What I saw today was an incredible act of kindness towards high school seniors in the Western NY suburb where my nephew lives. This morning a caravan of cars arrived, horns honking, and a couple of faculty members (in his case, his wrestling coaches) planted a sign indicating that a [name of school] High school senior lives there. The kids are so demoralized and disappointed by the loss of their senior year and all its attendant celebrations. They know it’s not life or death but it feels like a pretty big deal to these 17/18 year olds to miss prom, graduation, their friends, etc. Very nice of the district to do this for them.
NYC population is 8.4 million.
The antibody testing study recently suggested that about 21% of NYC was infected.
21% of 8.4 million is 1.76 million. 30% of 8.4 million is 2.52 million.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page says (as of this writing) 13,000 confirmed deaths plus 5,231 probable deaths (or 18,231 confirmed + probable deaths) out of a known 164,505 cases with 42,417 hospitalizations.
13,000 / 8.4 million = 0.15%
13,000 / 2.52 million = 0.52%
13,000 / 1.76 million = 0.74%
18,231 / 8.4 million = 0.22%
18,231 / 2.52 million = 0.72%
18,231 / 1.76 million = 1.0%
Re: NYC tri-state area vs. CA and FL and other places with lots of visitors:
Definitely, something like having lots of people traveling by subway would make a difference. Also CA locking down earlier than NYC.
I wonder if another one is simply the weather. More sun/vitamin D + warmer temps and more humidity = less (serious) infections.
The places that have been hit hardest have cold (but not arctic) winters. People have been warning about 3rd world health systems being overwhelmed but I haven’t heard much about that in places where it is summer pretty much the whole year round.
Fact is, there’s lots of blame to go around. And plenty of it could be aimed at us, as a nation.
As long as we’re numbering blame, I’d say for Americans second on the list should be the inaction, denial and lies that came, and continue to come, from our own leaders.
I have never seen an example of America’s people so thrown to the wolves.
I’m working with this every day. Yesterday we had a guy push past the greeter at one of our company’s Michigan locations (no mask) and act belligerent and inappropriate in the store. He was asked to leave. He posted all over social media that he had a doctor’s note which he showed saying he could not wear a mask. None of that happened. Protocol for us is if a visitor/customer says they have a medical condition and can’t wear a mask, we let them in. For employees, we engage in the AAADA interactive discussion and then try to find a reasonable accommodation- maybe a face shield, bandana when a customer or another employee is near, or perhaps a leave of absence. Michigan has the Freedom Rights folks who are attacking retailers regarding the (governor ordered) mask requirement. Problems in Maine as well.
We live in a small school district. The high school principal has gotten happy birthday signs…and these are placed in front of student homes on their birthday. Very cheerful and very thoughtful.
In terms of fatality rates, virtually everything I’ve seen indicates something in the 0.5-1.0% range. Which is pretty darn high. And much higher for at-risk groups (virtually nil for those who are young and healthy, though they may still suffer negative long-term effects).
The stated fatality rate for the flu is 0.1% but it almost certainly is less than that (probably more like 0.01-.05%) as it seems like many people can get the flu with little or no symptoms.
Another potential factor:
Pretty much all of East/SE/South Asia, Africa, and Latin American give their people the BCG TB vaccine at birth (it’s the one that leaves a scar on your arm).
Most of the West has stopped or never did. Italy and the US never did.
If you’re referring to the one I mentioned from the other thread, the dude had been informed he had tested positive, told to isolate, and went to the party anyway. MA is now one of the most affected states in the nation. He’s probably part of the reason.
As noted from some other anecdotes folks have shared, there are plenty of dumb and/or inconsiderate people in this country. (In the world too - we don’t have all of them here, but we have enough.)
The first confirmed case was on March 1st. NYC didn’t close their schools until March 15th. Cuomo’s shelter in place order didn’t happen until March 20th. So there was a 2-3 week lag between the first known case and the lockdowns in NY.
How does he live with himself???
I’m not at all disagreeing with you. Just adding anyone still comparing this to the flu really doesn’t understand the actual numbers being seen at all - whether through not wanting to or being unable to.
At one point it was all conjecture. We’re no longer at that point. We have data.
Both the flu and covid can be asymptomatic making exact total numbers impossible. Both skew elderly and vulnerable populations. Many flu deaths are estimates based upon probability (best guess). With Covid most places are sticking to “must have a positive test” leading to a potential undercount if we were comparing on a level playing field (aka, giving flu a big advantage in the numbers).
