All things COVID-19

[Stan]

shutdowns might have improved things. With new data, models are slightly more optimistic:


This site estimated hospital usage by state and country. I don't know the accuracy but the numbers fluctuate quite a bit over time;

[Tahlvin]

Our school system has moved to using a pass/fail grading system. So if the student gets a 60% or higher in the class, they pass and get credit for the class; if they get less than 60%, they fail and do not get credit for the class; either way, their GPA is not affected, but is frozen at where it was at the end of the first semester. I can understand why they're doing it, but I'm a little disappointed, because my son has actually been doing really well with this remote learning and was going to improve his GPA. But oh well. Who knows what college admissions will be like for the next few years, where they have to take into account all the remote learning that happened over this period of time.

And in other news, our state has had to close a number of the state parks. Too many people were crowding them and not observing the social distancing rules, and there was a lot of dumped trash and vandalism. Thanks a lot, assholes.

Finally, the first of my clients has indicated they may have to pause the project I'm working on for a few months, meaning no hours from them for those few months. They only represent a few hours a week of my time, and I can make that up with some of my other customers, so it's no real loss for me. But a few of my fellow consultants are working with them full-time, and it will mean they don't have any income for a few months.

[Stan]

Taiwan, who has as much contact with China as anyone, has had a total of 6 coronavirus deaths. They took decisive action in January. That's some serious organization.

[Phoebe]

Yeah! I was reading a thing about how they did it and I guess they learned a lot of lessons from the SARS outbreak. It basically took years of implementing a systematic public health plan and infrastructure. Good to know that this is possible when you try!

[poorpete]

Hi all, hope y'all ok. Part of the reason I haven't posted in a while is I tended to post most on my work computer and my work laptop I didn't have my sign-in here. So I've been lurking the past month, but will try to participate more, now that I've sync'd some of my stuff.

Anyhow, so much to think about on this, one thing that comes to mind is how fleeting reassuring statistics reassured. The "look, the majority of the cases and deaths are in China", the "your more likely to die from the flu" is all false just one month later. Now you hear governors a few days ago saying, "look, we're not New York" as if somehow the virus is special to only us, and not that it happened to spread quietly before other places and with no federal assistance. And sure, when over half the cases nationwide were from our state, sure. But a week later that percentage is now 20%.

Not all stats are fleeting though. The one stat that matters the most, until anti-virals have more success and until a vaccine comes, is the curve. And I saw a headline from Slate saying we shouldn't be obsessing over the curve, but the curve is one of the few things citizen can control, and one of the few signs of success we'll see.

That said, unless we begin mass testing of asymptomatic people, I feel the curve will have a long and tall tail, as the virus slowly works its way through essential workers who cannot distance themselves.

I still think a good US goal should be that we'll all be able to celebrate July 4th together. By then, mass-testing, or a larger quarantine, or a game-changer could happen. Could. Otherwise, it's hoping this will go away by pure luck. And luck has given us nothing.

Yeah. People are like "we're unlucky". I feel it's more the absence of luck. The entire federal strategy until mid-March was "if we're lucky it won't come here". Not winning the lotto is not bad luck.

Micronesia is lucky.

Or not. Ok, rant over, back soon. Good luck everyone.

[Phoebe]

Not winning the lotto is not bad luck, lol, exactly. Yes. It's exactly what we'd expect.

What's happening in South Dakota is a microcosmic case in point. The state had low numbers, a fairly flat curve, a low population spread out across a wide area. But then you had a tiny outbreak in one business that handled it poorly, and suddenly it becomes a hotspot affecting thousands, in a state that has systematically underfunded its public health resources particularly in rural areas. But big yay, at least they don't pay any income taxes there.

I'm disturbed that we are this far into it and testing is not more widespread. Testing and protection for health care workers is only happening where I am because local institutions took it upon themselves to come up with a way to manufacture gear and provide drive-thru tests. There must be lots of silent uncounted cases - what the public really should be seeing is a chart of the number of total deaths over time in each state, tracked alongside the tests per million and the cases and deaths known to be from covid. Deaths are normally pretty regular and predictable. It is upsetting to compare across states that have better and worse systems of testing. Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts make an interesting comparison set - different rates of tests per million, different overall known cases and death rates. Do you think Detroit is even equipped to process the number of deaths and identify which ones could have been from covid? Meanwhile the deranged reactionary DeVos-funded weapon-toting little crowd there wants to overthrow the governor so they can all congregate in public again. Freedom, baby! I guess this is what the kingdom of Calvinist soldiers looks like, and it is exactly what I would have expected.

[DMDarcs]

Stay in place has been extended until May 15. Mrs Darcs has been told to start taking sick days and vacation time for the next 2 weeks, and will then go down to quarter-time employment. As of 8 PM tomorrow, we are all supposed to be wearing masks out in public. Any hope I've built up so far has been crushed, and I can't move off the couch.

[akiva]

[DMDarcs]

It happens. I'm just hoping that things will start to return to normal.

[akiva]

I had to deliver groceries to my father-in-law this morning (he's got severed COPD, so he can't do much for himself). I drove past a 7-11, and saw a whole lot of day laborers. It must be incredibly tough for them right now. A lot of people in my neighborhood, I think, are day laborers (or just a step or two above that); I wonder how many of them will be forced to move because they can't get work.

[Stan]

Yea, the gig economy is working as intended by its creators. Companies can freely drop workers with no consequences and all the risks and costs are on the workers.

[Tahlvin]

San Diego Comic Con has been canceled. I would expect GenCon to cancel before too long.

[Phoebe]

The light and the heat.

[Kyle]

[Eliahad]

I might go pick me up a bottle of that there Chlorox-iquine. I hear it's legit.

[poorpete]

Helpful when all photoshops have already been made, so a simple google search returned:

[akiva]

I have 105 students. On Thursday the 16th, they got their first real assignments from me--2 things, due yesterday. Twenty-nine of them turned in neither. I'm not sure what the counts is for those who turned in only 1, but it's a lot higher.

[Mike]

[akiva]

[Kyle]

That's so dumb. Kids don't need to do school right now. Texas' rule is that they're offering assignments and classes, but they're not mandatory.

The idea of failing kids for not finishing "remote assignments" during a quarantine is so ridiculous. The idea that kids are going to be permanently damaged by missing 8-10 weeks of classes is even more ridiculous. Kids and parents that want to do this? Great. Special needs families that want to do this? Great- and you better be providing the services necessary. Families that don't want to do this? Don't make them do it.