COVID 19 Facts and Science

I wanted to start a separate topic that I want to use to share factual information and news related to our pandemic.
I choose to get my information from the U of M CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) website. This a a large panel of experts in infectious disease in order to develop policies for this exact situation. I find the information they put out very valuable for those of us that try and get our information from the mainstream media. There is a a lot of poor information being circulated in the media and some of it is flat out misinformation and/or disinformation.

Here is a recent podcast that highlights the importance of making decisions on good data. Dr. Michael Osterholm examines some of the current news and provides some input about what it really means vs how the media wants to perpetuate the information. He touches on masks again and discusses the recent news around how the CDC claimed that asymptomatic transmission was reported to not be significant. Its long but well worth it.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-11

Sounds like it may finally be coming down a little in Mn. Hopefully that trend continues.

Definitely coming down in MN but about 14 other states are showing some concerning increases.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/puerto-rico-14-states-see-record-covid-19-cases

In the past week, 14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever 7-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, the Washington Post reports. The increases are being fueled by rural outbreaks in southern and western states, many of which were quick to reopen on or around May 1, when national physical distancing efforts officially ended.

According to the Post, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have all seen their highest case counts since the start of June. Many of the outbreaks come in towns and communities with fewer than 60,000 residents, a stark contrast to the first wave of the US pandemic, which saw the virus burn through major cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Detroit.

The Texas Tribune says that state’s 14-day trend shows a 71% rise in cases, with hot spots in prison and meatpacking plants. State officials said mass testing, especially in prisons, has bumped up case count. Yesterday, 1,935 Texans were hospitalized for the virus, the most recorded in the outbreak.

Per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker, the country has 1,971,302 cases and 111,620 deaths.

biggill wrote:

14 states and Puerto Rico have recorded their highest-ever 7-day average of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began

Here’s some more random, pull out of your facts for you-

Nationwide, even with way more testing, cases, positive percentage, and deaths continue to fall.
The 2018 flu was more deadly for people under 50 than Covid has been. 34 states had a higher death rate from the flu that year than covid.
More people 95 and above have died from covid than those under 60. Same for deaths over 85 than under 80. More people over the age of 100 have died in Pennsylvania alone than those nationwide under 45.

Now can I go get a cheeseburger at a bar without someone claiming I’m part of the problem yet? How about fish with someone outside of my household?

Can I get a friggin cheese burger man!?!?! LOL

Thank God another Covid/political thread. I was worried this forum was going to become too fishing-centric.

Tbro, I don’t doubt those numbers are true but you need to understand that this disease is only about 3-4 months old here in the US. With over 100K dead and likely at least another 12 months to go. It has potential to kill many more times what it has for those under 50 and many more times what the flu kills. WE also don’t have a vaccine for this disease and don’t have any significant treatments like we do for the flu. Seasonal flu can be controlled, this can’t.

I’m not one to believe that one can’t go have a cheeseburger at a bar right now. The point of this thread is to discuss facts about the disease in spite of what the mainstream media portrays and some of the poor data being used by our elected officials to create policies.

If you want to talk data, you should know that over 600 healthcare workers have died from COVID related complications in this country so far. Regardless if they have underlying conditions or not, the vast majority of Americans have underlying conditions that significantly increase the risk of serious illness or death. There are a lot of people we all know that are high risk in spite of age.

I type this today from my kitchen table because there was an exposure at my daycare. I’m stuck working from home this week because my kid cant go to daycare. It affects us all, and unfortunately this is only the very beginning.

Matt,

Thank you for all your responsible posts.

some facts as of yesterday.

population of SD, ND, Iowa, MN and WI combined : 16.223 million

total COVID non LTC deaths in those states : 961

total confirmed COVID positive cases in those states : 81,610

961/81610 = 0.0117

total COVID cases in those states in 2020 : ???

It is very warm in Arizona, Texas and Florida.

I have a jaded angle on this virus as well. I dont have it, Ive never had it and I dont know anyone that has had it, so I have mostly lost my fear of getting it.
Once/if herd immunity kicks in I hope I am in the 30% that has no exposure at all. I am doing common sense things to avoid exposure but living a normal healthy life is my priority now. Getting far away from the cities as often as possible is the best medicine right now for several reasons.

