🤮 Coronavirus (Community Thread)

macro · August 11, 2020, 2:51am

I’m sorry but I feel that the time to get the epidemic under control in America is way past the point of no return until such time as a vaccine is available. The thing is you need more than just an efficient testing regime available free to everyone. The test results need to be available within 24 hours (not 2 weeks as I have heard instances of in the US) and the person with the suspected infection needs to self isolate at least until the results are back. It can take up to 2 weeks for a person infected to actually test positive, and during that time they can be shedding the virus and unknowingly infecting others. You also need to have a gold standard contact tracing program, ensure proper isolation for all those who come in contact with the person who has tested positive, and that means going back over a period of up to 10 days prior. Your super-spreader events such as open bars etc do not help.
According to the Worldometer Coronavirus web page the US has around 2.6 million active cases today and gains around around 50,000+ cases per day at present.

That is an enormous task of tracking all the contacts of those infected.
For a country such as ours with just 5 million people and a peak infection rate of some 100+ per day ( where it is a standing joke that everybody knows everyone else), it requires a staff of some thousand trained personnel to sort each source of infections into “bubbles” to isolate and contain the virus, and to contact all those who had come in contact with the infected people, to ensure that they were tested and isolated too. Scale that up to a country with a population of 330+ million with 50,000 cases and you are are talking massive staff numbers.
We also have the benefit of having a unified Health system that is public funded, and of course, available to all. It was possible for our response to be co-ordinated across all districts, and for PPE etc, to be redistributed to the areas most in need. Furthermore, the Government ensured that all persons were adequately funded, so that no one was out of pocket for any reason whether it was a small or large business that had to close, or a worker had to stay home. One of the most amazing benefits to come out of the lockdown was that many of our homeless people were finally housed in the motels that were left vacant, because all travel and tourism stopped. Some who had been sleeping rough for up to 20 years suddenly found themselves in a proper bed - and they like it!
It took almost three months to ensure that there was no community transmission at all, before considering the country opened up slowly again from lockdown. Coming down a mountain is as difficult, if not more so, than going up. We have currently 22 active cases in the country, all in managed isolation, and all returnees from overseas. Anyone entering NZ must go immediately into managed isolation for a period of 2 weeks, and undertake 2 covid tests. One after 3 days and the other after 12 days. All the 50 odd cases that have been detected in the past 103 days have been people returning to NZ, and still in Managed Isolation. (over 70,000 people have returned to NZ since the beginning of the lockdown. Up until today there was no charge on a person returning to NZ for their enforced isolation, however those returning now for a short stay (ie visit family or a wedding) will be required to meet some of the cost of their Managed Isolation. Obviously if a person does test positive for Covid-19 they are immediately transferred into a quarantine facility until such time as they are free of the Virus.

dragonfly9 · August 11, 2020, 3:31am

And you New Zealanders got to it immediately and hammered out all the variables. US is haphazard at best without strong leadership and direction.

Yes…vaccines and 24 hr or less testing. That would help.

macro · August 11, 2020, 4:16am

Yes we all here really do feel for you all over there (and by “all here” - I do mean all here.) There is not one person in this country who is unaware of the trials you all now face and we hope and pray that reason and sanity may prevail on the 3rd Nov, and that somehow the situation will not deteriorate beyond hopeless before the 20 Jan next year.
If you are fortunate enough to have a new Administration in the new year, they will be faced with an enormous task, and the country will have to accept that it is going to take some time to turn the 4 years of Malpractice around. I also hope, that there will be a cleansing of the Enablers (you know who I mean) who have stood by and watched this rolling catastrophe and have done nothing, because if that doesn’t happen then I cannot see much of a future ahead. 400+ Bills sitting in the Senate is an abomination.

Windthin · August 11, 2020, 4:47am

The sad fact is, as much as some states want to do something, no one state, even those as rich as New York and California, has the money, capacity, or network to replace what they’re lacking in leadership and resources from the federal government.

Trump knows that, and he didn’t care so long as it was hurting blue states. Now that it’s hurting red states, they’re in a bind, because Trump can never, ever admit he was wrong.

macro · August 11, 2020, 5:35am

The sad fact is, as much as some states want to do something, no one state, even those as rich as New York and California, has the money, capacity, or network to replace what they’re lacking in leadership and resources from the federal government.

We are seeing a similar situation happening across the ditch from here in Victoria Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-11/coronavirus-live-blog-tuesday-august-11-victoria-19-deaths/12543432

Yes exactly. and that point was well made in the recently published book by his niece Mary Trump.

macro · August 11, 2020, 10:10am

Excuse me but
Bugger!

