Read on Twitter
This article on El Paso is from Nov. 16th (18 days ago). I have not seen anything further. The article mentions that businesses were reopening at the time of the article, giving the impression that the situation would be absolutely out of control. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-paso-covid-body-transport-county-inmates-2-dollars-per-hour/
Here is a look at the dashboards for El Paso since that article was written. At the time of the story they reported "more than 1,100 people in hospitals". It looks like that number has dropped now to 794.
The number of total deaths did jump from the Nov. 17th report to the Dec. 4th report (note that there is a section that says deaths under investigation- I am not sure how that impacts their data).
The number of people being monitored has gone up from 848 to 1,468. Also, the test positivity rate has gone down since Nov. 17th from 18.93% to 11.95%.
Back in July there were articles about TX and AZ needing refrigerated trucks due to rising death rates. CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-arizona-coronavirus-deaths-refrigerated-trucks-morgues/
Anyway, the stories ran... then all went quiet. I do not remember any actual NY-like outcomes. Here are the case and death rate graphs for Bexar County, TX and Maricopa County, AZ (both specifically mentioned in the CBS article).
This is another piece that didn't get much follow up. https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-childrens-hospital-now-taking-adult-patients-coronavirus/story?id=71403248
The article talking about Texas Children's Hospital taking adult patients due to increased cases was written on June 23rd. It appears as though there have been bigger counts since that date, yet I have not seen similar reporting.
This article is from Nov. 20th in St. Louis. The article does not mention how many adult patients are being seen at SLCH. I have not seen any follow up on that situation. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/coronavirus/2020-11-20/st-louis-childrens-hospital-now-seeing-adult-patients-with-covid-19-trauma-surgeon-reports
I did look up this update from the St. Louis Pandemic Task Force which was provided on December 2nd. There is no mention of utilization of SLCH's, but numbers were trending down. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/st-louis-coronavirus-task-force-briefing/63-87f70d16-5a63-41ed-acb2-e27db259915e
Back in May there was this news piece (several outlets reported on this potential super spreader event): https://www.kmov.com/news/watch-packed-pool-party-at-lake-of-the-ozarks-shows-crowd-ignoring-social-distancing-guidelines/article_5de50ce8-9dbb-11ea-bd46-6b8e99107093.html
There was a follow up article on June 11th which indicated that only two people had contracted Covid from that party. https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/lake-ozarks-coronavirus-cases-memorial-day-weekend/63-a29c2d75-b7b0-4d8c-9bfa-f2fd5eda846b
Also in May there was this article (and several others) about two hairstylists potentially spreading Covid in Springfield, MO: https://abcnews.go.com/US/hairstylists-covid-19-exposed-140-people-salon/story?id=70859389
A follow up report by the CDC showed that despite the stylists being Covid +, there was no spread (lack of spread was attributed to proper mask use): https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm
I think it is important to note that when it comes to the pandemic, media is not our friend. Media is all about sensationalizing stories (often without follow up) which causes a great deal of fear for communities and for healthcare workers.
See also, this thread: https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1335588160965906433?s=20
"We are seeing some spikes. They are probably not as significant as we feared". So now they move on to fearmongering around Christmas The actual tweet has the conversation. Btw, they've done this every holiday...Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving.....
Seeing posts and articles about a new strain of the virus. As a reminder, we went through this in the spring and summer.
WHO "is aware of a new variant of COVID-19 that has emerged in Britain, but there is no evidence the strain behaves differently to existing types of the virus"
WHO "is aware of a new variant of COVID-19 that has emerged in Britain, but there is no evidence the strain behaves differently to existing types of the virus"
News of new strains pops up from time to time (viruses mutate). For reference here is an article from June: https://www.biospace.com/article/mutated-covid-19-viral-strain-in-us-and-europe-much-more-contagious/
Article from July: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/second-coronavirus-strain-may-be-more-infectious-but-some-scientists-are-skeptical/
Here is the piece where I got the WHO quote: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-idUSKBN28O2DI?taid=5fd7a8396bd4b60001875913&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter
I remember all the early scares regarding essential workers; not much recently. Yet "the US CDC is going to recommend that 'essential workers' are vaccinated before the over-65s, despite their *own modelling* showing this will result in more deaths."
It seems like those who employ essential workers have figured out ways to mostly protect those workers. However, the elderly who have been much harder to protect are going to be thrown under the bus. See this thread: https://twitter.com/surplustakes/status/1339574645180289026?s=20
Now I can add this to the list:
Again, I present the media (day before vs day after inauguration):