Bass-n-Eyes wrote:

Thank God another Covid/political thread. I was worried this forum was going to become too fishing-centric.

As the title of the post states “Facts and Science” let’s keep this thread going as such. If you are citing data, cite the source of it.
Although I hate to say it, I give this thread about 10 more posts before it turns into all the others.

Netguy wrote:

As the title of the post states “Facts and Science” let’s keep this thread going as such. If you are citing data, cite the source of it.
Although I hate to say it, I give this thread about 10 more posts before it turns into all the others.

department of health from each one of the states listed in my prior post.

I’ll just add what I’ve learned.
As of recently there were 1100 covid deaths in mn. Over 80% of those were from nursing homes and assisted living.

My dad was at sunrise edina following shoulder surgery. He was to be there 4 weeks. Half way through the locked it down, no visitors. Couldn’t go to the dining room, meals were brought to him.
The same staff that serves food and busses tables also provide his meds at night.
He paid $6,000 for 30 days for a semi-private room. Oh yeah, no clock or phone in the room.
No visits his last two weeks and he was not allowed to leave his room. Meals were delivered.
It was lipstick on a pig. Grand staircase ,pianos. I went down to take him home and spent the afternoon outside just enjoying the sunshine and talking.
Three days later he was on a ventilator at regions. We decided to remove all medical intervention on Easter Sunday. We had a funeral with 9 people.
Those care facilities are cash cows.

Thanks joe-winter

Sorry for you losing your dad, belletaine. That’s terrible!!

Belletaine, sorry to hear about the passing of your father. That’s just terrible. However, thanks for being willing to share your experience since most seem to not really know anyone who has been effected by the virus. It does shed some realism.

Wisconsin is a good test case, as they’ve been basically open for business for a month now. Here are their stats, you can decide for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/wisconsin-coronavirus-cases.html

BigWerm wrote:

Wisconsin is a good test case, as they’ve been basically open for business for a month now. Here are their stats, you can decide for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/wisconsin-coronavirus-cases.html

I am curious what is to be decided here. Is it that we should open up? I can’t totally disagree. Why keep businesses closed down when it doesn’t seem to matter at this particular point in time? MN seems to be on the same course.

Does that mean we will be in the same place 3 months from now? Absolutely not. It could mysteriously just disappear like was assumed by some back in March, or it could come back with a vengeance like past flu pandemics. We don’t know, no one does. Anyone who says they do is a liar. This is why we move forward using the best data available.

https://www.twincities.com/2020/04/14/larry-windrum-former-owner-of-missouri-mouse-antiques-in-st-paul-died-of-coronavirus/

biggill wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BigWerm wrote:</div>
Wisconsin is a good test case, as they’ve been basically open for business for a month now. Here are their stats, you can decide for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/wisconsin-coronavirus-cases.html

I am curious what is to be decided here. Is it that we should open up? I can’t totally disagree. Why keep businesses closed down when it doesn’t seem to matter at this particular point in time? MN seems to be on the same course.

Does that mean we will be in the same place 3 months from now? Absolutely not. It could mysteriously just disappear like was assumed by some back in March, or it could come back with a vengeance like past flu pandemics. We don’t know, no one does. Anyone who says they do is a liar. This is why we move forward using the best data available.

I was trying to keep my opinion out of it, and let the facts and stats speak for themselves, but since you asked ….Yeah, I think it’s been pretty clear for a while that we should open up 100% and let people make their own decisions. ND and SD barely made any adjustments to way of life or their economy and seem to be fairing just fine. I think there is little to no data supporting staying closed that don’t require authoritarian government control (China, South Korea etc.). Also, this 50% bs is just allowing businesses to die a slow death rather than the quick one they were headed for. And finally the fact that Gov Walz is STILL sending covid positive people into nursing homes is criminal imo.

Sorry for your loss belletaine. This is exactly what I mean when I say its going to affect us all. Everyone is going to know someone close to them that is either going to become seriously ill or die. 4 months seems like a long time to most but we are only in the very beginning. We have at least another 12 months to go if we don’t get a vaccine or a treatment.

That is one fantastic looking lake property.

