Some people thought life was a poop sandwich and every day was another bite out of it......................then the pandemic started to get real.?ÿ Suddenly, all the toilet paper in the world had disappeared.?ÿ Life must be worse.?ÿ Then the Governor or someone in authority tells you to keep your butt at home.?ÿ Life must be worse.?ÿ Then the schools close down and suddenly parents turn into instructional paraprofessionals to help the teachers provide instruction to their children.?ÿ Life definitely must be worse.?ÿ The the parents also had to learn how to grasp how to work with Zoom sessions and Google Classroom on various computers.?ÿ Life is really getting tough.?ÿ Then the somewhat standard things we dread in life begin to happen despite the pandemic/isolation.?ÿ Building fires, another idiot with a knife or gun in a busy public place killing people, an earthquake in Idaho, freak hailstorms, traffic accidents, etc., etc., etc.?ÿ Chatted briefly this morning with a fellow whose nephew died a couple days ago at age 29.?ÿ Nope, not COVID-19 related.?ÿ The nephew's girlfriend was very drunk and very mad so she swerved off the highway in her very nice car to run over him as he was walking away from where they had their fight.?ÿ Life goes on, but it may not be too cheery.
Then I get to looking on Facebook and find a jillion and one cute stories and memes of how people are adapting and trying to have fun despite the pandemic.?ÿ The chuckles are out there if you just go looking for them.?ÿ We will get through this (most of us, anyway) and we will start to be much more aware of what really matters in life.?ÿ 95 percent of what we are griping that we are missing is stuff our parents/grandparents did not have when they were our age.?ÿ They did fine without it.?ÿ So will we.
95 percent of what we are griping that we are missing is stuff our parents/grandparents did not have when they were our age.?ÿ They did fine without it.?ÿ So will we.
But most of our parents and grandparents had jobs at your age. There's getting to be a lot of people today who don't.
Well, it's tough times for sure, but we can do this. We didn't want the lady who helps us clean to come in on Friday, but we told her to stop by and we paid her anyway. We're not made of money, but we can do that.
Businesses around here are adjusting. One of the grocery stores has hired folks to disinfect zones every two hours. Most are limiting the number of people in the store at any one time.
Most of the restaurants we use had strong take-out businesses before the quarantine. One of our favorites, though, has owners near our age. They've closed.
Folks need those checks, though. I hope they're coming soon?ÿ
I think life in New Zealand for my grandchildren may very well more closely resemble that of my grandparents than that of my children.
After watching a report on CNN yesterday I'm starting to wonder what life in the future holds for us if we are still living. The facts presented about a global depression, not recession, are quite alarming. The trickle down effect has not even begun to impact world economies, but when/if it does it will be something none of us have seen before. Then again probably half the people in the USA have the "oh, it will go away" attitude. I hope they are right, for once, because if they are not the future is holding some things we can do without.
Not to put too much hope where there's so much worry, but the Raleigh newspaper has been keeping its own count of positive covid-19 tests in NC. It's slightly different from the state DHHS numbers because, I think, they have a different cut-off time than DHHS. They publish the graph every day. Today's is below.
One big caveat is that we're counting positive tests, so we don't know about people who have the disease and haven't been tested or are waiting for test results. But it's what we have.
Note that the positive count grew slowly at first, then exponentially, and now seems to be leveling off. it's the classic logistic curve and, when information is scarce, it's a go-to model.
Today's full article is here, along with the numbers that make up the graph. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241787796.html
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National data seem to be doing the same thing, but different regions are on different schedules. Here's a good source for that: https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/coronavirus-tracker/
Keep the faith, it may pass sooner than we think.
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@mathteacher please keep in mind but this is a global problem. One cannot think regionally or nationally. Yes we must all be positive that mortality numbers will be significantly less than what's predicted. but the aftershocks of the virus will have a severe impact. due to collapse of global and National and Regional and local economies,, there will be an increase of novel non-Covid deaths. Most likely among seniors and others not being able to deal with the stress.
John Hopkins arcgis covid site is probably the most up-to-date for daily info. Google it
One more thing. In 7 months another round of outbreaks most likely will?ÿ return.
Keeping a proper attitude is a necessity to survive any adversity.?ÿ At times I have been accused of taking a serious situation lightly.?ÿ I always explain I truly understand the gravity of a situation and my defense mechanism is levity.
I'm reminded of a series of old gag jokes I use to see occasionally.?ÿ The two main characters are prisoners in a dungeon.?ÿ Here's one:
Another is the same two guys with one saying to the other, "Just think, someday we'll look back on this and laugh".
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Making light of a horrible situation might seem inappropriate to some.?ÿ But just remember; smiling and laughing actually enhances the immune system.
Very true. States aren't closed domes, that's for sure. Last week, Dr. Birx talked about the migration from New York City. There, along with the normally thought of destinations, was North Carolina, last on her brief list.
I recompute a logistic model for the NC positives every day. The limiting value has crept up daily, from under 3,000 a week ago to more than 4,200 today. But the daily numbers can bounce around for any number of reasons, so I use a trailing 3-day exponential growth rate to smooth the things a bit. That rate is down from 0.157 on 3/31 to 0.105 today. I haven't smoothed the actual numbers because I don't like to do that unless there's a clear reason, like seasonality for example.
