Covid And The Rest of Us

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Today Quebec reports 187 new cases, the highest since June, a lot of these are coming from an apparent outbreak from a karaoke bar in Quebec City.
Today’s jump in cases comes after an outbreak linked to a karaoke night at a Quebec City bar; 50 cases have been linked to the singing.
Hospitalizations dropped by 9 to reach 100, 20 in ICU.

School slowly started last week in the French school boards, English this week. We see closures daily for cases. We only have online options for medical exceptions, otherwise it is mandatory in person learning.

We are hearing small talk of perhaps another lockdown, yet our Premieur says he is not closing bars or thinking of stopping karaoke

5,767 people have died of Covid in this Province

I hadn't considered karaoke but I assume in most places in the States they opened when bars opened..but now that I think about that isn't that a lot like church choirs issues mixed with bar issues? I'm not sure those are the best places to be open right now

That's very interesting regarding the online vs in-person. Did they give a reasoning for that meaning making in-person mandatory?

 

[MommyinHonduras]

https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-CA&mid=/m/01n7q&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en
This is a VERY interesting chart that compares Cases-Per-Million population for every nation on the globe. I had not seen it compiled in exactly this form before. Click on a country on the map then scroll down to where the numbers are and click the “cases per million” button. It’s absolutely shocking to see how huge this problem is in the US compared to any other country on earth.

What I want is deaths per million not cases. I know our cases are very low compared to people who have had it since they only test people with severe symptoms but our deaths are pretty low. To see huge circles for Florida and Texas vs New York seems miss leading as the death rates are much higher in the smaller New York circle. I wish you could toggle between death and cases.

 

[bavaria]

What I want is deaths per million not cases. I know our cases are very low compared to people who have had it since they only test people with severe symptoms but our deaths are pretty low. To see huge circles for Florida and Texas vs New York seems miss leading as the death rates are much higher in the smaller New York circle. I wish you could toggle between death and cases.

Deaths per millions was added to Worldometers quite early on. They started adding data like tests per million etc in the spring which made it easy to compare.

It really annoyed me when a Canadian on my Cancer and COVID group said Germany was doing SO BADLY. I had to point out that Germany has 85 million people and when you compare the rate of death/million or even cases per million.....

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Re the Google info, I find it helpful for a quick search ie 'COVID Germany' in Google does a quick summary of hot spots, new cases, deaths. I'm not sure how helpful for bigger countries though.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I don’t put a lot of faith in any of the numbers. They are too often corrupted and politicized, plus medically the lines were often quite blurred.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don’t put a lot of faith in any of the numbers. They are too often corrupted and politicized, plus medically the lines were often quite blurred.

I was just posting on another thread. The state next to me had a technical error and on Saturday they added 77 deaths to their numbers BUT the bulk of those deaths actually occurred between June and August with 5 occurring in the last 24 hours (which I still think isn't the best). I mentioned in my other comment I haven't heard much from my state but these types of things really can impact things. It's one thing to keep in mind how testing was for a long time, it's another thing to have deaths and cases not accurately but perhaps more importantly timely updated. It impacts how we view the COVID situation in a given area.

The numbers are still terrible no matter what way you slice it but if you think there's all of a sudden a significant increase in either deaths or cases you'd probably want to make sure those are current cases and deaths as that would signal potential issues such as increased community spread, issues with schools and colleges, and various other places for outbreaks. Not only that but when we're looking at places (either within the U.S. or globally) how the information is presented to us impacts our impression of it. On a local level knowing that the bulk of 77 deaths didn't just occur in the last few days is important but it's doubtful you would even know that the bulk of those deaths occurred over months of times if you weren't close to the impacted area.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-CA&mid=/m/01n7q&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en
This is a VERY interesting chart that compares Cases-Per-Million population for every nation on the globe. I had not seen it compiled in exactly this form before. Click on a country on the map then scroll down to where the numbers are and click the “cases per million” button. It’s absolutely shocking to see how huge this problem is in the US compared to any other country on earth.

Deaths per millions was added to Worldometers quite early on. They started adding data like tests per million etc in the spring which made it easy to compare.

It really annoyed me when a Canadian on my Cancer and COVID group said Germany was doing SO BADLY. I had to point out that Germany has 85 million people and when you compare the rate of death/million or even cases per million.....

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Re the Google info, I find it helpful for a quick search ie 'COVID Germany' in Google does a quick summary of hot spots, new cases, deaths. I'm not sure how helpful for bigger countries though.

