Covid cases, hospitalizations, death trends and other touchy subjects…

[pogi]

6 hours ago, Raingirl said:

Oregon is also overwhelmed.  We’re in the worst condition we’ve been in since the pandemic started. Hospitals are full. People are dying because they can’t get the care they need. Vital surgeries have been canceled.  Morgue trucks are being brought in. The National Guard has been brought in. 
 

And still, people are denying the reality of the situation. Refusing to vaccinate and wear masks. Parents are refusing to allow their children to wear masks to school. The insanity goes on. 
 

My employer is still planning on in-person classes, but they made the last minute decision to not bring the rest of the staff back to campus as planned. 
 

Our peak is yet to come, so it’s going to get even worse  

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Chum said:

As far as overwhelmed hospitals go, Oregon is in good company. Georgia. Tennessee. Alaska. Kentucky. Idaho. Arkansas. Alabama. New Mexico. West Virginia. Hawaii. Mississippi.

And of course states like TX and FL where the record number of deaths, etc is just state officials meeting their covid nurturing goals.

Seems awfully reminiscent of New York at the beginning of all this.  People pounced hard on me for suggesting that New York is not on Mars and to prepare.   People blamed the governor and said it would never be so bad here...yet here we are.  And this is with the vaccine!

It seems the same people are still trying to poke holes in prevention...sad!

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, BlueDreams said:

It you look at the maps and compare county vaccination rate and county hotspots (as in high case rate per 100k people) there is an obviously correlation between vaccination and spread. Multnomah is no exception. Their covid cases are steadier than most the rural counties I clicked on (as in there’s no drastic surging happening there) and per capita, their rate is on the lower end for Oregon. 
this is with a big thing going against it: it has a far greater population density. Which means it’s harder to socially distance and reduce contact with others. It gives huge credence to the final step to reducing covid transmission: vaccinations. Without it, it can dash previous efforts to slow the spread in the face of delta.
 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/oregon-covid-cases.html

 

With luv, 

BD

Here was yesterday's totals per county Multnomah has more cases than any other county.

It's like that pretty much every day.

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (12), Benton (21), Clackamas (105), Clatsop (6), Columbia (27), Coos (39), Crook (16), Curry (20), Deschutes (157), Douglas (151), Grant (8), Harney (8), Hood River (2), Jackson (195), Jefferson (15), Josephine (103), Klamath (61), Lake (2), Lane (205), Lincoln (37), Linn (154), Malheur (27), Marion (249), Morrow (11), Multnomah (285), Polk (41), Sherman (1), Tillamook (31), Umatilla (72), Union (15), Wallowa (23), Wasco (23), Washington (211) and Yamhill (46).

 

 

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Danzo said:

Here was yesterday's totals per county Multnomah has more cases than any other county.

It's like that pretty much every day.

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (12), Benton (21), Clackamas (105), Clatsop (6), Columbia (27), Coos (39), Crook (16), Curry (20), Deschutes (157), Douglas (151), Grant (8), Harney (8), Hood River (2), Jackson (195), Jefferson (15), Josephine (103), Klamath (61), Lake (2), Lane (205), Lincoln (37), Linn (154), Malheur (27), Marion (249), Morrow (11), Multnomah (285), Polk (41), Sherman (1), Tillamook (31), Umatilla (72), Union (15), Wallowa (23), Wasco (23), Washington (211) and Yamhill (46).

 

 

Are you considering population density and total population?

Even with higher vaccination rates there could still be far more unvaccinated people overall, and within closer proximity.

Are you really trying to extrapolate that preventive measures don’t work from this data?

Edited September 4, 2021 by pogi

[pogi]

2 hours ago, Danzo said:

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (12), Benton (21), Clackamas (105), Clatsop (6), Columbia (27), Coos (39), Crook (16), Curry (20), Deschutes (157), Douglas (151), Grant (8), Harney (8), Hood River (2), Jackson (195), Jefferson (15), Josephine (103), Klamath (61), Lake (2), Lane (205), Lincoln (37), Linn (154), Malheur (27), Marion (249), Morrow (11), Multnomah (285), Polk (41), Sherman (1), Tillamook (31), Umatilla (72), Union (15), Wallowa (23), Wasco (23), Washington (211) and Yamhill (46).

Just to give you an idea of how effective vaccines are, Marion County only has a population of 347,818 with a vaccination rate of 57.4% with daily new cases equaling 249.

