I’m home alone and kind of miserable, but am willing to pay that small price if it reduces the death toll. It looks like Minnesota’s efforts might pay off!
When Walz issued the two-week stay-at-home order, the goal was an 80% reduction in face-to-face contact and viral transmission.
Modeling by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests this is working. Deaths so far haven’t been increasing in Minnesota at the expected exponential rate, prompting the institute to lower its forecasted COVID-19 deaths in the state from around 2,000 two weeks ago to 932.
“We’re seeing the impact of these measures and how early they are” put in place, said Ali Mokdad, chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington.
Meanwhile, a bunch of states with Republican governors are dragging their heels and killing people. That’s what happens when you belong to a party that ignores the data.
Dang, I’m surrounded by three of those states, Iowa, North and South Dakota. When will you guys learn: don’t vote Republican, ever.
FYI, the state of Minnesota’s COVID-19 website that went up a couple of days ago is well done and worth bookmarking.
https://mn.gov/covid19/
Also, Governor Walz has been doing an outstanding job dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, even while being in quarantine himself. Credit where credit is due.
Your noting that surrounding states with Republican governors aren’t matching Minnesota’s efforts reminds me of someone’s post last week that different states having wildly varying quarantining and social distancing policies (btw, just look at Georgia’s decision to reopen beaches today!) is like having a peeing section in a public pool. Minnesota’s effectiveness won’t necessarily be hugely undermined by those states (depending on what kind of travel restrictions are put in place), but it certainly won’t help.
We locked down early here in Oregon. It looks like as long as we maintain we will not run out of beds. I think a lot of it is due to the Oregonian’s natural tendency to obey social rules. It was a bit of culture shock when I first moved here to see people standing in line for beer, but that instinct and that obedience for the good of society actually helps and works.
Also just have to mention the University of Washington’s excellent corona virus tracking web site.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Curious how your state is doing? It’s all in there.
I read somewhere that it’s the republican-controlled states that make up the former south that all delayed telling their citizens to shelter in place and mask up. So, they’ve literally wiped out a bunch of their more stupid republican constitutents. It’s not evolution in action, it’s just normal corruption.
@3 kaimatthews
Yeah, over here, Oregon, Washington and California are doing better than Idaho, Nevada and Montana. Nevada and Idaho are looking real bad right now. Idaho has always had a lack of hospital beds and Nevada should have shut down Las Vegas a month ago. They only issued a “Stay@Home” four days ago. COVID-19 is going to hit Vegas hard. It may as well hopped off an airplane and screamed “PARTY TIME! We’re in Vegas baby!”
Doing the right thing saves lives — US Navy, please take note ! (Besides relieving Captain Brett Crozier of his command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt of his command, both the USNS Comfort and Mercy are nearly empty apparently due to excessive / confusing admissions procedures (last I checked).†)
The orange hair furor won’t take note, understand, or even listen. Related, from from the article poopyhead referenced in the OP:
As an aside, another State doing well but probably surrounded by eejits — Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, and Arizona, albeit also by Colorado & Mexico — is New Mexico. They also have what looks like a fairly sensible site, 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).
† In contrast, e.g., here in France, high-speed TGV trains have been outfitted as rolling intensive-care hospitals, and are being used to transport critically ill non Covid-19 patients‡ from heavily-impacted parts of the country to less-impacted areas, freeing up ICU beds &tc, in those heavily-impacted areas. Furthermore, this is a pre-planned contingency plan, actually tested last year, in case of a serious emergency, including (but not limited to) a pandemic.
‡ Some reports imply Covid-19 patients are being transported; that is very probably sloppy reporting, unless there was a change of plan since the first TGV hospital was deployed. There seems to be more than one TGV hospital now in operation, albeit I have been able to locate a precise number, or even confirmation.
If only COVID-19 would selectively kill Trump supporters…. I guess the Republican governors are doing the best they can to make that happen.
Today’s Chicago Tribune had an article showing projections based on different habits.
The expected peak of the first wave is around the middle of April. There is second, smaller peak projected for June or July depending on how well people maintain social distancing. Yes, it does work. More testing would make the projections better.
I can’t begin to tell you, but for us we could drop the “kind of” part of that. There are three of us in this house, plus a dog. We all have our psycho-emotional issues…we haven’t been in continuous therapy for 3+ years for nothing. The stress is through the roof.
