Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

The willow is too close to the house.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Tuesday/Wednesday, August 18-19

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Tuesday/Wednesday, August 18-19

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America, fvck yeah!


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28Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    Was reading about the actress Sharon Stone.

    already lost her godmother and grandmother to COVID-19.

    her immunocompromised sister thought that she would be safer in Montana, but you know…red state FREEDOM from masks..

    and now, her sister and brother -in -law have it????

  4. 4.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yesterday, China again reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases and 1 new domestic asymptomatic case, none Ürumqi in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region, first time there has been no new cases from the city since the start of the outbreak a month ago.

    In Ürumqi, 3 cases are currently in critical condition, and 23 in serious condition. There are currently 354 total confirmed and 112 asymptomatic cases at Ürumqi. 23 confirmed cases recovered yesterday and were released from hospitals, 12 asymptomatic cases were released from medical quarantine, 1 critical case improved to moderate conditions. There are 7,426 close contacts remain under quarantine and medical observation.

    At Dalian in Liaoning Province, 2 confirmed case recovered and were released from hospital. 24 cases are currently in the hospital, and 3 asymptomatic cases remain under medical quarantine.

    Shanwei in Guangdong Province reported a new domestic asymptomatic case, a close contact of the confirmed case reported over the weekend, already under quarantine. In what is by now a familiar patter, Shenzhen has been conducting a testing blitz in response of the small cluster associated with the Freshippo supermarket in Luigi District. Over the past 3 days, > 300K individuals in the district have been swabbed, with > 280K results obtained, no positive cases found. Since there does not appear to be developing clusters in either Shenzhen or Shanwei, the needed contact tracing has already been completed over the weekend, and no lock downs or restrictions (beyond residential buildings of the confirmed and asymptomatic cases) have been necessary.

    Yesterday, China reported 17 new imported confirmed cases, 13 imported asymptomatic cases:

    * Shanghai Municipality – 8 confirmed cases, 3 Chinese nationals and 1 Indian national returning from the UK, via Moscow, 1 Chinese national each returning from Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines and the US
    * Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 4 confirmed cases, 2 Chinese nationals returning from Ethiopia, 1 each from Bangladesh and Canada; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese nationals each returning from Saudi Arabia and Canada
    * Shenzhen in Guangdong Province – 3 asymptomatic cases, all Chinese national each returning from Russia
    * Yangjiang in Guangdong Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from the Philippines
    * Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Saudi Arabia (via Baku) and from Singapore; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Singapore and Bolivia (via Lisbon)
    * Hangzhou in Zhenjiang Provonce – 2 confirmed cases (both previously asymptomatic), 1 Chinese national each returning from Spain and Indonesia
    * Rizhao Port in Shandong Province – 1 confirmed cases, a Bengali crew member off a cargo ship
    * Qingdao in Shandong Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines
    * Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Mexico
    * Xiamen in Fujian Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines
    * Shenyang in Liaoning Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the US

    Today, Hong Kong reported 26 new cases, 23 from local transmission, 8 of whom do not have clear source of transmission. Definitely trending down, even with testing ramping up.

  5. 5.

    prostratedragon

    My old college has backed off plans to have some in-person classes, and is going on-line only at least until January. (No Div I athletics)

     

    Allen Pan is at least a finalist for winning all of 2020, not that he wants it.

  6. 6.

    YY_Sima Qian

    I am surprised the Wuhan authorities permitted the music festival at the water park to go ahead, after being so cautious across the country on reopening movie theaters. At least it is an outdoors venue, I doubt any indoor concerts or parties would be approved.

    Even though it seems that there is no COVID-19 virus anymore in Wuhan, such festivals attract visitors from all over. All it takes is one infected person to trigger a super spreading event, and the city will have to go under partial lock down and mass testing, and the expenses associated with that. While Chinese authorities at the local and central levels are getting quite practiced and adept at the game of “Whack-a-Mole”, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily numbers. 16 new cases. 12 cases from local infection, all Malaysians: seven in Kedah, four from the Tawar cluster and three from the Sala cluster; four in Penang from the Tawar cluster; one in Johor detected in a shipboard screening. Four imported cases, all non-Malaysians: three arriving from Bangladesh, one on board a ship arriving from the Philippines. Cumulative reported total 9,235 cases.

    23 more patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 8,925 patients recovered — 96.6% of the cumulative reported total. Active and contagious cases currently being isolated/treated in hospital declined further to 185 patients; seven are in ICU, three are on respirators.

