COVID-19: Part 41

• Quarantine Day 134
• Livermore cases: 443
• Alameda County cases: 10,259; deaths: 178
• U.S. cases: 4,280,000+; deaths: 147,000+

"Right now we are experiencing a national forest fire of COVID that is readily consuming any human wood that's available to burn," says
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/28/894858475/

Now, Nuzzo doesn't think all hope is lost. If enough people finally start wearing masks, and get vigilant about staying at least 6 feet away from other people, especially indoors, there may still be hope in at least some places of avoiding new shutdowns, she says.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/28/894858475/

Meanwhile our neighbors hosted a street party over the weekend with about 20 people attending. They were, at least, outside; but I saw no masks and no appropriate distancing. I truly do not get it.

And places that didn't learn from NYC are now becoming NYC. Like NYC had to do, counties across the country are now loading up refrigerator trucks with bodies because they've run out of space in morgues and funeral homes.

"Unfortunately, Starr County Memorial Hospital has limited resources and our doctors are going to have to decide who receives treatment, and who is sent home to die by their loved ones," Starr County Judge Eloy Vera wrote on the county's Facebook page on Thursday morning. "This is what we did not want our community to experience. … We must be responsible for ourselves and our loved ones."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starr-county-only-hospital-forced-to-choose-who-is-sent-home-to-die-as-icu-beds-reach-capacity/

Based on this data, of counties reporting, Florida has 18 counties with ICUs at or above 90% capacity.

The eight counties making up California's Central Valley have pushed their hospitals to the edge and response teams and resources from state and federal governments are being sent in to help.

So many news sources are reporting so many ICUs reaching critical capacity, but I have yet to find any single source providing aggregate data across counties.

It is just so frustratingly stupid that we're in this position. We KNEW this would happen when we watched it happen in NYC in April! We've had 3 MONTHS to come up with a real plan to prevent it. But we have a president who claimed it wasn't real for months and months. We have governors who refused to take it seriously. We have citizens who proudly refuse to wear a mask; patting themselves on the back for "standing up to tyranny."

They think masks are tyranny, meanwhile this is happening in other parts of the country:

The red jumpsuits are prison guards. Federal prison guards working with other militarized forces to subdue protests about police brutality on American streets.

But temporarily wearing a piece of cloth over your mouth and nose is oppression.

[sigh]