[Keep the political type posts, including fear mongering, over on the Political Forum, please. -Staff]

Where was the daycare ?

Keegan99 said:

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A few points.

1) The Hospitalization numbers I present are from confirmed lab cases and not suspected cases.

2) The laying off of medical workers was due to the ordered halt on elective surgeries. Elective surgeries are very profitable. OK, I don't have the link to a source. If you disagree, Ill try to find some.

3) Yes, flattening the curve was all about not overrunning our medical services. Don't think I have ever stated otherwise.

4) It wasn't left out, we are ok now and have capacity. At some point, if the trend continues, that may not be the case. The models have a large range and even different models don't agree. Only time well tell.

5) Agree with others that hopefully we will be making better decisions with better data as we learn more. I am hopeful the decisions we make in September are better ones that we can make today. Until then the decisions being made are with the data and projections we have. They maybe right, they may be wrong.

6) We bought ourselves time with flattening the curve, two or months of learning, without the dire consequences of doing nothing. Are we better prepared if a wave hits, I would say yes. Is our preparation adequate, only time will tell.

7) What can I do to help: Try not to get and spread Covid and educate my family. So I will take the best measures to do this, within reason. For me, at this time, large social gatherings, infrequent washing of the hands, and not wearing a mask in public are not the best measures for my family, me, or my fellow Texans.

billydean05 said:

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Dazed and Confused said:

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Sorry if people can not see a trend. My conclusion is that we did flatten the curve, but the current trend is not flat or downward.

I'm glad we did not overwhelm our medical resources, unlike NYC. Look at the Covid death rate per confirmed cases for NY and Texas, 6% vs. 3%. Maybe NY didn't test enough people vs. Texas, but I would think not. Could be other factors. One Texas medical expert stated the death rate difference was due to NY medical being overwhelmed. You can believe him or not, or draw your own conclusion.

We don't have to worry today, there are plenty of beds and ICU beds. Many hospitals have a ICU surge plan to add more if needed. However, if the trend continues in 5 weeks or so, I might start tracking ICU usage.

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We have 28,634 hospital beds available and 2,260 ICU beds available. One key line was left out flatten the curve to prevent hospitals from overcrowding. Texas has been flat as a pancake hospitals are laying off employees because nobody are in them. We are at 10% capacity or under. We have plenty of room for more than a slight uptick. Goal has been achieved move on. Please see link below

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas

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I went to the link you showed. Can you help me understand why the model in the link shows for yesterday that 904 beds are needed for Covid with a range of 694-1175 , but Texas reports current beds used for Covid are 2056 for that day? I must be reading the data wrong, any guidance would be appreciated.

We still need to look at ages of those hospitalized. If there are bunch of folks under 60 in ICU and those numbers continue to grow, scared that schools and government will over react. If those in ICU as Dr Marcus said are almost all old and feeble, just continue to take precautions.

Aggie95 said:

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who in the world thought COVID-19 would just stay flat or steadily decline as we moved back into normal life? This is not surprising, nor a reason for panic. Remain vigilant, do what you can to stay safe and move on.

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Nobody, but the relative sharp and quick rise in cases is a concern. Because every incremental person that gets infected is just another spreader of the virus. Therefore the speed of infection spread, even at seemingly low levels, is a very important variable to watch. There were almost 0 cases in America in January, and we had a million active infections by the end of March. This can easily happen again...

I was getting optimistic seasonality was going to have a bigger impact... But this could get bad very quickly. The protests could have sparked some super spreader events... And we haven't even started to see the initial wave from that. We should have hoped to see a very slow and gradual rise on the other side of the shut down, because that would suggest that maybe we will be ok until the fall. This data is suggesting something else.

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There were almost 0 cases in America in January, and we had a million active infections by the end of March. This can easily happen again...

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No, it can't. An unexposed population is very different from one that's been exposed, particularly given non-homogeneity in demographics and behaviors.

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This can easily happen again...

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i'll agree with your concern, but disagree with this

closure of large events, increased public awareness (from zero), hygiene, masking, testing, tracing - you aren't going to see the unmitigated community spread and peaks we saw in April

it's likely going to be a shallow wave that never ends

Is there any chance some of these doctors and hospitals are admitting and keeping Covid patients that a month ago would have been sent home?

That could be because of nefarious financial reasons...hospitals need revenue now.

Or maybe just increased caution/level of care available since there is not a shortage of beds?

