Cases rising or dropping by you?

[hsmamato2]

You're not alone. And I can remember in March when we first wore masks and "sheltered in place", and they cancelled a conference I'd planned to go to in June. my reaction was "They think we're going to be dealing with this until JUNE?

Same. They closed the parks two weeks before our planned trip. I remember thinking,"oh,they'll be open again like normal before two weeks is up."

 

[RamblingMad]

Here's my (admittedly simplistic,but maybe effective) thoughts... IF we had a NATIONAL mandate on this whole lockdown thing at the BEGINNING (before our forest fire got out of control) then the cases would have been contained better within each state. Instead, we got one state enacting laws for safety on lockdown,with a state next door doing the complete opposite,and free travel between the two. It's pretty obvious what was going to happen. Multiply by 50. SO what started mainly as an outbreak on each coast, quickly started spreading from there.
Masks? No masks? depends on which side of the line you live.... Lockdown? no lockdwon? same. I can tell you ,it was highly frustrating for me,living in that tri state area last spring,and watching so many other states choose to live like it was all a silly story that didn't involve them.... meanwhile we were locked down, wearing masks if we went out,etc etc. Our numbers are much better now than then, and the places that didn't see a major problem back then are seeing it now.
But b/c of my first (and really,only) point, Covid has been traveling around the various states,curling and winding it's way to create outbreaks where there perhaps didn't need to be any.
Would a national no unnecessary travel/wear masks, one country,one policy for safety at the beginning of this have helped? I DON'T REALLY KNOW. But logic tells me that it would have significantly reduced our problems.
All I know is this thing is contagious. Spreading it around is 100% sure to cause more harm,not help reduce cases. Even now.

The politicization of this outbreak makes this whole thing worse. Why can’t we stick to science knowing that as we learn more the science will change? Super frustrating.

I think we’ll reach a steady state where a couple hundred people die every day until a vaccine comes out. Good times.

I can’t wait for this to be over. The conspiracy nuts are out in full force on my Facebook feed.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The conspiracy nuts are out in full force on my Facebook feed.

I don't know why you don't unfollow those people for the time being? It seems like all the time you're posting on the Boards about people and their crazy talk. Why continue to read their drivel?

 

[TipsyTraveler]

I had a different expectation when this started than others here have said. I absolutely thought we were in for the long haul. In early March, I was talking to a nurse at my doctor’s office. They had just been asked to reschedule all non-essential appointments for the next two weeks; simultaneously, the local schools had been closed for the same period. She was incredulous by the “extreme” response and made a comment about being back to normal in two weeks. I replied that kids would be out of school for the rest of the year and they’d be lucky to return in the fall. She was shocked and asked if I really believed that. I said, “You don’t stamp out a pandemic in two weeks. We’re going to be dealing with this for a long time.” Then I could see the wheels turning in her head. A month or two later, after it was pretty obvious schools wouldn’t be reopening for the end of the school year, I asked a neighbor if he thought schools would manage to reopen in the fall and he looked at me like I had two heads. He couldn’t fathom it still being a problem by then. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I’ve always thought the disease would have the upper hand, at least for the first couple of years until we had time to develop effective treatments/vaccines, or it ran its course and petered out.

 

[RamblingMad]

I had a different expectation when this started than others here have said. I absolutely thought we were in for the long haul. In early March, I was talking to a nurse at my doctor’s office. They had just been asked to reschedule all non-essential appointments for the next two weeks; simultaneously, the local schools had been closed for the same period. She was incredulous by the “extreme” response and made a comment about being back to normal in two weeks. I replied that kids would be out of school for the rest of the year and they’d be lucky to return in the fall. She was shocked and asked if I really believed that. I said, “You don’t stamp out a pandemic in two weeks. We’re going to be dealing with this for a long time.” Then I could see the wheels turning in her head. A month or two later, after it was pretty obvious schools wouldn’t be reopening for the end of the school year, I asked a neighbor if he thought schools would manage to reopen in the fall and he looked at me like I two heads. He couldn’t fathom it still being a problem by then. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I’ve always thought the disease would have the upper hand, at least for the first couple of years until we had time to develop effective treatments/vaccines, or it ran its course and petered out.

