Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

A bulleted FL COVID update ...... you'll like it.

• FL had highest one day total for new cases since C-19 pandemic started yesterday. While that's true, I had to find a NYT article to explain why.
• The new case spikes are almost entirely assignable to the migrant farm worker community. The picking season is over in FL and migrant workers are moving north and up the eastern seaboard to start the picking season in those regions.
• Last week, Desantis ordered state PH officials to focus on several counties where farm labor housing is concentrated. Collier Co. (Naples), Hillsboro Co. (Tampa), Hillsboro/Osceola Cos.(Orlando/Kissime)
• % +s in these counties where farm labor housing is located and walk-up test sites were set up ticked in at upwards of 30%! That is driving up overall % + rates.
• Excluding these counties, FL's overall % +s is around the usual 5% with many counties under 2%.
• This isn't about protests, it isn't about beach goers, it isn't about young people going to socialize in FTL's or Miami's or Boca's night spots.
• The last 2d, local news has fretted about hospital bed availability in S. FL. Not a single hospital administrator that was interviewed in one well done, unusually balanced article was worried. "We're in a good spot should we need to increase ICU capacity," was the common refrain. IOW, they're' not anywhere close to being "overwhelmed"

TBF, there's also some other news news:

• Farm labor, with many asymptomatic C-19 infections per capita, are moving north. States that they move to for the next picking season are concerned. One of them is NY so is GA and SC
• Some of the migrant labor force consists of undocumented aliens. Some won't come forward to get tested and those that do provide fictitious names and addresses making it impossible for PH authorities to contact trace.
• There are upticks in S. FL's tri-counties with Palm Beach Co. seeing the highest at 9% +s. Broward and Miami-Dade are around 7% so, re-opening is accounting for some increases but not as bad as the media would have you believe. Reporting new case #s continues to be misleading without context.
• As a result of the state wide increases, Desantis ordered that all long term care facilities will require 2X/week testing of residents and staff. Makes good sense. Protect the vulnerable.

Worried about increasing risk of exposure, I wasn't going to cycle this morning. I'm leaving now - migrant workers won't be cycling.

Later.

[Tom W]

I guess one benefit of this nonsense is that it's going to awaken Joe Q. Public about what is going on in the world. Most of the country still does not have a very strong opinion about Cancel Culture, but when you start exposing them to this moronic shit 80,000 people at a time, you're going to get an awakening.

This. It's becoming pure comedic entertainment for most of us. Sit back, watch these fools, take notes and act accordingly when the time is right. We can do without Aunt Jemima it's ridiculously easy to make pancakes from scratch anyways..

[iam416]

The more things that get canceled where you actually have to explain why they're "racist" the more people will question. Confederate icons don't need an explanation. Frankly, they're treasonists first and foremost and treasonists for a bad cause secondarily. But "Gator Bait" and the "Eyes of Texas" and capitalized "Black" and lowercase "white" and the absolute avalanche of nonsense that is coming -- that will or should start to raise some real eyebrows.

Again, reasonable people can't really speak up because the Democrat Cancel Culture will blitz them. So, they'll sit silently and vote. Or so I hope.

But, this is, in effect, a national book-burning. The true Maoists know it; the ones along for the ride who would self-righteously decry some christian minister burning books don't see it.

[Hannibal]

The problem is though -- voting isn't going to change anything. If you vote Republican, you are likely going to get a Cuckservative with no real intention of doing anything besides cowering in fear of being called a racist. If, by some chance, you don't, the courts will kill anything that the Republicans do on a national level, no matter how absurd or Unconstitutional that rejection is. Voting Republican obviously does not get you good judges.

[lineygoblue]

The whole Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben thing has me puzzled.

If they were depicted as being in a cotton field, picking cotton with a slavemaster standing over them with a whip, then I could understand.

But Aunt Jemima is a smiling, grandmotherly type lady, who happens to be black, whose face is representing a company that makes a very good pancake mix, and pancake syrups. How is this racist? Uncle Ben is the same thing. A grandfatherly smiling black man representing a company that makes very good rice recipes. I fail to see the racism in that. In fact, I think it may be a place of honor.

