My governor’s press conference today was embarrassing. Yes, our numbers have doubled since May … and if they double again, well, we’re REALLY going to have to do something. Weak.
Yep, those states are generally considered to have planned for reopening by stirring chicken entrails around with a pointed stick, but…
… California, where I understand government guidance has been scientifically informed and mask compliance is more correct, is seeing much the same.
Remember way back at the end of March or early April, when we found out the difference in spread just in Flushing, Queens, between the zipcode with the predominantly Asian population versus the zipcode right next door with hardly any Asian population? The difference was the early adoption of masks in the first zip code - due to being alerted by people in China way back in December and January. We are talking about an extremely densely populated area in both zip codes, along with multigenerational housing.
I didn’t need any other studies to tell me the effectiveness of wearing a mask. This was as plain as the mask on my face.
That it is still even up for debate is ludicrous.
Pesky data. Per capita COVID death rates by state:
1-NY
22-AZ
28-FL
29-CA
41-TX
Maybe we should all buy some chickens.
I have chickens! Maybe that’s why CA is down on the list 
Doing my part
Good news, terrible news…
Good news: Michigan’s numbers continue to look good. New cases going down, hospitalizations have tanked, and the % positive test rate has been below 3% for the past 3 weeks.
Terrible news: My coworker’s brother died of COVID-19 this weekend. Mid-forties, no underlying conditions - my colleague talked to him on Sunday morning (said he sounded “fine”) and then the brother died that night. Coworker is stunned at the rapidity with which it all happened and is heartbroken that he couldn’t get there in time.
Man, this is awful.
CF wrote…
We’ve got pretty good data now about “household” spreading. Infected people spread the disease to those in their household at about a rate of 20%.
—————
Say that another way? Speak slowly! 
My brain is being dense about “rate of 20%”.
I think it means that if a household member has COVID, you have a 20% chance of catching it from him.
You can derive this easily from first principles. Suppose you know R, the number of people that an average person infects if nobody is immune… If R is less than 1, congratulations, that disease is not going to take off. But suppose it’s greater than 1. You need enough people immune so that R times the fraction of non-immune people is less than 1. Do the math, and you discover that you need 1-1/R people to be immune.
And if no pandemic had happened there would have been people who looked at such studies and scoffed at the money it cost the gov’t to produce them calling it wasteful - wondering who got paid to study such things, because “obviously masks will stop things” coupled with “we’ll never need that info!” Research money is pretty darn limited and can be difficult to get.
It’s only in hindsight that some answers or “should haves” are known.
My condolences to your coworker. So, so sad. 
Iirc, you’ve had several people close to you die from this virus, so sending virtual to you.
NYS numbers also very good. I believe our percent positive was under 1% yesterday (reported today) with 57,000 being tested.
Only 10 deaths. Lowest it has been.
Sorry, that wasn’t the greatest writing. @roycroftmom understood my poorly expressed sentence. To put it another way, if your household member is infected, you have about a 20% (or so) chance of them infecting you.
It did. It was ignored by the administration.
My Governor (LA) announced today that we would be freezing at Phase 2, and postponing Phase 3 for 28 days.
There have been increases since re-opening, mainly in rural areas, but nothing you’d call a surge. I agree with his decision.
The way you continue to insist this is a sporting event makes it understandable as to why some folks want to see the south “get their just rewards.” It’s pitting folks against each other instead of everyone trying to work together for a win.
It’s entirely plausible that indoor vs outdoor has been a major cause of the northern states doing worse in the winter and the southern states doing worse now - each having worse results when the majority of their population goes indoors whether it’s for heat or AC. The south could benefit from what happened in the north - the shared medical advances, the knowledge about masks, and super spreader events, etc.
How about we start working together as one nation (and one planet) instead of seeing who “wins” by keeping score, esp since there’s a significant handicap against the north considering they had to use way to many of their residents as guinea pigs to figure out the advances.
Excellent decision.
That seems low.
I also think it’s unfair to compare death rates. The states/cities that were hit early had a very hard time. We were all playing catch up and the shortages of PPE and good information took a deathly toll. Your average person on the street couldn’t even find a mask back then either.
If the same level of infection hit anywhere today, exactly the same way, the outcome would be better. We have a better supply of PPE and we’ve ditched hydroxychloroquine for better treatments.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article243721007.html
"Now, new research says the number of COVID-19 cases in March may have been 80 times greater than what original estimates revealed, amounting to more than 8.7 million new cases in the U.S. that health officials and the public never knew existed.
At the time, about 100,000 cases were officially reported, according to the study published Monday in the journal Science Translational Medicine…
The team of researchers led by epidemiologists from Penn State University studied surveillance data on influenza-like illnesses (ILI) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the past 10 years, according to the paper.
Then for cases in 2020, they subtracted those that could not be “explained by either influenza or the typical seasonal variation of respiratory pathogens” from the total to count likely COVID-19 cases, the release said.
The team soon identified a surge in non-influenza cases starting the first week of March compared to the past 10 years, correlating “with known patterns of SARS-CoV-2 spread across states,” the researchers said…
They also found that cases doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed, the release said.
“At first I couldn’t believe our estimates were correct,” Silverman said. “But we realized that deaths across the U.S. had been doubling every three days and that our estimate of the infection rate was consistent with three-day doubling since the first observed case was reported in Washington state on January 15.”
The researchers also estimated infection rates for each state, which came out to be “much higher than initially reported but closer to those found once states began completing antibody testing,” the release said."
Marylands numbers today. Hospitalizations down 6. Positivity rate, 7 day average, the same as yesterday. Things still looking good. I fully expect to see a little blip in positivity at some point. Hopefully I’m wrong.