Getting the tracing up to speed is going to take the longest. They have to hire and then train the tracers (though they are requesting retirees from the public health system.) My friend who retired last year was called - she was a statistician for DOH. This can’t happen over night. Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins are helping NYS with the tracing program.
People really need to chill out. It’s better to get it right the first time and not have to deal with things getting out of control again because it’s been rushed. Opening then having to shut things down again will be much worse then taking it slowly to begin with.
Especially if you don’t have the systems in place to deal with outbreaks immediately.
I would be skeptical of where that data is coming from and how it is organized and updated. My state is listed as one of the "bad" ones in red, but the approximate date of the highest spike on that graph of positive cases does not match the one in our daily news here. Current hospitalized cases are less than 1/6 of what they were at their max sometime in March, daily deaths dropped into the single digits more than two - almost three - weeks ago, testing has increased and the state is in the process of phased reopening. (No hospital here was ever remotely near overwhelmed.) No deaths recorded for the past week yet, though I think there is typically some delay. "Need to take action" doesn't compute.
Every single expert prediction I have seen says we should plan on sporadic openings and closings over the next 2 years or until a vaccine is effective. There is no magic bullet that if we just stay closed 3 more months, we will be done with corona for good. We will not, that is one of the few things all experts agree on.
It would be nice if that page gave us their definition of victory. It seems to be reducing new cases to a small fraction of the peak. But this penalizes states that had a small peak: they have to reduce to a lower number.
It doesn't match the state health dept data published in the city's main newspaper. Just a guess on what the difference might be: the health dept began reporting "probable" non-tested COVID deaths *from the past*, together with actual, tested COVID deaths. Not sure if this is the case with NYT, but other sites such as IHME took the new reported deaths as if they happened on that date, when in fact the deaths occurred weeks prior, which the local news charts properly. A little confusing: the endcoronavirus link indicates "cases" though the above NYT link refers to both cases and deaths.
Ok, that might make a little more sense, but is still behind the times as far as what’s happening here. (“Need to take action” like what, I wonder.)
I don’t know where you live, @Youdon’tsay, but a lot of jurisdictions are looking for contact tracers. If you’re a former journalist, you indeed would be good at it. You’d have a lot of the same skills, notably an ability to establish rapport with someone you’re talking to on the phone.
I don’t think you need to even live in the same state to be a tracer. Iirc, NYS is hiring from OOS. You do the work remotely, from your home, so you can live anywhere.
In Colorado, the number of new positive tests has gone up slightly, but they test twice as many people, and the percentage of positive tests is down to around 10%. Also the number of hospitalized people is going down slowly but steadily. I’m cautiously optimistic but we’ll see what happens after the partial reopening in Denver. There were also reports of large CU-Boulder graduation parties.
We are in an early hot spot and school has been closed for about two months. We’ve been very cautious this whole time, and I think most people in our area have been abiding by the stay home order. We’ve flattened to curve but numbers in our particular county are still not where we need them to be.
So, the weather is now beautiful and people seem to have quarantine fatigue, which I totally get. As adults and tending towards the introverted side, we are fine, but our high schooler, who has been coping well for the most part, was in a very sour mood today because she’s seeing so many social media posts from kids she knows (not good friends) who are getting together at parks and probably people’s homes (she doesn’t want to talk about the details)
She understands the need to continue social distancing and isn’t exactly asking to meet with friends but being aware of what peers are doing certainly makes it harder for her to cope. We strongly feel we need to follow our local government’s order/guidance to keep contact to household members only until the next phase of opening, which could happen at the end of the month. But darn, it’s making this harder than it needs to be.
The double bubble in Canada sounds interesting, but so many folks are still venturing out for groceries and exercise and some are working and caring for loved ones. Since H and I are very high risk, we are probably not good candidates for “double bubble,” even if that concept makes its way to US. I can see how it creates angst and feelings of exclusion.
“There is no magic bullet that if we just stay closed 3 more months, we will be done with corona for good. We will not, that is one of the few things all experts agree on.”
I’m really dumbfounded how some keep saying “we can’t stay closed for x number of months” when many businesses and industries are already open for business and most states are easing restrictions in stages as we speak. While 14.5% workers are temporarily unemployed, 85.5% are still employed and most of them are actually working and have been working since the pandemic was announced 2 months ago.
You act like all business are closed and every citizen is in lockdown at their house and cannot leave. This is just not accurate on any level and IMO is not helpful to this discussion.
The endcoronavirus website does have a good presentation but the message that many states need to step it up is confusing - weren’t we supposed to just avoid overloading ICU beds and ventilator capacity?
Absent a vaccine or enough of us having had it, there’s likely no path to ‘endcoronavirus’, but I’ll give them credit for their graphs, if not for their premise for putting them up.
15% have filed for unemployment, there is an army of independent contractors, self employed, undocumented and gig workers who can not file and who you are not counting deliberately. And of those that remain employed, how many do you think will have jobs to return to when all business reopens? The 100k furloughed by Disney? Not likely.
Many businesses in Colorado opened today. It is clearly a case of ‘release the hounds’ as there was a lot of traffic and lines to get into stores. People have no where to go except shop as athletics, gyms, even parks are still closed… No concerts, movie theaters, churches, MLB, soccer, eating in restaurants. All there is to do is shop. You can golf but you have to have your own cart (more expensive) and there are fewer tee times so groups don’t bunch up.
Most stores have very reduced hours (4 hours instead of 10). That causes everyone who needs (or just wants) to go to the store to go at the same time.