COVID-19

gwb-trading said:
Want to see what an idiot looks like -- see the picture below.

South Dakota’s Positive Virus Rate Hits 46%—but Noem Aide Says ‘We Feel Pretty Good’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/south...but-kristi-noem-aide-says-we-feel-pretty-good

GettyImages-138145310_xhtnkl



A staggering 46 percent of coronavirus tests are coming back positive in South Dakota at the moment—but Gov. Kristi Noem has “no opinion” on masks and her team thinks everything is going just fine, The Wall Street Journal reports. The positivity rate is eight times more than the World Health Organization’s recommended 5 percent threshold at which businesses can safely reopen. But Noem’s senior advisor Maggie Seidel said, “We feel pretty good about where we’re at. The governor is not going to change any of her approach—why should she?” Noem has been ambivalent about face masks, writing in an opinion piece last week that “those who don’t want to wear a mask shouldn’t be shamed into wearing one.”

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that the lack of mask wearing in public could be a reason why the virus is spreading so severely in the state.

(More at above url)
More...

This woman (Kristi Noem) is very problematic for South Dakota during the Pandemic. The indigenous tribes of South Dakota do not want her on their reservation land. In fact, she's banned from setting a foot on the land.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/politics/sioux-tribe-south-dakota-governor-ban/index.html

She told the cities and counties to set their own restrictions but them becomes pssst when tribes in South Dakota set Covid-19 restrictions, stay at home orders and then she took them to court when they setup checkpoints (road blocks) on roads that lead into their reservation land.

Reality, the indigenous could not do what they wanted. :mad:

My relatives (Indigenous) in South Dakota helped setup some of those checkpoints to minimize the Covid-19 threat on their land when they realized the Governor had no interest in protecting the Indigenous community.

I'm not sure which is worst...her or Trump but together...they are bad.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news...u-are-not-welcome-here-DsW1nMF-VU2uksSJ6sqo3Q

South Dakota is a Republican stronghold state.

https://www.270towin.com/states/South_Dakota
  • Native American issues are coming to the forefront in the 2020 presidential elections and Democratic candidates are taking note.
  • The Native American vote could influence election results in seven major swing states: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Colorado, according to data from Four Directions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/nat...elp-swing-the-2020-presidential-election.html

wrbtrader
 
I remember at the start of the Pandemic...many were criticizing China about their "wet markets" (eating of exotic animals). Yet, very few realize there are other animal markets in the world just as dangerous that has nothing to do with "eating the animal".

One example is the fur trade market that's handle by humans. Denmark is one of those markets and now Coronavirus infected minks has sprung a mutated Coronavirus in humans...infecting 12 humans.

This has also happened earlier in the Pandemic in Spain via their mink farms back in July and the Netherlands mink farms.

Simply, China aren't the only idiots out there causing problems and hopefully Denmark has done what it takes to prevent a bigger spread of a mutated form of Coronavirus that would make the current potential vaccines almost useless (very low effectiveness).
  • Meat and Furs
Denmark to cull up to 17 million mink amid coronavirus fears

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There are more than 1,000 mink farms in Denmark

Denmark will cull all its mink - as many as 17 million - after a mutated form of coronavirus that can spread to humans was found on mink farms.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the mutated virus posed a "risk to the effectiveness" of a future Covid-19 vaccine.

Denmark is the world's biggest producer of mink fur and its main export markets are China and Hong Kong.

The culling began late last month, after many mink cases were detected.
  • Warning: you may find a picture of dead mink lower down disturbing
Coronavirus cases have also been detected in farmed mink in the Netherlands and Spain since the pandemic began in Europe.

But cases are spreading fast in Denmark - 207 mink farms in Jutland are affected - and at least five cases of the new virus strain were found. Twelve people had become infected, the authorities said.

Prime Minister Frederiksen described the situation as "very, very serious". Danish police and army personnel will help to carry out the mass cull.

Ms Frederiksen cited a government report which said the mutated virus had been found to weaken the body's ability to form antibodies, potentially making the current vaccines under development for Covid-19 ineffective.

"We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well," she told a news conference.

Since the start of the pandemic Denmark has reported 52,265 human cases of Covid-19 and 733 deaths, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.

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Mink virus might jeopardise vaccines
By BBC Environment correspondent Helen Briggs

More than 50 million mink a year are bred for their fur, mainly in China, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland. Outbreaks have been reported in fur farms in the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the US, and millions of animals have had to be culled.

Mink, like their close relatives ferrets, are known to be susceptible to coronavirus, and like humans, they can show a range of symptoms, from no signs of illness at all, to severe problems, such as pneumonia.

Mink become infected through catching the virus from humans. But genetic detective work has shown that in a small number of cases, in the Netherlands and now Denmark, the virus seems to have passed the other way, from mink to humans.

The big public health concern is that any mutation to the coronavirus as it passes between mink and humans might be enough to stop human vaccines working, if and when they become available. Some scientists are now calling for a complete ban on mink production, saying it impedes our response and recovery from the pandemic.

