Hoosier

Probably just me perceiving it wrong, but you almost sound giddy sometimes... lol Did you see Holcomb's comments the other day? He was almost setting it up as a binary choice between the current stage 5 and going back to March level closures/restrictions. Weird because it was just one month ago that we had some capacity limits on bars and restaurants. That is not ancient history. Anyhow, it tells me that nothing is going to be changing for a while.

Obviously we are still missing a good chunk of asymptomatic/very mild cases just about everywhere, but I think we could be missing even more than usual here in Indiana. I say that because something is not making sense. Take Wisconsin for example. They have been confirming an average of around 1.5x more cases per day than we have in Indiana, yet Indiana's current hospitalizations are almost 25% higher than Wisconsin. Unless there are some differences in hospital reporting, it is hard to figure why this is the case. Maybe it has penetrated into more of the vulnerable population in this state.

Another thing is immune health. It is not necessarily a static thing. It is something I have been wondering about. Say that the same individual person received the same viral load in the summer or winter (just to be clear, I am talking about a hypothetical situation that ignores immune memory to a previous covid-19 infection). Would they be more likely to have a more severe outcome in the winter, maybe because their vitamin D level or something else in the body is not as good as it was in summer?

The progged drastic drop in mobility in the next couple months is interesting. I wonder what is driving that projection? Is it that people will be taking it more seriously and choose to not move around as much or that stuff is going to close.

Indiana's hospitalizations are up by 137 over yesterday. The nationwide count has been rising by about 500-1000 per day, so that is saying something.

We officially pulled the plug on our Thanksgiving gathering. Normally have 20+ people sometimes closer to 30. I may get together with my mom and that's about it. Not even getting together with my sister and her family as they don't really follow the guidelines, but I have been seeing them every so often for the past several months so that doesn't really bother me.

Dang I wonder about the effectiveness of the lab produced antibody cocktails... Regeneron, etc. Similar concept but maybe not quite the same thing.

Eventually being the key word. It seems like it usually takes a while to see a meaningful impact since a lot of people live with someone else or multiple people. Sort of has to cycle through a household.

I didn't realize how much my county is spiking. I mean, I knew, but we are putting up daily case numbers that are in line with Marion county (Indianapolis) despite having half of the population. Not sure but I think Indianapolis still has the bar/restaurant capacity restrictions in place, so maybe that is why.

Bad The good news is that we have control over just how bad it gets. The bad news is that too many people aren't taking it seriously enough. The numbers are such that some of us here are going to lose a family member or friend to this virus this fall/winter. There are reasons for optimism the deeper we get into 2021 but it's going to be rough. Hopefully we at least have a good winter with lots of storm threats to help serve as a distraction. A ratter winter on top of a pandemic would be bad for the psyche of the board.

What about possible differences in quality of care? It is penetrating into rural America more than ever.

Yes. Now we are running 1 million tests or a bit more per day on most days, which is more than summer. Nationwide, current hospitalizations are about 70% of peak hospitalizations in summer. On another note... regarding halloween, it seems like towns around here are generally continuing with trick or treating as usual. I sort of break it down into 3 categories of risk: 1) door to door trick or treating with a parent/child: relatively low risk. Face to face interactions are a one time thing and brief. I guess the wild card is how much transmission can occur from touching contaminated objects and then the mouth (in this case candy wrappers) but this doesn't seem to be a major method of transmission. Maybe the bigger concern would be a kid touching a contaminated wrapper and then rubbing their nose/eyes. 2) door to door trick or treating in larger groups: more risk. Face to face interactions at each house are still brief, but the group of people will be near each other for an extended period of time. Outdoors helps of course. 3) indoor halloween parties. Highest risk category for obvious reasons of people being indoors for a length of time. That being said, still way more concerned about what happens with Thanksgiving if people hold their gatherings.

Good stuff... basically confirms what has been said about two way protection but more benefit in reducing outward transmission.

After seeing that, we probably are headed for a single day case record tomorrow.

Yeah it has been a sharp rise in the past 2-4 weeks in the states you mentioned. On September 22, IN had 759 hospitalizations. On October 22, it has doubled to 1515. IN population: 6.7 mil IL pop: 12.6 mil TX pop: 29 mil

Hospitalizations statewide surpassed 1500 for the first time since late April/early May.

Over 2800 new cases in IN. Test positivity rate continues to trend up as well. Lately we have been having our highest case numbers on Fri or Sat, so worse is probably yet to come.

Yeah our "lockdown" was pretty tame compared to some other places. I would say some other places went too extreme. I don't remember the stay at home orders from spring being enforced to any great extent. I do remember reading about some cases in which they would tack on a charge of violating the order if someone was pulled over for something else (like drunk driving), but generally speaking they weren't looking to pull people over for no reason.

Went to the store to buy some zinc and they were out of stock. Every brand, every type, all gone. I have taken a zinc supplement for years and can't recall it ever being out of stock. I spoke to an employee and she said it has been gone for a while and she doesn't know when they will get more because of supply issues. I haven't had to buy zinc since the pandemic began so not sure if it has been this way all these months or if it is a more recent problem. Hopefully it won't be as hard to find as toilet paper was.

Does the rollback carry any fine for those places or is it pretty much toothless?

The last 3-7 days or so appears to be the early onset of the increase in deaths nationally.

Indeed. The risk ought to be thought of as a continuum. If you are 10 feet away from an infected person in a relatively small/enclosed area for 2 hours, there's a significant chance of contracting it (especially if no masks).

Multiple brief exposures to an infected person can be a problem https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943e1.htm#contribAff

Some updated numbers

There's multiple variables but I do think the change in weather is playing a role in the dramatic rising numbers in the northern states. People need to consider modifying their behavior to really get the numbers down. In those states, you may have been able to get away with going to the bar or having a gathering before, but now it's more likely you are going to encounter somebody who is carrying the virus.