Multnomah County has a population of 601,592 with a vaccination rate of 68.7%, with daily new cases equalling 285

That is only a difference of 36 new cases daily despite a population difference of 253,774!  That is what an 11% difference in vaccination rates can do!

To put that in perspective, that difference in population is more people than the entire population of Jackson County (53.7 vaccination rate) which has a population of 216,574 and is seeing 105 new cases daily (far more than 36!).

In other words, whatever Multnomah County is doing is working very well considering total population and population density which puts them at a severe disadvantage when it comes to highly infectious diseases. 

Edited September 5, 2021 by pogi

[Danzo]

32 minutes ago, pogi said:

Are you considering population density and total population?

Even with higher vaccination rates there could still be far more unvaccinated people overall, and within closer proximity.

Are you really trying to extrapolate that preventive measures don’t work from this data?

I'm suggesting there are limits to what the government can force people to do. 

Even with the some of most restrictive measures in the country didn't spare the state. 

On the other hand our children's mental health suffered, education became a joke (our schools have been prohibited from requiring students to know how to read, write and do math to graduate), Portland is on track to its highest number of number of murders ever. After all of this damage for a result that doesn't appear much different than states that did much less damage to their children's mental health.

I am not anti vaccination, our family gets the flu vaccination, we got the covid vaccination shortly after we were allowed to (of course the teachers got to get it before the elderly in my state even though there was no school, the governor was just following orders from the people who were paying her).

I walked to work this morning without meeting anyone and worked by myself.  Somehow according to people her I am the problem and some sort of criminal because I wasn't wearing a mask.  Yet people were congregating in large groups in other places and they think it's ok because they have a piece of cloth hanging over their face.

I think the mask mandates make it worse because people think they can congregate with their mask and it somehow absolves them.

 

[Danzo]

7 minutes ago, pogi said:

Just to give you an idea of how effective vaccines are, Marion County only has a population of 347,818 with a vaccination rate of 57.4% with daily new cases equaling 249.

Multnomah County has a population of 601,592 with a vaccination rate of 68.7%, with daily new cases equalling 285

That is only a difference of 36 new cases daily despite a population difference of 253,774!  That is what an 11% difference in vaccination rates can do!

To put that in perspective, that difference in population is more people than the entire population of Jackson County (53.7 vaccination rate) which has a population of 216,574 and is seeing 105 new cases daily (far more than 36!).

In other words, whatever Multnomah County is doing is working very well considering total population and population density which puts them at a severe disadvantage when it comes to highly infectious diseases. 

I agree the vaccination rates do make the difference. I don't think the lockdowns and mandates help more than they hurt.

[pogi]

1 hour ago, Danzo said:

On the other hand our children's mental health suffered, education became a joke (our schools have been prohibited from requiring students to know how to read, write and do math to graduate), Portland is on track to its highest number of number of murders ever. After all of this damage for a result that doesn't appear much different than states that did much less damage to their children's mental health.

You are blaming this all on masks? Sheesh

1 hour ago, Danzo said:

I think the mask mandates make it worse because people think they can congregate with their mask and it somehow absolves them.

Or, we could look at the data:

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-021-00517-2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620303468

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253510

https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/COVID-19-report-July-20-updated.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7951820/

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by pogi

[Danzo]

46 minutes ago, pogi said:

You are blaming this all on masks? Sheesh

Or, we could look at the data:

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-021-00517-2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620303468

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253510

https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/COVID-19-report-July-20-updated.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7951820/

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

 

The shutdown did serious damage to our youth and young adult population.

I see it all around me. And yes, the covid was used a justification for placing our children in a virtual house arrest. Families I know (including my own )are trying to repair the youth. It turns out that forced idleness is bad for mental health.

[Chum]

15 minutes ago, Danzo said:

And yes, the covid was used a justification for placing our children in a virtual house arrest.

I'm sorry you chose to do that instead of visiting parkland and being safe at other socially distanced, outdoor venues.

[Chum]

4 hours ago, Danzo said:

Yet https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/09/providence-to-park-mobile-morgues-at-portland-area-hospitals-amid-covid-19-surge.html

I'm sorry but all of the previous debunkings of your slanted, cherry picked data will have to be enough for today.

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I'm sorry you chose to do that instead of visiting parkland and being safe at other socially distanced, outdoor venues.

What has parkland have to do with any of this?  I am not sure what your point is? Making my children stay home for school wasn't my choice. And yes, it was very damaging to them. Do you have teenage children?

[Danzo]

1 hour ago, Chum said:

I'm sorry but all of the previous debunkings of your slanted, cherry picked data will have to be enough for today.

