57 COVID deaths in GA today: Post-opening spike starting?

Fat hurts wrote:

Giles Corey wrote:

More than 500 physicians have now signed a document outlining the dangers of a continued shutdown. This complaint has very little to do with the economy. These doctors have pointed out the series of health problems that will continue to result from a closed country.

This isn't some grass-roots movement among doctors. It was initiated by the Trump administration.

It was widely reported a few weeks ago that the Trump administration was looking for doctors to sign on to this letter. Out of 950,000 practicing physicians in the US, they were only able to find 500 who were willing to sign.

It was widely reported? This came from the Trump admin? Any evidence to support either of these assertions.

How many doctors support the lockdown approach?

PaulG wrote:

For someone who is so obsessed with positive cases and death counts, I don’t understand why you don’t care about current hospitalization numbers. Here are the numbers from today and from April 24th when restrictions were eased and elective surgeries were allowed again. A month into eased restrictions and these numbers simply don’t line up with the gloom and doom scenario you seem to be hoping for.

Georgia hospitals as of today:

ER Beds in Use: 1,159

ER Bed Availability: 2,189

Critical Care Beds in Use: 2,032

Critical Care Bed Availability: 879

Inpatient Beds in Use: 9,956

Inpatient Bed Availability: 5,214

Georgia hospitals as of 4/24:

ER Beds in Use: 843

ER Bed Availability: 2,587

Critical Care Beds in Use: 2,329

Critical Care Bed Availability: 917

Inpatient Beds in Use: 9,169

Inpatient Bed Availability: 5,558

https://www.gha.org/News/Novel-Coronavirus/GHA-Daily-COVID-19-Update

I'm trying to do a dispassionate analysis of the data. I live in Georgia and a lot is at stake for me and my family.

I don't think we are in any near-term danger of running out of hospital resources in Georgia. So that part is not very interesting to me right now.

Georgia does not report the number of COVID patients in hostpitals, so that's not really an indicator of anything. In Georgia, you are not counted as a COVID hospital patient unless you first tested positive after you entered the hospital. If you tested positive before that then somehow you don't count.

What is interesting is the case data. It looks like we are seeing a second wave in Georgia and that has huge implications.

Giles Corey wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

This isn't some grass-roots movement among doctors. It was initiated by the Trump administration.

It was widely reported a few weeks ago that the Trump administration was looking for doctors to sign on to this letter. Out of 950,000 practicing physicians in the US, they were only able to find 500 who were willing to sign.

It was widely reported? This came from the Trump admin? Any evidence to support either of these assertions.

How many doctors support the lockdown approach?

I think USA Today qualifies as "widely reported". I'm sure plenty of other outlets also picked up the story of the leaked May 11 conference call where the plan to recruit pro-Trump doctors was hatched. It wasn't technically the Trump Administration doing it of course. It was the Trump campaign. But everything I said was basically true.

As for how many doctors support the lockdown approach, just Google any epidemiologist who talks about quarantine. There is a reason we have them. It's because they work.

The IFR will continue to plummet. Literally, no more lethal than common flu. And even Birx suspects that covid deaths are over-reported by at least 25%. This is the biggest Chicken Little moment in world history.

YMMV wrote:

The IFR will continue to plummet. Literally, no more lethal than common flu. And even Birx suspects that covid deaths are over-reported by at least 25%. This is the biggest Chicken Little moment in world history.

No evidence for this. Not even bothering to cite your alt-right blogs anymore. Just making stuff up.

Easy to disregard, though.

Latest news on Georgia.

Bars and night clubs are allowed to reopen on June 1st.

The Georgia Department of Public health finally started to break out the testing situation, reporting the total number of antibody tests included in the testing total. It doesn't backdate the data, so we will only know these numbers going forward.

After three days of this, we see that Georgia is only testing about 5000 per day for new cases as opposed to the 20,000 to 30,000 per day it was reporting earlier. It's too early to know what to make of that, but if the low testing rates continue then it will give more credence to the idea that we are seeing a major spike in Georgia following the April 24th reopening.

Fat hurts wrote:

Latest news on Georgia.

Bars and night clubs are allowed to reopen on June 1st.

The Georgia Department of Public health finally started to break out the testing situation, reporting the total number of antibody tests included in the testing total. It doesn't backdate the data, so we will only know these numbers going forward.

After three days of this, we see that Georgia is only testing about 5000 per day for new cases as opposed to the 20,000 to 30,000 per day it was reporting earlier. It's too early to know what to make of that, but if the low testing rates continue then it will give more credence to the idea that we are seeing a major spike in Georgia following the April 24th reopening.

So they were doing 15-20K of antibody testing and only 5K of new case testing? I would have thought those numbers would be reversed.

Who are all these people getting the antibody testing?

Giles Corey wrote:

Spyke wrote:

Who are the global elites? Names.

And how are they gaining more money, power, control?

What power and control are they gaining?

What are they going to do with this power and control?

The names of the Global elites? They would no be so elite of the public knew who they were, would they?

What power and control? Telling us we have to stay in our house, we cannot earn a living, we cannot assemble to protest?

What are people with power and control going to do? Whatever they effin want which includes enslaving most of us and getting rid of many of us in the excess population.

R U really this ignorant?

I'm going to have to give 8/10.

Really solid effort. Very entertaining.

Lost a few points due to lack of responses but definitely solid character acting.

It's very unclear because we don't know the breakout for previous dates. The total antibody tests is only about 15% of the tests overall. But we don't know when they started doing antibody tests or how many on each date.

