Thursday, July 09, 2020

CoViD-19: "Inevitable" Increases Demonstrate Utter Human Failure | School Reopening Will Be Based On Data, Not Threats or Tweets | 27 Outbreaks In San Diego Seven Days Into July

Amur Leopard cub at San Diego Zoo (Taken 7.7.2020)

We had a super great day yesterday and had a fun night rockin' out in the 'speakeasy' but then today I started listening to the press briefings and got super cranky. It feels like all bad news all the time. Then I read the "open letter on Justice and Oppression" and I had to give the biggest eyeroll. As dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of people have pointed out, JK Rowling is certainly free to continue her transphobic tweets all she wants, but she doesn't get to be free of consequences, and crying about 'cancel culture' isn't helping her cause. I've been trying to distract and watch new stuff but even that's grim. I'm watching Hanna on Amazon and it is the first time I've ever seen Joel Kinnaman in a role and holy shit is he beautiful, but now I'm stuck watching and the writing and acting in season two is seriously horrible, which is sad, because it definitely had a La Femme Nikita vibe for awhile. We're also watching The Babysitter's Club on Netflix and it's obviously made for children, but they cover real-world topics well, especially episode six where one of the girls learns that her grandmother was in the Japanese Internment Camp at Manzanar. She asks how they could do that to people and treat them that way and her sister poignantly responds, "we still do." I also tried to watch the David Foster documentary on Netflix but he is such a arrogant piece of shit, I only made it through 9 minutes before I had to turn it off, and I'm the kind of person who has to watch things to the end once I've started them. If you've seen anything good lately, please let me know. I finished Ramy and have watched all the standup I can handle at this point. You can read my angry rant and today's briefing news after the jump. 


I'm getting really sick of government officials and media calling current surges in cases "inevitable". From the piece of shit occupying the White House on down, there was nothing INEVITABLE about this pandemic. From the beginning, we lacked leadership from the top and the will to make it go away from the populace. Look at other countries and regions: China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, the whole of the EU and how they've dealt with this versus how we have. It is gross and shameful and fucking embarrassing. And if I haven't specifically said it before, FUCK TRUMP. As if he isn't despicable enough, now he's threatening to withhold federal funds if schools don't open in the fall. The idea of kids being sent to school to come home and be little superspreader vectors is fucking disgusting. 
  • California Governor Newsom Media Briefing:
    • Entire briefing was about how the state built hospital capacity, created a "Health Corps" to handle "inevitable" surges, stocking up supplies, cross-training nurses for new work, making space for Covid positive patients, therapeutics, stockpiling resources and PPE, etc.
    • Drivers of Hospitalizations:
      • Not enough people wearing masks and distancing
      • Increased mixing outside of households
      • Prison and jail outbreaks
      • Essential workplace outbreaks
      • Young people ignoring threat of virus
    • 44% Increase in hospitalizations in last 14 days /34% increase in ICU
    • 11,694 positive tests in California on July 7 (includes LA backlog)
    • 8,116 7-day average/ 7.1% positivity rate
    • 26 Counties are currently on monitor list (3 new added: Napa, San Benito, Yolo)
    • Opening safely is non-negotiable. 
    • "I'm not worried about the latest tweets. I can give you ad nauseum examples of why I've concluded that that's not the issue that we need to address."
    • School reopenings will be based on data and safety.
    • "We are not bystanders...we are agents of our own lives and our own decisions...we can just roll over and accept the spread and transmission and continue with the behaviors that have led to this transmission, this increase, or we can do more to practice the kind of personal responsibilities as it relates to wearing face coverings and masks and physically distancing from others that will mitigate the spread, will shift that trendline, and avail ourselves to more flexibility, more opportunity. I would like to think that we have the capacity to make better decisions the next few weeks so we don't have to make the decision to delay the school year."
    • School year decisions will provide local flexibility on distance learning, hybrid learning, in-person learning  
  • County Board Of Supervisors Media Briefing
    • CARES Money will be used for childcare/day cares, providing testing for schools, small business grants, extending Great Plates
    • Controlling the pandemic while also helping economic growth
    • T3: 7607 Tests/474 Contact Tracers/61 People in public health hotel rooms
    • 264 positive/3% percentage positive/406 deaths (7 new deaths)
    • 180 Congregate & Community Outbreaks since beginning/86 outbreaks closed
    • 94 Active: 23 SNFs/1097 Cases; 27/1194 cases in Congregate Settings; 44 outbreaks in Community Settings - 5 new since yesterday, Represent 740 Cases
    • Case Rate 135.9/100k population (Must be under 100 by state guidelines)
    • 24 Community Outbreaks in last 7 days (should be under 7, set by senior epidemiologist) 
      • 84 Community Setting outbreaks since the beginning
        • March- 3 outbreaks
        • April- 16 outbreaks
        • May- 8 outbreaks
        • June- 34 outbreaks
        • July- 27 outbreaks (only 7 days in)  
        • If we keep at current pace, we'll have 81 this month
      • Outbreak reporting lags behind cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in reporting because it takes investigators longer to identify them 
    • 3 Outbreaks "fell off" but 5 new ones were added: Healthcare setting, Restaurant/Bar, Gym, Daycare, Resort/Spa
    • Small Business Grant program will be decided by each Supervisor who will get about $3.4 million for small business grants in their district
    • After 3 weeks on watchlist, our metrics will be reassessed by State & County but guidance will come from the State. Could be extended if we're still triggering state metrics.
    • County News Center:
  • Remember how the covidiot-in-chief said the US is withdrawing form the WHO? Try again. 
  • I don't understand why WHO is acting like this is new information when we all watched that gross ass video from Japan from APRIL!! of people sneezing, but okay...if we must play along...

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