Just google ICU beds Arizona. Newsweek has an article saying it’s getting to 80%. Perhaps they’ll cite where they are getting the stats.
It’s at a point where one no longer can be confident if the news, the stats , the stories. Each of us should get as much info as possible and then process it individually to come to own conclusions. The situation in Arizona has no known effect on me currently, so not something that has much impact on my daily doings.
Texas, as a whole, may not be looking bad, but parts of Houston are on a watch list. Even there, Houston is a big city, and where one is in it can be of significance. If you have a kid at Rice, you are right near “hospital row”. What is valuable info would be how that is specifically impacting those who live in that area.
Things might be good, “overall”. But like the actuary who has his backside on fire while he has his head in the freezer, ummm, that his temperature situation is good “overall” is not the issue.
I have close contact with medical staff at a DC area hospital that was just about shut down because they closed all non Covid units. Not quite sure what was going on there. Close friend from college lives in Montgomery county, and to her, the situation for those who have medical issues was problematic (like her elderly parents), and now getting better.
You mean the mistake of having 10 million people living very close together, in winter, and a federal government telling them there are no tests unless you have a direct connection to China- causing the virus to spread unknowingly through public transport, etc?
luckily now there is plenty of testing and no other state that is in question right now has the density of New York.
Is there any clarity anyone has on the sources of these outbreaks in Arizona? Are they happening on reservations? In the city? In nursing homes? This is the kind of information that is needed to help inform the public of what’s going on. Generic numbers don’t say what’s causing the spread.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: In case anyone wonders, OneMoreToGO2021 has not been permanently banned. He may post again beginning on August 13. He has gotten a lot of warnings and notices from three moderators since he registered on the site in February. He will have a second chance in August.
Great news on Maryland! Do you feel good about the Stay at Home orders that were implemented in March and April? Do you think that helped “flatten the curve” in Maryland?
AZ…not just in reservations, and not just in nursing homes etc.
There is real concern that the %ages have increased substantially even IF they seem to be lower than other places.
AZ doesn’t have areas that are as densely populated as the northeast or other metro areas. Simply put…people are much closer together in NYC living wise than in any city in AZ.
I haven’t read this…but they should be concerned about their senior population. Lots of folks retire there. In addition, they need to get this under control or the snowbirds might just decide to deal with winter. This will significantly affect the economy in AZ.
They already have lost significant Convention business, and the MLB training season. Their arts organizations are shuttered.
I don’t know the specifics about Arizona, but the hospital that my D works at greatly expanded their ICU capacity during the height of the pandemic. Number of ICU beds will hopefully expand in Arizona too.
Northern Arizona is what worries me. My youngest went to college there and medical help is not very available, especially for emergencies. Getting to Phoenix can take 2 or more hours, and by then, things can be dire. Hospital beds per capita is low. I imagine Texas is similar. Easy to be in Houston, very hard to be in Marfa or anywhere in the western half of the state.
I posted a short paragraph from yesterday’s JHU Center for Health Security. Here is a snippet–
“…Multiple outbreaks in different locations – including congregate settings such as nursing homes, meat packing facilities, and prisons or jails – are contributing substantially to these totals in numerous states. Many of these states were not hit particularly hard early in the US COVID-19 epidemic, but they are now exhibiting increasing incidence that corresponds temporally with decisions several weeks ago to relax social distancing and permit increased social interaction. It is still a little early to identify any increased transmission related to Memorial Day holiday gatherings or protests against racial or social injustice in the US or other countries…”
I get a little frustrated with the reporting. Is this (in AZ for example) community spread amongst the general public? Or is Arizona having its turn with the virus running wild through its most vulnerable populations & settings-- the long term care facilities, the jobs with many employees + challenges to prevent infection (meat packing plants), prisons…
Illinois was deep in SIP while the virus got into long term care facilities and accounted for a large % of hospitalizations and deaths. According to the IDPH site, 3433 deaths among residents of long term care facilities out of a total of 6260 deaths in the state.
Also, it’s important to remember, in context, when NYC/NYS/NJ/MA surge began. It happened before we knew the importance of masks and social distancing or even large gathering - like the Biogen conference in Boston, for example.
Every state has that information now, so these surges really shouldn’t be happening, but they are. They are happening now because of throwing caution to the wind and not following what we know works. It is that simple.