It came out fairly early that a vaccine would take a minimum of 18 months. No idea how anyone was thinking we would quickly return to normal.

 

[Pyotr]

The politicization of this outbreak makes this whole thing worse. Why can’t we stick to science knowing that as we learn more the science will change? Super frustrating.

I think we’ll reach a steady state where a couple hundred people die every day until a vaccine comes out. Good times.

I can’t wait for this to be over. The conspiracy nuts are out in full force on my Facebook feed.

We have a vaccine for the flu and 60,000 to 80,000 people die every year from it. We have gone from 2 weeks to stop the spread to shut everything down until no one dies. Here in Florida where so much is based on the tourism industry, I have seen devastation of lost jobs. You should see the lines at the food banks.

I was all for the restrictions at the beginning of the pandemic. However, at this point I’m wondering if the cure is worse than the disease.

 

[RamblingMad]

We have a vaccine for the flu and 60,000 to 80,000 people die every year from it. We have gone from 2 weeks to stop the spread to shut everything down until no one dies. Here in Florida where so much is based on the tourism industry, I have seen devastation of lost jobs. You should see the lines at the food banks.

I was all for the restrictions at the beginning of the pandemic. However, at this point I’m wondering if the cure is worse than the disease.

The problem is that we didn’t have a playbook for a pandemic. And we spent decades reducing economic safety nets and reducing taxes. What we are seeing is the impact of those policies. When WDW was built in the 70s, I don’t think pandemic planning was on anyone’s mind. It really boils down to diversification. Central FL doesn’t have much opportunity outside of tourism.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I remember being in Berlin on 28th February and hearing that ITB, the largest travel trade show in the world, was cancelled for the following week. I was stunned, to be honest, that such a major event was cancelled (I was at that time in the midst of the Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival, so it was puzzling that an event being held in a few days would be cancelled)

I followed that with several more weeks of travel around COVID 'hot spots', and the day that FRA airport basically shut down I talked with several people I know well there and they were all saying 'see you in two weeks!' and that it would be good for us all to have a two week break to 'reset'.... !

It became big time real for us when the Big 12 Basketball Championship Tournament (college conference) was cancelled in my area. They were able to get one game in with fans, then the second game was announced to be without fans and before the game without fans started they announced the cancellation of the entire Tournament on March 12th. In part that was due to the mayor of the city where the events were held canceling all events with 1,000 people or more (crazy that now when you think about it it's like 1,000 people!?).

According to the local news article the economic blow to our metro was $13 million to $14 million (includes hotels, bars, restaurants and general spending while in the area). The league losing about $6 million to $7 million from ticket revenue. I have no idea how it will shake up this year (right now basketball is supposed to start November 10th). We're supposed to have the Tournament in our city until 2025 but if we lose 2 years of revenue on top of everything ugh on a purely economic level it's hard. And while I don't live in the city most affected it's in my metro--when they hurt we can hurt too.

I remember the whole "Pause for 15 days thing". Looking back it is interesting how our conversations were where it was more this "I'll see ya soon" rhetoric. It must have been very interesting for you since you were traveling around to see those abrupt changes happen.

 

[hsmamato2]

The politicization of this outbreak makes this whole thing worse. Why can’t we stick to science knowing that as we learn more the science will change? Super frustrating.

I think we’ll reach a steady state where a couple hundred people die every day until a vaccine comes out. Good times.

I can’t wait for this to be over. The conspiracy nuts are out in full force on my Facebook feed.

I agree. My postings have nothing to do with politics,I'm just thinking logic

 

[hsmamato2]

However, at this point I’m wondering if the cure is worse than the disease.

