End of season in jeopardy?

drfish said:
I guess i will weigh in on this with my random thoughts. 

1.  Treatments have improved as you would expect it would as we gain more experience.  

2.  Covid deaths are under-reported.  The CDC information that is bolded in Hilltops post is not saying that cases are being misclassified as COVID 19.  It is saying that deaths that are likely directly or indirectly caused by covid are being classified as something else.

3.  Masks are the single most effective source control (something designed to prevent an infected person from spreading the infection to others) measure available to decrease the spread from asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic persons.  Self-isolation being the most effective for symptomatic individuals.  Anecdotally (which is clearly not scientific) in the case of our facility, we have had a few cases amongst the staff, but almost all could be traced back to a family contact and were not acquired through contact with patients (all staff and all patients are required to wear a mask with rare exceptions).  If masks were not very effective, I would have expected more cases of spread to staff from patients.  Most of the community acquired cases that I have seen have been related to mask-less exposures at family or similar events.

4.  Most business (with the exception of bars and restaurants where mask wearing is not possible) can be conducted in reasonable safety If staff and customers wear masks and try to keep their distance from each other.  We have to be mindfull that excessive restriction of trade will results in significant hardship as well due to loss of livelihood which can certainly have a negative impact on health.  Plus, we can't continuously depend upon the Federal Santa to keep printing money to give out without expecting to pay the price later. 

5.  The failure to issue a mask mandate by many Governors around the country is a lack of responsible leadership.  It would be like saying, "I think nobody should drink and drive, everyone should use good sense, but we cannot mandate not driving while intoxicated. "  

6.  I would have no problem with people refusing to wear masks if the mask protected them and not the others around them.  If you want to take a health risk, fine.  You are an adult and you can make your own decisions.  However, the decision not to wear a mask is a decision to put the people around you at risk and you don't have a valid right to do that.

7.  Taking reasonable precautions in not "living in fear."  

8.  Refusing to wear a mask in a business that asks you to do so is being a selfish a$$hole.
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I know your response will have to be anecdotal,  but in regards to number 3 on your list:

I would assume your staff is generally wearing medical grade masks - please correct if my assumption is wrong.   

However,  do you have a significant number of patients wearing cloth masks, or are they also wearing masks that are the same as the staff?

I ask because we hear one of the "finesse" arguments against masks is that only "N95 masks are effective,  cloth masks are worthless" .

I somehow doubt it is that binary, and the purveyors of that approach are just trying to excuse their resistance to wearing masks.

If the bulk of your patients wear cloth masks, yet you don't seem to have any traced transmissions to staff, that would indicate cloth masks are useful.  Or no patients have covid at the time they visit, which seems unlikely the longer the pandemic runs. 

I'm just tired of the anti mask whiners complaining about everything.   Debunking them is a full time job at times.  

 
DrinkinwitTerrellFarley said:
Yep, exactly.  Two friends of mine, their fathers have passed away from the virus recently.   Less than two weeks ago, a friend from college in her 40's lost her life to Covid-19 and leaves behind a young daughter.  Everyone has pandemic fatigue at this point but we need to keep following science and caring about other people.  
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This pandemic has really exposed how anti-science and selfish a significant portion of our citizens are.   

I just don't get it.   Most of the anti-maskers are the loudest "open up our city" complainers.   Yet they defy the 2nd best way (after a vaccine) to actually open things up.

*sigh* 

 
CAHusker said:
I’m doing it, but I am sick of the phrase “follow the science”!  
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Yeah, some of the catchphrases are getting tiresome. Our school sends out multiple emails a week that still say some variation of "we're all in this together!" Ugh.

But constant reinforcement is an effective form of communication. That's why advertising works. That's why so many people believe the obvious lies of politicians if they just keep repeating the lie over and over. 

So yes, we need to keep up the message of "follow the science." But if you don't like that one, there are others. How about "listen to the experts" or "don't be a selfish a$$hole." 

 
drfish said:
6.  I would have no problem with people refusing to wear masks if the mask protected them and not the others around them.  If you want to take a health risk, fine.  You are an adult and you can make your own decisions.  However, the decision not to wear a mask is a decision to put the people around you at risk and you don't have a valid right to do that.
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This is the thing that gets me.

 
Talks are happening about the possible and potential delay of the CFP.  Again, reason for thread was to see if anyone was/is worried about the season being stopped, delayed, ended....

I

 
Interesting article showing the current status of COVID cases in counties that host a Power 5 Conference team.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/ncaaf/2020/11/13/college-football-covid-19-cases-jump-big-ten-big-12-counties/6270975002/

In fact, data analysis conducted by Emory's Rollins School of Public Health for USA TODAY found that the counties in which Power Five schools are located have seen an even larger spike in COVID-19 cases than the nationwide average, with communities in the Big Ten and Big 12 experiencing the most dramatic increases in their seven-day averages of daily new cases per 100,000 residents. 
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P5Covid.pngP5CovidRates.png

Interesting that currently the new case per day rate/100K residents in Lancaster County is 3x higher than Los Angeles County. The bolded number is the new cases/day/100K residents over the last 7 days.

 ​
Univ  County Cases Change*






Illinois


Champaign


80


65%




Indiana


Monroe


38


60%




Iowa


Johnson


107


144%




Maryland


Prince George's


21


36%




Michigan


Washtenaw


31


49%




Michigan State


Ingham


35


58%




Minnesota


Hennepin


71


74%




Nebraska


Lancaster


65


47%




Northwestern


Cook


81


55%




Ohio State


Franklin


43


56%




Penn State


Centre


31


38%




Purdue


Tippecanoe


78


59%




Rutgers


Middlesex


24


30%




Wisconsin


Dane


72


21%
Click to expand...
 ​
Univ County Cases Change*






Arizona


Pima


26


30%




Arizona State


Maricopa


26


43%




California-Berkeley


Alameda


8


37%




Colorado


Boulder


48


60%




Oregon


Lane


12


44%




Oregon State


Benton


10


117%




Stanford


Santa Clara


11


56%




UCLA


Los Angeles


20


47%




USC


Los Angeles


20


47%




Utah


Salt Lake


91


43%




Washington


King


20


80%




Washington State


Whitman


24


35%
Click to expand...

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Cities in the midwest (where COVID is rising significantly compared to the coasts) with large university populations.  Yes, they have football teams.  They also have thousands of students who are more prone to party and ignore prevention recommendations.  This is probably cherry picking data (using the data that support your premise while ignoring the data that do not support it (Americans have become very good at this) and cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy (occurring together, therefore there is a causal relationship.  Does anybody REALLY believe that it is due to football teams spreading virus and not irresponsible general college population spreading virus?  If anything, the virus rates in all 5 conferences and the timing of the start of play suggests that the two are not related since the relationship to 1st game played and increases are much different.  Relating COVID spikes to FBS power 5 football is not supported by an initial look at the data.  If it was football related, then the curves in all the conferences should begin at roughly similar intervals from the onset of play.  I would argue that the graph shows the opposite.  There is no consistent relationship between the onset of games in power 5 conferences and the onset of spikes in cases.

 
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