NY didn’t get it’s numbers down to best in the country from the worst numbers in the country by luck or wishful thinking. And it’s why, now that we have started slowly reopening, we must follow the numbers extremely closely and keep doing all the things we know that reduces the spread of the virus. That means being as diligent as we have been since PAUSE went into effect. It means not going back to what was normal before CV-19 reared it’s ugly head.
I agree that it is dire. I am a teacher and care greatly about my students and all young people. All deserve a top rate education. It was harder to teach online than in person. I couldn’t see facial expressions as well or lean over to see their work, etc. There is a lot that helps teachers know what we need to cover in more or less detail and depth that is harder to achieve remotely.
I think that if the statistics I have read are correct, our school could lose multiple staff and students and I don’t think that’s something most in that town are OK with and feel is a lesser of two bad choices.
I think most things I have read regarding predictions of the virus have been quite accurate up to now. All predictions have to look at how well other things happen. If testing, contact tracing, quarantine, is up and running appropriately, if hospitals are overfilled (will cause more deaths), if people are social distancing, if we stayed home, if there was compliance with staying home, if mask wearing is a high % of the population (and if people manage to cover their mouths and noses), etc all make a huge difference. So, there are enormous ranges in what people predict. And the better we do, the more it will look like the precautions were not needed because we won’t end up on the top end of the predicted possibly numbers.
I hope that we are able to keep as many things open as possible and won’t have to ping pong back and forth between things open and closed until the vaccines are out. I also hope very much that the various treatments that are said to block the virus will be widely released and cut down on severe complications and fatalities.
I think the best thing we can do is look at the most expert of people’s opinions and use them to guide what we should be doing. I also think the more controlled the virus, the more able our schools to open, and the better our economy will be.
I’m reading that there are large sectors of students who are going to lose a year of academic advancement and even go backwards. Sadly, they were those who were already behind in this regard.
I live in an area as where the Participation and completion numbers are abysmal. Internet is spotty enough that teachers are seen spending a good deal of time in school parking lots to get WiFi that they aren’t getting consistently at their homes. And they are the elite in this scenario. It took nearly 2 months after the schools closed to get chrome books to the kids, and getting them operational and connected to schoolwork is not working well. The school packets that are being distributed with the lunch packs litter the parking lots and fill the trash cans. A lot of these parents have a lot more Immediate serious problems than their kids not getting those school worksheets done. Even picking up the food is problematic since parents have to have the kids with them, and many families have no cars.
I am hoping that back to school here ameliorates the fall out. The fact of the matter is for many students, the bulk of learning happens in the classroom.
Though in this specific post, I’m looking at families living at, under, close to poverty level, those aren’t the only kids. My DH has a horrific childhood when it came to any parental guidance due to dysfunctional and destructive situations happening, and he and his siblings say that the academics were strictly at school. They hardly got homework done—which showed in their grades. A loss of a semester or quarter of school would have been a major academic set back. All of them failed at least one grade of school, though only one ended up repeating.
Arizona posts some detailed information about hospital space on the AZDHS Covid dashboard. Includes available beds, ICU beds, ventilator usage, number of total patients, number of Covid patients. There’s a tab for overall hospital metrics and Covid specific metrics.
Agree that students who are already behind are at risk of falling even more behind.
Seems unlikely this particular school district would be able to afford all of the extra costs associated with opening according to CDC guidelines…more busses, smaller classes which require more teachers, PPE for staff and students, enhanced cleaning practices requiring more labor and supplies, etc.
Have they announced their plans yet for Fall, or do they at least have a process underway for determining options?
It gives graphs, by state, of a lot of the measures I’m interested in: deaths, hospitalizations, cases, tests, each of them as total, as new per day, and as new per day smoothed to a 1-week average. And it gives cumulative, daily, and smoothed daily positivity.
Looking at Arizona, I see that for the last week, the average positivity has been a shocking 18%, and it’s been going up every day. Except for yesterday, testing has increased during this time.
Total hospitalizations have been going up 1% per day. That’s sustainable for a while, but we can have the worry that a number of the thousands of new cases identified this week are going to end up in the hospital next week.
But what if we were to learn the surges are happening in long term care facilities or amongst the most elderly patients in assisted living?
Is that necessarily tied in tight to state-wide SIP orders or restrictions? Or could it be some states are having a really hard time keeping the virus from blowing through certain populations and facilities?
I posted upthread that Illinois had 3433 deaths in long term care facilities out of a total of 6260 deaths in the state. That is a shocking statistic to me. I would have had no idea if I had not have looked it up on the IDPH site.