29 Replies to "CORONAVIRUS: Friday 7/24 roundup"

• flimflam July 24, 2020 (10:33 pm)

  ugh. lots of new cases and hospitalizations.

• psps July 25, 2020 (1:14 am)

  Inslee better get on the stick and nip this in the bud by repeating the lockdown. Just as predicted, the foolish rush to reopen effectively wasted the first one.

  • Smittytheclown July 25, 2020 (6:47 am)

    I’m sure the riots helped too. 

    • oakley34 July 25, 2020 (11:25 am)

      Clown indeed.

    • AMD July 25, 2020 (11:57 am)

      As you’ve been told before, if protesting were a major driver of infection rates, there would be a consistent correlation between places with large protests and spikes of infection.  Instead we’re seeing MAJOR outbreak in places like Mississippi and Florida which had relatively small protests and declining numbers in places like New York and Minneapolis where there were massive protests alongside ours.  Stubborn insistence on a narrative in the face of facts isn’t helping anyone.  I’m grateful to live in a state that used facts to make decisions about public health issues, rather than rhetoric.

    • Jamie July 25, 2020 (12:02 pm)

      Numerous studies have have investigated this and found no evidence of transmission at protests. People who are protesting are outdoors and nearly 100% are wearing masks. The far more likely explanation is the large crowds of people partying in close proximity withoiu masks at Alki, holiday backyard BBQs with lots of families, and people dining in busier restaurants – especially those with indoor seating.

    • Math teacher July 25, 2020 (12:57 pm)

      @Smittytheclown – Any time or place that people are sharing air, there is an opportunity for virus transmission, so, sure, it is possible that some people have caught or will catch the virus while protesting.  But the data is really, really showing that the increase in cases has been driven by disease transmission in areas of our state that have NOT been experiencing protests or riots. 

      • JMS July 25, 2020 (4:01 pm)

        Unfortunately, there has been isolated incidents of some
        people spitting/sneezing out loud at others. Two months ago, a car passenger
        opened his window and sneezed at me and took off laughing which I expressed on
        this blog then. Just yesterday, a bicyclist spat on the back of my neck as I
        was crossing on the crosswalk towards Blue Moon Burgers on Alki. He was wearing
        a brown top/orange pants and peddled fast looking back at me. I
        wished I had wings so I could fly over him and poop on him. Both incidents
        happened on Alki. So cruel! 

    • 22blades July 25, 2020 (8:38 pm)

      Anybody going to a protest is masked way better (out of necessity) than most people on Alki.

  • heartless July 25, 2020 (11:41 am)

    Yes, PSPS, all those states clamoring for re-opening resulted in a huge wave of cases.  If only science could have predicted this!  Sigh.

    Of course we still get Trump supporters parroting our president’s idiotic and false message that protests (or Mexicans! — always useful to blame Mexicans if you’re Trump or one of his mouth-pieces) are to blame.

    Factcheck.org recently debunked those claims, pointing out nobody has any evidence that protests caused significant increases in infections.  If you know anything at all about science, you know it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative, but in this case, well, I’ll quote from what they found:

    “Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, told us in a phone interview that he was concerned about large groups of protesters in close quarters screaming and chanting, and in some cases hit with tear gas that would make them cough — things that can contribute to virus spread. But the feared spike in infections never panned out, he said.“There has been no evidence that protests led to a significant increase in infections,” Adalja said.While there have been some cases that have emerged among law enforcement in particular, he said, “It hasn’t been very big.” Any increase, he said, “has been minimal, at best.”“It really hasn’t had a significant impact on the increases we’re seeing in certain states,” he said.

    Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch concurs.

    “To my knowledge there is no evidence that the spike in cases can be attributed to protests,” Lipsitch told us via email. “While I and other epidemiologists have noted the likelihood that some transmissions would likely occur at protests, my understanding is that when testing facilities were opened for those who had been at large gatherings, positivity was very low or even zero among those who came — probably because the protests were outdoors and largely masked.””

    (I added bold to highlight portions)

    So what is to blame?  Trump and his idiotic push towards reopening.

    Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/07/trump-wrongly-blames-protests-mexico-for-covid-19-spread/

    • Smittytheclown July 26, 2020 (3:01 am)

      Fantastic!Open Century Link to 60,000 masked football fans then!  

• BelMom July 25, 2020 (10:30 am)

  Free lunch and pantry items also available at WS High School north entrance weekdays 11-1.

• Math teacher July 25, 2020 (12:59 pm)

  I should remember to refresh the page before posting a response. I really appreciate all the other posters who had already pointed out the error in Smitty’s repeated sharing of his biased thought process.

• Greg Sprinkles July 25, 2020 (1:50 pm)

  It’s illogical to blame reopening in an hysterical manner unless you think it’s feasible to stay completely shutdown until there’s a vaccine (which is clearly not possible). How long countries were shutdown is proving to be irrelevant.