    No new deaths since 31st July; the total remains at 125 deaths — 1.36% of the cumulative reported total, 1.38% of resolved cases.

    In other news, the Kedah Consumer Association is suing Nezar Mohamed Sabur Batcha, whose now-closed nasi kandar eatery was the epicentre of the Sivagangga cluster from which some 4o cases were reported, for RM1.5 million (US$360,000). The suit was filed on behalf of 200 residents of the surrounding community.

    Nezar Mohamed pleaded guilty last week to related offences under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseses Act: he had ignored his home quarantine order after returning from India, and failed to follow the SOP required for restaurants. He is serving five months in jail and was fined RM12,000.

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    I agree. We’ve also seen what happened in Vietnam and New Zealand recently. It doesn’t take much to start a new outbreak; and as long as this coronavirus exists somewhere in the world, no one should brag of having eradicated it in their country or region. It can always get back in.

  10. 10.

    Mary G

    As you can see if you watch the whole mask shooting video, even Huntington Beach is doing better with mask compliance and the OC numbers continue to improve sharply. Only 287 new cases today, percent of tests positive down to 6.2% and hospitalizations continue to go down fast. It helps that hardly anyone is trying to open schools here.

  11. 11.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Interesting bit of triva, California, Texas and Florida have passed New York on the total number of cases but only have had a third of the deaths New York has had.  So is it the virus is mutating into a less lethal strain or was there not enough testing in New York?

  12. 12.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Mary G: 

    Masks are not a perfect solution to prevent the spread of COVID-19. An enforced closure of the beach in question and the visitors going home and staying there would be a much much better option but that’s not going to happen because people are people and this disease isn’t “bodies piled up in the streets” serious, at least in the US.

  13. 13.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Mutation doesn’t work that way, it’s not like every COVID-19 virus particle in the world suddenly changes into another version of itself. It’s more gradual and what the scientists monitoring this see is breakouts of “new” versions of the virus detected in samples that have minor changes in the RNA over previous versions. This allows them to track the movement of outbreaks geographically by mapping where the different variants appear over time.

     

    There will be other mutations they don’t ever detect because those mutations cause the mutated virus to fail to replicate itself inside cells so that mutation goes extinct in a single generation and never appears on a test swab.

  14. 14.

    WereBear

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: As I understand it, thanks to Trump flooding NYC airports with European COVID-19 carriers, before NY ramped up their own testing, the bomb had already exploded by the time New Rochelle was a hot spot.

    Everything after that was batting cleanup.

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    I am surprised the Wuhan authorities permitted the music festival at the water park to go ahead, after being so cautious across the country on reopening movie theaters.

    I saw some photos of the event and was surprised to see some many people apparently close together. Maybe the photos were from earlier years?

    Does the government think they have procedures in place to track people and react if necessary?

  17. 17.

    arrieve

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think a large part of it was that New York was hit so hard early, before anyone had any idea of how to treat patients, or the many ways Covid attacks the body. Treatments are much more effective now, because we’ve learned what does and doesn’t help.

  18. 18.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think it’s the same story we’ve seen elsewhere. It’s not that the virus has changed. It’s:

    1. Testing is more widespread, which increases the apparent case rate because we’re seeing more of the actual cases.
    2. Younger people are getting infected–in the Northeast wave, a large fraction of deaths were in nursing homes.
    3. Better treatment, informed by what we’ve learned since the spring, lowers the actual fatality rate (and also delays the deaths that do happen).

    All of these effects combined to make COVID seem less lethal than it was, even if it’s the same virus.

  19. 19.

    Matt McIrvin

    One way to see what’s happened is to look at the test positivity rate–at the height of the NYC wave, 40% of tests from the state of New York were coming back positive. That’s a sign that they were only seeing the tip of the iceberg–the actual case rate was likely several times what they detected. California is just under 7% positive now, and they’re probably still missing a lot. But they’re not missing as many as New York did.

  20. 20.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — The NRS reports that 3 people’s death certificates mentioned COVID-19 between 10th and 16th August (Monday through Sunday). The number of confirmed cases has gone up by 50, no new confirmed deaths. The test positivity rate is still around 1%. The numbers of people in hospital with COVID-19 has declined a little — it’s noteworthy that for some reason Scotland has a larger proportion of people hospitalised (250-odd patients from a population of about 5 million) compared to England (over a thousand patients, population over 50 million). Why this is so isn’t explained anywhere I can find.

