Posts Made By: James Brown

I thought I'd try my hand at provocative headline writing!  The title to this thread is entirely true by the way.  DeSantis has lifted some restrictions and the daily covid infection numbers in Florida are down 792% when the January 1 daily total is compared to yesterday.

Sure, I'll acknowledge that my thread title might be misleading with respect to the big picture, but no more than Rod's Idaho header.

Jim 

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

"Idaho Falls is top COVID-19 hotspot in nation, New York Times reports"
https://localnews8.com/health/coronavirus/2021/03/18/idaho-falls-is-top-covid-19-hotspot-in-nation-new-york-times-reports/
and:
"Rising COVID-19 cases push Eastern Idaho hospital to capacity
“We have been using overflow and we beg, borrow and steal beds from elsewhere in the hospital,” an ICU specialist from Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center said."
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/208/covid-19-cases-eastern-idaho-hospital-capacity/277-42a4bf37-c1fb-4e5b-8823-06e0664dbecf

Seriously?  While true, this is in the same league as my also true 792% headline.

Context: 
Idaho Falls - 1100 recent cases out of 150k population:  55/100K/day
NYC - 123,000 recent cases out of 20M population:  44/100K/day

Hmmm.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

Where is the governor, D or R who has the courage to look at the falling numbers and NOT OPEN UP?  Even a little.   

Getting the virus down on the mat is no good if you get up and strut around the ring.  As they say in many tacky martial arts movies, "FINISH HIM!!!!!!"

Dave

Hi Dave:

It is relatively easy for you and me to stay home.  You're retired right, and I'm working at a computer.  Not so easy for many of our fellow citizens - they go in to work, or they don't have a job.  So I agree with the governors who are slowly opening up their states, mine included.   Sure this will delay the end of the pandemic, but the economic and social cost of full endless shutdown is too high.  Like I said last week, balancing public health, economic, and social concerns is tough for any governor.  

Also, I don't think Covid 19, being an RNA coronavirus, can be finished.  This is not polio.  My pharmacist thinks that annual booster/vaccine shots are the future, just like we do for that other RNA virus - influenza.  Our goal is not to finish Covid 19, but to beat him down to an acceptable level of death and illness.  Cold-hearted?  Yes, but that is what we face.

On a lighter note, me and Ms. Brown had scheduled our first shots for April 2.  Our cohort of 50-59 year old's opened for vaccination on Friday the 19th.   Coincidentally, we were at the Safeway grocery, all masked up and shopping at about 5:00 p.m. this very Friday.  I overheard the pharmacist worrying to her assistant that she had two J&J shots that could go to  waste - apparently someone had just cancelled and she was supposed to go off shift at 5.  It was too late to easily start calling the wait list.  (J&J comes 5 shots to a vial and once a vial is opened, it has to be used.)  So, we offered up our arms and joined the vaccinated crowd.  One and done with J&J which is nice.  

Jim

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Seriously? Why don't you tell that to the hospital staff at the ICU in Idaho that's scrambling for covid beds in the number 1 hotspot in the country...
Hmmm. 

A bad, but isolated incident.  You know better than to extrapolate from a headline to a generalization (or maybe not).  We can probably find one or two hospitals that are disasters in every state. 

It might make you feel superior to pick on your smaller neighbors, but state wide, Idaho is doing about the same as other states, which is presently pretty well.  Idaho's hospital situation is better than California's, but that is probably an indictment of your crappy state government than it is any kudos to Idaho.  Of course these ICU numbers from John's Hopkins are a lot better across the board than last time I posted them.  Vaccinating the older population is no doubt making a huge difference.   Jim

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

You're welcome. I thought it would be nice to take a break and consider the worldly view from another planet!
PS: I post in cloudy nights which doesn't have a politics forum but even that can be a real downer at times so I'm taking a break from that, too. Some of its just too hard to swallow like huge threads on whether or not an old piece of pothole glass should be used for grinding a mirror. Five or more differing opinions of the resident "experts" on the same ronchi or DPAC results. It's worse for interferometry. An observer claiming he can see m51 from a brightly lit parking lot with a 67mm refractor. People who think they can see the central star in the ring nebula just about every time they roll their scopes out onto their driveways. Enough!

CN has always been that way - I don't know if a study has ever been done, but I personally think that using screen aliases causes some folks to wildly inflate the size of their technical expertise.   Some of the opinions on equipment and observing posted there are downright funny.  Still, If I am thinking about buying or selling gear, almost all the relevant internet research hits are from CN. 

Jim 

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

And, for an astronomy break, the mars rover "Curiosity" spotted clouds over Mars on March 19, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0uyHpM0n5w
Awesome detail!

Very cool.  Thanks, Jim  

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

My point is that the Republican governors COULD and SHOULD have played it right by seeing the freight train coming at them and getting their states on the right track and off the wrong one...

Here is a map from Johns Hopkins showing the incidence of new cases in the US, by county.  The darker orange, the more cases.  I don't see a red state/blue state pattern here.  I do see higher incidence in the major cities.  This should surprise no one.  That is where the people are, and where they are densely packed.   Overall, the US is trending downward on all metrics.  Presumably because the vaccines are working.

Jim

The data is starting to indisputably show the power of the vaccines.  The NYT has a nifty interactive map showing vaccine doses delivered/100 people.  Six economically powerful countries I looked at: 

Israel 110 doses / 100 people 
Great Britain 48 doses / 100 people
USA 38 doses / 100 people
Germany 13 doses /  100 people
Canada 11 doses / 100 people
Brazil 7 doses / 100 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

Originally Posted by James Brown

The data is starting to indisputably show the power of the vaccines.  The NYT has a nifty interactive map showing vaccine doses delivered/100 people.  Six economically powerful countries I looked at: 

Israel 110 doses / 100 people 
Great Britain 48 doses / 100 people
USA 38 doses / 100 people
Germany 13 doses /  100 people
Canada 11 doses / 100 people
Brazil 7 doses / 100 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html

Now look at the infection rate in these 6 countries.  Israel has crushed it, The UK and US are on the downward trend, but Brazil is a disaster and Canada is worried about a huge third wave.  

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/23/americas/canada-ontario-covid-third-wave/?hpt=ob_blogfooterold

Jim

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

Another ten dead. Another AR15. The right wing: but what's that compared to the second amendment and the CONSTITUTION!

Rod:

How can you blame this on the right wing, when we know nothing at all about the shooter and his motivations?    

Jim