StrangeSox

Complete failure at the federal level, including both the executive and Congress, who just decided to take yet another vacation after doing nothing, is the key to all of this. Federalism didn't mean we were domed; Germany is a federal system and they've done pretty well. But when our federal government completely failed to form coherent plans and strategies and to financially support the appropriate measures, we were doomed.

Yeah I was being sarcastic. Positive test rate lets you know when you're doing enough tests, something like 5% or below. But if you're still seeing hundreds or now over a thousand cases a day and climbing, it doesn't tell you too much. We've been increasing the 3- and 7-day average case count for over two weeks now. What is Illinois doing to contain the spread, right now, today? Because the metrics all lag by at best 7-14 days from the actual situation. If we wait to do anything to slow down the spread until we are hitting a couple thousand cases a day or more, we'll have guaranteed ourselves weeks of continuingly increasing counts after that point.

Back over a thousand cases per day for the first time in over a month. What is our plan to control this and stop them from continuing to increase? https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/1281289583674736642

Can't wait for my wife to have to go back to teaching in a building with over a thousand people in six weeks. Glad we've kept everything super safe and case counts in Illinois continue to drop!

I would be shocked if there aren't widespread strikes over unsafe working conditions at some point this fall.

Open'r up

I think allowing indoor dining and bars is monumentally stupid and harmful and we have pretty solid evidence of that, so yes P3 vs P4 does make a difference. But at the same time, you're right. When there's no actual plan or path forward beyond magical thinking and "live with it" amid health and economic devastation, lots of people will just say "screw it." And if you focus on the individual failures, rather than the public policy failures and the propaganda failures that convince millions to not do the simple things like wear a mask, you'll miss the real culprits that have put us in this position.

The massive eviction wave getting underway is going to be absolutely brutal so much unnecessary pain and suffering and death in this country

Because pandemics can grow exponentially and if you're sitting at somewhere between 500-1000 and you don't have good systems to isolate all those cases and their contacts, that can quickly become 1000-5000 or more. Unless you can get this under control and keep it under control, businesses will be hurt. People will be hurt. There isn't a good answer here. Because of widespread political failures, we are left with only bad options. The common theme that I think we agree on is the complete and continued failure at the federal level. But I don't want to watch Illinois join the "massive outbreak" states like we're seeing across the South and West right now. A whole slew of European and Asian countries have been able to safely open after lockdowns because they have functional national governments that took the appropriate measures and enough citizens who actually care about each other and their community rather than pure selfishness. Unfortunately, we do not have that here, and we failed to get this under control. We're paying the price for that now.

You need to look at the rolling 3- or 7-day averages. That smooths out daily fluctuations. It's how most of the major medical trackers show their data. Johns Hopkins' dashboard does the 3-day average. 91-divoc has a 7-day average https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states/illinois https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/states.html We've been climbing on the rolling averages for about two weeks now. I don't think we're seeing increased hospitalizations yet, but we can't safely reopen at 800-1000+ cases a day with little contact tracing. It's too large and we don't have the systems in place to smother local outbreaks. Illinois is still in decent shape, but it's getting a little bit worse right now, not better. And at the end of the day, we still had Illinois setting out a great plan with solid targets, meeting them to get to Phase 3, and then abandoning that plan to rush to Phase 4. I hope we don't reap the consequences of the decision to prioritize indoor restaurants and bars over public health expert recommendations.

One of the IDPH's stated requirements for Phase 4 was 90% contact tracing within 24 hours. We decided to ignore the guidelines set out by health experts. We're seeing what happens when you try to "balance" but aren't adequately prepared to actually handle the pandemic on a bunch of states, and Illinois is climbing upward in cases too. Setting official policy too aggressively can lead to worse health and economic outcomes. If the pandemic starts raging here again, you'll see traffic to stores and restaurants drop off anyway.

Testing results can take days or even a full week. It's absurd. This is what you get as a result (not IL, but same things happen here): Why did Illinois rush to Phase 4 without the necessary testing volume, turnaround time, and crucially the 90% contact tracing within 24 hours?