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced Auckland will go into lockdown and the rest of the country will go into level 2

It comes after four cases of community transmission from the same family were confirmed - after 102 days without any.

Ardern and director general of health Ashley Bloomfield announced the news tonight and an alert was sent to New Zealanders’ phones.

As of noon tomorrow, Auckland will move to level 3 for three days until midnight on Friday.

dragonfly9 · August 11, 2020, 6:09pm

Yes…you guys are on it.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Auckland is locking down and the rest of New Zealand faces lesser restrictions for 72 hours after a four members of the same family tested positive for COVID-19, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Tuesday.

Why it matters: It’s the first cases not in managed isolation for 102 days, Ardern said at a news briefing.

“Together we have beaten the virus before. We can do so again.”
— Ardern

What to expect: From noon Wednesday until midnight Friday in Auckland, in-person school lessons will be closed to all but the children of essential workers, non-essential businesses can open, but there must be no physical interaction with customers and the Aucklanders are advised to work from home.

Those who outside of Auckland will not be allowed to travel to New Zealand’s most populous city for the lockdown period.

Social distancing measures will be reintroduced and larger gatherings, such as for events like funerals, will also be limited across the country.

What happened: NZ’s top health official Ashley Bloomfield added that a young child was among those to test positive. The family member who initially tested positive for the virus has no history of overseas travel, he said.

Flashback: New Zealand beats coronavirus

Windthin · August 11, 2020, 8:11pm

Wave of evictions sweeps US amid impasse over coronavirus protections

Moratorium in federal housing expired at end of July

Trump stopgap measures seen as of doubtful efficacy

A huge wave of evictions is gathering pace across the US, with tens of millions of people facing the looming prospect of being ejected from their homes with the expiry of federal government protections.

A moratorium on evictions from most federally backed housing, along with a $600-a-week unemployment benefit, helped ensure many Americans avoided being made homeless from an economic crash sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

But these protections expired at the end of July and a slew of evictions are starting to unfurl across the country, while party leaders are at an impasse over further economic relief and a slew of stopgap measures from Donald Trump are on an uncertain path.

A picture shared widely on the internet described “eviction cairns” in New Orleans, showing belongings heaped beside the road, reportedly from a family of six that had been evicted from their home after being unable to pay rent.

According to the Aspen Institute, a non-profit thinktank, at least 30 million Americans out of the 110 million who live in rental housing are at risk of eviction by the end of September.

The organization warned the Covid-19 crisis will cause “long-term harm to renter families and individuals, disruption of the affordable housing market and destabilization of communities across the United States”.

The lapsing of eviction protections means that many people, unable to afford rent or mortgages, have been plunged into a precariously vulnerable situation. “There’s tremendous urgency,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told NPR. “There are millions of renters who can’t sleep at night because they don’t know what they’re going to do if they become homeless.”

The fresh disaster to stem from the pandemic is set to reach all corners of the US. A study by UCLA found that as many as 120,000 households in Los Angeles county, including up to 184,000 children, will probably become homeless when evictions resume.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, 52% of renters cannot afford their rent and risk eviction, with about 185,000 evictions possible across the state by the end of the year, according to Stout Risius Ross, a consultancy firm.

“A lot of the safety net things that people relied on are gone,” said John Pollock, coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. Stripped of federal assistance, and with many states also scaling back help, many people are having to rely upon savings or credit in order to retain their homes.

On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order on evictions that the White House said would address the situation. In the action, the president vowed to defer payroll taxes, waive student loan payments and secure unemployment benefits, albeit at a lower rate of $400 a week. The order also pledged to help renters facing eviction, although all of the measures were provisional on other actions or studies, and sowed confusion and controversy about certainty and timescale.

“I’m protecting people from eviction,” Trump said on Saturday. “You’ve been hearing a lot about eviction, and the Democrats don’t want to do anything having to do with protecting people from eviction.”

However, the order doesn’t actually extend the moratorium on evictions, nor provide any rental assistance to those unable to pay. Instead, it orders federal agencies, such as the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, to look at options for protecting renters. Housing advocates attacked the order as a toothless gesture.

“The president alluded to ‘stopping evictions’, but the executive order fails to provide any meaningful relief to the millions of renters who are at risk of losing their homes,” Yentel said. “President Trump failed even to use his existing authority to reinstate the limited federal eviction moratorium that expired on July 24, which covered 30% of renters nationwide.”

