First of all...that post was how many days ago? And I'm a nurse in a hot sport. So yes I do know the reality of the situation. Eyes are wide open. Come join me for a day.
I don't think anyone is suggesting hospitals in hot spots reopen for non-essential procedures. But it would be nice if hospitals in minimally-impacted areas could provide needed medical care, rather than sitting around waiting to go bankrupt for lack of patients. In my county, there have only been a few hundred cases. There have also been some cases, a few dozen as I understand it, transferred from fuller Detroit-area hospitals during our peak. But the hospital is currently reporting 56% of beds are empty, nurses and support staff are seeing their hours cut, and people are going without care that would prevent more serious issues down the road.
This is so true and I’m glad I was able to find that data for my state (Wisconsin). Daily new cases started getting higher the last few days, and those numbers by themselves were discouraging. But then I saw more info and it showed that they’ve also done more tests. In terms of the percentage of positives out of daily tests, it’s stayed relatively consistent, just a few spikes of a couple percent.
Here, it has been steady improvement. Around our peak, more than 40% of administered tests were positive - at one point, we had the highest percentage of positive tests in the country, even worse than NYC. Now, the case counts bounce up and down with the number of tests performed but the percentage of positives has fallen to 10%. But the media mostly runs the new cases/new deaths figures, with no mention of the test count or the percentage that are positive.
Listening to the news conferences the Governor does and the Secretary for the state's Health Department who talks in those conferences are where I get some information regarding the peak passing, discussion regarding likely shifting efforts to regional within the state rather than holding the whole state to a stay at home, increased efforts in rural counties and meat processing for testing, loosening up of testing restrictions (2 symptoms total rather than a fever and two symptoms), etc.
My county's dashboard has a good amount of information and they do a quick 2-4 mins daily update videos (about a day behind in the numbers though). Each day they talk about different things. Yesterday's daily update discussed the drop in EMS calls and concerns that people aren't calling in for medical emergencies. I haven't listened to today's update yet though. Their dedicated webpage has discussioned reopening efforts, updates to specific dates things are effective for, etc. Also the randomized but invite only testing by filling out a survey so they can get a better idea of the spread throughout the county and those not exhibiting symptoms as well as those who are and those employed in essential businesses. The county heavily utilized Nextdoor social networking site to get the info out on that survey. That's where I saw the information first actually.
I agree knowing where that number is being plugged into means something. Prison outbreaks and long-term care outbreaks are bad enough but they are also isolated places that present a different type of risk to the general population when discussing how a state is fairing and any plans for reopening.
Looking at the county where the largest prison outbreak is at in my state it's being included in their county's figures as far as the inmates. I would assume the staff are being calculated in their place of residence whatever county that may be but I could be wrong in that. I haven't checked other counties where a prison has been mentioned as having cases though.
Our governor has started talking about a regional approach as well, and I think it is a great idea. Where I'm at right now - I went up north the minute we weren't specifically prohibited from doing so - has only had 4 cases (and I haven't seen another soul other than my girls and some people walking in the distance on trails since we arrived, so I'm no risk to their good record
). It seems unnecessarily disruptive to have businesses here subjected to the same rules that apply in Detroit, where there have been something like 12,000 cases so far. Particularly with travel restrictions in effect, as they were until Friday, or recommendations that people traveling wear masks and avoid shopping if they do come up.
I was surprised that they aren't counting the prisons in the county numbers here, but I suppose it makes a sort of sense. Most of our prisons are in rural areas and including inmate counts would massively skew the overall case rate which might impact how the counties are treated under regional reopening standards. And that wouldn't really make sense - it isn't as though those 800 positive inmates are out in the community creating a higher risk of transmission at the local grocery store or park. Our county is pretty tech-adverse - our only updates come from a daily infographic posted to Facebook - but we've got a great non-profit news outlet that covers the whole state and really does an excellent job breaking down the numbers.
