OT: Coronavirus

[Guest]

I would bet $'s and donuts this was representative of the # of face masks at this thing...

I hope nobody gets ill from attending.

I wonder if a lot of rural residents think these rules are only needed to protect people in the cities and suburbs?

[Guest]

@purplefaithful said:


I would bet $'s and donuts this was representative of the # of face masks at this thing...

I hope nobody gets ill from attending.

I wonder if a lot of rural residents think these rules are only needed to protect people in the cities and suburbs?

It's America. Freedom. Liberty. We don't have any more of that than any other Democracy, but we think we do. And we're belligerent about it.  It's why we're exploding with corona and other areas have nearly eliminated it. An American is dying every 60 seconds from the virus. Meanwhile, in Italy, the former center of all virus hell, it's nearly gone.  

From NYT: 
And Italy? Its hospitals are basically empty of Covid-19 patients. Daily deaths attributed to the virus in Lombardy, the northern region that bore the brunt of the pandemic, hover around zero. The number of new daily cases has plummeted to “one of the lowest in Europe and the world,” said Giovanni Rezza, director of the infective illness department at the National Institute of Health. “We have been very prudent.”
How Italy has gone from being a global pariah to a model — however imperfect — of viral containment holds fresh lessons for the rest of the world, including the United States, where the virus, never under control, now rages across the country.

[Guest]

@purplefaithful said:


I would bet $'s and donuts this was representative of the # of face masks at this thing...

I hope nobody gets ill from attending.

I wonder if a lot of rural residents think these rules are only needed to protect people in the cities and suburbs?

If they had been holding BLM signs the state would have likely paid for the portajohns and endorsed the protest, probably would have paid for security and even closed some roads for him.

[Guest]

Birx warns US is 'in a new phase' of coronavirus pandemic with more widespread casesOn Sunday Dr. Deborah Birx said the US is in a new phase in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic saying that the deadly virus is more widespread than when it first took hold in the US earlier this year.

"What we are seeing today is different from March and April. It is extraordinarily widespread. It's into the rural as equal urban areas," Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union."
Birx stressed that Americans need to follow health recommendations, including wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.
"To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus," Birx said. "If you're in multi-generational households, and there's an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you're positive, if you have individuals in your households with comorbidities."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/02/politics/...index.html

[Guest]

Annual Sturgis motorcycle rally expecting 250K, stirring virus concerns

By STEPHEN GROVES Associated PressAugust 2, 2020 — 9:06am

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Sturgis is on. The message has been broadcast across social media as South Dakota, which has seen an uptick in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, braces to host hundreds of thousands of bikers for the 80th edition of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
More than 250,000 people are expected to rumble through western South Dakota, seeking the freedom of cruising the boundless landscapes in a state that has skipped lockdowns. The Aug. 7 to 16 event, which could be the biggest anywhere so far during the pandemic, will offer businesses that depend on the rally a chance to make up for losses caused by the coronavirus. But for many in Sturgis, a city of about 7,000, the brimming bars and bacchanalia will not be welcome during a pandemic.
Though only about half the usual number of people are expected at this year's event, residents were split as the city weighed its options. Many worried that the rally would cause an unmanageable outbreak of COVID-19.
“This is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year," Sturgis resident Lynelle Chapman told city counselors at a June meeting. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”
In a survey of residents conducted by the city, more than 60% said the rally should be postponed. But businesses pressured the City Council to proceed.
Rallygoers have spent about $800 million in past years, according to the state Department of Tourism. Though the rally has an ignominious history of biker gangs and lawlessness, bikers of a different sort have shown up in recent years — affluent professionals who ride for recreation and come flush with cash. Though the rally still features libertine displays, it also offers charity events and tributes to the military and veterans.
The attorney for a tourism souvenir wholesaler in Rapid City wrote to the City Council reminding that a judge found the city does not solely own rights to the rally and threatening to sue if the city tried to postpone it. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Chip, which is the largest campground and concert venue that lies outside the bounds of the city, made clear that it would hold some version of the rally.
Rod Woodruff, who operates the Buffalo Chip, said he felt he had little choice but to proceed with the rally. He employs hundreds of people in August and a smaller full-time staff.
“We spend money for 355 days of the year without any return on it, hoping people show up for nine days," he said. “We're a nine-day business.”
Woodruff felt he could pull off a safe event, allowing people to keep their distance from one another at the outdoor concerts at his campground. He said he was emboldened by the July 3 fireworks celebration at Mount Rushmore, where 7,500 people gathered without any reported outbreaks after the event, according to health officials.
In the end, Sturgis officials realized the rally would happen whether they wanted it or not. They decided to try to scale it back, canceling city-hosted events and slashing advertising for the rally.
Jerry Cole, who directs the rally for the city, said organizers are not sure how many people will show up, but that they're expecting at least 250,000. Travel restrictions from Canada and other countries have cut out a sizeable portion of potential visitors, he said.
Others think the rally could be the biggest yet.
“It's the biggest single event that's going on in the United States that didn't get canceled,” Woodruff said. “A lot of people think it's going to be bigger than ever.”
When the rally is over, every year the city weighs all the trash generated to estimate how many people showed up. This year, they will also conduct mass coronavirus testing to see if all those people brought the pandemic to Sturgis.
https://www.startribune.com/annual-sturg...571985582/

[Guest]

@Hidalgo said:

@JimmyinSD said:

@Hidalgo said:
The media is selling fear and a whole bunch of people are buying

No doubt there are inaccuracies and lots of agendas with Covid, but does that mean we dont have a crisis?