The same thing happened at Central Michigan with the Chippewa Indian Tribe. There was a "woke" movement that tried to pressure CMU into changing their name, and they were on their way to doing it when the Chippewa Tribe chimed in and said, "not so fast". The Tribe told school officials to just stop the 'war paint' and 'scalp 'em' stuff, and make all references to Native Americans an honorable depiction, and they'd be fine with them remaining the Chippewas. In fact, today, the Saginaw Band of the Chippewa Indians is the school's largest sponsor. That means sensible people can make sensible decisions.

Representatives of the Huron Indian Tribe tried to do the same thing with Eastern Michigan (formerly the Hurons) but those efforts fell on deaf ears. Washtenaw County liberalism, .. and all that. Now EMU is the Eagles. (maybe they should have become the Emu's)

Sensible has give way to stupidity.

[iam416]

44. A professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine apologized to students for including the phrase “I can’t breathe” in a question on an exam.

“I can’t breathe” became a slogan for Black Lives Matter demonstrators after the killing of Eric Garner, during which a New York City officer placed Garner in a chokehold. George Floyd, whose death during arrest by Minneapolis officers sparked mass demonstrations across the country, also uttered the phrase as an officer kneeled on his neck.

Daniel Corson-Knowles, assistant professor of clinical medicine, told students “We understand that the context in which this phrase was used resulted in a very painful trigger for many of you.” Corson-Knowles said he would look into materials on anti-bias training and microagressions.

The exam question, published by Reason, reads “A patient who missed dialysis suddenly becomes pale, diaphoretic, and screams, ‘I can’t breathe!’ You glance at the monitor and notice the following rhythm. You are unable to palpate a pulse and initiate immediate CPR. The most appropriate next step in therapy is…”

[Tom W]

It's all about power projections, pure intimidation, Liney, and it is scarily similar to the activities of the Brownshirts in Germany in the early to middle of the 1930s. Woke historians conveniently avoid mirrors when, or even if, they look at this significant point of 20th Century history. Being how ttat turned out, it might be a fatal mistake on their part.

[iam416]

Charles Cooke summarizes two preposterously stupid "cancellations" and comes to the obvious conclusion:

Fanatical literalism of this sort is the sworn enemy of human understanding. Intelligent people are able to process information within its context and, thereby, to distinguish between superficially similar elements. A robot may struggle to distinguish between the N-word as thrown by a racist and the N-word as used in Huckleberry Finn, or between a noose of the sort that Ida B. Wells knew and a rope being used as a swing, but an adult should have no such problem — especially when that adult has put been in charge of a large city or of a major state university. Any idiot can scan his surroundings for naughty words and verboten signs; it takes a person of judgement and discretion to filter what he sees through his understanding of the world. In Gainesville and in Oakland, such people are sorely missing. And so the riot continues.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/

Strangelove adds Cooke to "the list."

[Dr. Strangelove]

The List is getting lengthy.

I am starting to get concerned about the below. Over half the states are above 1 again

https://rt.live/

[Hannibal]

We crept up our reopenings to find the ignition point. It looks like we found it. As long as the hospitals don't get overslammed, we should be in a holding pattern for at least a few weeks IMHO.

[lineygoblue]

Our county has had one new case in the last two weeks. We have none in the hospital, and have had no deaths in nearly a month. Our local hospital closed its dedicated COVID wing and sent all the personnel back to their regular jobs.

Of course our county is lightly populated, so that helps. But we are surrounded by counties that are highly populated, and had hundreds more cases than we did.

The bulk of the outbreak in our county was limited to the nursing homes. That's unfortunate, because one of the original actions of the State was to send Covid patients to 'restricted areas" of nursing homes. That had tragic results.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Well on the plus side if it's mainly younger people that are catching it right now, we're likely to see a lot less deaths. But a fair percentage of even the young people can end up in ICU or spend several weeks in the hospital. All that is costing us something somewhere, whether in loss of economic activity or the taxpayers eat the bill, or what have you. People need to show a little more personal responsibility in not hanging out at bars or immediately shifting back to normal behavior. It seems like we greatly overestimated the seasonal aspect of this thing but on the plus side that could mean less of a spike in the Fall? Maybe? Hopefully?

The Phillies and Blue Jays have already shut down their facilities in Florida. 5 Phillie players and 3 members of the staff all tested positive. It's going to be tougher for sports leagues to pull this off than we may be thinking.

