I removed my personal filter on Facebook a few days ago and have been way more vocal than I ever have. I think it is incredibly important that we share the data that is available in support of lifting restrictions because it is the only way we're going to reach people. Some will never be convinced of anything but hiding until a vaccine, but others have just not seen the real data because they won't look further than the news headlines.

Steve Williams said:

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To take this a step further. I don't know of any golf courses that closed but parks were shut down. Can't figure the logic of that.

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Depends on the state. Massachusetts had shut their's down and some Golfers went to Rhode Island to play and got arrested for coming into the state and not quarantining. You can google it and it will come up.

Also, Pennsylvania had to reduce some of their death toll because there are some irregularities in the count. I don't think it was anything intentional, but I bet there is a lot of that going on elsewhere too.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/pennsylvania-forced-to-remove-hundreds-from-covid-19-death-count-over-glaring-irregularities

wilmwolf80 said:

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The few of my friends who have gone on record on social media speaking out in any way about any of this have been soundly shouted down by the group think mob.

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You mean reporters and other media members. I got tickled hearing the NFL reporters talking about how the shutdown prevented the GM group think mobs at workouts....with no self-awareness that they are extremely guilty of the exact same thing.

Whether a discussion is political or not, people on the outside attach politics to it. I had a difference of opinion on a group text with a family member that lives in NY about how we should be handling it in NC. Someone else said that it was a political spat. I don't see that at all as it pertained to our discussion. He is in NY. I am in NC. We have different perspectives, and NYers always have tunnel vision. If it's happening a certain way there, that's the way it should be/will be everywhere. We were both fine afterward and agreed to disagree. Having said that though, on social media, I absolutely see it as a political discussion. Especially since the president expressed his desire to open back up. If you want to open up, you are a careless, mouth breathing MAGA redneck. If you want to remain under quarantine, you are a protector of the old and children, and a moral supremacist.

I had gotten off of Facebook for the last several years. That changed the last couple of weeks as I have been making posts about opening up. I agree with the above poster that making posts with why you think opening up is ok is a good idea.

Steve Williams said:

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Packgrad, not referring to you but just in general, please don't veer off the tracks into political discussion. Let's keep it information based. It's been a great source of info.

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Sadly, policy and decisions have veered off the tracks into political debate, I believe. Along with the sharing of information -- why in the world can Davie and Wayland be the source of so much data analysis when our local media (and much of the national) keeps throwing out the same stats w/o context every day. They are just doing this on teh side....there are dozens of reporters right here in teh state who are covering this full-time and paid....which ones are sharing the detail with analysis that these guys are?

I didn't think you were referring to me. I like at least 3 other posters said it has gotten political. Social media in particular. I don't think it is as much in the real world with the people I deal with.

Didn't watch anything or keep up with anything this weekend. What's new?

RunsWithWolves26 said:

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Didn't watch anything or keep up with anything this weekend. What's new?

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Not a lot, honestly.

A lot of the hardest hit areas (NY, Spain, Italy) had their lowest death tolls in like a month. So that was a super positive, even with the caveat that weekend numbers sometimes are lower. But they were also lower than last weekend, and other indicators are trending down.

NC has a slightly better weekend than last weekend (death toll), but most of the deaths are still being driven by congregate facilities. This is a theme not only around the U.S. but around the world.

Some lower density states have experienced outbreaks in food processing plants, etc. This has caused spikes in their data and a lot of finger pointing at those states, but this is really indicative of the true type of outbreak these states will have.

Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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Wayland said:

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4/17/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
5859
NC Deaths**
152
Currently Hospitalized
429 (87% hospital reporting)
Completed Tests
72981

4/18/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 10:40am)

NC Cases*
6140
NC Deaths**
164
Currently Hospitalized
388 (88% hospital reporting)
Completed Tests
76211

4/19/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
6493
NC Deaths**
172
Currently Hospitalized
465
Completed Tests
78772

66 Deaths are now Congregate (+7 since yesterday)
18 Deaths can't be confirmed Con/Not

That means 7 of the 8 deaths added to the total since yesterday are congregate deaths

59 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+4)

WRAL is at 188 (+2) and NandO is at 185. Again, the lag, I am guess is coming in trying to confirm death location. Don't know why the lag since WRAL was in the 180s on Friday.

85% of the deaths are 65+. That number keeps creeping up.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/20/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
6764
NC Deaths**
179
Currently Hospitalized
373
Completed Tests
79484

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4/21/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 10:35am)

NC Cases*
6951
NC Deaths**
213
Currently Hospitalized
427
Completed Tests
83331

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4/22/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
7220
NC Deaths**
242
Currently Hospitalized
434
Completed Tests
90336

116 Deaths are now Congregate (+20 since yesterday)
29 Deaths can't be confirmed Con/Not (+3)
+29 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+23 Not GenPop, +6 GenPop)

97 Deaths assumed General Population
145 Congregate and Unknown Setting.

67 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+2)

WRAL is at 244 (+2) and NandO is at 261

269 positive cases over 7005 new tests. 3.8% positive rate.