I guess I don’t know how information or data from the U of M CIDRAP is any more Fact or science than the Information and Data that comes from 100’s of other sources that also claim to be the best information and data, and in some cases often different from the data from this expert. Keep in mind. This Virus is something that is mostly new. I don’t think at this time anyone’s science and Facts are 100% correct. For a lot of them its all guess’s. My biggest fear is that those who are not exposed to the Virus now. May be at a much higher risk If it mutates into a even stronger version later ( Many virus’s often do ) I just don’t know if there is enough data to say if exposure now Is a help or not. Once again, so called experts have different views on this .

BigWerm wrote:

I was trying to keep my opinion out of it, and let the facts and stats speak for themselves, but since you asked ….Yeah, I think it’s been pretty clear for a while that we should open up 100% and let people make their own decisions. ND and SD barely made any adjustments to way of life or their economy and seem to be fairing just fine. I think there is little to no data supporting staying closed that don’t require authoritarian government control (China, South Korea etc.). Also, this 50% bs is just allowing businesses to die a slow death rather than the quick one they were headed for. And finally the fact that Gov Walz is STILL sending covid positive people into nursing homes is criminal imo.

Its a fair opinion that we may not have needed to shut down as severely as we did. I tend to agree. We lost some really great restaurants and bars already. This should be remembered and weighed against the new knowledge we have so we can move forward more effectively and not create unneeded disruption. We have to remember though, there is no playbook for COVID 19. We can only try and learn from what we did in the past in similar scenarios like the Spanish Flu. A lot of things worked and a lot of things didn’t work there. Unfortunately it seems we are making most of the same mistakes now as we did over 100 years ago because we aren’t listening to the science. We can’t let what happened in Italy and New York happen again, but we also can’t continue to hurt our economy. Our leadership needs to find the happy medium.

No matter what we do there’s going to be loss of life. We need to walk the fine line between the cure being worse than the disease, and letting the disease itself cause mass disruption in our hospitals. I’d sure as hell hate to need hospital care for me and/or my family due to a car accident and not be able to get care.

My oldest child is starting kindergarten this fall, or at least she’s supposed to. I honestly can’t believe I’m not 100% confident that she’ll start school. I’m a firm believer that we need to make sure kids go back to school this fall. The evidence shows that schools are NOT a major risk factor for spread. At least no more than influenza.

fishthumper wrote:

Once again, so called experts have different views on this .

I just want to touch on this. In the podcast I started this off with, Dr. Osterholm goes on about the fact that the mainstream media tends to publish anything someone with a phd or MD in their title says regardless of their actual background.

A lot of the studies and articles you may see from other universities don’t have a dedicated infectious disease panel like the U of M. Which is why Dr. Osterholm was one of the first true experts being interviewed around the country way back in february and march.

I found this to be one of the more useful websites:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

they provide many ways to slice the data… when I see a news report about some area showing a flare-up or ‘record daily hospitalizations’, it’s nice to visually see how it compares, not just within the US. They also track many country-level trends. (most useful option is to graph numbers per 100K people)…

How have Covid threads not been banned yet……

G_Smitty wrote:

I found this to be one of the more useful websites:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

I don’t spend a lot of time looking at case and death data but when I want to I never know where to look. This is cool, thanks for sharing.

mahtofire14 wrote:

How have Covid threads not been banned yet……

I would guess the same reason political threads haven’t been banned.

Why do you want this banned?

If anyone would rather read the transcript, you can find it on this page: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/special-ep-masks

What i find interesting is his position that tight-fitting N-95 masks be reserved for the medical profession, like himself. The crux of the podcast is that loose-fitting cloth and surgical masks do not do the job people think they do.

HRG

Hot Runr Guy wrote:

What i find interesting is his position that tight-fitting N-95 masks be reserved for the medical profession, like himself.

If you were to listen to his previous podcast, he actually wears a cloth mask only to eliminate conflict.

Page 28, last paragraph. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/special_episode_masks_6.2.20_0.pdf

And yes, I use a cloth mask in public
places, even if I’m not convinced it’s going to make any real difference in protecting me. I do it
because I don’t want to make other people feel uncomfortable if they see me without one. This is
the new unfortunate culture of mask shaming. Please, this shouldn’t be about politics, this should
be about public health and science.