Hoosier

In a twist on the late Jimmy V... don't go out. Don't ever go out. Charlotte woman hasn't left her house in three weeks but tested positive for COVID-19 https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/charlotte-woman-hasnt-left-her-house-in-three-weeks-but-tested-positive-for-covid-19/ar-BB12sjy4?ocid=st

The Indiana State Department of Health has confirmed what many African-Americans have suspected and feared for weeks: Blacks in the state appear to be contracting and dying of the novel coronavirus at a much higher rate than the general population, following a trend in some other states. Despite African-Americans making up 9.8% of the state’s population, they make up 18.5% of positive cases and 19.2% of the state’s 300 deaths. In Indianapolis, the city’s black population is 28.9%. Whites – who make up 85.1% of the population – make up 50% of positive cases and 69% of deaths. The race of 19.1% of positive cases and 7.3% of deaths remain unknown, per the state data provided Friday. https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/indiana-releases-demographic-data-on-coronavirus-cases/article_5638bb26-7c04-11ea-a8c7-93baee7db2c3.html

Well now there are 15 cases where my uncle works. He showed up to work at 6 am today and they wouldn't let anybody in the building until a cleaning crew comes to disinfect. So my uncle had to sit in his car until his shift ended at 2 pm. Wasn't allowed to leave.

State health commissioner now says there have been 24 deaths at that nursing home.

Population density is a huge factor, no doubt about it. I don't have a link but I caught some of the chatter on tv about how blacks are dying at a disproportionate rate from this virus compared to whites (in areas that have released a racial breakdown of deaths). I think Michigan was one of the places mentioned as far as the racial disparity. It would be interesting to see a comparison of rural white death rate compared to rural black death rate, because that takes population density out of the picture. The area to get plentiful data on that would probably be in the south since rural black is more common than in the north.

City of Gary, IN has been releasing death and infection numbers (one of the only towns in Lake county to do so I think) and based on what they have provided, they have a disproportionately high number of cases and fatalities compared to the rest of the county. It can be dangerous to make assumptions but with Gary being 85% African American, we can make a good guess about which segment of the community is being hit the most. Unfortunately African Americans are being disproportionately affected by this virus as they are in other ways. It's just on a much bigger scale in large urban centers like Chicago and Detroit.

Ugh

55 newly confirmed deaths in Indiana since yesterday. As of today, all private labs in the state have to report negative test results and not just the positive ones. It had been optional for the private labs and there's probably no way to know how many negative test results weren't reported.

Regarding warm weather and the virus: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-warm-weather-will-not-slow-covid-19-transmission Even if it does help reduce transmission to some extent, we are vulnerable due to how contagious it is and any potential warm weather benefit could be undone if we aren't careful.

Missed out on everything so far.

Yeah, that is a significant downward revision by IHME. Nice to see. The range now goes from about 30k-130k with projected of 60k. Unfortunately the low end of the range looks out to lunch. Based on how this illness goes and using the patterns in other countries and applying to the US, there is no reason to think there won't be high 1000 to potentially over 2000 daily deaths in the US for the next week. Then should start coming down but remain high... well over 1000/day for a while. We could already be around 30,000 by end of next week. If we keep up with what we're doing until at least June, then hopefully we can keep the number more in the 50k-60k range.

Dang

New York City officials will begin to count suspected COVID-19 deaths of people who die at home following a WNYC/Gothamistreport revealing a staggering number of such deaths that were not included in the official tally. In a statement, Stephanie Buhle, a spokeswoman for New York City’s Health Department, said the city would no longer report only those cases that were confirmed by a laboratory test. “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and the NYC Health Department are working together to include into their reports deaths that may be linked to COVID but not lab confirmed that occur at home,” she said. She didn’t say when the city would begin reporting suspected deaths along with the overall count. But the new protocol is likely to add thousands to the toll. The announcement comes as New York City saw the largest single day of deaths so far from the COVID-19 pandemic — 727 people passed away in a 24-hour period. But even that number failed to include many of the cases in which first responders encountered someone who had already died at home or other non-hospital settings. That happened 280 times on Monday, according to data from the Fire Department. While not all of those deaths are necessarily caused by COVID-19, it’s a staggering increase over the average 25 home deaths the city usually saw on any given day before the pandemic swept the five boroughs. Over the last two weeks, FDNY officials said 2,192 New York City residents died in their homes, compared to 453 during the same time period last year. On Tuesday evening, the city reported 3,544 people have died of coronavirus, as confirmed by lab tests. Earlier in the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that the vast majority of deaths taking place at home were likely also due to the virus, meaning the death toll could be as much as 70 percent higher than currently reported figures. “We do want to know the truth about every death at home, but it’s safe to assume that the vast majority are coronavirus related,” he said. “That makes it even more sober, the sense of how many people we are losing.” An FDNY paramedic who asked his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters said he’s watched a dramatic shift over the past three weeks. First, he was called to attend to people with mild symptoms and anxiety about being sick; the second week, it was critically ill patients who were rushed to the hospital. “This week it went from critical patients, to just cardiac arrests all over the place,” he said. “We get there and the family’s telling us, ‘We went to the hospital five days ago and they discharged us’ or ‘We stayed home. We called our doctor. We called 311, a tele-doc gave us a prescription for a Z-pack this morning.’ And now they’re dying.” The paramedic called the situation demoralizing. He spoke to WNYC/Gothamist while waiting for police officers to respond to the scene of one home death in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning. “What we’re seeing now is people literally dropping dead at home” he said. “Nothing we do helps.” https://gothamist.com/news/death-count-expected-soar-nyc-says-it-will-begin-reporting-suspected-covid-deaths-addition-confirmed-ones

The United States case fatality rate is approaching 3.5%. It was around 1% not that long ago. It really shows that despite testing being better than it was in the beginning (a low bar to clear), we are still in catchup mode and a lot of cases will never be diagnosed because the window of catching a case is open for only so long before a person recovers.

2 days after 80

Tomorrow could be a little entertaining from a squall perspective.

Hey Jackstraw, I merged your thread into here since it appears his death is due to covid. I am ok with having a virus thread due to the extraordinary circumstances, but don't really want to set a precedent for any and all kinds of OT threads.

hässlich

I mean the general public of Dems, Reps, Indies should be against it. The outrage should be non partisan.

No, Centennial Park in Munster. Came over here because I'm tired of looking at Griffith.

Had a cluster of like 8 people pass by wtf. No masks

Actually there are still a fair number of people passing by... walking, biking, jogging. Gotta watch those runners, they expel a lot of breath.

Social distancing

73 more deaths in Illinois.

Going to have a 2000 day, if not today then soon. Although these daily counts are pretty prone to error in multiple ways. Indiana had 34 "new" deaths since yesterday's update, but those 34 died over a number of days because the confirmation process is slow.