I don’t think it would have affected what is happening now.
South Carolina governor says he will not lift restrictions until Covid-19 is under control
From CNN’s Hollie Silverman
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he will not lift restrictions on nightclubs, concert venues, theaters, auditoriums, spectator sports and other venues until Covid-19 is under control in the state.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got to follow the rules,” McMaster said at a news conference. “This is a dangerous, deadly disease, you’ve got to follow the rules. Wear your mask.”
He said that a majority of the new cases are among people under 40, particularly those age 30 to 35.
“They feel completely healthy yet they can be completely infected,” McMaster said.
Rates of infection for that age group are “just going up, up, up,” he said.
Despite the higher case counts, McMaster said that he will not mandate the use of masks.
“We cannot mandate. It is ineffective. It is impractical to have a mandate and everyone wear a mask because it is not enforceable and for me to tell us that we’re going to require people to wear a mask, and then not be able to enforce it gives a false sense of security to those who believe that everybody is following the rules,” McMaster said.
The numbers: South Carolina on Friday reported the highest number of people hospitalized in the state, Director of Public Health Dr. Joan Duwve said at the news conference.
There are currently 906 people hospitalized with complications from coronavirus, the largest number the state has seen, Duwve said.
At least 1,273 new cases were reported Friday, bringing the total to at least 30,263 cases and 694 deaths statewide, Duwve said.
Hospitals are currently at 75% capacity, South Carolina National Guard Adjutant General Major General Van McCarty said at the news conference.
He said if hospitals reach 80% capacity statewide, they will deploy the surge plan. McCarty added that they will reduce elective surgeries if needed to help with capacity.
“Our preference would be to keep patients in a traditional hospital. We will look to use the alternative measures we’ve talked about as only a second measure,” McCarty said.
“Turner added that he’s working on a “wall of shame” for businesses that are caught not following the governor’s new order.”
Apparently he has never heard the phrase ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’.
Governor advises county in Southern California to reinstate stay-at-home order
From CNN’s Cheri Mossburg
Gov. Gavin Newsom has advised Imperial County’s health officials to reinstate its stay-at-home order, he announced in a news conference.
Imperial County has a coronavirus positivity rate of 23%, with a case rate of 680 in the past week. The population of Imperial County is approximately 181,000.
These rates are well above state thresholds, said Sonia Angell, the state’s health director. The state guidelines are a case rate of 100 and a positivity rate of 10%.
More than 500 patients have been transferred out of Imperial County in the past five weeks, the governor said, and reinforcements from the state, including 44 National Guard members, have been sent in to assist.
More details: Imperial County lies just east of San Diego along the borders of Arizona and Mexico.
Some drivers of the uptick include US citizens returning to the states to seek health care, the California Department of Public Health said earlier this week.
The governor said “it’s too early to tell” if the high number of cases in Arizona are a contributing factor to increases in Imperial County, but a “deep dive” study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is underway to look at that data.
Imperial is one of 15 counties under what Newsom calls a “watch list” as concerns mount in the state.
Can’t link, because it’s Twitter, but a guy named Rich Davis, a lab director at a microbiology lab in Washington, did a simple test to see whether masks would stop droplets from coughing, sneezing, singing and talking.
He held an agar culture plate in front of his mouth, to test whether the mask blocked droplets from sneezing, coughing, singing and talking, with and without a mask (so that’s 8 plates of agar). Then he tried coughing for 15 seconds, with and without a mask, with the agar 2, 4 or 6 feet from his mouth (6 more plates of agar).
Then he let the cultures culture.
None of the plates where he was wearing a mask showed any bacterial culture growth. The one plate where he wasn’t wearing a mask, but the plate was six feet away, showed a little bit of growth. All the rest (no mask, not socially distanced from the agar) showed a lot of bacterial growth. Sneezing was the worst; the agar was covered with bacterial growth. Coughing was bad too, singing and talking less bad.
This is no proof that masks work. The coronavirus is a virus, not a bacterium. Maybe the coronavirus spreads almost entirely by aerosol rather than droplets. But the simple demonstration is certainly suggestive evidence that masks help.
They are going to revisit it every 2 weeks.
This is great news. Hopefully the vaccine works!
Looking at the data for the DC metro area, I think you would be hard pressed to say that the protests caused a meaningful spike. The numbers of new cases have largely been flat/declining for the last couple of weeks.
My little county (pop ~200K) has had single digits of new cases for most of the last week.
We move to phase 3 next week and it will be interesting to see what happens.