EDIT: Arizona's positive test rate is now over 20%. That's bad

[*JD*]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSneatadSJk

[Jeff Buchanan]

The List is getting lengthy.

I am starting to get concerned about the below. Over half the states are above 1 again

https://rt.live/

I think it's indicative of increasing community spread. AZ in particular has it. What that means is nothing to something. I can't speak for AZ but I can for FL.

I just finished listening to Governor Desantis address the increasing case numbers in FL. I posted some things about that this morning. He had the state Medical Director and the medical directors of the three large hospital systems - one in each of the three S. FL hospitals - a panel type discussion.

• Over the last 5d, 170K tests have been performed. The median age of positive tests is 34. The median age of testing in a similar period in April was 57*
• 1/15 Floridians have been tested (about 7%). That's above the US average and Desantis believe's FL's testing rate is the highest in the US**
• There are dramatically less critically ill COVID patients in all three of S. FL's hospitals; less ventilator patient's (11 across all three counties); less COVID related hospitalizations.***
• There are more ICU beds being used for post-op care following procedures than there are ICU beds being used for COVID patients.
• S. FL's hospitals are not close to maxing out bed space - where the media got their data to support that claim and then claimed it is beyond understanding.

Desantis acknowledged the increase in % +s state wide and attributed this to both increased availability of testing and utilization of testing sites by people who have no symptoms. You are going to find more positives, the % positive rate will go up. This is actually a good thing as it indicates you're finding increasing #s of asymptomatic +s, quarantining them and doing contact tracing and advising contacts of possible exposure and go get a test.

Acknowledged that young people in the age groups of 35 and younger are less complaint with social distancing and masking and this is partly responsible for increased %+s and community spread. All three S.FL counties have varying degrees of both rules on masking and distancing and enforcement. Desantis guidance is to provide public service announcements and notices and enforce but not with criminal penalties. Also acknowledged some lax compliance of the mitigation protocols by proprietors of places where young people gather, eat and drink. The mayor of Dade Co. said Miami police will begin more stringent enforcement starting Saturday. This is already going on in Broward Co.

He spoke of "Disease Burden." I hadn't thought about this much. I know the term but not as it applied in determining where you are with managing the COVID pandemic. The metrics state PH officials are watching is regional CFR and the specific hospital bed utilization rates noted above. CFR is declining and not just slightly. Officials believe this is because care is improving and less vulnerable FL residents are getting COVID. That is probably behavior related. It is also because specific steps have been taken in all FL LTC facilities. The infection rate within these facilities has dramatically declined state wide - acknowledges one outbreak in Miami Dade that was quickly identified all exposed residents and staff were tested residents were moved to LTC facilities designed to temporarily house all LTC residents who are + or are pending test results and staff were quarantined. This is exactly how these things should work. The disease burden in the state of FL and by county/city is low by any measure. The rising case #s and % +s simply don't tell the entire story - epidemiology as it is applied to pandemic management is hard and requires a good deal of skill drawing conclusions from it.

Bottom line, FL is fine when one drills down to the underlying #s and reasons behind them. FL's disease burden is low. I never felt like this amounted to goal posts shifting or hollow explanations. His presentation and the points he made were well reasoned and believable. I have no idea about AZ or any other state experiencing increasing case #s. It's clear that every region, every state and every city have different sets of circumstances. Those will affect disease burden as a function of COVID cases. As usual, case #s are meaningless without context. I just learned another factor to inform the question of how pandemic management is working - Disease Burden.

* Testing in FL was limited early to over 65 with symptoms that was going to skew the numbers toward 65; the abundance of new testing for anyone that wants it makes the current median age of 34 a more accurate figure.

** It's difficult to compare testing levels by country or state because of the multitude of different methodologies used to administer and process testing data and results. It is generally accepted that the initial R(0) defines the testing % for any region's testing strategy. NYC's R(0) was thought to be 7; that requires a testing percentag of > 50% according to one chart I've seen. FL's R(0) was 2.5 that dictates that 30% of FL's population needs to be tested - the lowest. I can't explain the math.

*** This data is not widely available to the public. Don't know why. It's the first time I've seen any kind of exacting numbers provided but this is what Desantis connected to Disease Burden and then explained this is perhaps the most important set of figures to judge how well a pandemic is being managed within a region. Makes sense.

[Jeff Buchanan]

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