Imagine Them Gone

From Don Winslow - #StopTheMadnessStopTrump:

 

US Cities of about 200,000 population:

• Rochester NY        205,695
• Port St Lucie FL     201,846
• Grand Rapids MI   201,013
• Huntsville AL         200,574 
• Salt Lake City UT  200,567
• Frisco TX               200,490
• Yonkers NY           200,370

COVID-19 Update

Clinicians are getting pretty good at dealing with the monster, as indicated by the death rate having fallen to 4% - down from close to 6% a few months ago.

And if you get infected, and the disease takes hold, the odds are still pretty big in your favor, with only about 1% of patients being reported in Serious or Critical condition, which is huge improvement over what they were predicting 6 months ago (upwards of 15-20%).

I haven't been able to get a good lock on where we are in terms of Infection Rate. ie: as we test people, the percentage of those testing positive gives us a fair idea of whether or not the disease is spreading, and how fast. Since we don't have a national strategy in place - and because we aren't doing all that much testing of the general population - it's hard to pin it down.

My "Growth Rate" is a simplistic thing, and while it's OK for a kind of broad strokes picture, it isn't meant to be anything particularly precise.

Suffice to say the thing is still spreading - I just don't know how to gauge it properly.

USA

• New Cases:   53,629
• New Deaths:       895

WaPo:

WHO warns 2 million deaths ‘not impossible’ as global fatalities approach 1 million

With the world fast approaching 1 million deaths officially related to covid-19, a doubling of that number is “certainly unimaginable, but it’s not impossible,” World Health Organization expert Mike Ryan said Friday at a news briefing.

“If we look at losing 1 million people in nine months and then we just look at the realities of getting vaccines out there in the next nine months, it’s a big task for everyone involved,” Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said.

Other Stuff

• Trump has repeatedly said a vaccine would be available by Election Day, or possibly sooner, worrying scientists that he might attempt to intervene in the review process.
• Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans showed signs of past infection with the novel coronavirus as of late July, suggesting that most of the country may still be vulnerable to infection, according to one of the largest studies of its kind published Friday in the journal The Lancet.
• A “large proportion” of the U.S. population will not be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus this year, Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, said during a Facebook Live event Thursday.
• Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and his wife, Pamela, tested positive for the coronavirus, the governor’s office announced Friday.
• Sudan has been hit by record-breaking rains and floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and complicated efforts to contain the novel coronavirus, alongside preexisting crises such as a polio outbreak and armed conflicts.
• Data shows that only about 100 children and teenagers have died of covid-19 in the United States, a fatality rate that is drawing wonder from clinicians and increasing interest among researchers hoping to understand why.

It's A Living Thing

Fire can create its own weather and weather gets pretty freaky sometimes - like when it tries to steal your fire hose.

The Death Of Irony, Part ∞

The guy who told us he'd definitely run into a school to confront an active shooter felt compelled to leave a memorial service early because the crowd booed him - from 100 feet away.

COVID-19 Update

USA

• New Cases:   43,355
• New Deaths:       943

The Guardian:

'Close to 100% accuracy': Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to detect Covid

Researchers running Helsinki pilot scheme say dogs can identify virus in seconds

Four Covid-19 sniffer dogs have begun work at Helsinki airport in a state-funded pilot scheme that Finnish researchers hope will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of testing people for the virus.

A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the coronavirus within 10 seconds and the entire process takes less than a minute to complete, according to Anna Hielm-Björkman of the University of Helsinki, who is overseeing the trial.

“It’s very promising,” said Hielm-Björkman. “If it works, it could prove a good screening method in other places” such as hospitals, care homes and at sporting and cultural events.

Whatever works is fine by me - and the emotional support we get from randomly anthropomorphizing critters can be of some value - but it seems there were very similar claims made about Cancer-Sniffing Dogs once upon a time, so I think I'll stick with something a bit more traditional until it can be proven. (yes - I'm a little cranky this morning)

Wanna know why you don't run government like a business? WaPo:

Virus’s unseen hot zone: The American farm

Across the country, fruit growers blocked testing of seasonal farmworkers and told those who caught the coronavirus to keep it quiet. County and state officials were largely unable to stop them

In Yakima County, Wash., some fruit orchard owners declined on-site testing of workers by health departments at the height of harvest season even as coronavirus infections spiked. In Monterey, Calif., workers at some farms claimed foremen asked them to hide positive diagnoses from other crew members. And in Collier County, Fla., health officials did not begin widespread testing of farmworkers until the end of harvest, at which point the workers had already migrated northward.

