Bad-Thoma wrote:claycarver wrote:This is accurate but misleading.
So, I just spot checked North Carolina from the list. It is true that North Carolina has a record number of hospitalizations, but that's only because their numbers have been unusually low. Their record high is 798. By contrast, Maryland is really happy that they're down to 751 hospitalizations...even though North Carolina has 4 million more residents than Maryland.
North Carolina's data does not show any indication that they're in trouble. So even though it's accurate that there are record hospitalizations in North Carolina, that statement gives a false impression.
Clay, I'm really not sure what you are trying to say here. North Carolina, in some regions, is at 69% to 77% hospital bed capacity and getting record numbers of hospitalizations from covid. That's a sign of trouble. It's not as easy as just shuffling people off to another region to open hospital space, that's too slow of a process to really help when hospitals hit capacity (ask NY how that goes). I'm not saying the whole country needs to be shut down or anything, I'm saying people aren't taking this seriously enough and because of this eventually we may hit another shut down similar to what we dealt with this spring. That's the last thing economically or mental/physical "healthily" we need. I want my kid to go back to school next fall and I don't want to be sitting at home with my thumb in my ass while I worry about my wife going to work in an essential service every day because we all have to quarantine again. There needs to be stronger leadership on a national and state level, yes open things up but enforce guidelines rather than hodgepodge a plan together. I live on the VT/upstate NY border and going to businesses from one state to the other is night and day different. VT most places won't allow you in without a mask, limit the number of people, etc. The upstate NY side of the border is a little red necky and every place you go there's invariably people acting like nothing is going on, no mask, life as normal. Therse are towns that are 15-20 minutes apart. There need's to be a coherent national narrative on this and we're just not getting it, and it's going to cost us down the road.
We seem to fall on different sides of this a little but I do respect your opinion, I just feel like you're cherry picking a little to make a point and I'm not clear on what that point is. Help me with that. To be clear, I'm not saying we need to be in a quarantine (at this moment). I agree with your previous point that when it comes to quarantine we need to be targeting the most vulnerable, i.e. nursing homes etc.. What I am saying is that this thing is real and not going away if people don't take it seriously and do some small, slightly inconvenient things like wear a **** mask even though it's not super comfortable and isn't 100% effective. It doesn't need to be 100% **** effective, it just needs to help. Try to stand away from people, try not to gather indoors in large numbers etc. I've not only seen people not wearing masks but also shaming people who are. What in the ever loving **** is that about? How **** dumb do they have to be to criticize someone for attempting to help in a way that harms neither themselves or anyone else and is a safety guideline? It hasn't happened to me yet, but it's happened to a couple of my neighbors and I'm anger loaded and ready to rip into someone so part of me is hoping for it, just a little bit.
So really, all I'm saying is dismissal and apathy is going to cost us hard down the road if we aren't careful. The outbreaks are embers, you can stomp them out pretty easily but if you don't ignore them there's a chance the house goes up. The more embers ignored the higher the chance. People need to be vigilant, not dismissive. Not scared, not wrapped in saran wrap and buried in the yard, just vigilant. The vacuum of national leadership is going a long ways towards stopping this from happening.
That Reuters report says some regions of SOUTH Carolina are seeing 69% to 77% hospital bed capacity. What I'm reading about North Carolina is that they have a little over 1000 ICU beds available for Covid patients, but they're only using about 20% of the beds currently. They can absorb a lot more than they have currently. This article was written in a way to heighten possible confusion like that because they're lumping states together.
For North Carolina, the issue isn't beds, its infection rate, which is a little over 1. Which is one indicator of concern, but they have a fairly low level of concern when you look at the whole picture including deaths, hospital beds available, positive test rates, etc.
So, reports like the one from Reuters stack several states together and say hospitalizations are high, infection rate are bad, positive test rates are booming, whatever...which is true individually, but not necessarily true collectively. They're mashing them all together and making it hard for the reader to see that these states don't all share all the warning indicators mentioned. Separating out the condition of each state gives a more clear and less alarming picture.
I am NOT saying that things should just go back to normal right away. Gradual reduction of restrictions and observation of outcomes is reasonable. But I am keeping in mind that excessive restrictions pose massive health concerns too. There's no virtue in being excessively restrictive just as there's no virtue in being dismissive of the virus.
Generally, news reports seem to pounce on bad data and present it in a way that presents an overly alarming picture. I think this is dangerous. If the news were shrugging it off and scoffing at precautions, I would be just as concerned.