Why aren't we seeing all the reporting and media focus on the true crisis of congregate settings?

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4/23/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
7608
NC Deaths**
253
Currently Hospitalized
486
Completed Tests
96185

124 Deaths are now Congregate (+8 since yesterday)
31 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+2)
+11 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+10 Not GenPop, +1 GenPop)

98 Deaths assumed General Population (+1)
155 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+10)

68 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+1)

WRAL is at 270 (+2) and NandO is at 273

388 positive cases over 5849 new tests. 6.6% positive rate.

DHHS is lagging hard on the media again but 10 of the 11 new deaths on DHHS were Congregate/Unknown. Only 1 was not.

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4/24/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 10:40am)

NC Cases*
8052
NC Deaths**
269
Currently Hospitalized
477
Completed Tests
100,584

132 Deaths are now Congregate (+8 since yesterday)
34 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+3)
+16 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+11 Not GenPop, +5 GenPop)

103 Deaths assumed General Population (+5)
166 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+11)

73 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+5)

WRAL is at 279 (+2) and NandO is at 281 deaths

444 positive cases over 4399 new tests. 10% positive rate.

Positive test rate is above average today. That sucks big time, would like to know if this is largely indicative of a congregate outbreak(s). I guess a side benefit is, if we can get the positive rate to spike, we can show improvement.

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4/25/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
8542 (subtracted 81 reporting error)
NC Deaths**
289
Currently Hospitalized
456
Completed Tests
105,265

148 Deaths are now Congregate (+16 since yesterday)
35 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (+1)
+20 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+17 Not GenPop, +3 GenPop)

106 Deaths assumed General Population (+3)
183 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+17)

80 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+7) <- Note a number of prisons added

WRAL is at 299 (+2) and NandO is at 304 deaths

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4/26/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 11:00am)

NC Cases*
8830
NC Deaths**
299
Currently Hospitalized
451
Completed Tests
107,894

155 Deaths are now Congregate (+7 since yesterday)
34 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+10 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+6 Not GenPop, +4 GenPop)

110 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
189 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+6)

81 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+1)

WRAL is at 306 (+2) and NandO is at 306 deaths

288 positive cases over 2629 new tests. 11% positive rate.

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4/27/2020 Morning DHHS update (as of 10:20am)

NC Cases*
9142
NC Deaths**
306
Currently Hospitalized
473
Completed Tests
109,920

159 Deaths are now Congregate (+4 since yesterday)
33 Deaths are now Unknown Setting (-1)
+7 Deaths Overall since yesterday. (+3 Not GenPop, +4 GenPop)

114 Deaths assumed General Population (+4)
192 Congregate and Unknown Setting. (+3)

82 Congregate Facilities now have an outbreak. (+1)

WRAL is at 316 (+2) and NandO is at 325 deaths

312 positive cases over 2026 new tests. 15.4% positive rate.

Really low number of tests. Also starting to lag way behind media numbers, so expect a big spike as they clear lag tomorrow.

Deaths over 65 have hit their highest percentage of total deaths now accounting for 86% of the deaths.
10% are between 50 and 64 years of age and 4% between 25 and 49 years of age.

Saw a Senator, I think... can't remember who/where, saying to expect meat shortages due to processing facilities closing down because of Coronavirus. Coincidentally, he also has a bill that he has been trying to pass for some time to speed up the process of getting meat from the farmers to the end users I hope there is no truth to this, and he's just using this pandemic as an opportunity to pass his bill, as bad as that is.

packgrad said:

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Saw a Senator, I think... can't remember who/where, saying to expect meat shortages due to processing facilities closing down because of Coronavirus. Coincidentally, he also has a bill that he has been trying to pass for some time to speed up the process of getting meat from the farmers to the end users I hope there is no truth to this, and he's just using this pandemic as an opportunity to pass his bill, as bad as that is.

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The major meatpacking companies have been telling people to expect shortages in May for a week or so now.

Tyson took out a full page article in the NYT and WaPo yesterday warning the food supply chain was in danger

Isn't that going to cause public panic and then even more shortages?

One could certainly argue that

New Antibody Survey from NY. 7500 people/

Statewide: 14.9% positive now (was 13.9% 5 days ago)
NYC 24.7% (was 21.2%) <- This should continue to be a headline and tons of analysis should be done for what this number and trend means.


NY also hit a new low in deaths at 337 (which again is larger than NC's total death count).

NY is also doing surveys of healthcare, FDNY/NYPD, and transit workers this week. It will be interesting to see the results.

PossumJenkins said:

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Tyson took out a full page article in the NYT and WaPo yesterday warning the food supply chain was in danger

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Beauty of living in a small town. The place where I get my meat from is butchered right there locally. Nothing from Tyson or Smithfield in their building at all

The joke of corona testing.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article242314121.html

Wake County is now at 752. It was at 670 yesterday. Wake County had been averaging about 10 new cases a day for the last 2 weeks, but now one congregate outbreak will throw the numbers way out of whack and make things look worse than they are.