Look hospitalizations are increasing however not at a quick rate and not at anything to get even remotely worked up about. They have gone up from a low of 1500-1600 to a high of 2100 in a month. This will plateau here shortly. If it triples from these levels or quickly doubles in a week or less from current levels then could be cause to reevaluate.

The presence of "hoteling" is definitely a question to ask, particularly if the patient's residence, in the case of a nursing home, may not readmit the resident until multiple negative tests.

The other concern, as pointed out earlier, is patients going to the hospital for another issue altogether, getting tested for COVID, producing a positive result, and then getting counted in a COVID census.

From "athletes coming back to campus" and other universal testing scenarios, it seems there is a measurable percentage of people testing positive that are asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic. If a similar percentage is present among those showing up at a hospital for other concerns, you create a number of COVID+ hospitalizations where COVID is not the cause of the hospitalization.

billydean05 said:

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Look hospitalizations are increasing however not at a quick rate and not at anything to get even remotely worked up about. They have gone up from a low of 1500-1600 to a high of 2100 in a month. This will plateau here shortly. If it triples from these levels or quickly doubles in a week or less from current levels then could be cause to reevaluate.

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I hope it does, but why do you say it will plateau shortly?

I base it locally first. Brazos County hospitalizations down to 4 increased to 17 down to 13. The reason for majority of increase was Parc at Traditions nursing home and assisted living facility. Lots of new cases. We are a spread out state and it is very hot, so outdoors ability to spread is limited over next 3 months. The other is other doctors threads on here who sees cases plateauing and decreasing again. The states that have less dense populations have not been hit very hard thankfully for Texas.

cone said:

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This can easily happen again...

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i'll agree with your concern, but disagree with this

closure of large events, increased public awareness (from zero), hygiene, masking, testing, tracing - you aren't going to see the unmitigated community spread and peaks we saw in April

it's likely going to be a shallow wave that never ends

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Protests are bigger gatherings of people than we had in February and March for the most part + everybody pretending this is over and returning to normal (not wearing masks etc.) Suggest that isn't entirely true. I'm optimistic that we'll revert back once people have refocused on this issue. But the truth is COVID-19 old news for the average person in America.

Keegan99 said:

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There were almost 0 cases in America in January, and we had a million active infections by the end of March. This can easily happen again...

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No, it can't. An unexposed population is very different from one that's been exposed, particularly given non-homogeneity in demographics and behaviors.

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Texas is an unexposed population

billydean05 said:

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Look hospitalizations are increasing however not at a quick rate and not at anything to get even remotely worked up about. They have gone up from a low of 1500-1600 to a high of 2100 in a month. This will plateau here shortly. If it triples from these levels or quickly doubles in a week or less from current levels then could be cause to reevaluate.

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Why would it plateau? Our actions lately are much more likely to accelerate things than have them plateau. I'm not saying we panic - I'm saying at this point we really need to expect this to double or triple in the next few weeks. Potentially worse.

Gordo14 said:

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billydean05 said:

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Look hospitalizations are increasing however not at a quick rate and not at anything to get even remotely worked up about. They have gone up from a low of 1500-1600 to a high of 2100 in a month. This will plateau here shortly. If it triples from these levels or quickly doubles in a week or less from current levels then could be cause to reevaluate.

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Why would it plateau? Our actions lately are much more likely to accelerate things than have them plateau. I'm not saying we panic - I'm saying at this point we really need to expect this to double or triple in the next few weeks. Potentially worse.

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Are we back to saying it'll get worse in 2 weeks? The protests started over 2 weeks ago, even Clay Jenkins is admitting the increase in cases is due to testing, nursing homes specifically.

Maybe I'm wrong but I seriously doubt we will have triple the hospitalizations from 2000 today, even if we did we would have over 9,000 beds left in Texas.

No, it's not.

It's not Italy or NYC, but it's not Texas in January, either.

Texas has about 80k confirmed positives.

Florida has about 67k confirmed positives. Texas' per-capita infection is less than Florida, but not by so much as a factor of two. Yes, this depends on test availability, willingness to get tested, and a host of other factors, but it's the best we have.

Most importantly, it's probable that the key nodes on the social graph in Texas have already been exposed, because those individuals tend to move about and not stay within the state. Social interactions are a power distribution. Again, the lack of homogeneity matters.