So all we really know is that for the past three days the testing numbers have been really low. We will need to see if the numbers go back up.

Fat hurts wrote:

brazen2 wrote:

So they were doing 15-20K of antibody testing and only 5K of new case testing? I would have thought those numbers would be reversed.

Who are all these people getting the antibody testing?

It's very unclear because we don't know the breakout for previous dates. The total antibody tests is only about 15% of the tests overall. But we don't know when they started doing antibody tests or how many on each date.

So all we really know is that for the past three days the testing numbers have been really low. We will need to see if the numbers go back up.

Interesting. How often do you think people should get tested? Weekly, Monthly? Should people who have a low transmission risk - people who shopping with mask, go to work, socially distance, etc. - get tested at all?

brazen2 wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

It's very unclear because we don't know the breakout for previous dates. The total antibody tests is only about 15% of the tests overall. But we don't know when they started doing antibody tests or how many on each date.

So all we really know is that for the past three days the testing numbers have been really low. We will need to see if the numbers go back up.

Interesting. How often do you think people should get tested? Weekly, Monthly? Should people who have a low transmission risk - people who shopping with mask, go to work, socially distance, etc. - get tested at all?

I'm not an epidemiologist, so I can't answer those questions. But we do have experts who can.

The thing we've been talking about is the question of whether or not we are really seeing a spike in cases since Georgia reopened. The graph from the Georgia Department of Health clearly shows that new cases are now rising exponentially.

So that leads to the question, is the spike in new cases only due to increased testing? It's hard to answer that question because of the way Georgia was reporting the test numbers. Now that they are doing it right we can at least know, going forward, if the number of PCR tests is going up or down.

I've been posting these for a month or two on the big Trump thread - maybe someone will find them useful.

I only look at daily deaths, because clearly the data around case counts are fraught.

As are death counts, but less so.

///

5/29 Data

The improvement continues for another day.

7 day rolling average of daily deaths fell yet again, as it has done since peaking in Mid April.

Both US and global are at new cyclical lows.

The world number is the lowest since April 2.

US: 986

World: 4132

Only change I see in the national or US state rankings is that Mexico improved - going from 32nd worst nation per capita to 33rd worst.

Fat hurts wrote:

As for how many doctors support the lockdown approach, just Google any epidemiologist who talks about quarantine. There is a reason we have them. It's because they work.

No names? No stats?

Timothy Foyle wrote:

Giles Corey wrote:

The names of the Global elites? They would no be so elite of the public knew who they were, would they?

What power and control? Telling us we have to stay in our house, we cannot earn a living, we cannot assemble to protest?

What are people with power and control going to do? Whatever they effin want which includes enslaving most of us and getting rid of many of us in the excess population.

R U really this ignorant?

I'm going to have to give 8/10.

Really solid effort. Very entertaining.

Lost a few points due to lack of responses but definitely solid character acting.

Drop the passive voice BS and stand up like a man.

I responded to every single point.

Giles Corey wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

As for how many doctors support the lockdown approach, just Google any epidemiologist who talks about quarantine. There is a reason we have them. It's because they work.

No names? No stats?

Pick any epidemiologist who has made a statement on the matter. Pick any epidemiology text book.

You are trying to say that quarantines don't work. That's like saying gravity is not real.

But if you must have a link, here you go:

Quarantines work....for the sick, not the healthy.

Not sure what the "rooting for Ga to be wrong" crowd is looking at. This is from the NYT tracker. Today was the first day they've moved Ga into the "staying mostly the same" category, OUT of the "generally rising" category.

Why are some people soooo invested in COVID being the most devastating thing to ever hit the planet. This is what I can't figure out.

Fat - of course quarantines work, if you look myopically at one desired result, less spread. But you have to look at total costs and total benefits of a policy. And yes, we humans, since the beginning of time, include lives lost in this calculation. So looking at this quarantine, and considering the low risk to most of the population, and the population at risk is easily identified, at that point does the cost/benefit of a quarantine, for the entire population, make sense? What seems to be happening is, you all keep hoping for the costs to rise of not having a quarantine (ergo rooting for Ga, Sweden, and freaking every place else to have high death levels, and if it spreads our of the elderly all the better) and look for anything to bolster this. Thus flipping that cost/benefit equation. Why? It's borderline sick. Unwrap yourselves from being so damn invested in this disease.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavirus-cases.html

Ciro wrote:

Jurgen wrote:

Wrong, I’m an actual conservative not a fan boi of a New York real estate, reality TV conman in bed with the Kushners.

Close to 100,000 Americans are dead inside a few short months and our Vets are dropping like flies.

Yet all I see is a bunch of Cosplaytriots moaning about haircuts while real men who served die in hospitals without any real support from the right wing in their hour of need.

Stay home like Trump did in Vietnam.

A good analysis of the situation, I think Conservative America has lost its way. It has mostly been conned. Good for you for seeing through it, perhaps real conservative values will return in time.

You need some strong mental help. You've gotta be over 45 years old and an annoyance at parties. Bias much?

I am rooting for what works. If I thought that the Sweden/Trump model was going to work then I would be all for it.

If we don't defeat the virus we will never get back to a robust economy.

Other nations have proven that you can defeat the virus if you do these three things:

1) Shut it down

2) Stop the spread

3) Test and trace

But if you let the virus run out of control, you get massive sickness, death, and economic depression. That's what Sweden and the United States have done. It definitely has not worked.

If we had done the 3 steps, we'd be almost back to normal by now. Instead, the misery continues with no end in sight.