COVID-19 Continues Its Surge In Texas and Florida
California closes indoor restaurants, movie theaters and all bars statewide as coronavirus cases rise, CNBC
“Newsom said the state recorded 8,358 new cases on Sunday. The state’s positivity rate, or the percentage of all tests returning positive, has ticked up to 7.4%. “The data suggests not everyone is acting with common sense,” Newsom said at a press conference Monday. California hospitals also reported an increase in the number of coronavirus patients, growing 28% over a two-week period, he said. There were 6,485 people hospitalized with Covid-19 as of Sunday.”
Florida shatters US record of single-day Covid-19 cases, CNN
The Florida Department of Health reported 15,299 new Covid-19 cases Sunday, the highest number of new cases reported in a single day by any state since the coronavirus pandemic began. The previous record — also set by Florida — came on July 4, with 11,434 new cases reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The test positivity rate in Florida is 19.60%, according to JHU statistics.
Houston leaders call for lockdown as county reports more than 27,600 active coronavirus cases, CBS
Houston leaders are calling for another lockdown as the number of active cases of the coronavirus in the county increased to more than 27,600 on Sunday. Houston’s Harris County — the most populous county in Texas — has been the hardest-hit in the Lone Star State. “Not only do we need a stay home order now, but we need to stick with it this time until the hospitalization curve comes down, not just flattens,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo tweeted Sunday. “Many communities that persevered in that way are reopening for the long haul. Let’s learn from that & not make the same mistake twice.”
If we’d just done this right back in April, we probably could be where Germany is now in terms of case count and death rate. We’d still probably have travel restrictions to avoid imported cases, but we’d be re-opening in safety rather than potentially shutting lots of stuff down again 4 months in.
Yes, hindsight is always 20/20. It we had just locked our borders to all foreigners and make them quarantine like Taiwan and New Zealand did we would be in even better shape.
BTW the death rate in Germany (cases to deaths) is 4.5 percent while it is only 3.9 percent in the United States.
Their Covid death rate per million people is about one-fourth that of the US.
They will catch up as the virus continues to spread out unless they lock their borders and quarantine travelers entering the nation. Only two things will stop it, it will burn itself out like it did in New York City where commuters spread it quickly or when a vaccine is developed. The problem with slowing the transmission rate is that it’s only local and you get re-infected from outside when you let up as is happening in Texas, Florida and the west. It’s practical on islands like New Zealand and Taiwan to limited travelers but much more difficult for countries with land borders.
COVID has no reservoir hosts. If we can stop transmission for two weeks it will die out. Sealing borders does no good for us when we have more cases than any other country.
No reservoir host we are aware of in the United States at this time. Your strategy is sound in theory, but as with all strategies there is the challenge of implementation. First, two weeks is just the period when symptoms appear in the percentage of the population they appear in. it is not know how long the virus actually lasts in humans. In some cases it takes months to recover.
The second challenge is testing. The United States has not been able to import enough of the critical elements from China that are needed for testing. You would at the end of those two weeks need to test everyone to see who has the virus still in their system and who doesn’t. Then you would decide if you want to keep the lockdown longer or separate out those who have it and quarantine them longer.
What has thrown the real curve at the medical community is that unlike the flu, SARS and MARS this virus is able to be transmitted without the individual showing any symptoms. Indeed, it appears a good portion of those carrying it never show any symptoms or only mild ones which means you only see the tip of a very big iceberg with reported cases. A sample study by the New York health department seem to indicated that less than 10% of those infected were counted as cases because of testing being limited to only those who were the most sick from it. An earlier study in California showed similar results. The ability of this virus to hide itself by not showing sickness is probably why it’s initial A strain was able to travel from Yunnan where the closest bat strain is to Wuhan without being picked up by the medical community until it mutated in Wuhan to the B strain.
The way both political parties are using it for politics, as your post illustrates, also isn’t helping matters in controlling it. Nor is the dependence of the United States on China for Pharmaceuticals and PPE. Taiwan and New Zealand were successful because they aren’t torn apart by politics, had fewer transmissions and were able to lockdown until their borders were sealed. Taiwan also learned hard lessons about China with the SARS that caused them to react long before anyone else. The jury is still out on Germany and other countries in Europe if they have controlled it or if it is building strength for a second larger outburst. Again, the lack of reagents to allow near 100% testing is the issue.
Look at the number of active cases in Italy, Germany, France, Austria. Spain, Norway, Thailand, South Korea, New Zealand. every modern country except the US. Even countries that were initially severely affected like Spain and Italy implemented effective controls on transmission and rapidly reduced the number of cases.
https://www.worldometers.in…
The President has repeatedly belittled competent scientific advisors, claimed the entire pandemic was a hoax perpetrated by his political enemies, encouraged his followers not to follow effective precautions. The US has had the most incompetent response to the pandemic of any modern country. As a physician who who has seen far too much death and struggles to save even a single life, there is no excuse.
Big Business, and Anti-Science only carries you so far until reality lands on you like a ton of bricks.
Some hoax.
There are no more than a dozen cases. it will die out soon.
Sadly, the governors let the horses out of the barn far too soon and I don’t see them putting them back in. Deeply disturbing.