Covid has “won” the numbers race for worse. Exactly by how much has yet to be determined, but it’s way in the lead and can’t lose.
This “old” article (from April 17, 2020) shows:
"The coronavirus has spread rapidly in the US, and the number of deaths has grown exponentially along with it. From April 9 to 15, at least 13,613 people died from COVID-19, compared with 9,801 the week before.
…
Even bad flu seasons, like the 2017-18 season, in which an estimated 61,000 Americans were killed — including 7,119 by the flu or pneumonia in a single week — didn’t claim lives as quickly as COVID-19 did last week."
It also suggested that:
"It’s also still too early to calculate the overall death rate of COVID-19, but the US has seen a lower rate so far than many other countries, with about 4.4% of those diagnosed with the disease dying from it.
That and other factors have led disease modelers to lower their fatality estimates: On Friday, the main model used in the US was predicting 60,415 deaths by August, assuming social-distancing measures are kept in place."
Newsflash… it’s not August yet and google tells me we’re already past 60,415 deaths.
@PurpleTitan – I always thought of smallpox as the one that leaves a scar on your arm, since that’s the one most of us older folks had gotten. Though I read that BCG does also.
I asked my H who worked with TB a lot in the eighties why we didn’t use it, and the reason was that overall the prevalence was low in the US, and once you start giving it, you can’t test for who is infected anymore. So that was past reasoning.
From what I’ve read a lot of transmission has to do with face to face vs side to side closeness. Those studies that showed a runners droplets could spread far behind him also showed almost Zero spread outside the width of his shoulders. If you are standing still speaking forces droplets forward. At the Biogen conference there was likely a lot of face to face speaking, hand shaking and probably touch points like coffee and food. At Kobe’s service there was little of that.
As for nyc and New jesrsey versus Florida and California the differences in reliance on public transportation and density of housing are likely in my opinion based on everything I’ve read to be huge factors in differences in spread.
Can we please not refer to computer simulations that have not been vetted by scientists as “studies”?
On a happy note, H and I just cut each other’s hair for the first time. I think we each did a good job. I purchased Wahl’s Magic Clip cordless clipper online and trimmed his all the same length (will try a fade next time) and he used it to trim 3" off my length.
The high schools in Arlington VA are doing the same thing for grads as @runnersmom’s nephew. There is also a photographer taking photos of the grads at one school in front of their houses with whatever prop signifies their favorite activity at school (sports, art, theater, etc.)
Did you see this? Bill Gates says our testing numbers are not meaningful because to do effective testing and contact tracing as we should we would need massive testing done not just to small portions of the society and not taking days for results. We would need rapid results. We are not doing that. Why can’t our country be one that is handling this well? Why are we one of the worst in the world? It’s discouraging.
Anyone who has been to NYC can easily see how it would have a worse outbreak than other places. And if you’ve ever been on a NYC subway, you really get it.
That said, Paris, London, and Tokyo weren’t as affected as NYC, and they have similar mass transit systems.
Northern New England. Went grocery shopping this morning. (ETA this was at a chain – Hannaford.)
- Most people wore masks, as did all the staff I saw, some staff had clear face shields.
- Limits on maybe a dozen items (eggs, flour, tissues, TP, milk, cleaning products).
- One way aisles marked with tape on the floor.
- Staff member at entrance wiping down carts and pointing us to clean ones.
- Clear barrier at registers.
- Single line to wait for next free register, marks at 6’ intervals.
- Baking supplies running low; some sugar but no flour, many prepared mixes sold out, didn’t think to look for yeast.
- Dairy inventory looked low to middling and varied.
- Fresh meat inventory was kind of varied but low, especially fresh chicken; what they did have for poultry was extra large packs of boneless breasts and boneless thighs.
- Paper goods were really low but there was a little something of everything. I scored toilet paper for my mother.
- Frozen vegetables were really picked over. Nobody wants frozen peas. They look so forlorn!
- People did their best to maintain distance. Most shoppers came alone. On my way out I saw one unmasked group, two adults and two elementary-age-looking children.
- Got fresh garlic and fresh leeks.
Now an informal opinion poll: I do my mother’s shopping as well as our own. It’s two separate transactions at checkout, rung up / bagged / paid for separately. Today I didn’t need to go over any of the store’s limits, but what would you do if you were shopping for two households and both needed, say, eggs / milk / flour? Take two trips? Call the store ahead of time? Just get what you needed and cash out assuming nothing will be said?