Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

This blog will pay for itself.

Let there be snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday/Saturday, Oct. 16-17

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday/Saturday, Oct. 16-17

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29Comments

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Dr. Tom Frieden@DrTomFrieden
    Replying to
    @DrTomFrieden
    Great new data on self-reported mask-wearing. More masks→less illness. Shameful misrepresentation of CDC study which found restaurants, bars, and family members with Covid associated with illness. Masks are a low-cost, effective way to reduce spread. https://bit.ly/37csil0 5/15

    Funny how closely these 2 maps correlate, just amaaaaaaaaazing.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    The Ministry of Health here has tweeted out numbers showing its readiness for the current third wave of Covid-19:

    • 43 hospitals comprising 41 Ministry hospitals and two teaching hospitals; these hospitals have a total of 3,505 beds available for Covud-19 patients, plus 497 ICU beds and 1,515 respirators
    • 41 centres for quarantine and treatment of low-risk Covid-19 cases, with a total of 7,571 beds
    • 61 testing laboratories (Ministry and private sector) with a total processing capacity of 54,706 tests daily

    The numbers for Sabah:

    • 9 hospitals designated for treating Covid-19, with a total of 1,045 beds plus 120 ICU beds and 180 respirators
    • 19 centres for quarantine and treatment of low-risk Covid-19 cases, with a total of 4,231 beds
    • 3 testing laboratories (Ministry and private sector) with a total processing capacity of 2,500 tests daily
  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    From One arrested in threat to kidnap and kill Wichita mayor over COVID-19 mask mandate:

    In July, Whipple proposed and shepherded a city ordinance that requires protective face coverings to be worn in most public settings in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

    That ordinance is extremely unpopular with a segment of Wichita society who showed up in force Sept. 8. At that council meeting, 120 people spoke for about seven hours in opposition to the mask mandate.

    Many of the speakers said their resistance is rooted in their belief that the mask mandate violates their constitutional rights or religious beliefs.

    Whipple has been an online target of local anti-mask activists after he pushed for the city to implement a citywide mask requirement as COVID-19 cases surged ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. He said he believes the man’s threat was credible and that he will have an increased security presence around his home to protect him and his family.

    I really want to know exactly which constitutional rights or religious beliefs they think are being violated by having to wear a mask.

  9. 9.

    Jack Canuck

    Only one new case here in Victoria! The restrictions have been a real burden, but damn if they haven’t worked. The premier is due to make announcements tomorrow about the next steps, and a lot of people are hoping for (or demanding) big steps. I suspect there will be substantial loosening of the restrictions, but I also predict that a lot of people will bitch and moan that it’s not enough, or not exactly what they wanted. I just keep thinking of a statistic that a friend-of-a-friend posted on Facebook in reply to one of those ranting about how awful and authoritarian the government here has been:

    • On July 27, France had 514 cases and Victoria had 532.
    • On October 16, France had 25,086 cases and Victoria had 2 (and one the next day).

    The predictable response: oh, that’s different, France has a much bigger population and much denser living, and apparently Victorians are just wimps for being ‘so accepting’ of authoritarian government, unlike the French. Which ignores the fact that some of the biggest case increases in the US are in regions which are, shall we say, decidedly not densely populated.

    I’m so tired of the restrictions too, but I’m so tired of idiots, or normally intelligent people acting idiotically. Fingers crossed for tomorrow’s announcements though.

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    I read that a late September event in the Swiss canton of Schwys, attended by 600 people, became a Covid-19 superspreader. It was an outdoor yodeling concert.

  11. 11.

    Sloane Ranger

    So, here in the UK. We had 15,650 new cases yesterday. This is 3330 down from the day before. New cases are broken down by home nation as follows,

    England – 12,176 (down @4000)

    Northern Ireland – 1299 (up @500)

    Scotland – 1196 (down by @150)

    Wales – 979 (up @200).

