So can we project peak illness with this thing? I saw somewhere a projection of 300k dead by winter, what about after winter? Sweden hospitals seem to be filling up too, I thought after Biden won, Covid was mysteriously going to disappear?

The data to watch for the direction this will go is the mobility data---if this spike will be headed off mobility data must fall.

10% of the dakotas have tested positive. Using the most common multiple of 6 means 60% of the people there have been infected. Best guess is 70% is herd immunity. New cases should be dropping off a cliff within a week or 2.

[Shrug]. Many don't care any longer. We're tired of the constant media shaming and haranguing. Too many have been crying wolf for too long and too often.

260k Covid deaths is still a VERY small number, just 0.0764% of our current 340,000,000 population. That's less than 1/10 of 1% if decimals don't work for you. There is no real proof that any large number of people will have long-term problems after surviving the battle with Covid.

600k people die of heart attacks each and every year. Many are in the hospital for months prior to dying. And yet all we get for THIS problem is some media PSA's?

Then ther eis the upcoming holiday travel. Despite all the begging to not travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, many people are turning a deaf ear. Just watch the TV news and the airport travel stories.

CA governor Gavin Newsom issued overnight curfew orders for something like 94% of the counties in the WHOLE STATE OF CA, starting this past Saturday. But many sheriff and police departments are ignoring the order and refusing to do enforcement, where like the public, they are effectively declaring this so-called pandemic unimportant and finished.

November 21, 2020
Every sheriff in Los Angeles region refusing to enforce Gavin Newsom's COVID curfew

Here's where NorCal law enforcement stands on COVID-19 curfew
State imposes a 'limited curfew' to counties with widespread coronavirus cases
KCRA Updated: 6:04 PM PST Nov 20, 2020

Field hospitals in the winter cold....I saw a Columbia Medical Center doc today who reported that their inpatient beds are close to full. The new antiviral that just got emergency use authorization may need to be administered in tents. The whole point of the lockdown (and masks) was to slow the surge to hospitals so we can cope with the ill of all kinds.

Although it is important to focus on beds. It is even more important to focus on hospital staff. Beds don't get tired. Beds don't get sick. Beds don't die. People do. The US is overwhelming the health care workers. Many have been working 60+ hour weeks for the last 9 months. They are exhausted. They are suffering PTSD. Many of them get sick or die. And early on they were hailed as heroes. Now the Trump cult is shitting on them, think that they are exaggerating Covid. Like Jojo. He insists that Covid is nothing . He would be the guy in the hospital, sick with Covid, yelling at the staff that it's all a hoax. You can't fight stupid.

I have no doubt JoJo would feel very different if he were to lose a brother, sister, mother, father or wife. My wife ran a 104 fever for almost a week back in mid March when the virus was on the upswing in NY. She was never admitted to hospital thank goodness but nonetheless I can assure it was a very very nasty virus. I got off lightly with a very very mild case. No real fever but achy, headache and loss of taste and smell.

I would like to see beds filled vs rnd 1. Considering nyc is fine now and SD isn't, this feels more like wave 1 for sd than anything. Parts that weren't hit now are etc. Data like that would be more interesting.

KTLA has reported recently, a 12% local hospitalization rate expected for the current spike in cases in Los Angeles.

Dr. Zelenko treated some 400 high risk patients early on in the pandemic, with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Zpac and had only a 1% hospitalization rate. Only 4 were hospitalized. Zelenko tried to keep his patients out of the hospital.

Seemingly, official policy is that if one gets sick, one is supposed to self quarantine and do nothing particular to fight the virus and just wait until and unless one has difficulty breathing, to then go to the hospital, then be treated at great expense.

We interrupt this comment thread for a public service announcement. This weekend between noon Friday and 4 pm today there have been 4 people shot and killed another 44 shot and wounded within the city limits of Chicago. (No available stats on shot at and missed, must be in the 100s) Christ Hospital, just outside city limits, is on bypass, as are many other hospitals in the inner ring ‘burbs. So don’t bother bringing anyone with a heart attack, stroke or seizure; plan for a longer trip to the outer ‘burbs. This public service announcement brought to you by the idiot white suburban p/ssy-hat wearers, blowing through 4 way stop signs in their $70,000 SUVs with their masks on. And now back to Bozo’s Circus..,already in progress!!!

