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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of November 9
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!
Usual personal update:
Two weeks ago I called the shot, saying that "schools in the US aren't going to be able to stay open". I'm unfortunately here to retract that -- not because it isn't true (it is) but because it's not nearly as true as I was intending it to be.
Two weeks ago I saw no way that we could stay open due to quarantine requirements; now I don't see any way we can close. The interpretation of the guidelines has been eroded so far that even a confirmed positive case pretty much only yields a quarantine for that individual child. That's it, and nothing more. It doesn't matter that they spent six hours a day sitting in the same room next to the same students including unmasked time for eating lunch. As long as they were six feet away from everyone, then nobody is considered "close contact" and therefore no one is at risk. Problem solved!
It's clear that we've simply given up on trying to fight this the right way. We're addressing a spreading fire by turning up the radio to drown out the smoke alarm.
The US surpassed 10 million cases today, and has reported over 100,000 new cases every day since last Wednesday. There are at least 8 cases in another White House outbreak as well, including Mark Meadows, Ben Carson, and David Bossie (who were all present at the White House election results party).
Another new record for daily case count in the US, with 130,989 new cases today, while the number of people currently hospitalized by coronavirus also hit a new peak of 61,964. Hospitalizations previously approached 60,000 in late April and late July, but this is the first time above that mark.
Utah governor declares emergency, issues mask mandate: ‘We cannot afford to debate this issue’
New Zealand has suffered 7 isolation breaches in 3 months now—somehow we've got lucky for most of them and they didn't cause any wider community transmission, probably in line with the Pareto-esque qualities of COVID-19's spreadability—superspreaders overwhelmingly are the problem, and in appears many people don't spread the disease at all.
It's becoming increasingly obvious if we want to maintain our COVID-19 free status for any reasonable length of time border work needs to be a live-in job, or we need to start using our military bases to isolate returnees to the country.
Pfizer stated they contacted the Brazilian government to give us a chance to acquire the vaccine and we didn’t even answer.
Today Bolsonaro said he’s happy some Chinese vaccine was not approved by our version of the FDA. The reason? The vaccine was made in collaboration with the Instituto Butantã, in São Paulo, and São Paulo’s governor openly opposes the president. Bolsonaro basically said “fuck the dying people, I won this round!”.
Edit: Bolsonaro (a trumpist) also hinted at the idea of an armed conflict with Biden’s America. Yeah, right... as menacing as a two year old threatening a grown man.
Passenger Aboard First Cruise Ship to Return to Sailing in Caribbean Tests Positive for COVID-19
now five people, out of 53 passengers and 66 crew
Well that turned out not so well... A childhood friend and his girlfriend visited my hometown six days ago. I haven't seen him in decades and we decided "well we're gonna meet somewhat Covid safe".
They where drunk, I got drunk - hugs etc happened.
Turned out that his girlfriend probably had the rona while here, so they called the second it happened to tell me (covid is kind of like getting an STD in that regard) and now I am in self-isolation.... gah!
AND since I am such a nervous hypochondriac AND middle aged everything already kind of hurts each morning and the second I read the symptoms to my husband I told him "Well this is a normal fekking monday for me!" and now I have - in my mind - covid and probably some kind of extinct plague too (also may have a yeast infection, scurvy and perhaps the mumps).
But since I don't know I will have to stay isolated for a week plus...
Bah!
Texas becomes 1st state to surpass 1 million COVID-19 cases
Tomorrow, or perhaps Friday, California is going to become the 2nd state with 1 million cases
Here in Washington, we had yesterday what was described as an "urgent" press conference with the state Dept of Health and local health officials.
They announced...nothing that we didn't already know. Things are bad, cases are going up. Everyone should wear masks. Stay 6 feet apart. And so on.
When they opened it up for questions, just about every media question was some variation on "is there going to be another lockdown / other increase in restrictions, how soon might that happen, what specifically would trigger one, what would the restrictions look like", etc.
Their answers were basically that we're heading in the direction of needing that, but they don't want to do it, so they're hoping everyone will comply voluntarily and make formal restrictions unnecessary.
They did...basically this exact same thing back in March. It didn't work then and I'm disappointed that they didn't learn from it.
Chicago Mayor asks residents to cancel Thanksgiving plans and stay indoors as Covid cases rise
[...]
Michigan governor made similar remarks yesterday: https://www.radio.com/wwjnewsradio/news/local/whitmer-urges-michiganders-not-to-gather-for-thanksgiving
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak tests positive for Covid-19
N.J. bars, restaurants must close indoor service by 10 p.m. under new COVID-19 restrictions, Gov. Murphy to announce
Boston's wastewater was looking better for a brief moment, but it's back on the rise now. Also if anyone knows of any other wastewater data that's being aggregated and shared elsewhere, let me know.
Six weeks after the city and county of San Francisco reopened restaurant dining rooms, cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed by 250 percent, city officials say. That’s why, as of 11:59 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 2020, restaurants will be required to shut their indoor dining operations down again, and to revert to an outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery model for an unknown period of time.
Here in the EU, Hungary fared quite well thru the 1st wave, but 2nd wave is hitting here very hard. Daily counts are now up around 5000/day and still rising (compared to 1st wave, where our worst one-day count was <300).
Yesterday, the govt announced a broad set of new lockdown restrictions for the next month at least (they will re-evaluate in 2 weeks) ... including 8pm-5am curfew, masks required in all public spaces, no large gatherings or events, restaurants, salons, gyms shut down, most schools going virtual ... all the good stuff.
Maryland Gov. Hogan cancels family Thanksgiving plans due to COVID-19; instead, he’ll have dinner with just his wife
Elon Musk has tested positive... and negative, and is being a bit weird about it on Twitter, as you might expect.
This actually makes me less anxious, so, thanks.
San Francisco pauses indoor dining and school reopenings. Contra Costa, Santa Cruz counties slide backward to more restrictive tiers
President Trump Delivers an Update on Operation Warp Speed
This might be another minor update with him blathering on about how great he is and other ego stroking press news conference.
*interesting he is using a sign language interpreter
with $1.95b investment from federal government, Pfizer's covid vaccine "will be distributed to front-line workers, the elderly and high-risk Americans immediately"
Vaccine will be available to general population by April
Yes, it's not an investment, but it's a very large purchase order. (Pfizer didn't want an investment from the US government because they come with too many strings attached.)