COVID-19: Part 13

March 30, 2020 3:59 pm
  • Temporary Hospital constructed in Central Park, NYC.
  • Navy hospital ship arrives in NYC.
  • National social-distancing guidelines extended through April 30 (no enforcement).
  • Alameda County shelter-at-home order extended through April 30 (has force of law). California's statewide order is indefinite.
  • Regular reports of various events centers around the country being converted to temporary medical space.
  • Dr. Fauci (public face of national medical response) estimates 100,000-200,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19 (which would be a huge win over initial estimates).
  • Alameda County cases: 264; deaths: 7
  • U.S. cases: 140,000+; deaths: 2,400+

A note on those top-line numbers I've been giving on Alameda County and U.S. overall. The Alameda County numbers I'm getting from the website for the Alameda County Public Health Department. The national numbers are coming from the CDC website. There's a fair bit of variance depending on which tracker you use, so for those top-line updates I've been using, and will continue to use, those sources consistently.

Apparently the new propaganda plan to cover for the Trump administration's failure to respond to this crisis is to blame hospitals. In a press conference on Sunday Trump suggested hospitals are reselling their supplies instead of using them to treat patients. What a tool.

The University of Washington has a website up providing modeling on a national and state level. Based on that modeling, California's going to do pretty well, likely as a result of the early action. New England, however, is going to have a very hard time.

This data suggests California still has 3.5 weeks to go before hitting peak infection. At peak it suggests ~100 deaths/day in California. Critically, from a statewide viewpoint, we won't run out of hospital beds. That, of course, may not be true of any particular locale within the state.

Here's New York's modeling:

They're looking at hitting peak in just over a week with shortages of hospital beds in the tens of thousands. Almost 800 deaths per day at peak.

Here's the nationwide modeling. It's going to be even fuzzier simply because having lots of hospital space in Wyoming doesn't help if the patients are in Florida. So it's only useful for the really broad strokes.

Notably none of these models are showing a second-wave effect. It appears that the modeling is specifically looking at resource-utilization under an all-other-things-being-equal scenario. It's not considering what happens as states begin loosening shelter-at-home directives or any other dynamic variables.

With that in mind, it represents a probable view of the near-term future but shouldn't be relied on for anything past the first wave.

As a nation, months to go still before anything approaching "normal" will be seen again. Even then, if the medical catastrophe is wrapped up, is the drastic economic effects to be dealt with. Almost $3 trillion in relief/stimulus passed into law already, but whether that will be enough is entirely unknown.

On Sunday I gave myself a haircut, with some help from Jess for the troublesome spots on the back of my head that I can't see. Shorter than I usually do, but it was the longest trimmer guard I had. Not too bad.

When I went to the store on the 21st there was a limit of 2 bread products. I bought a loaf of bread and a bag of bagels. We have some frozen hamburger patties, but no buns. So on Sunday I made hamburger buns.

I've never had a problem with over-baking the recipes in the book I've been using, so I put these in for the recommended time and figured I'd go from there. They ended up being a bit darker than I would have liked. The second batch I baked for 2-minutes less, but they were also a little too dark. Pretty good though.

Homemade bun, BBQ sauce and Miracle Whip, French-fried onions, cheddar cheese, beef patty, lettuce, pickles, jalapenos. Yum.

We spent some time outside during the afternoon on Sunday and the girls rode around on their bikes. Corinne is getting quite good at balance (no pedals yet). She continues to show her much more risk-accepting behavior compared to Heather--she shows little concern for wobbling or losing control. The neighbors were also out riding bikes and it was a stressful time watching low-skilled kids twisting around and past each other. There was one collision, but no injuries. After a little off-bike time Heather did some more riding by herself and manage to turn too sharply and wipe out. Took a bunch of skin off her knee. We had expected to be hearing about her inability to move on her own for days, but she seems to be recovering psychologically pretty quickly this time compared to the past.

Amazingly, Heather is outside back on her bike right now. That's a huge step for her in developing resiliency. When she rode into a the back of a parked car however long ago that was I think it was weeks before she would try her bike again. So this is actually pretty big for her to be getting over it this quickly. I think she's been making notable progress on handling her anxieties. Her emotional development may finally be catching up to her intellectual development.

Mom & Dad are on day 12 of their post-airplane-travel quarantine and so far doing just fine.

Heather and Corinne both had video calls with their teachers today. I believe they were both purely to let the kids see their teachers and the kids in their classes. A chance to break up the monotony of being at home all day every day. I don't think they were attempting to accomplish any meaningful teaching during the calls. Corinne got bored with hers pretty quickly. She was more interested in making faces at herself in the camera.

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