases, the most in one day since 28th July. 23 cases from local infection. 20 Malaysians: 14 in Kedah comprising 10 from the Tawar cluster, three from the Sala Cluster and one from the Muda cluster. Two in Penang state from the Tawar cluster. One in Perlis detected in pre-surgery screening. Two in KL, one detected in a workplace screening and one in contact tracing. One in Johor, detected in pre-surgery screening. Three non-Malaysians, two immigration detainees in Negeri Sembilan and ine etected in workplace screening in KL.

    Three imported cases: Two Malaysians, returning from Vietnam and Austria, and a non-Malaysian arriving from the US. Cumulative reported total 9,175 cases.

    Three more patients recovered and were discharged; total 8,831 patients recovered, 96.2% of the cumulative reported total. Active and contagious cases being isolated/treated in hospital rose to 219 patients; six are in ICU, one is on a respirator.

    No new deaths since 31st July; total stands at 125 deaths, 1.36% of the cumulative reported total and 1.40% of resolved cases.

  6. 6.

    gkoutnik

    AL, I appreciate that in addition to reporting numbers of all kinds comprehensively, you also show us the limits of those numbers – that they are wildly inaccurate.  That’s distressing but at least we are not being misled.

    No tests at all available around Atlanta.  I guess that means they licked the virus!  Except that child… who died…

  7. 7.

    opiejeanne

    @Mary G: Orange County’s new cases and new deaths are very similar to the entire state of Washington today. Our total deaths are @ 1700.

    We have twice the population of Orange County and I think our numbers for today are still pretty bad. I’ve been keeping track of our daily numbers for several months, but I don’t know if Orange County’s numbers are improving or not.

  8. 8.

    otmar

    Good morning from Vienna airport.

    We’re about to fly to our yearly vacation on a Greek island.

    Let’s see how this will work out.

    Just yesterday, our government published a travel warning for Croatia, asking vacationers to return asap.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    WoooHooo! We’re #2! Better watch out Holt county, we Washington countians are… OK, not exactly right behind you. You’re 288% 7 day increase rate is something most can only look upon with abject horror but our own 61% rate is nothing to be proud of either. Besides, we’re tops in the state with the 72 Hr Relative Increase of 19%.

    Funny how everyone in outstate Misery thought this was just a STL and KC disease that affected only those people, but all the righteous rednecks were immune. Crows are coming home to roost and that’s what we’re eating now.

  11. 11.

    opiejeanne

    @otmar: Good luck. I have only been watching a couple of European countries, France and Switzerland, so I don’t know how either Austria or Greece are doing, but if you’re able to have a vacation the numbers must be pretty good.

    I am tempted to rent a small motor home, pack the cat and our bags and just go somewhere, anywhere. I’m getting a little tired of not being home all of the time.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    @p.a.:

    The Trump administration’s malign ineptitude has made the US an object of global horror and pity. It makes a whole bunch of other national governments, including in some in what Trump would call “shithole countries”, look competent by comparison.

  14. 14.

    opiejeanne

    @OzarkHillbilly: Oh jeez! I apologize for all of  my idiot cousins. The dumbest ones never left (I’ve met a bunch of them over the past 70 years) and they were a fruitful bunch, and spread out.

    We were there last summer and not much has changed in Camden County in the past 16 years, except more of the old houses are near collapse and there are more single-wides parked next to them because the buildings are no longer habitable.

  15. 15.

    opiejeanne

    @Amir Khalid: A lot of us look on our country with horror and pity. Not everyone is as lucky as we are, and it’s very troubling. There was a brief story this week about a woman with 6-month-old twins who had been evicted and were living in her car. It was heartbreaking but I couldn’t find where we could donate to get her back into housing. So many in need, so many more teetering on the brink.

    I don’t believe in the devil as a living being, but I do think that Trump is the anti-Christ.

  16. 16.

    WereBear

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Funny how everyone in outstate Misery thought this was just a STL and KC disease that affected only those people, but all the righteous rednecks were immune. Crows are coming home to roost and that’s what we’re eating now.

     
    It’s not even as bad as it WILL get.

    Months ago I predicted that red states would not wake up from the fever dream. That for many Trump Cultists, it would end in a tent, with a large animal vet dressed in garbage bags.

    I didn’t want to be right.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @opiejeanne:

    Camden County: Cases per 100K Population 844.70
    7 Day Relative % Increase: 9%
    Cases 7 Days Ago: 356
    Total Cases: 387

    Camden got hit earlier than us here, Lake of the Ozarks doncha know. Not a whole lot of reasons for anyone to come here so our spread is almost entirely of the “No masks fer me, Ah got mah freedumbs” homegrown variety.

  18. 18.

    Robert Sneddon

    @WereBear: And Sturgis hasn’t even hit yet.

    Don’t worry, just wait until a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving and you’ll see the numbers really rocket upwards.

     

    “Mum, Mum, Tyrone isn’t wearing his mask! Tell him to wear his mask, Mum!”

