@Parentof2014grad frankly, I think Arizona is there.
@CountingDown I’m so sorry.
I guess it depends upon what you consider dire. I think the modified k12 school arrangements discussed on the school in the fall thread are far more dire than any virus statistics.
Losing a substantial part of the public school population to dropping out of education has consequences
“If/when other states find their rates of infections increasing, they can learn lessons on what not to do and hopefully have better outcomes.”
I’m very sorry about your aunt, @CountingDown.
@CountingDown, so sorry for your loss.
Re the surge in California the LA Times reports
“We’ve ramped up testing in an extraordinary way, nearly hitting our goal that was set for August — not June, not July, but August — of getting to 60,000 to 80,000 tests a day,” [ Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services]said. “We’re already knocking on that door, averaging in the mid- to high 50s over the past few days across the state.”
Instead [of raw numbers of cases] , officials are closely monitoring two metrics: the positivity rate, which is the proportion of people who have tested positive out of all those who have been tested, and the daily number of hospitalizations. A rise in the former could indicate an uptick in community transmission that’s taking place separately from increased testing. A rise in the latter could mean that more people are becoming seriously ill, possibly jeopardizing the ability of the healthcare system to deal with the influx in patients.
So far, California’s positivity rate has continued to trend downward, and hospitalizations have remained within the range of stability, Ghaly said Friday.
L.A. County has seen similar trends, with slight declines in both the positivity rate and number of hospitalizations, Barbara Ferrer, the county health director, said Friday.”
So I hear a lot of dire talk about Arizona. I guess I’m just not seeing the data supporting it.
Are there more cases? Yes.
Is there increased testing? Yes? (Will most certainly show more positive cases)
Are the positivity numbers rising? I’m not sure I don’t see that data graphed.
Hospitalizations are not rising at all with rising cases. Looks like from the graph they are falling
Deaths are falling also. I understand there’s some lag there.
I’m just not seeing the dire issues. Cases are going to fluctuate by number of tests and who is tested. Hospitalizations will fluctuate by who gets admitted. A valuable statistic is ICU beds used. Is there a graph of that?
I keep hearing on my local news that total coronavirus cases continue to rise. Well, duh, we have more cases everyday, it’s going to rise until it’s completely eradicated.
I still don’t see anything shocking happening in Arizona. I think all states will end up going through peaks and then rebounds. What will affect the timing of these is many things. Population density, travel, geographic location, rules, compliance rate. In the end all states will go through their own individual situation on their own timeline.
From the article:
I’d call this a huge surge. There has been some discussion apparently about setting up field hospitals in tents. Are they nuts? It’s HOT this time of the year in Phoenix. They have a convention center with AC, and college gyms with AC. What’s the matter with using those facilities?
Good numbers out of Maryland again today.
Positivity rate down another 0.18%
Hospitalizations down another 37 to 799.
I certainly feel like Maryland is moving in a good direction. I am glad we were allowed to start opening things a month ago. I am glad we are now opening more.
I agree. There’s still time before school starts to see how things develop, but for states where Rt is less than 1, if schools don’t open to in-person instruction, they aren’t following the science at that point. Of course I do understand the additional cost issues associated with opening and hope more fed aid is coming.
@MarylandJOE , Friends of ours who are doctors in Arizona say that ICU beds are exceeding the 75% mark. Record number of hospitalizations, and they are concerned about staffing issues. That’s really where it hurts, when there is insufficient hospital staff. You can set up beds in a tent, a garage, wherever, but you cannot get the trained people and the protocols to follow. They are personally moving their elderly parents who has been in quarantine elsewhere, looking at hospital capacities. They are not concerned about him getting COVID19. He has other health issues that they say are not going to be adequately addressed in Arizona if any problem arises.
When ICU, contagious disease, and other acute care hit certain levels, it causes crises in a lot of other areas. NYC fell into that. I’m well familiar with the now infamous Elmhurst hospital. Anyone whose care was primary there during NY’s peak with COVID19 was not going to get much care there.
We knew so little about all of this several months ago. Easy to judge in hindsight. It seems to me that with the issues that went wrong back then, the governors have a better handle of what numbers trending have what potentially dire consequences.
One of the issues with covid is that the ICU stays are much longer than for typical ICU patients.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/coronavirus/articles/icu-recovery.html
Regarding Arizona:
“It’s a vicious cycle. That’s why the public health community was so alarmed when a major Arizona hospital system warned this week their ICU units were filling up and ventilator use had quadrupled since mid-May.
Arizona looks like the likeliest candidate to become a new Covid-19 hot spot. The state’s new Covid-19 cases are up more than 200 percent over the last two weeks, according to the Covid Exit Strategy dashboard.
Some of that spike is probably the result of more testing. But what’s so concerning is that the positive test rate is also increasing at the same time, up from less than 8 percent at the end of May to nearly 14 percent now. As I wrote earlier this week, that trend “suggests the virus is actually spreading, not just that more tests happen to be finding more cases.” In new cases per million residents, another means of measuring whether spread is getting worse, Arizona has the highest rate in the country.”
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/12/21288090/covid-19-coronavirus-us-cases-update-texas-arizona-florida
Also from the same article:
“Arizona might be the most extreme case in terms of worrying trends, but at least six other states share a similar profile:”
“Arkansas (cases up 113 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, current hospitalizations up from 64 on May 10 to 181 on June 10)
Florida (cases up 87 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, the state does not report current hospitalizations)
North Carolina (cases up 62 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, current hospitalizations up from 442 on May 10 to 780 on June 10)
South Carolina (cases up 93 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, the state does not routinely report current hospitalizations but there was a reported recent spike)
Texas (cases up 53 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, current hospitalizations up from 1,626 on May 10 to 2,153 on June 10)
Utah (cases up 126 percent in two weeks, positive test rate increasing, current hospitalizations up from 93 on May 10 to 130 on June 10)
“This is not a second wave. These places are experiencing their first significant upswing in Covid-19 cases because they had constrained the virus by adopting stay-at-home orders and other distancing measures before their outbreaks grew out of control. Early research suggests that lockdowns have significantly suppressed Covid-19’s spread.“
The experts have been remarkably ineffective in predicting the course of this virus. As of today, Texas is 39th in per capita COVID cases, so I will worry more about the 38 states ahead of it right now.
So sorry for your loss, @CountingDown.
Poking around on the internets, I found this: https://covidactnow.org/us/az?s=48058
Good charts on trends, including icu beds, by state. AZ looks scary, TX not so much.
Thanks for this site! It has more info on PA than I’ve found on our own site. I have no idea if their predictions (or anyone else’s) will be accurate, but I love the up to date current info, esp since I can get it at the county level.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Deleted several posts - people are heading down a political, snarky road. Please watch what you write. Thank you.
Death statistics for a few of the states we’ve recently been discussing:
# Deaths Deaths per 100,000 residents Total State Population
New York 30,758 158
California 5,003 13
Arizona 1,156 16
Florida 2,925 14
Texas 1,957 7
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/
We should be spending more time focusing on what is contributing to the low rates of death in CA, AZ, FL and TX and making sure they don’t replicate the mistakes made in NY.