_105894347_grey_line-nc.png

_115239164_85fc362d-d39f-43ce-ae11-d44807b7ce72.jpg

Denmark began culling last month when mink were found to have the virus
_115239166_49e9f639-d915-4228-9885-0705a25fcd96.jpg


Teams in protective kit for the cull - usually mink are gassed with carbon monoxide
Mink at more than 1,000 Danish farms are to be culled. The World Health Organization says it is discussing the outbreak with the Danish authorities.

Spain culled 100,000 mink in July after cases were detected at a farm in Aragón province, and tens of thousands of the animals were slaughtered in the Netherlands following outbreaks on farms there.

Studies are under way to find out how and why mink have been able to catch and spread the infection.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54818615

wrbtrader
 
With the highest number of cases per capita in the nation, North Dakota is now allowing demanding asymptomatic COVID positive nurses to work in hospitals due to staffing shortages. Still no statewide mask mandate.

With North Dakota hospitals at 100% capacity, Burgum announces COVID-positive nurses can stay at work
https://www.grandforksherald.com/ne...ounces-COVID-positive-nurses-can-stay-at-work

In an attempt to alleviate some of the staffing concerns, Burgum announced that the state health officer has amended an order that will allow health care workers with asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 to continue working in hospitals' COVID-19 units. The Republican governor said hospital administrators asked the state to take the extraordinary step.

(See article for additional stupidity from a governor of a state whose hospitals are at 100% capacity)
 
Covid Superspreader Risk Is Linked to Restaurants, Gyms, Hotels
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...der-risk-is-linked-to-restaurants-gyms-hotels

The reopening of restaurants, gyms and hotels carries the highest danger of spreading Covid-19, according to a study that used mobile phone data from 98 million people to model the risks of infection at different locations.

Stanford University and Northwestern University used data collected between March and May in cities across the U.S. to map the movement of people. They looked at where they went, how long they stayed, how many others were there and what neighborhoods they were visiting from. They then combined that information with data on the number of cases and how the virus spreads to create infection models.

In Chicago, for instance, the study’s model predicted that if restaurants were reopened at full capacity, they would generate almost 600,000 new infections, three times as many as with other categories. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature, also found that about 10% of the locations examined accounted for 85% of predicted infections.

This type of very granular data “shows us where there is vulnerability,” said Eric Topol, of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, which wasn’t involved in the study. “Then what you need to do is concentrate on the areas that light up.”

In a concurrent opinion piece published in Nature, Marc Lipsitch and Kevin Ma at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote that there is limited epidemiological data on how interventions curb infection. Such models, they said, can act as a starting point to guide policy decisions about reopening.

The models produced in the study reported Tuesday also suggested that full-blown lockdowns aren’t necessary to hold the virus at bay. Masks, social distancing and reduced capacity all can play a major role in keeping things under control.

Capping occupancy at 20% in locations in the Chicago metro area cut down on predicted new infections in the study by more than 80%. And because the occupancy caps primarily only impacted the number of visits that typically occur during peak hours, the restaurants only lost 42% of patrons overall.

Reducing maximum occupancy numbers, the study suggested, may be more effective than less targeted measures at curbing the virus, while also offering economic benefit.

Reopening Strategies
“We need to be thinking about strategies for reopening the economy,” said Jure Leskovec, a Stanford University computer scientist and lead author on the paper. “This allows us to test different reopening scenarios and assess what that would mean for the spread of the virus.”

Without virus mitigation measures, he said, they predicted that a third of the population might be infected with the virus. When they fit their model to publicly available data for the daily number of infections, the researchers found it could predict epidemic trajectories better than other models.

The model also suggests just how effective lock-down measures can be in public spaces by noting infections and the use of those spaces over time as cities put lockdowns into effect.

In Miami, for example, infections modeled from hotels peaked around the same time the city was grabbing headlines for wild spring-break beach parties that prevailed despite the pandemic. But those predictions shrunk significantly as lock-down measures went into effect.

Income Disparities
The work also predicted a disparity in infections among income groups. Lower-income populations are more likely to become infected, they found, because they are more likely to visit smaller, more crowded places and less likely to reduce their mobility overall.

The idea that restaurants may be feeding a new wave of infections as they open up isn’t unique to this study. JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Monday said they found the level of in-person spending in restaurants three weeks ago was the strongest predictor of where new cases would emerge.

Similarly, higher spending in supermarkets indicated a slower spread, suggesting shoppers in those regions may be living more cautiously, according to researchers at the bank, which tracks spending of 30 million Chase credit and debit cardholders.

Topol said his view is that all of these layers of data could be combined into a national virus dashboard that could go far in helping policy makers create smarter, more targeted policies for virus mitigation. He has advocated using fitness trackers as another way to flag potential virus hot spots.

Leskovec said that his team is currently at work building a tool that public officials could use to make reopening decisions.

“Further model testing is needed,” Ma and Lipsitch wrote in their opinion piece, “but given the challenges in gathering and interpreting other relevant data types, these findings could have a valuable role in guiding policy decisions on how to reopen society safely and minimize the harm caused by movement restrictions.”
 
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