[Goose]

I would say I’m a little more optimistic than I was a week ago.

[+] cases have flattened in many places in the US

[+] some states in the US have gotten their act together and are making progress on many fronts (ppe, testing), especially CA

[+] san mateo pho believes we’ve found only a small % of the cases, which, if true, means the cfr is much lower than we feared, and we may be able to achieve herd immunity faster and with fewer deaths than we feared

[+] made it a week without a major meltdown



[-] still no evidence I have heard that, outside of Mass, we are increasing the tracing and quarantine enforcement capabilities to needed levels in CA, USA

You probably saw my post that San Mateo County Health says they will be ready to go. They are transferring people around in the Department to do so, but they say they will be ready. So maybe we aren't going to hear much about it if they can staff it in house. For sure restaurant inspectors will have less to do. I hope they aren't being overly optimistic.

[-] Ro in the Bay Area still too high even in lockdown. Still many new cases daily even 4 weeks into the Lockdown, Stanford study shows 50% of young people self-report they aren’t complying. If people keep violating the SIP, the cases won’t reduce, and it will take longer, and people will get frustrated

[-] Still need at least another 10x in daily tests in CA, it’s been stuck at about 10k tests/day for a little while. For comparison, UW alone can process 3500/day

Please take a look at http://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/ On no day has UW accomplished 3500 tests. They have reached over 3000 once. The average is more like 1600 per day or so. It may well be they are capable 3500 a day and are just not being asked to do so. It is for sure true that early on in this epidemic UW claimed rates per day that in fact they could not (and did not) sustain. I don't know if testing capability in California is a problem for contact tracing. It may be as low as it is because of demand, not supply. The bar to getting a test is still pretty high. I am pretty sure that the Abbott Labs tests (or something similar) will need to be available to the county health workers to make timely contact tracing possible. Failing that, the 2 day wait (average) for results will be a problem, no matter how available the test may be.

[-] As expected, less developed countries are starting to explode. The sham that is Russia is becoming exposed — they could be the next Italy. Every time this happens, it will fuel new outbreaks as foreign nationals flee hotspots and return home. Still no good plan in US I have seen for dealing with this — travel bans are too porous, too late, and poorly executed. The mad rush like people returning from Italy and standing in long lines in customs, with no followup quarantining or tracing, could end up making things much worse.

[Goose]

I would say I’m a little more optimistic than I was a week ago.

[+] cases have flattened in many places in the US

[+] some states in the US have gotten their act together and are making progress on many fronts (ppe, testing), especially CA

[+] san mateo pho believes we’ve found only a small % of the cases, which, if true, means the cfr is much lower than we feared, and we may be able to achieve herd immunity faster and with fewer deaths than we feared

[+] made it a week without a major meltdown



[-] still no evidence I have heard that, outside of Mass, we are increasing the tracing and quarantine enforcement capabilities to needed levels in CA, USA

You probably saw my post that San Mateo County Health says they will be ready to go. They are transferring people around in the Department to do so, but they say they will be ready. So maybe we aren't going to hear much about it if they can staff it in house. For sure restaurant inspectors will have less to do. I hope they aren't being overly optimistic.

[-] Ro in the Bay Area still too high even in lockdown. Still many new cases daily even 4 weeks into the Lockdown, Stanford study shows 50% of young people self-report they aren’t complying. If people keep violating the SIP, the cases won’t reduce, and it will take longer, and people will get frustrated

[-] Still need at least another 10x in daily tests in CA, it’s been stuck at about 10k tests/day for a little while. For comparison, UW alone can process 3500/day

Please take a look at http://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/ On no day has UW accomplished 3500 tests. They have reached over 3000 once. The average is more like 1600 per day or so. It may well be they are capable 3500 a day and are just not being asked to do so. It is for sure true that early on in this epidemic UW claimed rates per day that in fact they could not (and did not) sustain. I don't know if testing capability in California is a problem for contact tracing. It may be as low as it is because of demand, not supply. The bar to getting a test is still pretty high. I am pretty sure that the Abbott Labs tests (or something similar) will need to be available to the county health workers to make timely contact tracing possible. Failing that, the 2 day wait (average) for results will be a problem, no matter how available the test may be.

[-] As expected, less developed countries are starting to explode. The sham that is Russia is becoming exposed — they could be the next Italy. Every time this happens, it will fuel new outbreaks as foreign nationals flee hotspots and return home. Still no good plan in US I have seen for dealing with this — travel bans are too porous, too late, and poorly executed. The mad rush like people returning from Italy and standing in long lines in customs, with no followup quarantining or tracing, could end up making things much worse.