StrangeSox

Raw cases and positivity keep climbing

Sinclair owns about 200 local news stations across the country. Dangerous false propaganda that will get people killed

It can be turned out more quickly if they're the top priority Or if MLB teams bought a bunch of those less sensitive but still good Abbott machines that give results in like 30 minutes.

It's not 0%, but the false positive rates for these tests is really, really low.

NYT has a page tracking the current status and latest updates for the vaccine candidates out there. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html Pfizer is already partnered with a couple of other groups for making an mRNA vaccine.

"employee-owned" in that the low-wage workers can buy company stock, but they have zero decision-making power.

Illinois continuing to quickly decline:

People look to officials and leaders for guidance. If officials are opening bars, well, it must be safe to go engage in that activity, etc.

Same with HyVee. It shouldn't be up to individual businesses, though. It should be at a minimum a state-level mandate, ideally a federal one.

It was remarkable, but really unfortunately predictable, that Congress lost all sense of urgency as soon as they bouyed the stock market.

The record for weekly claims prior to this spring was a few hundred thousand at the depths of the great recession.

oof

Restore Illinois IDPH Plan, Phase 3, "HOW WE MOVE TO THE NEXT PHASE" https://coronavirus.illinois.gov/s/restore-illinois-phase-3 Illinois moved to Phase 4 on June 25th, almost a month ago. JB Pritzker, today: https://capitolfax.com/2020/07/22/pritzker-extends-evictions-moratorium-through-august-22/ I still remain baffled and frustrated that Illinois completely ignored this key requirement and nobody seems to be holding the public officials accountable for the completely predictable rise in cases.

It will depend on what the Phase 3 trials find as far as complications go and how large the trial sizes were and what countries' FDA equivalents have reviewed and approved it.

I just don't think any of the medical/scientific experts expect such dramatic improvements in treatment, especially going forward. They threw everything they could think of at this thing at the start and now have a much better handle on it than they did in March and April. But by now, a lot of the different possibilities have been tried. It's made a difference, but it didn't suddenly make this not a dangerous and potentially deadly virus for a lot of people.

Yeah. Even if we stay below hospital capacity, that doesn't mean we're on good shape. That's still hundreds of thousands dead and millions or tens of millions seriously ill, some chronically, and trillions upon trillions in health care costs. We're getting better at not having the worst cases die, but there are still a lot of terrible outcomes out there and will be for the foreseeable future.

Optimistic at this point is that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine flies through Phase 3 trials with continued high rates of success. Emergency distribution could begin as early as October. Widespread availability could be some time early next year or next spring in the US. Experts seem cautiously hopeful on this one. The Moderna one has some more questions. I think the best-case expectations are that we have enough vaccines out there and distributed and injected that things can pretty much return to normal by next summer. I'm not sure how well you can stabilize if you're still below the threshold for herd immunity stopping Rt from going to 1 or higher. If 40-50% of your population has protective antibodies, the disease could still spread rapidly through the other half at ways that could overwhelm local health care. Hey man I can only say "go listen to TWiV" so many times! They regularly have Daniel Griffin from NYC on and discuss clinical updates. That's something else to keep in mind with whatever vaccine(s) we do get out of this. They may not be fully protective, meaning you might still be able to contract SARS-Cov-2, but it may substantially reduce the risk of serious complications. The flu vaccine works partially like this in that it boosts our general immune system and can take the edge off influenza even if you do get sick.

This is either very optimistic about how widespread this already is and how long natural immunity lasts, or pretty pessimistic on vaccine development

Confirmed here Not sure how bars survive this indefinitely without federal support (many other industries and public services as well)

You'd have to figure out where the risk inflection point is on the chart for "spending 7 hours with 15 kids vs. spending 1 hour with 5 sets of 15 kids," but it's probably much less risky to be with that small group rather than cross-contaminating all day. The difference between being with an infected person for 1 hour vs 7 is probably pretty small, and if you're seeing multiple classes you're increasing your odds of coming in contact with an infected person. The FDA gave EUA for test pooling up to 4 people. The Harvard doc on a recent episode of TWiV argued strongly in favor of test pooling. The idea is you can increase the throughput of the testing greatly by running 4 samples at once. In places with a low enough positivity rate, like Illinois, a big majority of the batches will come back negative, and now you've just reduced the testing time for those 4 people by 75%. If the batch tests positive, then you re-run the individual samples to narrow it down. It can be very efficient at screening down to the trouble spots. Not sure how well it'd work when you're in an area with 30% positivity rate like some states though. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-first-emergency-authorization-sample-pooling-diagnostic

Increasing total testing and positivity rate is, uh, not a good sign

A graph of Rt (transmission rates) over time for every state