I don't follow. What slanted data are you referring to?

What have O done to offend you.  It to the point that to have a different point of view makes me some sort of mortal enemy. To people on this board.

Seriously how do you expect to convince anyone of anything when you automatically dismiss anyone who says something different.

 

[CV75]

As for data, here's a "broken record" of mine: The book, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt is extremely insightful and helpful as to how either opposing side might share their message. Difficulty understanding another’s objective (whether to vaccinate/wear a mask or not) has to do with fundamental differences in moral reasoning based in innate cognitive elements, modules and tools that have been shaped by culture and genes (see “moral foundations theory” in Wikipedia). I would think the NIAID would have the resources to develop such a thing; they have used "single overriding communications objective" (SOCO) messaging for some time now.

Edited September 5, 2021 by CV75

[Peacefully]

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/education/more-than-27000-texas-students-positive-covid-19-last-week-state-data/287-2b071022-d261-401c-9b66-29b0c83d195c
 

My daughter is a social worker in one of the school districts here. Before the school year started, when she knew masks wouldn’t be required, she posted this:

“I mean...could we have at least waited until our littles could get vaccinated? Just throwing them to the wolves and after they’ve been such troopers ☹️

—ISD doesn’t get out until June 18th and masks can no longer be required starting June 4th.”

Unfortunately, her fears are coming true here in Texas.

On top of that, she is pregnant and working in close quarters with people who aren’t required to wear a mask. She has had at least two Covid tests that I know of, both negative, thank goodness. Stress she doesn’t need right now but she handles it like the trooper she is.

This school year started with no mask mandates and as I heard one educator say “the kids are dropping like flies.”

I don’t remember a lot of kids getting sick when the mask mandate and social distancing in schools was happening. 
 

I work from home and my husband is retired so we can pick and choose where we go and who we are around. So many people don’t have that choice.

I know masks aren’t 100% effective and many people don’t wear them correctly, but any blockage is better than none.

Why are we so selfish as a society that we can’t just do what the experts recommend and get a vaccine and wear a mask? I know there are exceptions but they should be few and far between. 

People are dying. Young, healthy, people are dying. How many have to die before we as a society do the right thing? 
 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Peacefully

[Rain]

One of my mom's good friends died this morning.

A family at church got covid this week so we are staying home.  Luckily we had been released from primary for our first week when they would have been there, but we don't know if it spread or not.  Haven't heard how they were doing since they asked for meals for then on Wednesday.

[Tacenda]

11 hours ago, Danzo said:

I don't follow. What slanted data are you referring to?

What have O done to offend you.  It to the point that to have a different point of view makes me some sort of mortal enemy. To people on this board.

Seriously how do you expect to convince anyone of anything when you automatically dismiss anyone who says something different.

 

I work in the schools and it was scary actually because I was in a classroom with a boy that was coughing and sneezing constantly. I had to ask him to sneeze in his shirt. I am a sub, so I didn't know if this boy could have had allergies or not. Maybe should have sent him to the office to call his parents. But was sure glad I had my mask on. And if he did have covid, he exposed a whole sleuth of children surrounding him. There were only about three or four that had masks on. The rest, it was open season for a virus to attack. 

I think it was hard on the students for sure, but sometimes we do hard things in these difficult times. And they are going to be better for it. In Utah there have been recent deaths of two young people I believe. A whole school has shut down also, because of how many teachers and students have covid. 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Tacenda

[Ragerunner]

What is impacting youth mental state is less about mask wearing and more about having to take in the idea that many friends and loved ones are getting very sick and dying of a deadly virus. 
They not only have to absorb that reality but know that they, a friend or a love one could be next. 
What makes it worse is it’s not over by a long shot. 

If they are members of the church they also must process why many of their leaders and family members have chosen not to heed the guidance, urging and counsel of the Prophet.

If we want to help our youth deal with the stress of a pandemic teach and show them how to follow the prophet and take more control of your life by getting vaccinated (if old enough) and wear a mask. Feeling that there is a safer route through this current pandemic will provide a lot of stress reduction for our children and ourselves.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Ragerunner

[Robert J Anderson]

14 hours ago, pogi said:

You are blaming this all on masks? Sheesh

Or, we could look at the data:

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-021-00517-2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620303468

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253510

https://www.unthsc.edu/newsroom/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/COVID-19-report-July-20-updated.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7951820/

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118

 

Here is an interesting study showing that sars-cov-2 is transmitted via aerosols.  https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.26.453518v1

The normal cloth masks don't stop aerosol spread effectively indoors.  https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100  

[Ragerunner]

6 minutes ago, Robert J Anderson said:

Here is an interesting study showing that sars-cov-2 is transmitted via aerosols.  https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.26.453518v1

The normal cloth masks don't stop aerosol spread effectively indoors.  https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100  

So wear a surgical mask or an N95. Don’t try and justify no mask wearing because you think one type of mask doesn’t work well.