  Many countries are starting to see spikes after beginning to reopen. Japan, a relatively small island country that was one of the best examples of doing everything right, is seeing record new cases daily. Spain, France, etc are also seeing rising cases. As we get more and more data, it seems apparent that shutdowns do nothing other than delay the inevitable spread of the virus, which makes the shutdown strategy completely pointless.

  https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/07/42a830919b34-coronavirus-outbreak-latest-july-23-2020.html

  • Math teacher July 25, 2020 (2:18 pm)

    Delaying the spread is not pointless.  Delaying spread of this disease allows the medical system to not be overwhelmed. Delaying infections means that there is more understanding of the disease, more time for development and evaluation of treatment strategies, more availability of masks and other protective equipment, and so on. 

  • psps July 25, 2020 (2:26 pm)

    Nobody is recommending “to stay completely shutdown until there’s a
    vaccine.”  What does have to be done is “to stay completely shutdown” 
    long enough for the virus to diminish enough to be a relatively minor
    threat.  The vaccine can come later.  Without available hosts to infect,
    viruses die out.  Polio and smallpox were no different.

    All the countries having spikes, including Japan, re-opened too soon. It’s described in the very article you linked.

  • KBear July 25, 2020 (9:05 pm)

    …and Greg Sprinkles his virus around some more, along with a dose of misinformation… It’s selfish people like you who will make it take much, much longer to get back to normal. Because you only care about your normal. 

  • 22blades July 26, 2020 (4:38 am)

    “relatively small island country”… That’s funny. FWIW, it’s the size of California with 126 million people versus California’s 40 million. Quaint island…

• heartless July 25, 2020 (2:28 pm)

  “As we get more and more data, it seems apparent that shutdowns do nothing other than delay the inevitable spread of the virus, which makes the shutdown strategy completely pointless.”

  Uh…no.  You are terribly and dangerously wrong.

  Perhaps you have heard the phrase ‘flattening the curve’ bandied about?  If not go ahead and look it up. 

  And if you need an example of why that is so important, look at today’s New York Times discussing a small county in South Texas:

  “The county’s infection rate of about 2,350 per 100,000 people is far higher than in more populous parts of Texas, including Houston. The county’s single hospital cannot handle the crush of Covid patients, and ethics committees have been formed to help determine which patients should be treated and which should be sent home to die.”
  -NY Times, 7/25
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/world/coronavirus-covid-19.html

• me July 25, 2020 (3:56 pm)

  Wow, I can’t read the article because it’s blocked but why are they sending people home to die rather than sending them to another hospital? And we cleared 200 new infections again today, so what we’re doing so far isn’t enough. We’ll probably get another set of restrictions next week if not an all out shut down but I’m guessing it will just be more restrictions.

  • Gwen July 25, 2020 (5:04 pm)

    They’re at the point of medical triage—having to make the wartime decision of who lives or not.

    • StoneBuddha July 25, 2020 (9:34 pm)

      Nuanced, but according to both articles (NYT and Star-Telegram) the panel is meant to determine, of those who are going to die, who will die in a hospital (assuming with some sort of palliative care) and who should die at home cared for by their families. It doesn’t read like they are sending patients home who still have a chance at recovery. Again, nuanced, as I’m sure there are a lot of issues involved even with these decisions. For me, it would be crushing to think someone was beyond recovery, who actually wasn’t. 

  • datamuse July 25, 2020 (6:20 pm)

    They’ve been doing that, but the places they’re sending them are running out of capacity as well. This article has some details: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/coronavirus/article244443257.html

    • me July 25, 2020 (9:37 pm)

      Thanks Data, that’s unsettling. I hope we can prevent this from happening again.

• flimflam July 25, 2020 (5:20 pm)

  so, anyway, any more room on Alki for me?

• Mj July 25, 2020 (7:01 pm)

  AMD – the protests are a contributing factor.  They opened up the hypocrisy of the stay at home order, City/State contractors allowed to work but small fry homebuilders shut down.  The government pressing the 6 feet spacing yet when it was being openly violated notta from electeds to encourage maintaining spacing.  

  • AMD July 25, 2020 (8:37 pm)

    MJ, saying something is a contributing factor doesn’t make it so no matter what non-sequitur you follow that statement with.  If you didn’t care for the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order, that’s your prerogative, but your prerogative doesn’t change what epidemiologists are saying are and aren’t contributing factors to the current uptick in cases.

• Mj July 26, 2020 (8:26 am)

  AMD – are you saying not one corona virus case can be attributed to the protests?   If not the protests are indeed a contributing factor.  

  • heartless July 26, 2020 (3:32 pm)

    MJ:

    Nobody is saying that “not one corona virus case can be attributed to the protests”. 

    What the professionals ARE saying is that the protests have not resulted in increases in the general population.  And it is that metric that we care about–overall numbers of cases in a population.

    It is important you understand that distinction, because otherwise we are just talking past each other.

    Once again–at a population level, scientists have looked and looked for protest-caused spikes and have not found them.  These are scientists who thought they’d find increases due to the protests–looked really hard for increases due to the protests–and they found nothing.

    It’s up to you whether you believe in science and the scientific method–but if you do, you really got to go with what the scientists have been saying…  And if you don’t, well…

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