From the Chicago Tribune:
The total number of new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases in Illinois is 11,028, a little lower than Friday’s record-breaking 15,415, state public health officials reported on Saturday.
But the number of new deaths on Saturday spiked to 166, at least six times higher than Friday’s figure, 27.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the IDPH director, noted during Friday’s COVID-19 state briefing that due to a data reporting issue there was a delay in deaths reported that day. According to a news release, 66 of the deaths “that occurred yesterday are being reported with today’s total.â€
The total number of known infections statewide is 562,995, The total number of fatalities since the pandemic began now stands at 10,670, official said.
Meanwhile, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Friday he was extending a host of coronavirus-related executive orders for another 30 days, including an extension of a moratorium on evictions.
The state also updated the data that it posts related to contact tracing, which involves reaching out to people diagnosed with COVID-19, urging them to isolate and asking them where they’ve been and whom they’ve seen during the two weeks prior to their positive test so those people can be asked to quarantine.
There have been multiple news reports that contact tracing has been next to useless in the Chicago metropolitan area. Only about 20% of the individuals whom they try to contact respond and some of those lie.
I should probably go to the trouble of putting together a timeline. Illinois’s lockdown mandate began in March (right after California) and continued until the end of May. Since the beginning of April Gov. Pritzker has continued to issue orders beyond his statutory authorization as has been found by more than one court. He still is. There have been no legal or political barriers to his actions.
I’ll ask the question I’ve asked before: what did he do wrong? His policies definitely had an effect on thousands of businesses in the state and state tax revenues. IMO it is now fair to say that the effect of lockdown mandates is not to prevent the disease from spreading but to timeshift its spread. What did he do with the period during his previous lockdown to ensure that the continuing spread of the disease would not overwhelm Illinois’s health care resources? As I pointed out last week it is clear that, if he is responding to data, it’s not data that’s available publicly.
I’ll answer that question. He squandered it. He assumed, incorrectly, that the disease would just go away or that a vaccine would be available soon enough to make additional actions unnecessary. We can now be pretty confident that the earliest that an effective vaccine will be be available for mass distribution will be sometime next year and it may be much later. It remains possible that a safe, effective vaccine will never be available. It’s still early days in vaccine trials.
“IMO it is now fair to say that the effect of lockdown mandates is not to prevent the disease from spreading but to timeshift its spread.”
Which I have been saying for months.
And we should note that something like 2/3rds of all states have mask mandates in place, with populous counties in other states under the same mandate. And yet we have a surge. Contact tracing, you name it. But the virus goes on.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the young, relatively young, and kids do just fine. Had a friend couple here from Chicago on a house hunting trip over the weekend. Entire family got it a while back. 3 day flu event.
For the umpteenth time: protect the elderly and the comorbid. Better, they need to protect themselves. They have a few percentage point probability of dying. We will not “stop the virus.” We do not live in a riskless world.
Suppose we did “stop the virus”, would we be OK?
Risk remains, always, everywhere, refocused.
Parents, grandparents always lead with “just be careful that”……
Young eyes glaze over. Life goes on.
https://www.klkntv.com/a-bucket-and-a-rope-lincoln-woman-is-living-on-the-second-floor-of-her-home-during-pandemic/
https://www.klkntv.com/videos-spark-concern-after-large-concert-in-lincoln/
Who’s crazy? Who’s not?
A thought that just occurred to me.
There are a lot of methodological similarities to polling and contact tracing as practiced here in the US.
Perhaps it is not surprising they both seem to be abject failures for the purpose they were supposed to serve.
““IMO it is now fair to say that the effect of lockdown mandates is not to prevent the disease from spreading but to timeshift its spread.—
Also to save lives. If you have Covid now your chance of dying is about 1/2 of what it was in March. We could have/should have also used the time gained by lockdowns to build up PPE supplies (we didnt) and worked on a coordinated national plan so that we wouldn’t have to have lockdowns in the future while avoiding high rates of Covid. Instead we had mixed messaging so there is no consistency. We now have areas that have the geographic advantages that should lead to relatively low Covid risk instead having lots of Covid.