I'm glad you both posted these things. I really hadn't taken a look at other countries in just raw numbers and even though I'm big on context I honestly had no idea India had the numbers it had or that Brazil did and at least Worldometer shows Brazil having slightly more deaths per million than the U.S. though the U.S. still has more deaths and has more than 2 million more cases than Brazil. I know the news has talked about how South America and Latin America were considered to be alarming but that was a few months ago and I hadn't kept up on that. Peru also though it looks like they are having a downward trend at least in new cases. I just hadn't heard much at all in months and months about India I guess. I know there's been differing opinions on what people tend to focus on like deaths vs cases vs long haulers, etc but this is interesting to look around in.

 

[MommyinHonduras]

I separate the US is states to compare to countries as size is a factor to me when comparing the US to other countries.

Examples (195,000-300,000 cases range:
Germany 251,060 cases 9,401 deaths
England cases 279,459 death 36,765
Arizona 205,518 cases, 5,207 deaths
Illinois 250,882 cases, deaths 8,405
Italy cases 276,338 deaths 35,534
Turkey 278,228 cases 6,620 deaths
New Jersey 195,530 cases, 15,985 deaths
Iraq 256,719 cases and 7,422 deaths
Georgia (state not country) 265,215 cases, 5,842 deaths.

Examples (400,000-1,000,000) cases range
Spain 517,113 deaths 29,418
California 736,083 cases 13,708 deaths
Texas 663,246 Deaths 13,660
Florida 643,859 cases 11,810 deaths
India 883,862 cases, 26,279 deaths
New York 443,497 cases, 32,379 deaths

I know the big numbers of the US look well, Big, but broken down to to state size, it does not seem so much different than other parts of the world. A few countries of interest
Canada 131,653 cases, 9.145 deaths
Russia 1,025,505 cases, 17.820 deaths
Brazil 4,123,000 cases, 126,237 deaths
USA 6,620,993 cases, 188,409 deaths
Sweden 84,985 cases, 5,835 deaths
China 68,135 cases, 4,512 deaths
India 4,113,811 cases, 70,626 deaths
Honduras 64,352 cases, 2,006 deaths, we look better than China!?!

 

[mommasita]

I hadn't considered karaoke but I assume in most places in the States they opened when bars opened..but now that I think about that isn't that a lot like church choirs issues mixed with bar issues? I'm not sure those are the best places to be open right now

That's very interesting regarding the online vs in-person. Did they give a reasoning for that meaning making in-person mandatory?

I don’t think they are the best places to be open, it seems to spread like wildfire

Re: the online schooling here, they are citing lack of teachers, it’s in the courts now.https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/legal-challenge-back-to-school-quebec-heard-1.5709241

 

[lisaviolet]

That's what I was afraid of. I agree with the PP and it was my thoughts from the beginning. Nasal swabs can be hard enough to administer correctly when done through drive-thru or at the doctor's office. At home? Yipes that's just asking for issues.

My guess is it won't be nasal swabs. But what do I know. If I can't get it from two articles read, I am calling it a day.

 

[godisney14]

https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-CA&mid=/m/01n7q&gl=CA&ceid=CA:en
This is a VERY interesting chart that compares Cases-Per-Million population for every nation on the globe. I had not seen it compiled in exactly this form before. Click on a country on the map then scroll down to where the numbers are and click the “cases per million” button. It’s absolutely shocking to see how huge this problem is in the US compared to any other country on earth.

Thanks for the link. That is an interesting compilation.

The southern US states sure aren't helping the US's numbers. Not surprising, though.

 

[lisaviolet]

Oh @lisaviolet - my sides! I had to go down your google rabbit hole. Honestly, I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Snipped from a Narcity article:
View attachment 523411

Pretty easy. Oh my. I can't. I just can't with him. Notice he doesn't mention francophones in his own province. Yep, he just wants to communicate with the Quebecois. Pop over and have lunch. Do a beer run to the depanneur.

"Mes amis, vous n'avez pas de biere a un dollar?"

Both situations had pros and cons, to me.

Absolutely. Some lonely and others questioning their relationships. Interesting times.

 

[lisaviolet]

Local school boards opening on Tuesday, another on the 14th (Ontario). My friend was in for orientation for the new protocol last week
and said the rules are very strict.

No easy answers. Imagining the environment, as I listened, seemed depressing to me. But so is children not going to school, in my mind.

Teachers are going to be exhausted keeping everything in line.
--------
And one of our doctors here - who regularly updates Covid information, is not sending his children back to school. EDIT: I somehow got this completely wrong. He is deciding to keep his youngest home.

