dan11295

16 hours ago, Wmsptwx said:

It’s really really bad at local hospital my mom works at. Literally at capacity and starting to be thinking of ideas for unit outside of hospital and or opening defunct hospital small distance away to use. It’s very bad and trending worse.

Almost 5000 hospitalized now in PA (+238 today). 7700 new cases today.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/05/18/icu-bed-capacity-in-all-50-us-states-compared-infographic/?sh=6218b7cd24dc

Here is an ICU bed per capita ranking.

From the link above there are normally ~105k ICU beds in the US. There are currently ~19k COVID patients in ICU beds. Of course hospitals have been converting beds, etc. as much as space (and staffing) allows. But it gives you a sense of the stress on the hospital system when almost 20% of your normal ICU capacity is COVID.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and-ratings/states-ranked-by-hospital-beds-per-1-000-population.html

Hospital beds per capita. Would help explain why the Dakotas were not completely overwhelmed despite their very high per capita numbers. Although Wisconsin is very low on this list, lowest numbers on this list are generally western and southwestern states. 

28 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

No real surprise that the CDC panel is recommending that health care workers and nursing home residents ought to get the vaccine first.

There's a school of thought that if the vaccine is as effective as claimed, maybe you could just vaccinate the nursing home employees and hold off on vaccinating nursing home residents and save those early doses for other essential workers and elderly people who live outside of nursing homes.  Makes some sense, but assuming the recommendations are followed, that's not how it will go.

Obviously they are trying to target the source of a large % of current mortality. I agree that the employees should be vaccinated early as well. But I guess you cannot consider allowing visitation again in the near term without the residents vaccinated. I wonder how long it will take for vaccinating to begin cutting into infections/mortality numbers. Am guessing with a focus on nursing homes you can begin to really cut into the infection numbers there by sometime in early/mid January. That would put early February for when you would be noticeably cutting into mortality. I suspect that we will be over the crest of the current infection wave by that point, so that will help accelerate the decline in numbers there.

I know California's hospitalized per capita is below many other states, but their trend is ugly. Just blew by their July peak while going up by 400-500 a day. Now over 9000.

I know most people have been focused on the Thanksgiving gatherings for causing a spike, but what about the start of holiday shopping season? People often spend longer time shopping for gifts than just going to the grocery store. I know big box stores have been implicated in spread in some areas, like El Paso recently. Also might get more foot traffic/more crowds especially if stores slack on maintaining capacity limits.

1 hour ago, Wmsptwx said:

PA at 4600 plus hospitalizations and rising pretty quick.

Same with Ohio, now over 5000 there. Michigan is also still rising, although not as quick 4300 now.

Looking at trends is this general subforum area ND, WI, IA are off 20-25% off their hospital peak. They are currently 3 out of top 4 total reported cases/capita. Maybe some herd resistance going on. Don't think it was just weather. Warm spell did nothing in OH/PA or here in Mass. either.

Stuff has leveled off in IL, but OH/PA mentioned above are still not on a good trend. Almost 5000 in hospital in OH and 4400 in PA. both +150 today.

Elsewhere the country trends in California are really ugly. +514 hospitalized today, 8200 total (600 below July peak but could easily blow by that in a few days).

A note on hospitalizations numbers. Some states only count confirmed cases in those numbers (i.e. Texas). So the holiday backlog might be suppressing hospital numbers in certain states.

8 hours ago, StormfanaticInd said:

Thats a good question. If I remember right you will not be protected until the second dose. Which means at best mid January before we start seeing some impact on this war against covid

We have to remember the initial vaccinations will targeted for HC workers, first responders, etc. It wont be until we get significant vaccination of at risk, elderly population that vaccination will meaningfully impact numbers

1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

Appears that more of the hospitalization data got in today, with over 91k now in the US.

I suspected the apparent drop yesterday was a holiday effect. The effects on testing and death reporting is obvious. Going to be some nasty data dumps during next week.

Going to be a rather ugly data dump if not today then early next week. Probably about 1600 backlogged deaths from Thursday/Friday.

Covid Tracking Project showed nationwide hospitalizations dropping by 600 today. although the rates of increase for cases/hospitalizations has slowed, I suspect that drop is an artifact connected to the holiday. Take Texas, supposedly -200 today. Doesn't jive with their case trends prior to Thursday.

It is obvious how much the holiday effected case/death reporting as well.

Next 2 weeks will have messy data. depressed numbers first have of week, then potentially an artificial spike due to backlog catchup late next week (not this is too early to see holiday effects). Dec 7-11 is when you would see any holiday impact on numbers.