    “Shut up and eat your turkey, Donna.”

  20. 20.

    otmar

    @opiejeanne: numbers in Austria are trendig up a bit. Still manageable, but the summer travel has not been helping.

    Especially returnees from Serbia and other Balkan countries.

  22. 22.

    Bruce K

    Greece is not looking good right now. 251 new cases (new daily record) and 2 new deaths yesterday. The second wave is already worse than the first, and the general population is crowding the islands and not taking health precautions seriously enough by a long shot. Restrictions are being implemented piecemeal: three islands in the Cyclades are now subject to curfew, but it looks like the virus may be loose in the population on the mainland.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WereBear:It’s not even as bad as it WILL get.

    You’re right, it’s gonna get far worse. My wife says the mask wearing in WalMart is almost universal now (still a few scofflaws but well above 90% are masked) so folks are finally getting the message. But what with schools reopening, and how teenagers gotta be stupid, (it’s just a law of nature) I don’t see the #s doing anything but continuing up.

    I have a burial to go to next week, (got to bear witness, the last of the familial WWII vets), not the visitation (never do that anyway) or the funeral itself, or the big feed afterword, nothing indoors. A wedding in mid-Oct too, but the way the numbers are trending I’m afraid we will just have to skip that one.

  24. 24.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yesterday, China reported 8 new domestic confirmed cases and 7 new domestic asymptomatic cases.

    7 confirmed and 2 asymptomatic cases at Ürumqi in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region. 12 cases are currently in critical condition, and 24 in serious condition. There are currently 438 total confirmed cases (436 in Ürumqi, 1 each at Kashgar,  Changji Prefecture and Xinjiang Construction Corps), and 126 asymptomatic cases (125 in Ürumqi, 1 in Changji Prefecture), plus 1 asymptomatic case exported to Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province. 33 confirmed cases recovered yesterday and were released from hospitals, 5 asymptomatic cases were released from medical quarantine, 1 critical case improved to moderate and 1 critical case improved to serious. There are 11,466 close contacts remain under quarantine and medical observation.

    As I mentioned yesterday, a confirmed case was reported by Shanwei in Guangdong Province, after traveling from Shenzhen in Guangdong Province a week ago. Shanwei and Shenzhen have tested nearly 4K individuals connected to the case, so far Shanwei reported 3 asymptomatic cases (all family members of the confirmed case) from 1,105 results (out of 3,184 individuals tested), and Shenzhen reported 2 asymptomatic cases (both coworkers of the Shanwei confirmed case at the supermarket she worked at) out of 1,730 individuals tested. Shenzhen government has request all shoppers who have frequented the supermarket since 7/24 to get tested in the next 3 days.

    The fact that the Shanwei confirmed case had left Shenzhen nearly 10 days ago (the last opportunity for her to infect anyone in the city), developed first symptoms at Shanwei, and all of her contacts have tested negative to date (except 2 coworkers at the same supermarket) suggests that at least she did not seed a cluster at Shenzhen. There is still the matter of transmission source of the case, currently unknown. There could have been low level community transmission seeded by introduction from Hong Kong or elsewhere overseas. If the 3 supermarket workers remain the only ones infected, then fomite transmission from imported frozen food becomes suspect again (just like the recent outbreak at Auckland, New Zealand). The HEMA Freshmart they work at is a high tech, high end market like Wholefoods, lots of imported foodstuff. Shanwei has a clear source of introduction, so it should be much easier to contain.

    For the 6th consecutive day, Dalian in Liaoning Province did not report any new cases, confirmed or asymptomatic. 13 confirmed cases has recovered and was released from hospital, and 1 asymptomatic case was also released from medical quarantine. 27 moderate cases, and 6 mild cases are currently in the hospital, and 5 asymptomatic cases remain under medical quarantine.

    Yesterday, China reported 14 new imported confirmed cases, 13 imported asymptomatic cases, and 1 suspect case:

    • Shanghai Municipality – 4 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from the UAE, Senegal, Hong Kong and Canada; 1 suspect case, no information released
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 4 confirmed case, 2 Chinese nationals returning from Pakistan, 1 from Qatar and 1 from Singapore; 6 asymptomatic cases, 3 are Chinese nationals returning from Pakistan, 2 from Indonesia,  and 1 from the Philippines
    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Portugal and the UK (via Lisbon)
    • Nanjing in Jiangsu Province – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese National each returning from the Philippines and Singapore
    • Hohhot in Inner Mongolia – 1 confirmed case, no information released
    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese National returning from Côte d’Ivoire; 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Serbia
    • Foshan in Guangdong Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Singapore
    • Xiamen in Fujian Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Mexico and the Philippines
    • Hebei Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Hefei in Anhui Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Ukraine

    Today, Hong Kong reported 46 new cases, 39 from local transmission, 12 of whom do not have clear source of transmission.

  26. 26.

