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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of October 19
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Boston Public Schools is suspending all in-person learning as citywide coronavirus rate climbs
I've seen plenty of other individual school closures in the news but this is the first large city-wide pivot back to remote in the US that I'm aware of (if I'm wrong on that please let me know).
To avoid quarantining students, a school district tries moving them around every 15 minutes
In desperate attempts to not have to close again, schools are looking for any loophole that will help them stay open. The example in this article is particularly flagrant, but this kind of "rules lawyering" is rampant right now, but usually in more subtle forms.
I was looking into information about Boston and found something really interesting:
Apparently COVID is detectable in wastewater, and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority has been running tests on the greater Boston area. The data is available here, which is pretty fascinating on its own, but it also shows an alarming spike at present. Standard COVID testing shows that Massachusetts is already trending upwards, and it's possible the wastewater data shows that they might be in the beginning stages of another outbreak (this is pure conjecture on my part though, so don't take it as anything more than uneducated supposition).
I know of at least one other example of this fact being used, back in August there was this WP article about Arizona State using sewer water testing to catch outbreaks among the returning students.
The Boston wastewater data updated yesterday and pretty much confirmed that the slight upward tick from before wasn't just noise.
I really wish we had this data for other cities/areas as well. It seems like wastewater data would be a good early indicator of spread, given that it doesn't have the built in delays of testing (e.g. time to result, as well as people waiting to test until they are symptomatic). I worry for Boston that what we see on the wastewater chart will soon be reflected in Massachusetts's testing data. I also wonder how many other places might have this same thing happening right now but we just don't know about it.
CDC has now updated their guidelines to make it clear that this idiocy won't fly.
An epidemiologist explains the new CDC guidance on 15 minutes of exposure and what it means for you:
All 62 residents at Kansas nursing home have COVID, 10 have died
It is worth it to go to a gym in the East Bay Area? I was working out consistently from Nov 2019 until the lockdown and businesses closed. As a result I gained the Covid 15 and have not been able to lose them.
Wondering if I should just force myself to do some BWF or find a gym and do some heavy lifting like I was before.
For anyone else wondering, apparently BWF expands to “body weight fitness.”
This has worked for me + walking/running. Lost ~25 lbs. in lockdown, so far (I could probably lose ~5-10 lbs. more, max). I'd suggest investing in a pull-up bar and a kettlebell.
Thanks for the advice there is a park less than 100 meters from my house so I may start using the BWF equipment there.
I'll actually just got my kettle bell in the main today. I ordered it so I could just do some lunges/squats with some extra weight
The US reported their highest daily new-case count ever today, with 83,010. The previous highest was 76,842 on July 17.
The large majority of the states are back into the "Where new cases are higher and staying high" section on the New York Times tracker.
Things are getting Real Bad in rural parts of the country, which previously may have thought themselves to be isolated enough to be at low risk.
Panhandle of northern Idaho, for example: Kootenai Health 99% full, may be forced to transfer patients to Seattle or Portland
Idaho county drops mask mandate despite warning of overwhelmed hospital
This is a quote from someone on the public health board:
edit: found an NYT interactive with graphs and maps showing much the same thing
In particular, compare this map of rural counties that are being hit the hardest with this one showing current temperature (in Fahrenheit, here's the same map in normal units) (both screenshotted from DarkSky)
Pretty clear correlation - cold rural counties are getting hit hard, presumably because everyone's forced inside. No one wants to eat outside in below-freezing weather.
This makes me...not terribly optimistic about winter as it descends on the rest of the country.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823b17327b2bf1d4
Looking pretty, that map. Red, btw. indicates that a district is exceeding the limit of 50 cases in the last week/100k inhabitants. That is the limit for when additional measures will be put in place. Dark red indicates > 100.
Patience now. Batten down the hatches, don't freak out. Let's see what the measures of the last few weeks will achieve. Good thing I don't have to leave for anything but groceries.
From reddit this morning: ‘Mini-lungs’ reveal early stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection
Lol...this is... interesting.
I'm not a brave person so I would never be an early adopter of such a contraption, but I actually like it and would not mind if it was a thing.
Having that on your shoulders doesn't look comfortable, but I would wear it for Halloween.
Peter Zeihan - A geopolitical strategist view of the possibility of a Vaccine and Coronavirus.
Coronavirus - The Best Case Scenario (2:12)
The "Not Good" Case Scenario (2:07)
Coronavirus - The Bigger Picture (3:37)
Coronavirus - Looking Ahead (6:27)
The social experiment of reading US friends living in Sweden continue.
As they are heavy consumers of liberal media from the US they see lack of mask wearing as some sort of selfishness, cruelty or idiocy on the non-wearers part. So when no one is wearing the masks they are literally freaking out.
At the same time people who are Swedish freak out about them, as the reactions they have: often pointing out people or posting photos of groups of people outside their window - are seen as worse and directly inhuman or fire-and-brimstone-puritan by looking for individual guilt (the focus they all have of the bureucrat handling the covid recommendations from a research perspective is sort of telling - but fed at the same time by the Swedish media who see foreign press conferences and want to replicate them here - but in this case with someone who has no control over what is and isn't done: Anders Tegnell).
The end result as of right now is that the Swedes seem to do what we do when we think someone is behaving irrational. Ignore them. So many of the people from the US have noticed that their Swedish friends stop commenting or being a part of their social media presence, and some shared Swedish friends have mentioned that they have stopped following them on social media as they are being irresponsible or in one example called "cruel and inhuman".
Its fascinating as both groups live in the same area, but not in the same place. The area they exist in is defined objectively but the place is defined differently depending on what news you read or media you consume.
NZ has 25 new Covid-19 cases today - 23 at the border, two related to port worker
Fewer than 4% of adults in Wuhan, China, tested positive for antibodies against COVID-19, putting the possibility of countries developing "herd immunity" against the virus without a vaccine in doubt, according to an analysis published Friday by JAMA Network Open.
The study: Seropositive Prevalence of Antibodies Against SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China
Delta has banned 460 anti-maskers