I was watching some analysis today. The new infections in some of the UK are rising really rapidly. In some areas it is mostly the new variant, but in others (e.g. Wales) it isn’t quite that, so it appears to be due to behaviour.
Looks like we have several pretty horrible months to come, before the vaccine gets rolled out. On the plus side (if one can call it that) the hospital situation might just convert some anti-vaxxers…
Off_Field wrote:
Doesn’t california have the strictest lockdown measures pretty much in the country?
It does, but that imagined social engineering solution is not applicable to the real problem at hand, which includes real people.
My interests personally when in California or anywhere else would be hospital capacity (ICU is steady at 20% availability in my area, and nothing to do with government) and whether my personal statistics indicate a significant probability of infection (two people I’ve ever known have been infected). The solution for individuals is for they personally to properly manage their lives and risk, based on their own circumstances, while real technology (vaccine production) does its thing to develop a solution that actually works. I think technology is coming to closure now, funded and motivated by lots of real money, as it often does while the uninvolved talk endlessly about e.g. controlling spread via the science of transmission that nobody actually understands very well, some trying to gain power in doing so. I hope very much technology will save us from government, and quickly.
It was regardless amazing to watch the Governor of California explain that ICU capacity in his state is at 0% (shock, horror) but don’t worry too much because it doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty enough ICU beds available! The California government intentionally ‘doctors’ the numbers to make a headline and scare people – you be the judge of that social manipulation tactic, I’ve already judged it for myself. I do look at the real data periodically but I don’t take the nonsense political/governmental/media blab seriously. It’s amazing to me that people think there’s value in it.
Today was regardless a perfect day for flying in my area, CAVU and calm, so my wife and I went for a little ride… high above all that nonsense, and stopped to fill the tanks with self-serve 100LL for $3.49 a gallon (or €0.75 per liter). Cheap fuel thereby helps us to stay away from other people, something which is becoming increasingly attractive to me in relation to about 90% of people, on several different levels 
Silvaire wrote:
but don’t worry too much because it doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty enough ICU beds available! The California government intentionally ‘doctors’ the numbers to make a headline and scare people
[ expletive deleted… normally the whole post is deleted ] I talk to ICU docs here in LA and the numbers – for LA County (around 10mio people) – are real. Doesn’t mean I trust this so-called ‘governor’, or, even worse, the joker who poses as Mayor of L.A.
Silvaire wrote:
The solution for individuals is for they personally to properly manage their lives and risk, based on their own circumstances,
This I agree with 100% – It doesnt matter what the “Rules” are, or even what “new Laws” are passed by Politicians after a vote.
Personal attacks will be deleted. If you disagree with someone, disagree with what they write, explaining why.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
apparently in the US, thanksgiving had surprisingly few impact
If that is fake news or not, who knows. The thing is, the same development is seen here for Christmas. From December 24 and until January 2-3, Norway pretty much closes down. People generally just relax, visiting family and friends. The weeks-month before, everybody stresses around buying gifts and ingredients for food and parties. Lots of people were crying wolf, for two reasons:
In theory (at least according to some theorists 
) we should be a corona epicenter by now, but this isn’t happening. The second wave peeked in the first week of December, and is now steady, even going down in the last few days. IMO, shopping and “family gathering holidays” obviously does not increase spreading. Why? who knows, but probably because you only have so much time available. Using that time for shopping and visiting family and friends, prevents you from doing other stuff that for sure will spread the disease; pubs, restaurants, job travels.
One of my predictions early on was that we might get an apocalypse within hospitals that would be largely unappreciated outside of them.
We remain just about in control locally, but looking at community figures and the number of random cases popping up on the wards, I think we are likely to have widespread COVID here quite soon. The urban hospitals already have COVID all over the place and people we send to them for specialist emergency surgery are often getting infected. We have stopped elective surgery. I’m fairly certain we will need the overflow hospitals, but I haven’t yet heard who is going to staff them. Other ICUs in the area have stopped accepting transfers.
I’m curious as to how Silvaire’s local hospital is at 20% ICU capacity. Round here we typically run close to 100% which isn’t ideal, but running at 20% on a regular basis would be phenomenally expensive and lead to deskilling. Usually there is a mix of emergency patients whose numbers you can’t really control (other than adjusting your risk appetite in order to move some patients to the wards earlier than you would like to) and elective patients whose numbers you can control but who don’t usually make up a large proportion of the cases except in hospitals that specialise in elective surgery.
Perhaps they’re trying to clear space in anticipation?
kwlf wrote:
I’m curious as to how Silvaire’s local hospital is at 20% ICU capacity.
I may be misunderstanding him, but I think that he meant that they had 20% free capacity. ie 80% Occupancy, 20% Free.
That’s correct, obviously ICU 80% full is not ideal, but it means there are about 140 ICU ‘beds’ available in my area (multiple hospitals combined)… which is not the same thing as zero, or close, and has been almost constant for a month.
At the moment it’s about half CV cases.
Apologies for my misunderstanding.
