Back up to 20 cases.
New Zealand has picked up four new cases of Covid-19 at the border, with one victim receiving hospital care in Auckland.
www.rnz.co.nz
Catching it at the border.
But....
Under extreme stress.
A review of the country's managed isolation and quarantine system has found it to be under "extreme stress" and unable to respond to increasing demands as more NZers return home.
www.rnz.co.nz
So far it's working. Wouldn't be surprised if something goes wrong.
So this is the kind of thing habitual masks can help with.
If it drops spread by 50%, Rf goes from 2.6 to 1.3. The virus life cycle stays ~4 days. Before it doubled every 3 days (lg(2)/lg(2.6)*4). Afterwards, 11 days (lg(2)/lg(1.3)*4).
That huge gap buys time for contact tracing.
Add in "no choirs" etc and you might even get Rf under 1 *before contact tracing kicks in.
But even if it was "hiding" at some low level before, there's been a clear year-on-year death excess in 2020, iirc. So there must have been some significant change with respect to the virus' lethality or contagiousness or something.
Man... this epidemiology stuff is hard!
It is possible that a single strain mutated.
But covid-19 as we see it was not circulating much before December. The virus spreads too fast and kills too many people, and gene change tracking has a single source prior to the huge explosion over the world.
We have
floors on how lethal it is, because there are areas of the world where 1% of the population died in a period of weeks as the epidemic flooded over them.
I attend a Catholic Church with a congregation bigger than most so-called megachurches. We break up services over 2 days to serve them all, instead of having huge numbers praying together. And we just officially canceled choir practice and service participation until December at the very least. This was done because numerous choir practice sessions across the USA have been linked to large outbreaks. We didn’t want to add to that.
Your church should be online.
You
JUST CANCELLED CHOIR? OMFG, no wonder your state is screwed.
Choirs are mega-spreading events, and up here they have been gone since March. We currently have single digit positive tests on about 1000 tests/day, and we aren't even talking about opening up
Choirs. Church services are indoor gatherings; current rules permit 10 people in a gathering, ideally outdoors, with social distancing.
You are killing 100,000s of fellow Texans with your current behavior.
The goal around here is to eliminate Covid-19 so we can go from condition Orange to Yellow and reach stage-3 of reopening. (The city is Orange on a Green-Yellow-Orange-Red scale for health care resources, and we are on reopening stage 2. On this scale, you appear to be on the "naughty word it" reopening stage, and inferno health care status)
Meanwhile, VP Mike Pence visited Robert Jeffress’ First Baptist Church today. While Pence was masked- a rarity- FBC’s full 100+ member choir performed standing shoulder to shoulder and maskless.
Bars are closed again, but Lone Star State churches have no occupancy limits.
www.motherjones.com
Yes, his plan is to kill a few million Americans. Maybe 1, maybe 2, maybe 3.
His behavior is going to do it slightly faster than yours is, but both of your behaviors are on the road to end up with millions dead.
Surrender is always an option, and your federal and state government is aiming for it. At best, they are making noises about how they give a naughty word, while not giving a naughty word, because giving a naughty word requires doing something.
Things like compound interest were covered in math class but who really pays attention to math class and they don't relate it back to the real world.
I want to write up the game that teaches compound interest via a "conquest" or "economic expansion" system.
Ramping up the time scale makes compound interest far more obvious, especially if you are facing AI competition that does use it.
Even in hard hit areas like Italy you've got something like a 99.7%+ chance of not dying. IDK what the latest toll is but 60 million people live in Italy. In some countries with low death rates crossing the road is more dangerous.
There are cities in Italy where over 1% of the population died during the epidemic.
Most of Italy shut down and managed to contain it, so this didn't happen everywhere.
nypost.com
