dan11295

MS Gulf Coast needs to watch out for the winds too, this isn't going to weaken much before they get the SE quad.

With the storm strengthening on approach and fast forward speed this is going cause wind issues a good ways inland I would think.

I am hopeful New Orleans avoids the strongest winds mostly since they may avoid the SE quad

Isaac was an 80 mph storm though.

Maybe this with track over city keeps strongest winds to east of New Orleans?

Almost certainly not weakening atm with that presentation on IR. Can see south side of eye on radar also, so its not the "half-a-cane" look that you had with Delta on approach, at least right now. At least with the fast movement duration of winds will be short. Bit unfortunate for New Orleans that it looks to go right over them.

Was looking at some state metrics and California is one of very few states still seeing a decline in hospitalizations. Most of the other states heavily impacted in summer,, i.e. Arizona, Georgia & Florida, have begun to see some upward movement on their numbers again in the past week. Now only 1-2 states seeing declines in cases/hospital numbers. This makes the current surge very different from the Spring (uncontrolled spread in the northeast and a few other cities primarily) or Summer (Sun Belt states). Very similar to what happened in Europe where basically every country started to spike at the same time.

That's a higher number of cases per capita then Florida ever recorded. Starting to get clear signs of a spike starting here in Mass. along with the rest of Southern New England. Given the high levels of mask usage in this area, it suggests seasonal factors are at work.

Compared to Delta, Zeta is a bit weaker on Gulf emergence and will have less time over water, but the overall environment appears to be a bit better. I agree at least a solid cat 1 at landfall is likely, could be a bit stronger depending on how long it takes the storm to "reset" after the land interaction.

One of the major problems with the spread in places like the upper Midwest/Mountain West is limited availability of medical facilities and properly trained personnel. Very difficult to increase capacity in facilities in those areas, as opposed to a large hospital system in a major Metro. On a side note, also a possibility that hospitalizations are currently being under reported due to the high level of rural spread.Some of these smaller hospitals many not be reporting to HHS due to lack of staff knowledge of the new HHS system or have the time to handle all the reporting they require.

You can tell people are done with this season when there isn't a post here in 10 hrs and the NHC is showing a potential US hurricane landfall in 60 hrs. Albeit Zeta is not likely to be too much more than a nuisance.but I'm sure Louisiana is done with storms at this point.

Actually I was wrong about some parts of the "unenforceable" comment Re: El Paso. The do actually have the support of the Gov. for the curfew etc.

Not enforceable, as Gov. Abbott has removed that authority. But its the best they can do to try to get the people there to take it seriously. Regarding the Pats, their season went off the rails when Cam tested positive. Completely disrupted their momentum and disrupted practice schedule, etc.

Would think if this gets into northern gulf its strong TS at max. Only gulf coast hurricane with later landfall date are Kate and Juan (1985)

I know two personally who had it back in April-May. Both were in their 20s-30s neither were in hospital AFAIK but both had dry cough for 3-4 weeks

NNE is basically the one region of the US which is mostly escaped so far. Makes me worried about ski season up there. Not the skiing itself of course, but people traveling etc.Obviously its an important part of their economy.

Not sue how much of this is true. Deaths are definitely reduced compared to hospitalizations relative to the spring, but some of that is certainly due improvements in treatment and groups much more vulnerable, like the elderly being better protected/more cautious. Also, masking may be reducing viral loads in those infected, and there could potentially get seasonal factors at play also (although this last one is much more speculative).

One thing I am curious about is hospitalizations bottomed out at about the same level (+/-1000 roughly) in June and September. Yet Average deaths were down to 550/day in June but didn't go below 700/day in September. Seems like too much of a difference to just be noise. Don't know why that ratio would be higher now.

Looks like we are catching more cases compared to July at least with more testing and lower positive rates and relative numbers of hospitalized/case ratio compared to then. Obviously the trends are still bad.

Looking at state trends, Illinois and Texas are both a bit problematic: Illinois had almost 5,000 cases today, hospitalizations up 50% in two weeks from 1650 to 2460. Texas has had 6,000+ cases past 2 days. El Paso in particular has major problems, 1800 cases in 2 days. Texas statewide Hospitalizations also up ~50% from 3200 to 4900 in 2 weeks, they didn't keep their numbers down for long after the summer spike. Of course many other states are also seeing hospital numbers jump. Indiana is at record hospital numbers etc. Only states keeps numbers from going completely haywire is CA and FL. cases/hospital numbers there have been pretty stable

Northeast states are slowly but steadily rising too, had 1,000 cases here in MA for the first time since just before Memorial Day. Seeing similar pattern in NY, NJ, CT, RI, NH.

Not just Germany, pretty much every county in Europe's is spiking rather hard, save for Finland and a couple other small countries.

This may have been part of Europe's problem as well regarding the fatigue issue. In general they were more strict with their lockdowns in the spring than anything in the U.S. They got their numbers very low (unlike the U.S.) and got complacent. Regarding Wisconsin, they (and the Dakotas as well), were at higher risk for a surge due to lower percentage of the population being exposed compared to the deep south and northeast. The North Dakota situation in particular shows that having a lower population density only protects you so much. I am sure many people there thought "it's never going to be a problem here",

Any guess on now many more storms we get this season? Two more would tie 2005 (one unnamed storm was added post-season in 2005).

Without a vaccine, eventually enough population gets exposed for (at least partial) herd immunity in the short to medium term (2-3 years). Longer term, the virus would most likely become endemic and more adapted to humans resulting in generally more benign effects. A vaccine is very unlikely to eradicate it like smallpox. Most likely scenario is vaccine combined with exposure in the population will get us toward herd immunity levels by later 2021. Vaccination will not have a real impact for this winter unfortunately. Even with approvals late year and some vaccine dosages available, it will take time to distribute with the cold storage requirements and get a meaningful percentage to the population to get it.