Lets say there is a 10% inaccuracy (which is big) with data from CDC (below). That 10% inaccuracy would mean the # of US death per day is 900 instead of 1000 over the next 30 days, or could it be 1100???



The death toll is projected to reach 173,000 by August 22, according to a new composite forecast from by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects. That's an average of almost 1,000 US deaths every day for the next 30 days.

"There are two things that are going on," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "One is the underlying level of infection is rising, which is obviously the thing we are most concerned about," Jha said. 
"But in about 18 to 20 states, the number of tests that are being done is actually falling. And it's falling because our testing system is under such strain that we just can't even deliver the tests today that we were doing two weeks ago in about 18 to 20 states. That's very concerning because when cases are rising, and your number of tests are falling, that's a recipe for disaster." 

[Guest]

@purplefaithful said:

@Hidalgo said:

@JimmyinSD said:

@Hidalgo said:
The media is selling fear and a whole bunch of people are buying

No doubt there are inaccuracies and lots of agendas with Covid, but does that mean we dont have a crisis?

Lets say there is a 10% inaccuracy (which is big) with data from CDC (below). That 10% inaccuracy would mean the # of US death per day is 900 instead of 1000 over the next 30 days, or could it be 1100???



The death toll is projected to reach 173,000 by August 22, according to a new composite forecast from by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects. That's an average of almost 1,000 US deaths every day for the next 30 days.

"There are two things that are going on," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "One is the underlying level of infection is rising, which is obviously the thing we are most concerned about," Jha said. 
"But in about 18 to 20 states, the number of tests that are being done is actually falling. And it's falling because our testing system is under such strain that we just can't even deliver the tests today that we were doing two weeks ago in about 18 to 20 states. That's very concerning because when cases are rising, and your number of tests are falling, that's a recipe for disaster." 

Yeah, the whole belief that the "media is selling fear," or intentionally misleading you, is dangerous. It leads to people refusing to distance, wear masks and doing what's necessary to get rid of this thing.

When you look at the case statistics in communities, states and countries, it almost exactly mirrors where and when we follow CDC guidelines and where and when we let our guard down. 

[Guest]

Isn't this Mpls? 

https://twitter.com/Chris_Hawkey/status/...19840?s=20

[Guest]

yup it was...I will say (again) that in all of the retail stores I frequent (or work in daily) people are wearing masks and not whining about it - at least openly.

So much more to worry about than this these days...

[Guest]

Is the five-day office week gone for good?Both workers and companies want to keep some work at home.

By Claire Cain Miller New York TimesAugust 2, 2020

Most office workers are in no hurry to return to the office full time, even after the coronavirus is under control. But that does not mean they want to work from home forever. The future, a variety of new data shows, is likely to be workweeks split between office and home.Recent surveys show that both employees and employers support this arrangement. And research suggests that a couple of days a week at each location is the magic number to reap the benefits of each arrangement while canceling out the negatives of both.
“You should never be thinking about full time or zero time,” said Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University whose research has identified causal links between remote work and employee performance. “I’m a firm believer in post-COVID halftime in the office.”
According to a survey by Morning Consult, 47% of those working remotely say that once it is safe to return to work, their ideal arrangement would be to continue working from home one to four days a week. Forty percent would work from home every day, and just 14% would return to the office every day.
The group of workers that is able to work from home is likely to have more education, with higher incomes, and so far they have escaped the most severe job losses from the pandemic. That could change if the economy continues to suffer, which analysts said could affect work-from-home policies — say, for instance, that employers opt to make remote work permanent to cut real estate costs.
In the Survey of Business Uncertainty — which was conducted by the Atlanta Fed, Stanford and the University of Chicago — employers predicted that post-pandemic, 27% of their full-time employees would continue working from home, most for a few days a week. Other surveys of firms have shown that they expect at least 40% of employees to keep working remotely.
Across organizations, work was most effective when employees were home one or two days a week, according to research by Humu, a tech company.
“It creates a shift, where office time is for collaborative work, for innovative work, for having those meetings, and home time is for focused work,” said Stefanie Tignor, director of data and analytics at Humu.
Thinking has changed
Past experiments in remote work at Best Buy and Yahoo were ended because managers decided remote workers were not accountable enough and missed out on in-person collaboration.
But it’s hard to know if the effects would have been different had their competitors, partners and customers also been working from home. Plus, in the past few years, technology for videoconferencing and virtual collaboration has become more seamless, and, because of the shelter-at-home mandates, workers have become more comfortable in using it.
So far, the results of corporate America’s large-scale experiment on remote work have been positive, even with the enormous stresses of the pandemic, including shuttered schools.
In the Morning Consult survey, conducted June 16-20 with 1,066 Americans who said their jobs could be done remotely, nearly two-thirds said they had enjoyed working from home, and just 20% said they had not (the rest were neutral). Three-quarters are happy with how their companies have handled the transition, and 59% would be more likely to apply to a job that offered remote work.
Of the 87% who want to keep working from home, people ages 18-44 and women are slightly more likely to want this arrangement.
49% of the respondents said they were more productive working from home compared with 32% who said they were not (19% did not know). Forty-four percent of respondents said the quality of their work had improved while working remotely during the pandemic, compared with 27% who said it had not and 29% who did not know
https://www.startribune.com/is-the-five-...571972672/