To add to everything, it’s been raining so it’s gloomy and cold outside. Working in the garden or going for neighborhood walks isn’t pleasant. That looks like it will end mid-week.
To think we’ve got at least a month more of this…at best. Although California and in particular the Bay Area is doing pretty good with slowing the rate, I suspect it will be June/July before restrictions start easing.
At least we each have a room of our own so we can get some separation from each other.
@9 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
That graph is from the same University of Washington study I was on about. Seriously, check out the original source material.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
I can’t stress enough how good it is.
@10 robro
Sorry to hear the rough time. I’ve been occupying my new spare time trying to keep my friends who for one reason or another suffering from one type of mental illness or another. I just seem to attract the type. Whatever. I make sure to check in by phone to try and brighten their day in these dark times. Stay safe OK?
Ray Ceeya, the last projection in my cited article is from COVID Act Now.
robro@10, My (admittedly informal) understanding is having a room of your own is a good & helpful strategy. I hope you are able to talk to (or otherwise keep in contact with) others. Please stay safe!
On the rain &tc, at least for me, spring here in S.France is a nice time of the year: Not too hot, still few tourists / visitors, … albeit increasingly less rain. I admit to kind-of liking rainy days (that was true even when I lived in the San Francisco area); locally, it’s the Mistral wind which blows me ’round the bend, so to speak.
I’m not thrilled with being in lockdown myself, but understand the reasoning and am following the regulations. Fortunately, I am able to do interesting things (most of which I’ve wanted to do for some time, but never seemed to get around to doing). I haven’t even started in (yet?) on my pile of unread books. What I cannot do is pop out for a dead-tree nespaper and beer or lunch, and the outdoor markets are closed (so besides shopping for more at a time (to limit my trips out), I’ve had to adjust where & when I shop). ;-(
I suppose I should be “happy” I neglected to get my bicycle serviced & repaired during the winter, else I’d be staring at it all the time and wishing, wanting, to get out! France, spring, bicycling, Mediterranean coast, …
Meanwhile over in Europe, UK recorded Covid-19 deaths today exceeded those of Italy for the first time. There was absolutely no need for this to happen, as the UK got crucial extra weeks to minimise the death toll, and wasted them, thanks to Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson and his Steve-Bannon-equivalent, Dominic Cummings.
@13
But the earlier graphs are from UW IMHE. I’ll add COVID Act Now to my list though. Seems like solid data.
Well, we didn’t learn after we (the SD electorate, in this case) tried to rein ‘em in with an ethics initiative and the jokers blew it off.
The state barely has any Democratic Party offices operating—they may not have one left open anymore.
@PZ, blockquote fail on the last two paragraphs of your posting, I think.
KG @ #15 — The NY Times is reporting that BoJo has been admitted to hospital for COVID-19.
robo@19, Johnson’s hospital admission suggests virus may have progressed:
It is not currently known which hospital he is in, or if it is even an NHS one.
@#9, Nerd of Redhead:
Thanks to a relative in Illinois, I looked up some information there, and it looks superficially like suburban Cook County* (not counting the 4 suburbs with their own separate health departments — Oak Park, Skokie, Evanston, and Stickney) may have peaked already, at least for the time being — the number of new reported cases has declined 4 days in a row, twice by significant amounts, to the point where it seems likely that the trend is downward even taking pending tests into account. Of course, the doesn’t mean there aren’t unreported cases, but still it’s nice to think that maybe the lockdown is having an effect. [Source (Official Cook County tracker)]
*For those not currently or formerly in Illinois: Chicago is in Cook County, but there are several layers of suburbs around the edges which are not part of Chicago. (And also several counties of suburbs further out, like DuPage and Will.)
Including Chicago and the 4 extra suburbs, Cook County has 8728 of Illinois’ 12262 currently reported cases (as of April 6), or a little over ⅔ of the total, and of that, the region covered by the link above contains 3250 cases, or approximately ¼ of all cases in the state, so although it’s geographically insignificant it’s still a hefty chunk of the outbreak within state borders.
(New confirmed cases in Chicago are also apparently down, but the city’s official report — which is here if you want to look; you can get a graph of new cases by day via the Full Report link — hasn’t been updated for April 6 as of now, and from the need to include the text “Does not reflect pending tests” in the chart it sounds like they have a lot of pending tests.)
People not used to reason rather than opinion and facts rather than spin have trouple understanding geometric growth and the need to deal with it early while numbers are low.