To me, numbers of patients hospitalized is as important as any other statistic. If those continue to go up, it’s very worrisome as COVID patients tend to stay in hospital longer than those with other ailments. That’s where we could see hospitals overwhelmed, which crowds out not only future COVID victims, but other people with serious illnesses as well.
There is a new study reported today. 80% of people testing positive show no symptoms. The study was done on cruise ship passengers.
It will be interesting if medicine can determine if there are some physiological differences to account for why some die and some don’t even have any symptoms.
I like to try to look at the numbers week after week. I’ve been trying to save the daily totals from Marylands website so that I can easily compare points in time. I know in Maryland it has allowed me to accurately see that week by week even though many of our numbers increase, they are increasing by a much smaller percentage each week. I wish there was an easier way to archive these numbers.
A BBC World News show I watched sometime in the last week or so did a segment on researchers using blood to try to figure out why. The research is ongoing, but the researcher they interviewed was asked if they had anything positive so far. He replied yes and that they hope knowing early who will be “bad” will allow early - potentially effective - treatments.
I’m hopeful with more time this will become just a treatable disease.
It’s a big part of why I’m personally perfectly content giving it more time rather than heading out assuming there’s nothing that can be done.
Speaking of physiological differences. I guess that might be something here. In Maryland there is a glaring difference in death rate between Hispanics and all other races. According to our official numbers Hispanics are only about 1/5 as likely to die from this virus as other races. That’s from actual numbers of confirmed cases and actual deaths by race. I’ve been looking at these numbers for a few weeks now and it’s still amazing to me. Here’s the raw data also available at
African American, 14,217 cases, 941 deaths
Asian, 917 cases, 85 deaths
Caucasian, 9,575 cases, 944 deaths
Hispanic, 11,956 cases, 204 deaths
It’s amazing to me. I’ve tried to justify with many ideas but nothing really explains it.
Average age of Hispanics is lower. They have more children and old people are back home. Just a guess.
Wisconsin has a sharply increasing number of tests per day, and decreasing positive rates. Hospitalizations are increasing sliiiiiightly. You’d rather see hospitalizations go down, not up, but the situation doesn’t look terrible to me.
In Maine, OTOH, cases are up, hospitalizations are up. I’m sympathetic to restaurateurs who want to open up, but surely the state has to respond to data in making decisions about re-opening.
In my area, Latinos are overrepresented in the death statistics, by a lot, even though their average age in my area is much lower than the average age of whites or Asians. I’d look to social differences rather than genetic differences to explain racial disparities in covid deaths.
This contradicts what other studies have found. It’ll be interesting to see how that shakes out. I’m wondering whether some of the cruise ship passengers were pre-symptomatic rather than asymptomatic.
Or this study could be right.
Illinois is the opposite. Hispanics are the largest number of positive cases but a fraction of the deaths (less than 1/2 of that of Black people)
This could be based on the fact that death is a trailing statistic and the virus spiked later in Latino communities.
I’m surprised by stories of people not getting cancer treatment. I know several people who were diagnosed and treated since the pandemic started. It is baffling to me why that wouldn’t happen somewhere.
Montgomery was later than Mobile and Birmingham. Whether or not nursing home/LTC facilities are contributing to what they’re seeing isn’t clear but I’ve seen coverage that suggests it is.
Yesterday’s spike, other than Memorial day weekend counting? A poultry processing plant in Walker Co., and a nursing home outbreak in Tuscaloosa. One’s an essential business, the other is too predictable.
Business outbreaks don’t fill hospitals, but nursing home ones do, which does suggest where Montgomery’s problem originated.
Perhaps some of the people with cancer felt that going to the hospital would be a COVID-19 risk that they are in a higher risk group for (cancer is more likely among older people, and being older appears to be the biggest risk factor for a bad result from COVID-19).
A good friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was rejected for a mastectomy. Her doctor reclassified it as a recurrence as she had had cancer in that same breast 20 years ago, and she was approved for surgery.
Forbes has a brutal article that the uniquely horrific death count in NY/NJ was due to the political decisions of those governors regarding nursing home cases. The story has good graphics of nursing home deaths by state, and is free to read.
I’m in one of the holdout counties. Supposedly some is opening up June 1, but that could be pulled back.
Educated != “Elitist”
Agree, except as to the ‘now’ part.
That ditch got stepped across about the time I saw: ‘put me on ignore, if you don’t want to read what I’m going to keep on posting’. Didn’t fold, doubled down instead.
‘Roll Tide’, indeed.
It might take more for you to think something is horrific that it takes me.
New Jersey has been excellent at reporting deaths in long term care facilities. Union County New Jersey has 1034 deaths so far, about 1 in 500 residents. NJ reports that 434 of those deaths have been in long term care facilities.
That means if not one single resident of a LTCF had died, Union County would still have lost about 1 in 900 residents. I guess that’s not uniquely horrific, because some nearby counties have lost about the same, or more: Essex, Hudson, Queens, Kings, New York, Bronx. But it’s horrific nonetheless.
And they’re still dying.
The month is almost up. Maybe June will be better. 