outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

PHOENIX — A drive-up testing site equipped for several hundred people in West Phoenix was swarmed on Saturday by about 1,000 people, leaving some baking in their cars for hours.

A nearby testing station has already reached capacity for this weekend, appointments vanishing within minutes. Hospitals are filling up. Restaurants are again shutting down, more than a month after Arizona reopened its economy under the mantra “Return Stronger.”

Arizona has emerged as an epicenter of the early summer coronavirus crisis as the outbreak has expanded, flaring across new parts of the country and, notably, infecting more young people.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is recording as many as 2,000 cases a day, “eclipsing the New York City boroughs even on their worst days,” warned a Wednesday brief by disease trackers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which observed, “Arizona has lost control of the epidemic.”

But physicians, public health experts, advocates and local officials say the crisis was predictable in Arizona, where local ordinances requiring masks were forbidden until Gov. Doug Ducey (R) reversed course last week. State leaders did not take the necessary precautions or model safe behavior, these observers maintain, even in the face of compelling evidence and repeated pleas from authoritative voices.

“We have failed on so many levels,” said Dana Marie Kennedy, the Arizona director of AARP, who said her organization has yet to receive a response to four letters outlining concerns to the governor. She is working on a fifth.

Neither the governor’s office nor the state health department responded to requests for comment.

At critical junctures, blunders by top officials undermined faith in the data purportedly driving decision-making, according to experts monitoring Arizona’s response. And when forbearance was most required, as the state began to reopen despite continued community transmission, an abrupt and uniform approach — without transparent benchmarks or latitude for stricken areas to hold back — led large parts of the public to believe the pandemic was over.

And now, Arizona is facing more per capita cases than recorded by any country in Europe or even by hard-hit Brazil. Among states with at least 20 people hospitalized for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, no state has seen its rate of hospitalizations increase more rapidly since Memorial Day.

How Arizona ‘lost control of the epidemic’

doesn't even need to mention that the president decided to hold a campaign rally with hitler youth in an indoor 3,000 church just a few days, even though all of the above was already exceedingly clear, and few of the hitler youth wore masks, in deference to the notoriously non-tacky and tasteful aesthetics and non-vanity of the president, and no one ever asked them to, either, at least not from the stage

they should be scared, they all deserve to fucking die

― time is running out to pitch in $5 (Karl Malone)

I just don't want this post to vanish under the fold without a resounding "KARL OTM"

heh, thanks sleeve

i immediately wanted to rescind it. i am a bad place, generally, and am going to cut myself off before i get really fucking annoying

self-care is revolutionary, man, practice it <3

No they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/let-the-hate-flow-through-you2-768x498-620x402.jpg

i meant "i am in a bad place", but "i am a bad place" is better, and i request that you send all the dead assholes to my place when they're done here

get in my fucking lodge, republicans

caek do you teach medical students? in my experience our stats training was woeful and I had to basically self-teach what I didn't remember from undergrad

does this mean that generally speaking the more prevalent the illness, the higher the PPV, even if the specificity/sensitivity is relatively high?

yes

you can fill out this table with some simple round numbers and see how changing the prevalence, sens/spec, etc, one at a time changes the PPVs and NPVs

whoops https://www.medcalc.org/calc/diagnostic_test.php

So that would just have to shake out over time the more prevalent covid becomes, right? That is, the PPV is lower than 50% because it's not that widespread yet, so statistically, on paper, it's likely that a lot of those positives are false positives. But that's based on projection, right? It's also possible, if less statistically likely, that in practice all of those positives are in fact true positives?

FL has once again temporarily shutdown standalone bars, suspending alcohol service statewide (restaurants that serve food and alcohol can continue)

Meanwhile, Illinois continues to cautiously open up, encouraged by great numbers. The question in my mind is not will the states/places that half-assed it at best run into problems - duh - it's will the states/places that took things seriously and got good results be able to sustain those results as things open up again.

Florida supposedly had "good numbers" before re-opening, which is usually easy when you game the data like Desantis did/is doing.

speaking of,

"Florida is reporting 8,942 new covid-19 cases on Friday, blowing past its single-day high of 5,511 set on Wednesday. It is the 19th day in a row the state has hit a new average high. Average cases are now up about 77 percent from a week ago, and 526 percent since Memorial Day."

fuck.

Yeah, it's hard to hide that kind of data.

Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., is furious because, earlier today, he saw a jogger wearing a face mask. pic.twitter.com/OVyvP1v41k

— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) June 26, 2020

"Don't look back, you can never look back"

I've given up with Florida. we have a Governor who doesn't give a shit, we have a populace who doesn't give a shit.

you should maybe get out of there?

if I didn't have folks living here that might need me for emergencies, that ship woulda sailed a while ago.

course, all of my usual destinations are places that also aren't doing well with COVID, so it might be "midwestern state with 50 miles between houses"

will the states/places that took things seriously and got good results be able to sustain those results as things open up again.

I think the widely agreed answer among epidemiologists is 'no'. An increase in cases is unavoidable, along with an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. The opening up of businesses and small social gatherings is a solution to a different problem than "how do we keep the virus from spreading"; instead it is in answer to the profound social costs incurred by the indefinite extension of the shutdown, not just in terms of the economy and plummeting tax revenues, but also the massive mental stress on the whole population and the resulting social unrest and desperation that was emerging.

Some form of reopening was always bound to happen. What's most disheartening is that the time that should have been spent strengthening the public health infrastructure and preparing the nation to unify in the face of a dire necessity, was spent dithering, wallowing in incompetence, then sowing discord in search of political (and financial) gain. Now we just have chaos and confusion, and the people who are saying the right things about maintaining caution, distancing and wearing masks are drowned out or talked over by idiots and nonsense.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/politics/maskwearing-coronavirus-analysis/index.html

I've given up with Florida. we have a Governor who doesn't give a shit, we have a populace who doesn't give a shit.

― I hear that sometimes Satan wants to defund police (Neanderthal), Friday, June 26, 2020 10:37 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

cmon over to arizona...

Also, come on, can we not to do the whole "just move" thing? It's rarely that easy.

not to mention moving from a place of high incidence to a place of low incidence is potentially a really good way to spread a disease

tbf it WOULD be easy for me compared to other people (if not for the aforementioned folks) in that I have an assload of savings, live alone, and a job that I can do in any state.

but yeah, I would definitely not do so unless I had a clean test first and self-quarantined for 14 days upon arrival.

truth be told though I'm thinking of moving into the ocean

No Covid in the ocean, afaict.

I agree that the "why don't you just move" schtick is always a lame reply but i would maybe suggest an exception for florida

there's also the "everybody I have ever known in my life sans about four people live in Florida" dilemma, but maybe we can all move and form a commune somewhere.

i should note that i lived in sarasota for nine months at one point, speaking from some experience

No Covid in the ocean, afaict.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 26, 2020 2:08 PM (seven minutes ago)

very high mask use iirc

wait til the first person tries to fuck a whale

the arizona of the ocean

https://i.imgur.com/sHDCpfE.jpg

wtf are you all doing! where a mask! fuck

except all of the fish are like "i just want other fish to follow the law. and maybe the people telling us to wear masks should be declared domestic terrorists, is what many people are saying"

*fish stare blankly, almost like they don't need to blink at all, almost like they're not human*

"i just want to spend a weekend on the beach with my family!!!!!"

"i don't know whether to wear a mask! i need a world of probabilities between 0.1% and 99.9% to deliver a probability of 100% so that i have no uncertainty! for now i won't wear a mask tho"

that is my impersonation of coronavirus fish in arizona, that's all i got. i will go back to work now

lol thank you for that KM, sincerely

i made them arizona fish instead of florida fish, out of respect 2 u

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to1XKxFlb2I

You can see the actual moment when VP Pence's soul would've left his body if he still had a soul. pic.twitter.com/gmeVAUxTvf

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) June 26, 2020

BREAKING: Tennessee sets an all-time daily high in new #COVID19 cases with 1,410, already making this the worst week of the pandemic 1/ https://t.co/54BWulnpYZ

— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) June 26, 2020

what a fucking disaster! Who would have thought?

the great thing is that each state has different rules about opening and shutting down, and some are in coordination with each other, but most of them aren't! that way, the declining conditions in one state can be sure to affect the states around them as well, including the ones that were starting to do better, on an endless cycle! some have talked about a mysterious "united" entity that would have oversight of the whole thing, like a central effort to coordinate all of the different states into one single "plan". but how many people would that involve? and how can we see them all on the same screen at the same time? technically we could - sure look at the phantom menace trade federation scenes for a look at what that kind of giant central coordinated meeting of "united states" might look like - but there's a reason phantom menace is science-fiction, or fantasy and not a documentary. so for now we all just have to come up with our own plans and pray

I can cross three or four state lines in a 20-minute drive.

you are the new quad-state captain

I can cross three or four state lines in a 20-minute drive.