“I’ll ask the question I’ve asked before: what did he do wrong? ”
It could be any number of things, or maybe nothing. Its a new virus. We knew that opening up some would mean higher rates for Covid this fall. We know that respiratory viruses usually have a peak in the fall. (Still cracks me ups that man of science Drew claimed that only those driven by politics would make this claim.) So we didnt know how much it would increase. Also, you can have mandates but they dont work if people dont follow them. In my immediate area compliance has been pretty good, but in our more rural areas it has not. As I said before we had pts in the hospital refusing to wear masks, even when they had Covid. Too many people remain convinced that Covid is a hoax, its just a plot to hurt Trump. Too many remain convinced that masks and distancing dont help at all.
We are seeing a lot of fatigue with this disease. People are getting tired of masks and not having gatherings. It was always going to be difficult to get through this. Our abysmal leadership at the very top has made it worse. Trump promised us this would all disappear on 11/3. It was all just a political effort to hurt him. Well it didnt go away and here we are.
“Risk remains, always, everywhere, refocused.”
Ah, heck you are right. Lets stop treating cancer, other infectious diseases, heart disease. No matter what we treat there will always be other diseases. That tuna salad sitting out since yesterday? Go ahead and eat it. Food poisoning hardly ever kills anyone, less than Covid.
Steve
That’s not a falsifiable claim. You might be right or you might be wrong.
The Governor is an ass. That’s not just an ad hominem, but he made enemies instead of trying to persuade. Everybody else is at fault for letting poor little inherited billionaire down on his first job. If one follows the “science,” getting people to social-distance and wear masks is a lot more about polite encouragement than bullying. That is, assuming his policies were sound, he was the wrong the presenter.
which is why I have, for example, suggested a public service campaign with media celebrities, sports figures, etc. You don’t need a national plan for that. You don’t need to wait for federal government permission or leadership for that.
Persuasion is a skilled craft. If the governor doesn’t have the skills himself he should hire those who do.
I should also mention that I continue to see Chicago police officers not wearing masks and not social distancing.
The problem with celebrities, at least in the Fall of this year, is a lot of people seemed to be getting angry at being preached at by people from palatial beach-side estates about doing the right thing.
When the Governor issued his stay at home order, his family was in Florida and then traveled to Wisconsin. His family was “off limits,” but by my count he’s had three outbreaks on his staff. I’ve never read any follow-up explaining what was responsible for those outbreaks. Were those outbreaks because of a lack of social-distancing or masks, or do those things not always work? I don’t know that I want family and workers to be singled out for public ridicule, but the Governor’s everybody is to blame except me and mine is ridiculous.
Like everywhere else, there is a huge spike in Covid here in Colorado. My school district is going all synchronous online for the rest of the semester for middle and high school. Elementary is likely to follow.
Our governor the progressive libertarian, added schools to the “critical” business list so if counties or the entire state move to the shutdown stage, schools can stay open. But the governor is actually trying to do everything he can (which isn’t a lot given the limited power of the office here) to forestall another lockdown. And his reasons are economic -people cannot afford to be laid-off or lose their jobs and state and local tax revenues would be crushed even more than they have been (The general fund here already decreased by 25% due to Covid revenue loss). He’s basically said the state and workers can’t afford to shutdown without another stimulus from the feds. And, at least for Colorado, I think he’s right.
The irony is that he’s pissed off both progressives and right-leaning Republicans. The former for not using authority he doesn’t have to make people comply and the latter for being a despot regarding mask mandates. Fortunately these two opposing groups of – let’s not mince words – ignorant people lacking self-awareness, aren’t very large.
Personally, I tend to be much more on the side of fiscal conservatism when it comes to government finances. It’s one reason I appreciate my state and TABOR as opposed to what you have in Illinois. And I also am extremely concerned about the structural deficit problems at the federal level. At the same time, however, I do think additional federal spending is needed for this spike and this situation is exactly a case where deficit spending and federal assistance is justifiable and warranted. But that doesn’t seem to be a priority in Washington. Trump is too busy deluding himself about his election loss and Congress is being…well, Congress.
I’m less concerned about the structural deficit since all of its causes are addressable by the Congress. What’s absent is the will on anybody’s part.
What concerns me more is what happens if all of the extraordinary discretionary spending induces a loss of confidence in the dollar. The best case, best case mind you, is that the spending will produce inflation. The worst case is hyperinflation. Everything we’re doing puts us on the road to being Venezuela.