4 minutes ago, RyanDe680 said:

I would think 1 out of 2.5 is good considering I’ve seen numbers indicating that testing is catching 1 out of every 8 in some places 

We are certainly catching greater than 1 in 8 now. In the spring it was much less, but not now. I don't think 80% of North Dakota has had it, for example.

30 minutes ago, NEILwxbo said:

Working at Chicago outlet mall & easily thousands of people here today. Mall said they were gonna only allow half of the parking lot to fill up before blocking it off, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Atleast every store is enforcing the occupancy policies, but still kind of unnerving (but not surprising) to see these crowds still 

Of course in some areas of the country stores may slack off on enforcing occupancy rules. More foot traffic in enclosed spaces = greater risk, especially if people spend a lot of time in the stores. Not as risky as in person T-day dinner but its certainly there. Some of the spread in the El Paso area for example was linked to big box stores.

Between the travel, holiday gatherings and now start of shopping season. Then everyone goes back to work in a few days.

6 hours ago, KokomoWX said:

I am solo for the holidays and went to a park to photograph birds and do a hike.  Lots of folks on the road and many houses had family gatherings.  My social media feeds are also representative of family gatherings.  Let's see what happen when stores open for Black Friday sales.  

Was thinking about the start of holiday stopping season as well. Obviously a portion of the population will avoid the stores, but many wont. One question is how well will stores enforce capacity restrictions? They might be reluctant as they don't want to lose the ability to make a sale but making them wait outside for a long time. Too many people shopping and spending lots of time in the store increases the risk.

2 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Sort of hit a wall.  Almost 20 states haven't reported yet.

Many states are not reporting for Thanksgiving. Even some that are probably will have limited county level data.The combination of closed testing sites, closed labs, etc. will cause numbers to be artificially lower for 4-5 days at least (See Labor Day). With testing capacity so strained right now I would think the effects on numbers would be even worse.

1 minute ago, Hoosier said:

Considering it's thanksgiving, the early reporting states are putting up fairly high numbers.  Perhaps the decrease from holiday reporting will show up more significantly in the coming days.

Would make sense if most of that data is from yesterday. It will become more apparent in the coming days. Multiple states aren't going to report today (I know Mass. isn't).

I see 5 states with hospitalization declines in the past week: ND, WI, MO, NE, IA. None of those states have enacted any restrictions of substance.

Wisconsin and Michigan both came it with much lower numbers at least.

Ohio was not impacted as much as nearby states (IL/MI/PA) in the spring, probably due to Cleveland not being as much of a travel hub as Detroit and Chicago, and the PA cases were mostly in the eastern part of the state. They never had more than 1100 hospitalized in spring or summer. They have 4500 now and rising.

1 minute ago, Hoosier said:

If we are already roughly plateauing on cases in the Midwest, then it would strongly point to the idea that the 7+ day stretch of warmer weather at the beginning of the month was the main culprit in causing the temporary drop.  

As has been pointed out, numbers in the coming days are bound to look a bit screwy due to the holiday and will need some more time to evaluate.  Then, it won't be until we get at least a third to halfway through December until we start to see any ramifications from Thanksgiving gatherings.

Yea a short term evaluation of potential weather impacts on case trajectory will be difficult with Thanksgiving tomorrow. Cases from gatherings wont show until 2nd week of December,

1 minute ago, Hoosier said:

Seeing signs that the drops in some of the Midwest states are flatlining and not continuing to drop.  Not good.

Illinois came in with over 11,000 today, you wonder if the weather turning colder again ~2 weeks ago was a factor.

14 minutes ago, StormfanaticInd said:

Today is looking like another bad day. We could easily see 2k+ deaths today

Unfortunately I think weekday deaths will be 2000+ for the next few weeks going forward.

17 minutes ago, nwohweather said:

For sure. Two things that have been very interesting to me this Fall, no athlete has caught Covid from a game in the NFL or College which is interesting considering they're playing a contact sport. Secondly no one caught Covid from that field storming at Notre Dame. I'm shocked at both things

Both events are/were outdoors and generally involve brief periods of contact. A little bit different then sitting down for 45 minutes at a restaurant or a 3-4 hour indoor social gathering. Getting exposed to very small number of viral particles is not generally believed to cause an infection. Outdoor ventilation is generally very effective at diluting viral concentrations.

Just so much going on with Thanksgiving this week that has potential to aggravate the situation:

 College kids coming home. Lots of travel. Significant among of large multi-family gatherings are still going to occur, which will often include older relatives. Also don't know how well stores will enforce capacity limits etc. for holiday shopping.