Let me clarify this...it's not. Yeah,we are seeing repercussions all over the place- but this virus is killing and damaging the population at an unprecedented rate,and that's with our efforts to curb the spread. I would hate to see where we'd be right now if no one had tried anything.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I know this was talked about before but don't remember which thread. There's been great concern on both sides (transparency and privacy) regarding where outbreaks are occurring and the names of them. My state announced today that beginning September 9th instead of just listing that an outbreak is occurring under Private Businesses or Schools or Long-Term Care facilities or previously only releasing the names when contact tracing wasn't available they will now name the place and give its location. For definition purposes my state considers an "an outbreak is defined as two or more cases associated with one known exposure."

There are some caveats--

• Active locations will be released when there are five or more confirmed cases associated to the location.
• For private businesses, the name of the business will only be released if there are 20 or more cases associated with the location.
• The information will be published weekly on Wednesdays and will include the number of cases associated with each outbreak. Presently the COVID Summary for the state is released only on MWF (it used to be daily). I wish it would go back to daily. I appreciate the information but only doing updates weekly for the information for the cluster summary doesn't seem like it would help to reduce spread as a decent amount of time has passed.

Presently according to the state there are 178 active outbreaks with 50 (the highest) of that coming from Long-Term Care facilities and 35 coming from private businesses and 23 from college/universities (colleges have been starting back as well as doing practices for sports since August).

In my county we've had Long-Term Care facilities listed as the name and location for a long time but it will be interesting to see where else this is occurring in decent numbers.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I had a different expectation when this started than others here have said. I absolutely thought we were in for the long haul. In early March, I was talking to a nurse at my doctor’s office. They had just been asked to reschedule all non-essential appointments for the next two weeks; simultaneously, the local schools had been closed for the same period. She was incredulous by the “extreme” response and made a comment about being back to normal in two weeks. I replied that kids would be out of school for the rest of the year and they’d be lucky to return in the fall. She was shocked and asked if I really believed that. I said, “You don’t stamp out a pandemic in two weeks. We’re going to be dealing with this for a long time.” Then I could see the wheels turning in her head. A month or two later, after it was pretty obvious schools wouldn’t be reopening for the end of the school year, I asked a neighbor if he thought schools would manage to reopen in the fall and he looked at me like I had two heads. He couldn’t fathom it still being a problem by then. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I’ve always thought the disease would have the upper hand, at least for the first couple of years until we had time to develop effective treatments/vaccines, or it ran its course and petered out.

I knew fairly quickly after it really started going down that we would be dealing with it for the long-haul in stark contrast to people who said "if only we just stayed home for 2 weeks we'd be done by now"..no no we wouldn't be done with the virus by now. I do give people leeway though for thinking months and months down the road and not thinking we would be still dealing with xyz.

That doesn't mean I wasn't surprised by just how quickly it all changed and just how much had changed in a relatively short time and that's more where I was coming from.

We went to our Super Bowl parade with so many people on Feb 5th. A month and a half later the entire environment changed from steep drops of number of attendees, to closures of bars and restaurants, to the mantra of "6 ft apart/social distancing", no more than 10 people in a gathering, to schools closed for the rest of the year (at least on my side of the state line), stores deemed non-essential and closed down or only allowed curbside to that we would even have a thing called a stay at home order, and so much more. March will forever be the month that had so many changes I couldn't quite figure out what day it was most of the time lol.

 

[bavaria]

It must have been very interesting for you since you were traveling around to see those abrupt changes happen.

Well to be honest it felt sometimes like we were outrunning, or following, the virus around since December. We talked about it daily, but it was just a thing to monitor, and nothing really that concerning until mid-March. When the US suddenly announced that they were closing their borders, and recalled their citizens, we saw a noticeable panic and the tone changed dramatically. Our pretty empty flight was suddenly full of Americans running to get home. Completely bizarre situation, because when we landed in Germany our next flight was full of French and German holiday makers, talking about how schools were closing, but in a totally different mood and mindset. Once things started to shut down, flying was a bit surreal.

