Just wait for Georgia.
All from two upperclass(people) that went to off-campus parties and brought it back onto campus. The student body is pissed. This is from the son of a friend that attends ND.
Read those tweets, then the first few comments (if you can stomach them) and youâll see why this isnât going away anytime soon.
I work at a small, fairly liberal higher ed institution in close proximity to UT Austin. Weâve been fully online since March but are firing up roughly 50% capacity in-person instruction in about a week and a half. Our VP has already had to send a nastygram out to the community because one of our student housing residents blew the whistle on some of their peers not observing mask wearing and social distancing while hanging out outside their apartments.
Meanwhile, the Delta Tau Delta house just a few blocks away has apparently already had a big party, an occurrence that Iâm sure will only increase when UT starts classes next week and especially once football games start.
I give it until maybe October before weâre shut the fuck down.
Meanwhile, back at the plague:
Overall U.S. daily cases appear to have rolled over and are on a gradual down slope. With the appropriate caveat for data manipulation, it does seem that the upward trend has finally peaked. California experienced an apparent twin peak, but that has now resolved into a downward slope. There were some issues with the state data in CA which led to resignations. It appears that those data delays have been resolved. Florida and Texas are also rolling over which is bringing the overall U.S. number down in spite of rises in some smaller states.
Fatalities have remained up. There may be a plateau forming, or it may resume daily increases, next week should tell. The case fatality rate is still much less than the âfirst waveâ which is probably due to more testing (i.e. capturing more of the less severe cases), better emergency room and other hospital procedures and protocols, and a younger patient profile than in March.
Creepy âMy pillowâ guy hawing more snake oil. Trump takes him seriously, you shouldnât. The Army checked it out and dismissed it. I hope he shares a cell with Trump next year.
Some real treatment possibilities with a drug derived from llama cells and another with beta interferon. There are several other treatments that have real promise. I expect the fatality rate to reduce significantly next year regardless of a vaccine. Speaking of vaccines, a new study shows that most people have a robust immune response to infection, which is encouraging for the efficacy of any future vaccine.
I fear opening of schools and especially universities will fuel another, bigger wave starting late September. A six week, painfully tight, nationwide shutdown would get the virus under control provided those six weeks were spent putting testing and contact tracing in place. If Trump would do that, he would emerge in October as the hero and walk to reelection. He wonât, but he could.
The MyPillow Moron advocating eating oleanders as a COVID cure is even more irresponsible than Trump suggesting you shove a flashlight up your ass and drink bleach.
4 Likes
You also know that once the numbers start going down people will stop wearing masks and social distancing. Not realizing that those two things are the reasons for the drop in numbers.
I fear it will be a roller coaster until a vaccine. I donât have a lot of faith in the American public to do the right thing.
4 Likes
I have a lot of faith too many wonât do the right thing.
We do have a track record to draw upon.
What do you mean by this? Do you think the public servants at CDC and HHS are fudging numbers?
The CDC isnât getting the direct numbers any more, remember?
1 Like
Unlikely at CDC, but possibly at HHS. There was no compelling reason to transfer the data reporting. However, my greater concern is at the state level. CA data has proved unreliable for a period, although it is unclear if anything nefarious has happened. Florida has had a number of accusations of manipulation and Texas has a rather large âexcess deathâ greater than Covid reported deaths.
I think there is cause for skepticism when data doesnât follow patterns.
HHS is. And, that was an intentional construct in place before the pandemic started. Part of an actual plan. CDC manages the initial process and pivots it to HHS for ongoing maintenance. And, HHS procured services to help with that since their existing resources were not rapidly scalable.
Then why was it a surprise to everyone at the CDC?
For Texas, I donât trust Abbott and DSHS to provide me unvarnished data. I trust them enough not to blatantly lie, but not enough that the data isnât manipulated/massaged in a way that suits their political aims.
The âno compelling reason to transfer the dataâ is factually incorrect. CDC is not set up to warehouse or orchestrate APIâs for data at that scale. They are initial triage only. HHS is designed for this very thing.
State, local, tribal and hospital data feeding into that system will always have problems and having a clearly architected API strategy is a key component of fixing that. CDC is not set up to do that work nor direct those local entities to fix their data. HHS is. They have the mandate, authority and IT infrastructure.
That is intended for long term data collection and scrubbing, not for real time data collection in the heat of the pandemic. Again, why was the CDC surprised?
Heads down triage. If youâve ever been in that situation, youâd understand itâs easy to have blinders on focusing on the issues of the day and not peek up at the codified plan that was already in place. HHS started working on their part in April.
The first sentence is just not accurate. Not at all.
See my last note on 2nd question.
I have no comment on this. The Fed is reliant on accurate data from local sources.
I glad you implicitly trust the Trump political appointees at HHS. I would rather trust the professionals at the CDC. The transfer of responsibility was a surprise to everyone, it should not have been. Also, you may disagree, but this virus did not âjust go awayâ, the pandemic is still raging. The policy wonks at HHS can scrub the data when this thing is over.
There is no excuse for the haphazard way the data reporting responsibility was handled. I tend to blame Trump political appointees because subject matter expertise does not seem to be required, rather than the professionals at CDC for the clusterfuck.
In any case, as I stated, the greater risk of corrupt data is from the states.