Deferring evictions is only one part of the action required, advocates argue. Even though many landlords have been barred from removing renters unable to pay until now, the owed amount of rent has continued to accumulate, meaning that tenants will face a huge bill once protections are lifted. About half of landlords are small, family-run operations, meaning that they, along with renters, may require substantial financial assistance to avoid ruin.

anon95374541 · August 11, 2020, 10:05pm

Dude idk…

Windthin · August 11, 2020, 11:54pm

The more I read about this, the more worrisome it gets. I mean, I am not going to hope it fails, obviously, but what they’re doing, rushing this through without proper trials, releasing it without any data, claiming he’s given it to his daughter, it’s all so reckless and smacks of propaganda.

Also… didn’t they try to hack OUR research?

celena · August 12, 2020, 8:46am

So… what you’re saying is… if it kills a bunch of people there we can cross off one of ours?

Anyone here have kids going back to school? We’re at the point where I need to make a decision, just wondering how other people are handling it.

dragonfly9 · August 12, 2020, 9:24am

‘Deepening despair’…in the country. Yup…no end in sight.

Parents lie awake, their minds racing with thoughts of how to balance work with their newfound role as home-schoolers. Frontline health workers are bone tired, their nerves frayed by endless shifts and constant encounters with the virus and its victims. Senior citizens have grown weary of isolation. Unemployed workers fret over jobs lost, benefits that are running out, rent payments that are overdue. Minority communities continue to shoulder the disproportionate burden of the contagion’s impact, which in recent weeks has killed an average of about 1,000 people a day.

The metaphor of a marathon doesn’t capture the wearisome, confounding, terrifying and yet somehow dull and drab nature of this ordeal for many Americans, who have watched leaders fumble the pandemic responsefrom the start. Marathons have a defined conclusion, but 2020 feels like an endless slog - uphill, in mud.

Recent opinion polls hint at the deepening despair. A Gallup survey in mid-July showed 73% of adults viewed the pandemic as growing worse - the highest level of pessimism recorded since Gallup began tracking that assessment in early April. Another Gallup Poll, published Aug. 4, found only 13% of adults are satisfied with the way things are going overall in the country, the lowest in nine years.

A July Kaiser Family Foundation poll echoed that, finding that a majority of adults think the worst is yet to come. Fifty-three percent said the crisis has harmed their mental health.
>
In a podcast released Thursday, former first lady Michelle Obama directly addressed the mental toll, saying she has struggled with the quarantines, the government’s response to the pandemic and the persistent reminders of systemic racism that have led to nationwide protests.

“I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression,” she said.

Historians say that not even the 1918 flu pandemic, which killedan estimated 675,000 people in the United States, had the same kind of all-encompassing economic, social and cultural impact.

“One of the biggest differences between this virus and [the 1918] influenza is the duration,” said John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

anon95374541 · August 12, 2020, 2:58pm

My child’s high school will be all online in the fall. It’s his senior year too. This sucks.

Windthin · August 12, 2020, 3:24pm

Mine too, both accounts.

dragonfly9 · August 12, 2020, 3:26pm

More WTF

A month after the Trump administration changed how hospital data is rWTFeported, the public release of this data “has slowed to a crawl,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

The big picture: This is the latest example of how the world’s wealthiest country just can’t get it together.

Testing and case data — which tell the story of where people are getting sick — have been a problem for the last six months. This latest fiasco blurs the picture of how many people are getting very sick at a given time, which until now has been a more reliable measure of the pandemic.

Driving the news: The Department of Health and Human Services last month ordered states to report coronavirus hospitalization data directly to the agency, rather than to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as they’d been doing.

Now, important data, like the number of beds occupied by coronavirus patients, is lagging by a week or more.

The implications go beyond tracking the virus. Hospitalization data is also used by agencies to determine where to send remdesivir and personal protective equipment.

What they’re saying: “The transition has been a disaster,” Jeffrey Engel, senior adviser to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, told the WSJ. “What HHS said was that the CDC was not nimble enough and couldn’t handle new data elements, and that’s simply not true.”

The other side: HHS officials told the WSJ that the new system has a more complete set of data, but that the quality-control process has led to some delays as the new system gets up and running.

The bottom line: We’re doing a terrible job handling the pandemic, at least relative to other wealthy countries. The fact that we don’t have a good idea of what’s happening in real time – and it’s getting worse — is one of the major contributors to that failure.

(paywall)

dragonfly9 · August 12, 2020, 3:29pm

Video on NYC and it’s check points (random) as cars that are incoming with a fine of up to $10,000. They mean business and they want to preserve their momentous win over COVID as of now.