One of his interviews about schools opening up:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/national/coronavirus/2020/8/25/1_5078420.html

 

[Karin1984]

News from NL (typing this from the train back to NL after 1.5 day DLP )

- A convent of nuns has 20.000 bottles of wine left. Our national airline was supposed to buy these, but due to the lack of flights, they didn't. So now they had to be creative to get restaurants and individuals to buys these bottles
- The annual flower procession (to have a look Google: Bloemencorso Zundert) got cancelled but as this is such a big event the people working on it decided to create an exposition about the procession and all that goes into it.
- And we had the highest amount of positives since April (945 yesterday)

Today a newspaper here published an article on 6 reasons why a patient is now luckier than before the lockdown.
1. We know more every day.
2. We have medication.
Remdisivir is out, steroids are in. Finetuning treatments helped, blood plasma of recovered covid patients etc.
3. Vaccins are on their way.
It's a matter of months now.
4. Hotspots are better controlled now
As we test more and people keep our distances, small hotspots stay small.
5. Herd immunity is on its way.
And it might not be the 60% we initially thought. Swedish research (Tom Britton) says it might be good already at 43% and Belgian research (Gabriela Gomes) even quote 10-20% is enough.
6. Keeping your distance works and the majority of the population understands this.
The protests against the 1.5m society are only a handful of people. Due to this also the numbers of other infectious diseases have gone down.

 

[lisaviolet]

News from NL (typing this from the train back to NL after 1.5 day DLP )

Nice. Great picture.

- A convent of nuns has 20.000 bottles of wine left. Our national airline was supposed to buy these, but due to the lack of flights, they didn't. So now they had to be creative to get restaurants and individuals to buys these bottles

- And we had the highest amount of positives since April (945 yesterday)

(I posted on your post but this stat is sad/a shame. Hoping they are mild cases.)

Today a newspaper here published an article on 6 reasons why a patient is now luckier than before the lockdown.
1. We know more every day.
2. We have medication.
Remdisivir is out, steroids are in. Finetuning treatments helped, blood plasma of recovered covid patients etc.
3. Vaccins are on their way.
It's a matter of months now.
4. Hotspots are better controlled now
As we test more and people keep our distances, small hotspots stay small.
5. Herd immunity is on its way.
And it might not be the 60% we initially thought. Swedish research (Tom Britton) says it might be good already at 43% and Belgian research (Gabriela Gomes) even quote 10-20% is enough.
6. Keeping your distance works and the majority of the population understands this.
The protests against the 1.5m society are only a handful of people. Due to this also the numbers of other infectious diseases have gone down.

This is productive information.

 

[bavaria]

Yep, he just wants to communicate with the Quebecois. Pop over and have lunch. Do a beer run to the depanneur.

Non-COVID detour to better times:
Venice carnival is a place to meet strangers, especially as in the narrow streets one stands with tens of thousands of others, moving a few metres an hour (took me 2 hours for a route which normally takes me 15 minutes in non-carnival time)

A few years ago I had a family from France on my left, and another family on my right. French family asked family on my right in English 'excuse me, but may I ask what language you are speaking?'. Father on right says 'French!' Father on left says 'uhhhhhhh'.... Bavaria says 'Québécois' and the family on left says AHHHH!

We spent the next half hour, not moving with me saying to family on the right 'ok now tell them what is that frozen dessert on a cone?' 'What are the two days after Friday called?' and of course 'what is the worst swear word you can ever say?'.

Family on the left was stunned and we all had some very good laughs at crème glacée, 'fin de semaine', and well, you know....

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don’t think they are the best places to be open, it seems to spread like wildfire

Re: the online schooling here, they are citing lack of teachers, it’s in the courts now.https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/legal-challenge-back-to-school-quebec-heard-1.5709241

How fascinating, especially because it's the opposite in many places in the States, here the parents are fighting hard to have districts (or the states or counties depending on who is making the decisions) allow in-person and in your area it's mandatory! But truthfully y'all probably have a more concrete plan for back to school and/or the confidence level higher than here in the States on keeping a hold on the cases from schools.

What is interesting about the lack of teachers is at least in some places in the States teachers are expected to do both the in-person instruction and remote instruction so they aren't hiring a separate pool of teachers for remote in some areas. I believe some people on one of the threads mentioned it would be like the remote students log in to watch the instruction live. Which the Premier for Quebec mentioned: "We cannot at the same time have teachers teaching in classrooms, and the same teachers teaching the children who decided to stay at home. You cannot have both" so clearly that's a major difference there and in the States. I don't know how teachers will handle that if that's the route enough places go to. My aunt retired last year (thank goodness) after teaching 40+ years for 2nd graders (and then the last 2 years 3rd graders) and there's a lot of time spent trying to wrangle the kids, I can only imagine a teacher trying to teach both in-person and remote at the same time!