At the height of harvest season, growers supplying some of America’s biggest agricultural companies and grocery store chains flouted public health guidelines to limit testing and obscure coronavirus outbreaks, according to thousands of pages of state and local records reviewed by The Washington Post.

At the same time, state agencies and growers were slow to determine how and when to test workers, what protocols to adopt when workers tested positive, and how to institute contact tracing, advocates say. They say that there should have been mandatory personal protective equipment and clear guidance on worker safety at the federal and state levels.

Worker advocates say the failures put millions of workers at greater risk of contracting and spreading the virus among themselves and to other Americans as they crossed state lines to move with the harvest season.

Migrant farmworkers die in Canada, and Mexico wants answers

The struggles to contain the virus among migrant farmworkers are documented in internal state and county agriculture and health department records, as well as email exchanges with farm bureaus, grower associations, and public health and worker advocacy groups that were obtained by the Documenting COVID-19 project at Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation through public records requests and shared with The Post. These documents and additional interviews by The Post show a pattern that extended across more than a dozen agricultural counties in 10 states — and that largely withstood officials’ attempts to stop the spread of the virus among agricultural workers.

“If this is an essential industry, why is it we can’t at least take the kind of steps needed to figure out where we need to do interventions?” asked Don Villarejo, a former researcher at the California Institute for Rural Studies who has been analyzing coronavirus data on farmworkers. “My mantra is that all pandemics are local; if you don’t track every aspect of people’s lives including where they work and where they live, then you can never do a proper intervention."

And there's that weird dichotomy that's inherent in the "American way" of doing things. You have to have the tactical flexibility of an autonomous local authority because orders coming down from some Central Command won't fit every situation out there in the field. But at the same time, you have to have an overall strategic plan so there's some consistency in the approach - some guidance that the big brains at the home office can bring to bear.

Our scattershot response to COVID-19 has been a dismal fucking failure, and I think it's consistent with how the Radical Libertarians(*) want things to play out.

* Nancy MacLean - Democracy In Chains

Rule 1

Daddy State Awareness, rule 1

Every accusation is a confession.

The Trump Crime Family spends inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to smear everybody else as dopes and criminals - while being deeply involved in dopily criminal behavior themselves.

That's why they've been working to hard to get Ukraine (eg) to phony up some shit on Hunter Biden - which efforts have so far gotten President Stoopid impeached, and which, if Republicans had half the integrity of Snidely Whiplash, would have resulted in the removal from office of the sorriest excuse for a chief magistrate ever.

WaPo:

NEW YORK — A state judge on Wednesday ordered Eric Trump to be deposed no later than Oct. 7 in the New York attorney general's examination of the Trump Organization's financial practices, rejecting a protest by President Trump's son, who has said he is too busy to meet with investigators until after November's election.

The ruling was handed down by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron after nearly two hours of arguments in a lawsuit brought by state investigators conducting the civil investigation.

The president’s company is managed now by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom have taken active roles in their father’s reelection efforts. An attorney for Eric Trump said during Wednesday’s hearing that the president’s son travels nearly seven days a week to make campaign-related appearances.

Gotta love it when these privileged assholes argue they can't bother with obeying the law cuz they're just so darned busy all the time.

“This court finds that application unpersuasive,” Engoron said, referring to Eric Trump’s stated need to put off an interview until mid-November. He added that he felt Eric Trump’s attorney had cited no legal authority to support a bid to delay the deposition.

“Neither petitioner nor this court is bound by timeliness of the national election,” the judge said.

The judge also ordered that the Trump Organization and related business entities that were withholding documents and claiming attorney-client privilege proceed with producing records to the attorney general.

The lawsuit was filed in August by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), after lawyers in her office said they had hit a roadblock with attorneys for the Trump Organization and other potential witnesses in their pursuit of testimony and documents.