Gordo14 said:

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billydean05 said:

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Look hospitalizations are increasing however not at a quick rate and not at anything to get even remotely worked up about. They have gone up from a low of 1500-1600 to a high of 2100 in a month. This will plateau here shortly. If it triples from these levels or quickly doubles in a week or less from current levels then could be cause to reevaluate.

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Why would it plateau? Our actions lately are much more likely to accelerate things than have them plateau. I'm not saying we panic - I'm saying at this point we really need to expect this to double or triple in the next few weeks. Potentially worse.

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I have been asking myself and others the same question. So far I have heard of three possible reasons; for me to be convinced I need to see data supporting these reasons.

1) Covid may be seasonal.

2) Admissions are rising because patients testing positive in SNF are being sent to the hospital. Assuming they weren't before because we weren't focusing testing on SNF.

3) Some patients that would have died are living longer due to improvements in medical care because of increased learning. Therefore the average time from admit to discharge is longer.

If others have data that supports these reasons or have other reasons, please post.

Montgomery County

Not been shown to be the case in other states as they open up. No large spikes in other states that are opening up.

CDub06 said:

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Montgomery County

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Data?

4) Patients coming to the hospital for other reasons, being tested as a matter of protocol, and discovering a positive.

billydean05 said:

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Not been shown to be the case in other states as they open up. No large spikes in other states that are opening up.

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What are you defining as a large spike?

Are you saying that Hospitalization rates for all the states that have opened up are sloping downward or at a plateau? Data please?

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

Keegan99 said:

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4) Patients coming to the hospital for other reasons, being tested as a matter of protocol, and discovering a positive.

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I don't have the data, but I believe Hospital admits for non-Covid reasons have been tested per protocol before the recent uptick in Hospitalizations. This was so they can isolate the Covid vs. Non-Covid patients. But there could be a rise in people going to the Hospital for Non-Covid reasons now vs three weeks ago, which could have the same effect. I don't know why data is so hard to get for Texas or even Houston, to get more insight in the recent trend. TMC would know for their patients, why haven't we seen it?

If I'm not mistaken Alabama just came off of a spike a couple of weeks ago.

From a first hand account on this board it was due to long term health care facilities getting hit.

It shouldn't alarm anyone to see the numbers go up and then level off and then go up again due to these populations getting hit.

But the point is, many people weren't going to the hospital in March/April and even May. For anything.

beerad12man said:

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But the point is, many people weren't going to the hospital in March/April and even May. For anything.

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Yes, I stated that "But there could be a rise in people going to the Hospital for Non-Covid reasons now vs three weeks ago, which could have the same effect."

1) more testing = more cases.

2) people think this thing is over; cautionary measures no longer observed.

3) testing still not targeting vulnerable hotspots such as nursing homes, senior living.

4) treatments are still largely politicized according to WHO and Fauci recommendations, which have been wrong. HCQ+zinc+z-pack not used as it should be.


We are currently in the Swedish model, and doing a poor job of it so far.

We're doing fine.

COVID fatalities in Texas are very, very unlikely to surpass flu fatalities in Texas from the 2017-2018 season.

Keegan99 said:

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https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

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I could not find a trend graph or data set to looks at trends on hospitalization in the link provided. Only the current daily snapshot. Not sure what data you are looking at.

Did find this on a different site for June 10th: "There have been 8,974 total patients hospitalized in Georgia during the pandemic, according to the Department of Public Health's cumulative total. Over the last 14 days, the average daily increase in new patients was 81.79 new patients a day. Over the previous 14-day period, the average daily increase in new patients was 97.93."

I agree with you we're doing fine; am not worried. But we could be doing better w targeting how and where we test and maintain cautionary measures.

billydean05 said:

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Not been shown to be the case in other states as they open up. No large spikes in other states that are opening up.

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14 states have seen a large spike in cases - Arizona in particular. And given that many states have not really opened up or had a significant amount of cases at any point, it's like 14/25 states. This does not suggest it'll calmly plateau and we can just pretend this doesn't exist.

Picadillo said:

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3) testing still not targeting vulnerable hotspots such as nursing homes, senior living.

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I was hoping we were improving with Gov. Abbott mandating COVID-19 testing for all nursing home residents and staff, but I don't have the data.

https://www.kxii.com/content/news/Gov-Abbott-mandates-COVID-19-testing-for-all-nursing-home-residents-staff-570438951.html