Then there's students do synchronous learning (where the teacher is using zoom type instruction with the students logged on live with the teacher but that teacher may or may not have students in-person just depends on how the school district is doing it) some days then asynchronous learning (where the teacher uploads coursework and the students complete it without the teacher being live) other days and whew honestly I haven't kept up with how my own area is doing it fine details. I do know there are some issues with staffing though.

It seems no matter which path you go here great concerns over the level and quality of education students have are on a variety of countries' minds.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

My guess is it won't be nasal swabs. But what do I know. If I can't get it from two articles read, I am calling it a day.

I don't blame you! Sometimes it's so frustrating how little information things given when it's typed up and submitted and you're just left wondering where the actual details are.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

News from NL (typing this from the train back to NL after 1.5 day DLP )

- A convent of nuns has 20.000 bottles of wine left. Our national airline was supposed to buy these, but due to the lack of flights, they didn't. So now they had to be creative to get restaurants and individuals to buys these bottles
- The annual flower procession (to have a look Google: Bloemencorso Zundert) got cancelled but as this is such a big event the people working on it decided to create an exposition about the procession and all that goes into it.
- And we had the highest amount of positives since April (945 yesterday)

Today a newspaper here published an article on 6 reasons why a patient is now luckier than before the lockdown.
1. We know more every day.
2. We have medication.
Remdisivir is out, steroids are in. Finetuning treatments helped, blood plasma of recovered covid patients etc.
3. Vaccins are on their way.
It's a matter of months now.
4. Hotspots are better controlled now
As we test more and people keep our distances, small hotspots stay small.
5. Herd immunity is on its way.
And it might not be the 60% we initially thought. Swedish research (Tom Britton) says it might be good already at 43% and Belgian research (Gabriela Gomes) even quote 10-20% is enough.
6. Keeping your distance works and the majority of the population understands this.
The protests against the 1.5m society are only a handful of people. Due to this also the numbers of other infectious diseases have gone down.

View attachment 524308

Love the picture! and the mask to me works with the outfit especially with having the ears Hope you had a good time out there! Our closest amusement park (about 40-45mins away but still within our metro) is closing tomorrow for the season. Normally it would have Halloween, then close again then reopen around Thanksgiving through Christmas/New Years time for Winterfest on the weekends (something started several years ago). They cited the uncertainty with respects to the pandemic for closing at Labor Day for the season. But I don't know anyone who went to the amusement park this year so not sure how the experience was. The water park next door to it never opened for the season.

Good information in your post too, the herd immunity part something I think to really keep an eye on. I feel like that has gone back and forth from is it possible to is it not possible; seems like other countries think it's possible whereas that thought process kinda went away in the States. The percentages you quoted are very interesting, I feel like in the past the numbers were listed as needing to be much much higher if herd immunity was even possible.

 

[lanejudy]

To see huge circles for Florida and Texas vs New York seems miss leading as the death rates are much higher in the smaller New York circle.

One problem with comparing “death rates” is that places hit hard early last spring did not yet have the benefit of treatment protocols. Most of the NY deaths were from the spring, while most FL and TX deaths occurred over summer. Unfortunately those early cases became the guinea pigs who gave us the more accetable protocols now in use to start treatments. If FL and TX didn’t have the benefit of NY’s experience (experiments?) with treatments, the deaths would most likely have been much higher in those locations.

 

[ronandannette]

What I want is deaths per million not cases. I know our cases are very low compared to people who have had it since they only test people with severe symptoms but our deaths are pretty low. To see huge circles for Florida and Texas vs New York seems miss leading as the death rates are much higher in the smaller New York circle. I wish you could toggle between death and cases.

Yes - my source didn't include that particular stat, which, I agree is vital. I still do find it thought-provoking to contemplate why transmissions are exponentially higher in some places than others, though. The death-rate stats make one wonder what all has contributed to the outcomes in places one assumes the conditions are fairly similar.

Local school boards opening on Tuesday, another on the 14th (Ontario). My friend was in for orientation for the new protocol last week
and said the rules are very strict.

No easy answers. Imagining the environment, as I listened, seemed depressing to me. But so is children not going to school, in my mind.

Teachers are going to be exhausted keeping everything in line.
--------
And one of our doctors here - who regularly updates Covid information, is not sending his children back to school.