When the time came to make a critical decision, I regret that I didn't go with our first instinct to just stay put and ride it out where we were. Had we known what we know now, it would have been a good decision.

But the messages around the world really made it seem like all flights would shut down, borders would close, and people were in grave danger. So we did what we thought was the 'responsible' thing at the time. In the end, there were still flights and we would have been fine. (However, a lot of people 'trapped' in India are looking forward to Lufthansa resuming flights to India this month as the airspace was closed and people could not get back to their homes around the world for the last many months from India, and a few other 'closed' countries)

 

[charlie.nj]

New Jersey has been doing well for a while. This is from our New Jersey news site 9/3/2020.

N.J. reports 455 new COVID-19 cases, 9 more deaths. Transmission rate increases again, to just below key mark.

“Gyms were permitted to reopen to limited indoor capacity Tuesday, while bars and restaurants will be allowed to reopen indoor dining at 25% capacity Friday. Movie theaters and indoor performing arts venues can reopen with restrictions on Friday, too.”

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020...e-increases-again-is-just-below-key-mark.html

** *****

Interesting last night I was watching the Olympic Channel on cable. It had a track and field pole vaulting event from Lausanne, Switzerland. I thought it was a years old repeat but then noticed many people in the crowd were wearing masks. So nice to see life starting to go back to normal. Excellent event it was setup in an outdoor business district. Funny just as it was ending, and the top two vaulters were neck and neck it started to get dark and they didn’t plan on it. No extra outdoor lighting setup. The crowd were all holding up their cell phone lights to try and help..lol. Great event says this old guy who used to be a track and field star in High School....ah the glory days. Does anyone have a time machine? Please.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I haven't heard much from my state but the state next to me has had a few issues over time with data dumping. It's nowhere near as bad as what occurred in FL with data dump but still.

Today the local news said yesterday the state next to me added 77 deaths to their count but only 5 of those deaths (which is still bad IMO) were from the prior 24 hours. They said the bulk of those 77 deaths actually occurred from June through August. Apparently there was a technical error which I do know they've had issues in the past and updates to what programs they use. That really can impact things just in general when you consider accurate and timely data updates. With schools starting and certain activities barred until positivity is at a certain rate and states that quarantine other states you can see how inaccurate data can impact that. This was a data issue with deaths but certainly can be the same issues with number of cases added. It also impacts how we view the COVID situation in a given area.

Also in the theme of the thread Friday the state next to me added 1,987 cases BUT 831 of that (or nearly 42%) came from one University.

 

[tvguy]

Down a hair, to the level we were at in July, so still pretty bad. Not as bad as August, but bad. And two weeks from now judging from what I am seeing of people out on Labor Day, we'll be setting new records.

 

[MamaLema]

Our city’s cases have gone up for the last 11 days. People are wearing masks and social distancing for the most part. It’s a beast.

 

[JimMIA]

Florida's new cases for yesterday were 2,564, with a positivity rate of only 5.06% For the past two weeks (except for one day when there was a huge data dump from Quest Diagnostics) the positivity rate has ranged from just under 5% to just over 6%.

In Orlando, which many of us are interested in, the new cases and positivity rates remain quite low. Only 122 new cases yesterday and positivity ranging between 3.5% to 5.5%, with the big majority below 5%. Yesterday's positivity rate was 3.71%.

Surprisingly, we have not seen a surge in cases either from WDW reopening or from UCF reopening (70,000 students in normal times). UCF has only reported 190 new cases since dorm move-in started 3 weeks ago -- 167 from about 6,000 move-in tests and 23 self-reported.

 

[disneychrista]

Our 14 day average peaked in Mid-August at 17/day. Yesterday the average was 9/day.

 

[tarheelmjfan]

I've stopped paying attention to our numbers, because I don't trust them to be accurate.