Wondering about Arizona. They closed up at the beginning of April and re-opened beginning May 15. Is it possible that they weren’t closed long enough to lessen the blow of Covid? Our state was pretty shuttered for about 2 months…not 6 weeks. And our reopening is in stages very gradually.
AZ seemed to be very much on the rushed side.
I’ve also heard that the lines to be tested in the Phoenix area are hours long. We should be much more efficient by now.
In my county in PA, all nursing home residents and staff must be tested by July 15th, or at least that’s the date at the facility my parents live. I’m hoping the surge in cases in my county is related to that testing, since we have a lot of nursing homes. A friend who lives at another facility in the county said their testing found 5 asymptomatic residents in their nursing home. Up to this point that facility had only experienced positive cases in staff, and that was months ago.
Don’t recall who, but a while back someone here predicted that the fallout from the maskless at the protests and riots should show up sometime around the last week of June.
Since only a few states (along with a few chickens that were too speedy to be caught) opened early, can we assume every state that looks to be bumping up bought and paid for it by pretending the protests were non-infectious events? Unlike funerals and worship?
Only asking because I doubt Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc. are going to be alone long in this. Could be wrong but there are suggestions of upticks in states other than PA.
Evidently it’s going to sweep. Just hoping the fatality rate continues to drop.
You mean they are testing the entire population of the nursing home for the first time, now? I thought that in the northeast this had already been done. I assumed staff was being tested weekly. It’s been months now…
A lot of the cases in my Wisconsin county have been linked to people going to bars. Few have been linked to people going to protests. One big difference between the activities: rate of mask wearing.
Yes, that’s correct. And I share your sentiments.
I got an email from a local restaurant and they are being very careful with reopening.
I’m impressed. Especially with that last bit about fixing the broken restaurant business model
Here is something to (hopefully) lighten up the mood and make you smile.
A pandemic world through the eyes of an 11 yr old comics artist. 
Alaska’s largest city is making public face coverings mandatory
From CNN’s Andy Rose
The mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, issued an order Friday requiring people to wear face coverings in public.
The order will go into effect at 8 a.m. Monday morning local time.
“Unfortunately, not enough people are practicing the distancing needed to keep the curve flat, so we have a choice between doing nothing, hunkering down, or masking up,” Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said in a statement.
Anchorage has experienced a significant increase in new cases over the past week, according to the city’s health department. Officials say some of the cases come from non-residents who are in the state as seasonal workers in the seafood industry.
Months into the pandemic, a number of US states are still reporting their highest daily rise in new cases
From CNN’s Jennifer Henderson and Jamiel Lynch
At least six US states reported their highest single-day jump in new coronavirus cases on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University:
Georgia: 1,900 new cases (state total: 72,995 cases and 2,770 deaths)
Tennessee: 1,410 new cases (state total: 39,444 cases and 577 deaths)
Utah: 676 new cases (state total: 20,050 cases and 166 deaths)
Idaho: 283 new cases (state total: 4,865 cases and 90 deaths)
Florida: 8,938 new cases (state total: 122,960 cases and 3,366 deaths)
Arkansas: 678 new cases (state total: 18,740 cases and 249 deaths)
South Carolina also had its second-highest one-day jump on Friday.
The latest White House coronavirus briefing has health experts worried
From CNN’s Andrea Kane
On Friday, the White House coronavirus task force held its first public briefing in two months – but health experts expressed concern afterward, saying Vice President Mike Pence offered little guidance for the country.
“This is a sad moment,” epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant told CNN. “In all the modeling we did, in all the projections, we never modeled a federal government that didn’t take charge, that didn’t have a strategy. It’s really disheartening."
The US recorded more than 40,000 new cases on Friday alone, and infection rates are going up in more than 30 states, forcing several to dial back their reopening efforts – which Pence didn’t address in the briefing.
"This is the all-time high we’ve had since the beginning of the pandemic and we squandered five months,” Brilliant said.
“What I worry about now is the Fourth of July,” he added. “We had Memorial Day; three or four weeks after that we had a peak in cases. Two or three more weeks from now, we’ll have a peak in deaths.”
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, warned that the US was “still just in the very beginning of the pandemic.”
Only about 5-7% of the US population has been infected so far, he said, and herd immunity would require about 60-70% be infected. “So, when you think about all the pain, suffering, death, economic disruption we’ve had, think about how much more we have to go,” he added.
“The latest White House coronavirus briefing has health experts worried
From CNN’s Andrea Kane”
“On Friday, the White House coronavirus task force held its first public briefing in two months – but health experts expressed concern afterward, saying Vice President Mike Pence offered little guidance for the country.”
Opening remark at yesterday’s presser by the VP:
“We have made truly remarkable progress.”