On March 16, a UNC epidemiologist projected 4,000 NC cases by April 2. Our actual number that day was 1,857. Today's model says that we will be at 3,995 on April 15. i wouldn't bet so much as a penny on that date and number
Even the smartest experts are struggling for answers. Numerically, for the short term, I don't think there are any.
Medically, I hope there's something soon.
@paden-cash I agree. But you need more than a chuckle. I discovered and have been recommending to people that you need some really gut-busting laughs that produce tears in the eye. Once or maybe twice a week to get anxieties and stress out of you. These are the two things that we have been doing. Long walks. Kind of liking those Victorian novels in movies where the characters are always taking a walk Besides the normal 15-20 minute walking the dogs twice daily, three times a week we walk them for about an hour and a half. Friday and Saturday nights after dog walking. A good bottle of red wine. Doesn't have to be expensive. This past Saturday night we actually doubled the consumption of wine. Started recounting forgotten things of the past and let our hair down and laughed and laughed. Swmbo was so surprised that she was laughing uncontrollably. She said its been quite awhile. We ended up playing rummy past midnight still laughing at silly stuff.
@mathteacher a lot of the testing results in Louisiana 4 positive cases has dealt with the testing lags for + results. Sometimes they come in from independent labs in clusters.
Adding to the bounciness of the numbers. There's a nice young lady in Kansas who was infected. She shared her story publicly on FB. The turnaround time for her test was 8 days. She self-quarantined at the first symptoms, but not everyone is so conscientious.
One official said that the numbers we see today are the state of the outbreak two weeks ago. I hope the lag is not that long, but there has to be a lag.
I had a conversation last Friday with the editorial page editor of our local paper. He is a real skeptic of epidemiological models. I am, too, but I know that to forecast correctly, you have to forecast often. One of them is likely to be right.
After all that forecast-bashing, Sunday's editorial was about global warming and included a "projection" of the number of additional respiratory illnesses we will have in 2050 if something isn't done. Really? A projection based on a forecast? Thirty years into the future?
Those climate scientists need to apply their considerable skills to covid-19. The next thirty days are way more important than the next thirty years.
@mathteacher well I'm not going to take that bait. I've been tossed out of here once for politics. Long time ago I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. One of the themes is that men/women of science save the planet Earth. Not the great white Hunter persona. I was also taken by the Gaia hypothesis . So I will disagree with you and leave it at that. But we cannot become shortsighted.Now is the time of the Big Come Together moment. People are calling this The New Normal but I prefer to call it the new abnormal. We need to pay more attention to scientists and Technologies. Ignore the politicians and their minions of media pundits who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. At lunch I saw a report of the Cheeto saying that he wasn't a doctor but he had common sense.
Someone help us please I'll even take an alien invasion on Mercy mission.
I guess I'm gone again. You all take care
Those climate scientists need to apply their considerable skills to covid-19. The next thirty days are way more important than the next thirty years.
First off, I'm not sure that all the prediction expertise in the world will do much good.?ÿ The present analyses have led to advice and efforts that should help/are helping.?ÿ What prediction would get government and people to do more?
On the other hand, if better prediction could help now, it would be worthwhile to pull the predictors off of the long term issues for a few weeks to work on this one.
The stay at home order and the many advice of everyone to stay at home has not slowed down the survey orders and the "we must have this survey completled to close by the 14th of April" calls and other expressions by impatient clients.
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We may be a lot closer than you might think. Dr. Fauci is experiencing the same criticism, that he held back the use of potentially effective drugs during the AIDS crisis years from about 1985 through about 1995. I was a life insurance company forecaster then and that disease was significant to us. He wanted the data, he didn't want to kill people with a bad drug, and I thought he was right. He reminds me of the smartest man I ever worked for; similar demeanor and totally honest about what he knows and doesn't know.
On the other hand, there are things like this: https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/news/2020/03/30/medical-center-touts-anti-malaria-concoction.html and this: https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-drug-covid-19-malaria-hydroxychloroquine/6079864/
I didn't mean to bait you or anyone else with the climate model comments and I wish that science had not been so politicized. Models are models only and, as Dr. Fauci said, they're only as good as the assumptions they're based on.
My only intent was to point out that bashing one science's models while accepting another's without question is not a consistent position.
Right you are and that's the point Fauci makes. Our governor, on the other hand, needs to know the chance that we might run out of hospital beds. If we need for Samaritan's Purse to dismantle the Central Park field hospital and move it to Research Triangle Park near Raleigh, then he'd like a few days' notice.
In the end, a projection is just one of the inputs to executive decision making. A skeptic will under-weight it and believer will over-weight it. Where it fits depends on the executive.
Our county is holding at one known positive.?ÿ That was a young lady who had been in Germany when this all started.?ÿ Immediately upon her return to her home county she met with medical staff and was tested, then she self-quarantined at home.?ÿ The result was positive.?ÿ That was close to three weeks ago.?ÿ Despite having traveled about two and a half hours from the airport in a vehicle with her parents there has been no announcement of them having been infected during that trip or by being at home with her.?ÿ They chose to self-quarantine once she knew the results of her test.?ÿ They probably should have done so immediately, but, had no basis for doing that at the time.?ÿ There has been no news of her condition either improving or deteriorating to date.
Two neighboring counties are still at zero positives.?ÿ But, all it takes is one careless circumstance and we could have 20.?ÿ Another adjoining county has two police detectives who have been found to be positives.