    Aleta

    (Post) In a recently published study, Thanh H. Nguyen and Vishal Verma* detailed how the dry heat produced by such electric cookers (rice cookers or multicookers such as Instant Pots) may be an effective way of decontaminating medical-grade N95 masks. Using the rice preset on the Farberware cooker and N95 respirators from 3M, a major manufacturer of the protective coverings, the researchers found that 50-minute treatments without pressure at a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit left the masks thoroughly cleaned without compromising fit or filtration efficiency.

    “The N95 can be reused using a very simple method,” said Nguyen, whose research focuses on pathogen transmission and control. “We are not testing exhaustively every device out there, everything, but we want to show that this concept works. Then people can use the idea and apply to other things.”

    The study — published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, a peer-reviewed journal — joins a growing body of research that has emerged during the pandemic that evaluates the efficacy of kitchen appliances as a sanitation tool. In February, a team from Chung Shan Medical University in Taiwan found that dry-steaming surgical masks in a rice cooker for several minutes had a sterilizing effect, the Taipei Times reported. Taiwan’s health minister later demonstrated the technique at a Central Epidemic Command Center news conference. More recently, scientists in Ohio suggested in April that steaming masks in rice cookers could also be effective — a finding that aligns with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on reusing N95 respirators, which lists “moist heat” as a promising

    * Both in Civil and Environmental Engineering Dept, UI at Urbana

  27. 27.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — still no reported deaths of confirmed cases. 51 new cases, a 1.1% test positivity rate. The hospital numbers are down a little but there are still three people in intensive care. This number has been steady for some time but it’s not confirmed that they are “long-haulers” or that some people have been discharged from the ICU and replaced by others whose condition has worsened.

     

    The First Minister does not have a scheduled briefing today so breakdowns of the number and how the Grampian outbreak and the new cluster in the Orkneys (fishermen on a boat who sailed from Peterhead near Aberdeen last week) are progressing aren’t readily available.

  28. 28.

    S. Cerevisiae

    As an Ojibwe I really like the posters in our language and the traditional floral graphics like our beadwork and quillwork.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @WereBear: That’s the thing,  The entire population of Stugis is 6,700 people.  Worst possible case is 40% infected, or 2,680 and of those .0065 will die, 17 dead. That’s such a low number that it won’t be noticed

  30. 30.

    Drkld

    An increase in deaths in Sturgis may not be noticeable (most townies know enough to stay away). I will b looking at increased numbers/rates in surrounding states (NE, WY, MT etc) at a coarse grain level. At a finer grained level I will b looking at county numbers/rates on common routes into and out of Sturgis. Pay attention to what happens in counties along I-90, Hwy 20, Hwy 16 to mention just a few. This should leave a tracking pattern similar to what we observed for Florida spring breakers the data could give us numbers for biker home regions. The numbers will b dispersed but they will b observeable.

  31. 31.

    Sloane Ranger

    Figures from the rest of the UK.

    There were 934 new cases reported today in England and 21 in Wales. No new cases in Northern Ireland.

    The new way of reporting deaths is to only count people who died within 28 days of a positive test of which there were 3. No breakdown on where these occurred but probably in England.

    177, 957 tests were processed today out of a capacity of 337, 089. 128 people were admitted to hospital making a total of 930 currently hospitalised, of which 73 are on ventilators. 31 of the new admissions were in England, 47 in Wales and 1 in Northern Ireland.

    The North West has the highest number of cases with a rate of 677.1 (calculated as number of cases divided by denominator population), the South West has the lowest number of cases at 245.6.

  33. 33.

    Kirk Spencer

    <a href="#com@Enhanced Voting Techniques: 

    To be honest, I’m not as concerned about the deaths

      in

    Sturgis as I am the deaths

      FROM

    Sturgis. Approx 270,000 attendees, most spending time in bars and other high-communication, high-density activities both inside and outside. I’m thinking the specific IFR is going to be higher (both for the reasons stated and the typical age and higher co-morbidity rates of these folk).

  35. 35.

    J R in WV

     

    CDC asks 4 states and a city to draft #coronavirus vaccine distribution plans https://t.co/CC5LCW4033

    Wait just a moment here!?

    The Centers for Disease Control asked 4 states and a city to draft vaccine distribution plans???

    And here I thought that was the explicit mission of the Fukin CDC all along. To create vaccine distribution plans for the whole world, really.

    But I guess that was back in the good old days of a President who knew how to manage the world, instead of a “president” who can’t manage his own twitter account.

  36. 36.

    JR

    People who are asymptomatic for #SARSCoV2 may pose a risk to blood-supply safety. A case study in July found reproducible virus from a blood donor 40 days after asymptomatic infection was thought to be resolved. Annals of Internal Medicine https://t.co/N1FiGZtgEK pic.twitter.com/7rLtlIaGDt

    This tweet is wrong. That’s not what the journal article says:

    To report the case of a volunteer blood donor, healthy on the day of donation, who had detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in their blood at least 40 days after resolution of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-like symptoms.

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