Where Did We Go?

There is no literature or poetry in this White House.
No music.
No Kennedy Center award celebrations.
There are no pets in this White House.
No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat.
No kids’ science fairs.
No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt-khaki pants uniform and hides from Americans to play golf.
There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation.
No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments, or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.
I was thinking the other day of the summer when George H couldn’t catch a fish and all the grandkids made signs and counted the fish-less days.
And somehow, even if you didn’t even like Poppy Bush, you got caught up in the joy of a family that loved each other and had fun.
Where did that country go?
Where did all of the fun and joy and expressions of love and happiness go?
We used to be a country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity.
We used to have a president that calmed and soothed the nation instead of dividing it.
And a First Lady that planted a garden instead of ripping one out.
We are rudderless and joyless.
We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great.
We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness.
The cheering on of others. Gone.
The shared experiences of humanity that make it all worth it. Gone.
The challenges AND the triumphs that we shared and celebrated.
The unique can-do spirit Americans have always been known for. Gone.
We have lost so much in so short a time.
~Elayne Griffin Baker on Facebook

Today's Pix

 

On RBG & Dying Democracy

Trae Crowder

COVID-19 Update

USA

• New Cases:  41,616
• New Deaths:   1,112

The world will top over 1 million dead some time before Monday or Tuesday.

Now we're cookin'. WaPo:

Massive genetic study shows coronavirus mutating and potentially evolving amid rapid U.S. spread

The largest U.S. genetic study of the virus, conducted in Houston, shows one viral strain outdistancing all of its competitors, and many potentially important mutations

Scientists in Houston on Wednesday released a study of more than 5,000 genetic sequences of the coronavirus that reveals the virus’s continual accumulation of mutations, one of which may have made it more contagious.

The new report, however, did not find that these mutations have made the virus deadlier or changed clinical outcomes. All viruses accumulate genetic mutations, and most are insignificant, scientists say.

Coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 are relatively stable as viruses go, because they have a proofreading mechanism as they replicate. But every mutation is a roll of the dice, and with transmission so widespread in the United States — which continues to see tens of thousands of new, confirmed infections daily — the virus has had abundant opportunities to change, potentially with troublesome consequences, said study author James Musser of Houston Methodist Hospital.

“We have given this virus a lot of chances,” Musser told The Washington Post. “There is a huge population size out there right now.”

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine, the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin also contributed to the study.

The new study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was posted Wednesday on the preprint server MedRxiv. It appears to be the largest single aggregation of genetic sequences of the virus in the United States thus far. A larger batch of sequences was published earlier this month by scientists in the United Kingdom, and, like the Houston study, concluded that a mutation that changes the structure of the “spike protein” on the surface of the virus may be driving the outsized spread of that particular strain.

David Morens, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reviewed the new study and said the findings point to the strong possibility that the virus, as it has moved through the population, has become more transmissible, and that this “may have implications for our ability to control it.”

Morens noted that this is a single study, and “you don’t want to over-interpret what this means.” But the virus, he said, could potentially be responding — through random mutations — to such interventions as mask-wearing and social distancing, Morens said Wednesday.

“Wearing masks, washing our hands, all those things are barriers to transmissibility, or contagion, but as the virus becomes more contagious it statistically is better at getting around those barriers,” said Morens, senior adviser to Anthony S. Fauci, the director of NIAID.

This has implications for the formulation of vaccines, Morens said. As people gain immunity, either through infections or a vaccine, the virus could be under selective pressure to evade the human immune response.

“Although we don’t know yet, it is well within the realm of possibility that this coronavirus, when our population-level immunity gets high enough, this coronavirus will find a way to get around our immunity,” Morens said. “If that happened, we’d be in the same situation as with flu. We’ll have to chase the virus and, as it mutates, we’ll have to tinker with our vaccine.”

Peter Thielen, a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said scientists will need to continue studying the virus to see whether the new mutations identified by the Houston researchers change the “fitness” of the virus, “and if SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility is truly increased as a result of these mutations.”

Another scientist who has studied the coronavirus, Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said in an email Wednesday that “the Houston paper highlights the fact that, with respect to SARS-CoV-2, we need to remain vigilant, and increase our capacity to monitor the virus for mutations.”