A number of these women went out to work during the day and came back to congregate living at night. Good job prisons on keeping things in check in a congregate setting when in a pandemic.

I am sure the media won't provide any nuance and our local elected officials will be unable to discern this data.

Things like this will also heavily affect daily positive case rate because you are testing a confined population where > 25% come back positive. It will throw off your numbers. Get ready for that spike in tomorrow's count.

https://covid19.wakegov.com/

cowboypack02 said:

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PossumJenkins said:

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Tyson took out a full page article in the NYT and WaPo yesterday warning the food supply chain was in danger

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Beauty of living in a small town. The place where I get my meat from is butchered right there locally. Nothing from Tyson or Smithfield in their building at all

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Tyson plant in Wilkesboro has a hot spot now. Wilkes County went from 4 cases to 21 in a few days with a couple dozen tests outstanding. Coincidentally Tyson has been giving chicken to its employees in Wilkes. I don't mean a little either, 20, 30, 40 pounds at a time.

So I was digging around the internet, and I found the NC chart for all outpatient influenza like illness. It looks like we are back in normal range. If you use the outpatient chart 2017-2018 looks a lot worse than 2019-2020:
First Graph
https://flu.ncdhhs.gov/data/documents/flu1920.pdf

Note: The above link is supposed to catch mostly influenza, but acknowledges the ILI chart will catch COVID cases. But also note the NC State Laboratory of Public Health has not recorded a single case of flu for 3 weeks.

The graph that is included in the Covid surveillance is the ED visits, not all outpatient visits. How did they distinguish between COVID like illness and Influenza like illness for years without COVID? Why does the CDC linked report use outpatient and COVID only uses ED?;
Page 3 here:

https://files.nc.gov/ncdhhs/documents/files/covid-19/Weekly-COVID19-Surveillance.pdf

This gives you a big indicator on a national level. Look at that drop in ILI nationally the last few weeks on the ILINET graph:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap

The best that I can tell from that last link is, they are basically not counting flu deaths anymore and they are just counting them as Covid. It states right in the link that there's a lot of pneumonia and a lot of flu deaths, but they are not due to the flu or pneumonia but because of Covid. Which doesn't necessarily make any sense. If you have one, both or all of those diseases, how come only one of them gets the "credit"?

Even with that and the still elevated ILI activity level in the northeast, the nationwide percentage of visits for ILI is below baseline. And that percentage is certainly impacted by a change in behavior for non ILI or maybe the shift is just that non ILI are now presenting themselves instead of hiding in fear.

Either way, the underlying numbers are good.

Side topic: I still want to understand the NC hospitalization number more and what percentage are in the ICU. Are hospitals now admitting milder patients because they lack patients or is the rate of admission really that stable?

Daviewolf83 said:

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Wayland said:

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Even with that and the still elevated ILI activity level in the northeast, the nationwide percentage of visits for ILI is below baseline. And that percentage is certainly impacted by a change in behavior for non ILI or maybe the shift is just that non ILI are now presenting themselves instead of hiding in fear.

Either way, the underlying numbers are good.

Side topic: I still want to understand the NC hospitalization number more and what percentage are in the ICU. Are hospitals now admitting milder patients because they lack patients or is the rate of admission really that stable?

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I have wondered this myself. Hospitalizations are effectively flat (11% of total cases). I assume hospitalizations would have started to falling by now, but congregate care facilities originating patients (likely to be more in need of critical care) are keeping overall hospitalizations up, but this is really just a guess at this point.

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Both my brothers work in hospitals. One in Charlotte and the other in the Triangle. They've both said that at their places of work Covid ICU is entirely the very old and the obese.

Interesting to see Meck hospitalizations dropping.

Also, strange, I thought with their 50% social distancing and UPenn model their hospitalizations were going through the roof. Maybe it was a crap model all along (like I said).

I just started listening but here is a podcast with the IHME model creator. 538 is a site many are probably familiar with from their Election coverage and they get pretty technical.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-how-one-modeler-is-trying-to-forecast-the-toll-of-covid-19/

This is why some of our politicians are cheerleading the virus.

The convention is 8/24-8/27.

Jensen's tweet before that one is just as alarming. The Charlotte chief of police (obvious medical expert) says Novant and Atrium have gotten better at treating the disease and that's the reason less patients are on vents. Actual doctors then refute that and say "number of total hospitalized cases have dropped". Seriously...this is absurd

PossumJenkins said:

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Jensen's tweet before that one is just as alarming. The Charlotte chief of police (obvious medical expert) says Novant and Atrium have gotten better at treating the disease and that's the reason less patients are on vents. Actual doctors then refute that and say "number of total hospitalized cases have dropped". Seriously...this is absurd

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Some crazy tweet sequences there. Someone needs to break up the groupthink in Mecklenburg.