We went over 2k deaths today - the most deaths in the US since May 7th. Not quite time to spike the ball just yet.

Here's an idea that will never happen:

Put a task force together to investigate every single Covid death. Classify each case as died from Covid or died with Covid.

That truth will never be told because it doesn't fit the fear mongering narrative.

As for the super spreader there are too many stories where husband has it and wife sleeps in same bed and she and kids never catch it.

My sons roommate catches it on Northgate and gives it to my son, but my sons GF, who was staying there at the time, doesn't get it. The list goes on.

Respect the virus, take reasonable precautions, don't live in fear and let's get on with our lives.

Dermdoc, I echo your frustrations.

I dusted off my Kevlar so bring it on...

Happy Thanksgiving!

There are far too many factors at play to determine whether anything works or not at this point. Anyone looking for black-and-white answers right now is peeing in the wind. If Covid proves to be seasonal (and it's too early to declare that), then it makes sense that colder places like Illinois would ramp up earlier than warm places like Florida. Or maybe masks really aren't working. It's far too soon to say anything definitive. Nobody is proving anything in this thread.

The behavior of the spread is going to take a long time to untangle. Compare the curves of Chile and Argentina - countries which are largely similar in terms of geography and demographics, and therefore provide a bit of a control for those variables. The timing of their peaks is very different. If you tried to compare their total numbers in June, and use that to make a case about what worked or what didn't, you'd have jumped the gun, because now their total numbers are quite similar - they just happened at different times.

Bottom line is that throughout this thing, people on both sides have been speaking with far too much certainty about how Covid spreads and what works or doesn't work. I'll admit I've fallen prey to that myself.

What's baffling though is that there are decades of public health research on well-established diseases that shows that certain measures can be effective... and there was a complete lack of willingess from a substantial portion of the population to play that game back in March.

I wish there had never been a lockdown. But I also wish we didn't have a large portion of the population back in March saying "it won't kill me so I don't care" or "this is just a little flu that'll die off in April." We've been living on the extremes as a country, and sadly I think it's only going to get worse. Social media and specialty news networks keep us in a bubble where all we hear are things that confirm our own bias and make us double-down on our opinions. I don't know the answer to that, but it's clearly a huge problem for everyone in this (mis-)Information Age.