At Houston Methodist, whose main hospital is part of the Texas Medical Center in central Houston but also includes hospitals around the city, scientists have been sequencing the 30,000-character genome of the coronavirus since early March, when the virus first appears to have arrived in the metropolitan area of 7 million. The paper documents 5,085 sequences.

The research shows that the virus disseminated across Houston neighborhoods in two waves, first striking wealthier and older individuals but then spreading, in the second wave, to younger people and lower income neighborhoods — affecting many Latino city residents.

At the same time, as the virus spread Zip code by Zip code, it also compiled a catalogue of mutations, many affecting the spike protein. That structure on the surface of the virus, which resembles a tree decked with curled ribbons, enables the virus to enter cells.

The genetic data show the virus arrived in Houston many separate times, presumably at first by air travel. Notably, 71 percent of the viruses that arrived initially were characterized by a now famous mutation, which appears to have first originated in China, that scientists increasingly suspect may give the virus a biological advantage in how it spreads. It is called D614G, referring to the substitution of an amino acid called aspartic acid (D) for one called glycine (G) in a region of the genome that encodes the spike protein.

By the second wave of the outbreak in Houston, the study found that this variant had leaped to 99.9 percent prevalence — completing its domination of the outbreak. The researchers found that people infected with the strain had higher loads of virus in their upper respiratory tracts, a potential factor in making the strain spread more effectively.

Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in California, who was not involved in the new research, downplayed the significance of the new study. He said it “just confirms what has already been described — G increased in frequency over time.” As for the numerous other mutations the study finds, “they just catalogue them, but we don’t know if any of them have any functional relevance.”

Musser said his interpretation is that D614G has been increasingly dominant in Houston and other areas because it is better adapted to spreading among humans. He acknowledged that the scientific case is not closed on this matter.

“This isn’t a murder trial,” Musser said. “We’re not looking for beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a civil trial, and clearly, it’s the preponderance of the evidence that I think forces all of us into the same conclusion, which is there’s something biologically different about that strain, that family of strains.”

Recently, the even larger study of the spread of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom, based on some 25,000 genomes, also found evidence that this variant of the virus outdistances its competitors “in a manner consistent with a selective advantage.”

In general, scientists would expect natural selection to favor mutations that help the virus spread more effectively — since that allows it to make more copies of itself — but not necessarily ones that make it more virulent. Killing or incapacitating the host would generally not help the virus spread to more people.

The study found 285 separate mutation sites that change a physical building block of the spike protein, which is the most important part of the coronavirus in the sense that it is what allows it to infect and harm humans. Forty-nine of the changes at these sites had not been seen before in other genomes sequenced around the world.

The study characterizes some of the spike protein mutations as “disconcerting.” While the paper does not present strong proof that any additional evolution of the spike protein is occurring, it suggests that these repeated substitutions provide a hint that, as the virus interacts with our bodies and our immune systems, it may be learning new tricks that help it respond to its host.

“I think there’s pretty good evidence that’s consistent with immunologic selection acting on certain regions of the spike protein,” Musser said.

The actual mutations in the virus occur randomly as it makes mistakes trying to copy its genome within our cells. But every new case gives a chance for more mutations to occur, which in turn increases the chance that one of these mutations will be useful to the virus, just as D614G apparently already has been.

Given the changes that are already occurring to the genetic code of the virus, one key conclusion of Musser’s is that we are not sequencing it nearly enough if we want to be able to anticipate what the virus will do next.

While some large metropolitan areas in the United States, such as Seattle and Boston, are also doing a great deal of sequencing, the country as a whole is missing many areas — and many potential virus variants, as a result. Even in Houston, the study estimates that only about 10 percent of known coronavirus cases have been sequenced.

“I think we need to be doing this pretty aggressively in multiple locations on a real-time basis,” Musser said. “I think it’s shameful that we’re not doing that.”

And again, we're not doing what we need to do to beat back the monster.

Not only are we not testing people enough, we're not even studying the fucking virus itself so we know what's happening and where it's happening and how it's happening.

I guess we're waiting for that magic day when "it just disappears - like a miracle."