     

    Aberdeen remains in lockdown with nearly 300 cases and contacts deriving from a pub crawl that happened a couple of weeks ago. The authorities seem to have gotten a grip on this outbreak but they’re still not wanting to open the place up quite yet despite whining from the hospitality trade about loss of income. Another cluster in Tayside probably derives from the food packaging plant in Kinross that reported an outbreak a few days ago. A couple more school students have tested positive in the Glasgow and Lanarkshire areas but the government still claims there is no detectable spread within schools so they’re all open at the moment.

  21. 21.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Brachiator: No, the photos are from this year’s festival. It is being run at half capacity, in prior years it would have been much more crowded.

    Interestingly, the festival started from 8/15, and flew under the radar news wise even in Wuhan. However, the fact that videos of it went viral around the world itself became a viral topic in China, as well as the varied responses around the world from new media and social media (ranging from understanding and congratulations to jealousy and rage).

    I would have advised against such mass gatherings until vaccines are widespread. However, Wuhan has not had new cases since early May (and even then a handful), and almost every resident was tested back in end of May. The risk is likely very low, but it’s like playing a game of low risk Russian Roulette: the probability that any pull of the trigger kills you is very low, but do it enough times it becomes inevitable. The apparent reason for the larger outbreak in Ürumqi was a super spreading event at a large wedding.

    I am sure there are economic considerations for the authorities. The service industry has been hit hard by the reluctance of people to engage in activities, as is the case everywhere in the world. While the remote mountains in western Hubei might have seen much reduced tourist traffic, the attractions in Wuhan was jam packed over the weekend. Masking is required to enter these attractions (as is accessing public transportation). However, unlike in public transportation, masking is not really enforced once you enter the parks, and most people take them off. Summers in Wuhan are hot and humid.

    Anywhere else in the world with Wuhan’s case counts over the past three months would be partying hard, too. The possibility of a Danang, Auckland, Dalian or Ürumqi is the risk one takes on to return to semblance of normality. Hell, such parties are happening across the US, in the middle of a raging pandemic.

  22. 22.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Brachiator: Wuhan has millions of people living there with an intense testing regime in place both locally and nationally and right now they’re not detecting any “domestic” cases in the area so holding that sort of event is in reality very low risk for them.

     

    The US has “freedom” and the Anti-Mask League and lots of ongoing infections and superspreader events like college return and the Sturgis rally and, coming soon, Thanksgiving. Good luck guys.

  23. 23.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Robert Sneddon: I would think with the half assed testing we are doing means the virus strains that are most likely to cause asymptotic systems thrive.  They say the Spanish flue turned so deadly because the WWI inverted the normal pressures because the soldiers with mild symptoms stayed isolated in the trenches while the seriously ill were sent to the rear were so it can happen quickly.,

  24. 24.

    Sloane Ranger

    The UK-wide coronavirus dashboard was experiencing problems yesterday (again!) so here are yesterdays figures from the Home Nations, minus Scotland.

    There were 1089 new cases across the UK. It looks like new cases are remaining steady at around this figure, at least currently. Broken down by nation the new cases are 975 for England; 41 for Northern Ireland and 24 for Wales. Despite the whining of those returning from France, I think the readiness of the Government to enforce quarantine upon entry at a moment’s notice in response to surges elsewhere is one of the few things they’ve got right.

    There were 12 deaths yesterday, 11 in England and 1 in Northern Ireland.

    150,174 tests were processed yesterday. In addition, the Office for National Statistics Infection Survey will test 150,000 people a fortnight in England by October, up from 28,000 now. This is a separate programme from the mass testing of people with symptoms and is intended to test a representative sample of the population to see the true spread of the virus and, hopefully, react quickly before things get out of control. Fingers crossed.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    America has a pandemic problem so I solved it by making a gun:

    I love his deadpan on “Now let’s go shoot some people.”

  27. 27.

    Sloane Ranger

    Today’s UK figures published on time so here they are for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I’ll leave Scotland to Robert Sneddon as usual.

    812 positive tests out of 163, 010 tests processed. Of these 707 were in England; 34 in NI and 21 in Wales.

    There were 16 new deaths. 15 in England and, I break my word above, the remaining death was in Scotland.

  28. 28.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Sloane Ranger: The death announced in Scotland was of someone who died on April 21st, almost four months ago. That death has now been confirmed to have been from the effects of COVID-19.

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