The COVID19 numbers are very serious. For every hospitalization there are many multiples suffering at home. The daily deaths are very high and will likely continue to climb in the few weeks. It is sad that so many are not taking this disease more serious. 1 in 1000 adults in the US are already dead. This number could rise to 1 in 600. There is lots of uncertainty about the likelihood of long terms health consequences from catching it.

I urge people to social distance, wear a good quality mask, wash hands regulalry and get tested / quarantine when appropriate.

It is very likely that daily cases will peak in Later November to Mid December. With a growing percentage of the country already infected, vaccinations starting in mid December it seems very likely that by late January the daily cases will be falling at a fast clip. It is likely that by Mid March the US will finally have COVID19 under control which about a full year from when it got out of control [ by under control I mean daily cases less than 20,000 per day and a positivity rate of less than 5%.]

I always liked Chris Martenson's tagline, that "it didn't have to be this way". The US is a perfect place for something like Covid to thrive. We have a fat, unhealthy population to begin with and on top of that, we're belligerent about it. We're the sort of country where people would rather throw punches than have to park an extra hundred feet away from a store. We've become a country of jerks that can't stand each other and this is reflected in our response to Covid.

It's hard to understand how people draw the line at face masks when they're perfectly happy giving everything to bankers, running up debt, conducting military misadventures around the world that make people hate us, etc. It's such a weird hill to die on.

Must be fun being a ruling elite in the US. If you want to financially ruin us, we won't stop you, we might even cheer you on as you do it. But ask us to wear a mask and there will be hell to pay!

A couple of new studies on Covid,

One showed that smokers were more vulnerable to contracting Covid and suffering serious illness or death. No surprise there.

A second study showed that people who were vaccinated for Measles, Mumps, Rubella had better resistance to the virus, and far less likely to be seriously ill. That was a pleasant surprise. I'm sure that someone will expand on this.

While cruising the internet, I recently came across another poster using the name "Realist". Given the amount of posts this person has on UNZ, I imagine that he had the name long before our sad sack picked it up. Or are they really one and the same? Hmmm.

Realist Comments
• My Comments
7,910 Comments • 284,700 Words

Big drop in daily cases from NYT:

"At least 834 new coronavirus deaths and 141,641 new cases were reported in the United States on Nov. 22. Over the past week, there has been an average of 171,461 cases per day..."

This is very interesting because many people (such as myself) have been wondering since April why the CDC does not come out with statistics on the intersection between lupus/arthritis hcq users and covid infection and mortality. Seems like the easiest ‘trial’ to evaluate.

Couple of points (and I haven't seen the original article yet):

1. The presentation rambles on and on, but fails to even mention Zn++ ions (big red flag), which is what this is all about (hcq is a zinc ionophore, might not even be the best one, but it's the zinc that inhibits RDRP and viral replication). Note that this doesn't just apply to C19 but viral replication in general. There does not seem to be any data on zinc serum levels. And we know most of the modern population is zinc deficient (too little minerals in the soil and the vegetables). Hcq without adequate serum zinc levels will obviously have little effect. A good study would want to assess doses of hcq and zinc serum levels, and many other serology data if available, as well as time from infection that hcq was started, etcetc.
2. The proximity to the time frame observed and amounts of hcq use are also not clear, only that the one group had some exposure during the past year to hcq and the rest did not.
3. Notwithstanding, we would still expect to be able to measure some difference. However the numbers don't add up. 70/30,000 and (547-70)/164,000 amount to .229% and .291% respectively and not the cited .22%. Perhaps he is not presenting the data correctly. The difference is 27% higher, so not insignificant. I will have to read the original paper to check this out. Chinese statistics from February did show differences between lupus/arthritis patients compared to the general population. That is one of the reason they started using it in Feb in China, Korea, etc.
4. He is talking about the IFR, but the statistic he is presenting is morbidity (morbidity is ratio of fatalities to population, IFR is ratio fatalities to infections, CFR is ratio fatalities to cases.) He has presented no data on the actual infection rate, which would be very interesting second measure next to morbidity (if the data allows).

I will have to read the original.
But this IS real data, albeit not yet conclusive in my opinion.