    5 of the 9 English regions now have a rate of over 1000 cases per 100,000 of population, East Midlands, North East, North West (nearing 2000 cases per 100,000 population) West Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber),

    Deaths – There were 136 new deaths, 120 in England, 2 in Northern Ireland, 9 in Scotland and 5 in Wales. There was a massive jump from 50 on 12th October to 143 on the 13th and the number of deaths has hovered in the high 130’s since then.

    Testing – 304,315 PCR tests were processed out of a capacity of 323,006. I reported that there were concerns about a shortage of stuff needed to process tests due to Roche changing warehouses but this doesn’t seem to have materialised, at least not yet. Several weeks ago the media were talking about people waiting days for their test results but I haven’t heard anything about that recently. Whether that is because the problems have been solved or the media has moved on to the recent increase in cases, I don’t know.

    Hospitalisations – 5311 people were in hospital nationwide on 14th October (up @300 from the day before) and 580 were on ventilators on the 15th (up @20).

    General – Nothing really new except Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Government Advisor, has gone public to advocate for a “circuit breaker” full national lockdown in England.

  12. 12.

    TS (the original)

    @Jack Canuck:

    The restrictions have been a real burden, but damn if they haven’t worked.

    You have all been marvellous. Living north, it has not been as restrictive & we have all been so impressed with what has been happening in Victoria.

    As with NZ & Qld, I think labor will win the Vic election (unless the enquiry into the hotel issues really goes west for the government). Been a long time since Dan had a day without a press conference. I think he has gone longer than Gov Cuomo in NY.

    Do you have any ideas about the current growth of NSW hotspots? Think it will be a problem?

  13. 13.

    Jack Canuck

    @TS (the original): I believe Dan the Man is now over 100 consecutive days of press conferences. I personally have a lot of respect for the man. Have there been mistakes? Yes, and they’ve been costly and difficult. And it’s possible political heads will roll for them (beyond Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, who’s already out). But I see a government working like hell to get this back under control regardless of the hit to their popularity. That’s what I don’t get about people like my friend going on about how authoritarian and dictatorial and unreasonable the Vic government has been. Who’s benefiting? Because I know that every elected government desperately wants to impose onerous, unpopular, expensive restrictions on the public just for shits and giggles, right? It’s not like they’re having fun jerking the public around – they’re trying to avoid disasters like we’re seeing, oh, pretty much everywhere in the world at the moment.

    Having said that, it has been gotten under control, and I think they really do have to loosen things up or the discontent really will get out of hand. There are less than two hundred active cases in the state, only one new one in the last day, etc. And people really do need to make a living, keep their businesses going, see other people for their mental health.

    As far as the NSW stuff, I have no idea. Obviously it could get out of hand, that’s the nature of this thing. Hopefully it won’t. There is a (very) small-minded part of me that wants it to get bad somewhere else in the country, to stop the smugness and finger-waving advice. That lasts for about half a second before I remind myself that this is people’s lives and livelihoods at stake, and I hope we can finish this thing and be able to say ‘sucks for Victoria, they really had it hard, but at least they were the only ones’.

  14. 14.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 numbers. Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 869 new cases today, another new record. This brings the cumulative reported total to 19,627 cases. He also reports four new deaths, bringing the total to 180 deaths, and five new clusters.

    All 869 new cases are from local infection, and include 124 non-Malaysians. 451 cases are in Sabah: 234 close-contact screenings, 54 in existing clusters, two from the new Teduh cluster, and 161 in other Covid-19 screenings. Penang has 189 cases, 186 in existing clusters and three close-contact screenings.  Selangor has 159 cases: 89 in existing clusters, 23 rom the new Kelaui cluster, 23 close-contact screenings, eight from the new Menara cluster, two back from high-risk zones in Sabah, and 14 in other Covid-19 screenings. 38 cases are in Kedah: 37 from the Tembok prison cluster and one in the Bah Lunas cluster.