He stated the combination of an elderly parent in their house and a lack of lowering of class sizes/clear protocol organization as his reasons to decline.

I do find it a very positive thing that a person with public authority has the latitude to publicize a decision like this, made for his own reasons. Not being forced to "toe the company line" as it were. Did he make this announcement in a critical way as a dire warning against the back-to-school plan though I wonder? Or more just as a suggested framework for how parents might evaluate their own situations?

News from NL (typing this from the train back to NL after 1.5 day DLP )

- A convent of nuns has 20.000 bottles of wine left. Our national airline was supposed to buy these, but due to the lack of flights, they didn't. So now they had to be creative to get restaurants and individuals to buys these bottles
- The annual flower procession (to have a look Google: Bloemencorso Zundert) got cancelled but as this is such a big event the people working on it decided to create an exposition about the procession and all that goes into it.
- And we had the highest amount of positives since April (945 yesterday)

Today a newspaper here published an article on 6 reasons why a patient is now luckier than before the lockdown.
1. We know more every day.
2. We have medication.
Remdisivir is out, steroids are in. Finetuning treatments helped, blood plasma of recovered covid patients etc.
3. Vaccins are on their way.
It's a matter of months now.
4. Hotspots are better controlled now
As we test more and people keep our distances, small hotspots stay small.
5. Herd immunity is on its way.
And it might not be the 60% we initially thought. Swedish research (Tom Britton) says it might be good already at 43% and Belgian research (Gabriela Gomes) even quote 10-20% is enough.
6. Keeping your distance works and the majority of the population understands this.
The protests against the 1.5m society are only a handful of people. Due to this also the numbers of other infectious diseases have gone down.

View attachment 524308

Lovely picture - I hope you enjoyed yourself! We spent a single day at DLP in 2018 - fresh off the red-eye from western Canada and honestly, we were so jet-lagged I couldn't even tell you what we did or saw.

One thing about your article that leaves me a little perplexed is the comments about herd immunity. Were we not just recently told there would be no herd immunity due to the emergence of verified cases of re-infection and the fact the virus can/might/will mutate? Also, here in Canada we've heard next-to-nothing about treatment protocols. No announcements whatsoever about promising drug therapies. I'm not sure why - it's quite frustrating, but good to be informed that there are treatments showing results.

How fascinating, especially because it's the opposite in many places in the States, here the parents are fighting hard to have districts (or the states or counties depending on who is making the decisions) allow in-person and in your area it's mandatory! But truthfully y'all probably have a more concrete plan for back to school and/or the confidence level higher than here in the States on keeping a hold on the cases from schools.

What is interesting about the lack of teachers is at least in some places in the States teachers are expected to do both the in-person instruction and remote instruction so they aren't hiring a separate pool of teachers for remote in some areas. I believe some people on one of the threads mentioned it would be like the remote students log in to watch the instruction live. Which the Premier for Quebec mentioned: "We cannot at the same time have teachers teaching in classrooms, and the same teachers teaching the children who decided to stay at home. You cannot have both" so clearly that's a major difference there and in the States. I don't know how teachers will handle that if that's the route enough places go to. My aunt retired last year (thank goodness) after teaching 40+ years for 2nd graders (and then the last 2 years 3rd graders) and there's a lot of time spent trying to wrangle the kids, I can only imagine a teacher trying to teach both in-person and remote at the same time!

Then there's students do synchronous learning (where the teacher is using zoom type instruction with the students logged on live with the teacher but that teacher may or may not have students in-person just depends on how the school district is doing it) some days then asynchronous learning (where the teacher uploads coursework and the students complete it without the teacher being live) other days and whew honestly I haven't kept up with how my own area is doing it fine details. I do know there are some issues with staffing though.

It seems no matter which path you go here great concerns over the level and quality of education students have are on a variety of countries' minds.

Oh my, Mackenzie, I don't mean this with any sarcasm at all but your first paragraph seems so indicative of the general US attitude, which stands in stark contrast to many other places. The words "fighting hard" seem to describe practically everything Covid-response related, don't they?

For the record, education is a provincial jurisdiction here in Canada. Each province is responsible for determining it's own path forward. School started here in Alberta last week with 3 options: in-person classes at every level from pre-school to grade 12; on-line learning led by board-certified teachers using the exact same curriculum as in-person; and "independent learning" (which is the official term here for home-schooling) which must be done according to an approved curriculum under the oversight of a school district. The choice is up to parents and perhaps the fact that there is a choice is what has kept the issue from becoming contentious.