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Peacefully said:

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/education/more-than-27000-texas-students-positive-covid-19-last-week-state-data/287-2b071022-d261-401c-9b66-29b0c83d195c
 

My daughter is a social worker in one of the school districts here. Before the school year started, when she knew masks wouldn’t be required, she posted this:

“I mean...could we have at least waited until our littles could get vaccinated? Just throwing them to the wolves and after they’ve been such troopers ☹️

—ISD doesn’t get out until June 18th and masks can no longer be required starting June 4th.”

Unfortunately, her fears are coming true here in Texas.

On top of that, she is pregnant and working in close quarters with people who aren’t required to wear a mask. She has had at least two Covid tests that I know of, both negative, thank goodness. Stress she doesn’t need right now but she handles it like the trooper she is.

This school year started with no mask mandates and as I heard one educator say “the kids are dropping like flies.”

I don’t remember a lot of kids getting sick when the mask mandate and social distancing in schools was happening. 
 

I work from home and my husband is retired so we can pick and choose where we go and who we are around. So many people don’t have that choice.

I know masks aren’t 100% effective and many people don’t wear them correctly, but any blockage is better than none.

Why are we so selfish as a society that we can’t just do what the experts recommend and get a vaccine and wear a mask? I know there are exceptions but they should be few and far between. 

People are dying. Young, healthy, people are dying. How many have to die before we as a society do the right thing? 

That's the thing, I think -- the attitudes on this subject run deeper / cut across a fear or concern of death, much like religious attitudes often do.

[Chum]

5 minutes ago, CV75 said:

That's the thing, I think -- the attitudes on this subject run deeper / cut across a fear or concern of death, much like religious attitudes often do.

I think it's more like politics than religion. At least the part where a political interest hijacks a neutral topic and spins it into a dystopic wasteland that forces adherents to accept the new dogma or risk being branded a heretic....  No, wait. It is religion. Sorry.

[pogi]

53 minutes ago, Robert J Anderson said:

Here is an interesting study showing that sars-cov-2 is transmitted via aerosols.  https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.26.453518v1

The normal cloth masks don't stop aerosol spread effectively indoors.  https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100  

It is transmitted via aerosols, but the primary mode of transmission is droplets.  

Masks won’t stop the spread but they will reduce the primary mode of transmission.

Do you disagree that there is medical consensus that they work? 

[Robert J Anderson]

53 minutes ago, Ragerunner said:

So wear a surgical mask or an N95. Don’t try and justify no mask wearing because you think one type of mask doesn’t work well.

I'm just stating where the research is.  What I think and/or feel has nothing to do with it.  Cloth masks simply aren't as effective as advertised.  Also, the research doesn't stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

[Bernard Gui]

17 hours ago, Danzo said:

I'm suggesting there are limits to what the government can force people to do. 

Even with the some of most restrictive measures in the country didn't spare the state. 

On the other hand our children's mental health suffered, education became a joke (our schools have been prohibited from requiring students to know how to read, write and do math to graduate), Portland is on track to its highest number of number of murders ever. After all of this damage for a result that doesn't appear much different than states that did much less damage to their children's mental health.

I am not anti vaccination, our family gets the flu vaccination, we got the covid vaccination shortly after we were allowed to (of course the teachers got to get it before the elderly in my state even though there was no school, the governor was just following orders from the people who were paying her).

I walked to work this morning without meeting anyone and worked by myself.  Somehow according to people her I am the problem and some sort of criminal because I wasn't wearing a mask.  Yet people were congregating in large groups in other places and they think it's ok because they have a piece of cloth hanging over their face.

I think the mask mandates make it worse because people think they can congregate with their mask and it somehow absolves them.

 

I think the inconsistency of the messages turns many people off. 
 

 

[pogi]

12 minutes ago, Robert J Anderson said:

I'm just stating where the research is.  What I think and/or feel has nothing to do with it.  Cloth masks simply aren't as effective as advertised.  Also, the research doesn't stop you from doing whatever you want to do.

Do you really think your position is representative of “the research”?

”Not as effective as advertised”?  By who?

Edited September 5, 2021 by pogi