    KL has 15 cases: seven close-contact screenings, four in the new Sentral cluster, three in the new Menara cluster, and one symptomatic person. Sarawak has four cases, all in the Bah Arnab cluster. Perak also has four cases: two in existing clusters, one in the Menara cluster, and one screened at an immigration detention depot. Terengganu has three cases, all in the Bah Bemban cluster. Johore has two cases, one in the Buntar cluster and one close-contact screening. Putrajaya has two cases, one in the Menara cluster and one i  the Buntar cluster. Negeri Sembilan has one case, a close-contact screening. And Melaka has one case, a close-contact screening.

    302 more patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 12,561 patients recovered — 64.00% of the cumulative reported total. 6,886 active and contagious cases are currently in hospital; 91 are in ICU, of whom 30 are on respirators.

    The four new deaths reported are all in Sabah: a 78-year-old man with hypertension and chronic kidney disease; an 88-year-old man with hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidæmia and a history of stroke; a 71-year-old woman; and a 53-year-old non-Malaysian man. The fatality rate is 0.92% of the cumulative reported total, 1.41% of resolved cases.

  15. 15.

    Amir Khalid

    @Amir Khalid:

    Forgot to mention this: the Health Ministry and the Malaysian armed forces are also setting up two field hospitals, in Sabah and Kedah, to treat non-Covid patients as well as stage 1 and stage 2 (i.e. asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic) Covd-19 patients.

  16. 16.

    TS (the original)

    @Jack Canuck:

    My part of the country I have heard no-one attacking Dan or the people of Victoria (quite the opposite) – so much easier for everyone in Australia to be safe if every state has low numbers.

    Hope all goes well with Dan’s announcements tomorrow. I’m hoping the internal borders are all open for Christmas.

  17. 17.

    Jack Canuck

    @TS (the original):  Honestly I think the finger-waving is more here in Victoria: look how well everyone else has done, why is our government so stupid/incompetent? That kind of thing. It is hard to get a sense of the mood outside the state though. We’re so wrapped up in what we’re dealing with here, and don’t really want to think about everywhere else where you can still go to the shops or even see a show or something!

  18. 18.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jack Canuck:

    I believe Dan the Man is now over 100 consecutive days of press conferences. I personally have a lot of respect for the man.

    There’s hundreds of thousands of people like him all around the world, working their asses off to save the rest of us, and none of them really gets appreciated enough.

  19. 19.

    Princess

    The US is so screwed. We are going to have the same explosion that is happening in Europe over here in a week or so, except that no centralized action is going to happen here. Either a) Trump will win the election, in which case, he won’t care about anything other than looting the country for the next four years or b) he will lose in which case we’ll be effectively without a government for the 2.5 months until the inauguration, when the worst of it will begin to hit. The red state governors will do nothing.

  20. 20.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Yesterday, China reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases and 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases.

    The new domestic asymptomatic case was reported by Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, a service staff at one of the quarantine hotels housing foreign arrivals. He was caught during periodic screening of service staff at such facilities (once every ~ 10 days). As with all staff at quarantine hotels, he has been living in staff dormitory, rather than at home with his family. There must again have been break downs in protocol for this to happen. So far, 68 close contacts have been traced and swabbed, with 66 having tested negative.

    Qingdao in Shandong Province has completed the 100% mass screening of all residents, with 10,899,145 individuals swabbed, all negative. All Tiers 1 & 2 close contacts, as well as regular contacts, have each been tested 4 times, all results negative.

    Yesterday, China reported 13 new imported confirmed cases and 10 imported asymptomatic cases and 1 imported suspect case:

    * Shanghai Municipality – 5 confirmed cases, 3 Chinese nationals returning from the Philippines, 1 Filipino crew member off a cargo ship, and a Chinese student returning from Germany; 1 suspect case, no information released
    * Tianjin Municipality – 4 confirmed cases, 2 Chinese nationals returning from the Ukraine and 1 each from Hungary and Czechia (all via Warsaw); 3 asymptomatic cases, 2 Ukrainian nationals coming from the Ukraine and 1 Moldovan national coming from Moldova (all via Warsaw)
    * Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Italy and Guinea; 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Ghana
    * Chengdu at Sichuan Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from Egypt; 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Qatar
    * Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 1 confirmed and 1 asymptomatic case, both Chinese nationals returning from Angola (via Lisbon)
    * Zhengzhou in Henan Province – 4 asymptomatic cases, no information released

    Today, Hong Kong reported 17 new cases, all imported.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Many of the speakers said their resistance is rooted in their belief that the mask mandate violates their constitutional rights or religious beliefs.

    There are people for whom the Constitution is indeed a suicide pact.

    But it is not just selfishness. It is a strange insistence that the God and the Constitution ordains that an individual must be allowed his or her “liberty” in all circumstances and that the individual can always determine what is the best thing to do.

  22. 22.

    Skepticat

    ProPublica has an excellent but profoundly depressing post about the CDC. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc

    The area of The Bahamas in which I usually live, which was literally free of the virus until late in August, has had a surge in cases and is back under lockdown. I’m planning to return to my very small island in a month or so, but there really are very, very few truly safe places in our world, especially the States, today. And it absolutely did not have to be this way.

  23. 23.

    Suzanne

    One of the coolest parts of my job is the interesting people I meet. Saskia Popescu, mentioned in the first tweet, is a very smart infection prevention and epidemiology expert who works for a health system in Phoenix. I got to work with her on a project about a year and a half ago. It’s been really cool to see her quoted routinely through this pandemic.

  24. 24.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Skepticat: That report is journalism at its best, but also very painful to read. It will take many years for these formerly technocratic agencies, with hard won reputations around then world for their competence and capabilities, to recover from the Trump era. They may never reclaim the authorities they had around the world.

  25. 25.

    Betty

    Regarding tourism, Dominica’s latest plan is to allow those with negatives tests to come in, including US residents. They will be kept in a bubble and escorted to their hotel and sites of interest. Not sure if anyone has come in yet. The total number of confirmed cases is about 30 with no deaths. The number had been lower until people started sneaking in from neighboring French islands that have pretty high rates of infection.

  26. 26.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The small town in Upstate New York my parents are living in has seen a surge in cases recently. Active cases in the country of < 100K people numbered just over 300 at end of August, now more than 700 a month and half later. There have been clusters around retirement homes, day cares, and detention facilities, but COVID-19 is circulating among the wider population as well. Cases are popping up in my employer’s facilities in the area, though the company claims transmission has not taken place within company grounds. I do believe my employer has taken good steps at maintaining social distancing at the work place and making masks and hand sanitizers available to its workers. Now, large percentage of folks are going back to WFH, and the company is planning to establish its own testing program to periodically screen all employees.

    My parents have not visited any friends or neighbors since they went back to the States in early Feb., and they only go out for groceries every 10 days or so. Otherwise it’s strolls in the neighborhood, which is sparsely populated. They managed to get their medical stuff done over the summers, when things were quiet On the COVID-19 front in NY.

    One of the General Managers finally made it from the US back to China, and passed through the 14 day mandatory quarantine. He said the difference was night and day across the Pacific. Going through the quarantine was not fun, but he thought it was well worth it to maintain the safe bubble in China, so everyone can live with a new normal that is not too different from the old one (aside from no international travel). We were able to arrange a welcome back party for him, attended by everyone in the office (some 3 dozen people), at a pub restaurant, and indoors, too.

  28. 28.

    Skepticat

    @YY_Sima Qian: They indeed have broken many, many things that never can be fully repaired. Remember all those years ago when we lived in a semi-sane country and the U.S. was a respected world power? The past four years have been an execrable eon.

  29. 29.

    rjnerd

    The Herman Cain Medal site has passed 50 awards, with Dishonorable Mentions leading. (tho with 3 super spreader events daily, just keeping up with trump may put events into the lead)

    As always, nominations are welcome.  Recognizing notable people who impede public health efforts, and aid the spread of contagious diseases.

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