Fear The Chorizo

Check their population age demographics, and it wouldn't surprise me if they happen to be a state with a larger percentage of people with comorbidities that covid 19 is difficult on. Plus ATL was the busiest airport in the country last time I checked. GA was actually among the earliest group of states with cases, they have probably gotten around to testing on a more rapid pace so the total confirmed numbers appear to be spiking

Virtually everyone is preparing for massive budget cuts. This is happening at my university, it is happening behind the scenes at every corporation in America. That's going to be the driver that opens everything back up - when entire hospital systems are on the verge of collapse due to an economic shutdown originally enacted as a way to try and protect hospital systems and public health, the writing is on the wall that it isn't sustainable no matter what the health risk is. Nonexistent tax revenues emptying coffers of state and local units of government, regardless of regional political leaning, will drive economic reopening, and I think it will happen at a faster pace than even currently rosy economic predictions lay out. I think we'll avoid a depression but have a bad recession, and the rebound will be hampered by dealing with this disease and prolonged public fears of returning to some societal norms - but that will be far better than stretching shutdowns into summer and leaving the economy to start so far down that it leaves scores more people in generational poverty. Doom and gloom longterm economic forecasts are being put together much the same way initial Covid-19 modeling was done forecasting millions of dead - depicting worse than worst case scenarios and assuming no societal/economic changes would be made during an extended period of time. Those models will be shown to the same government officials who were largely responsible for driving the economic shutdown along with what projected budget shortfalls will be if these actions remain in effect, and there will be a sobering realization that this just can't continue. As for public sentiment, look what is happening in Michigan today - despite it being a midwest state that is pretty hardhit by Covid-19, especially in the Detroit area...a rapidly growing contingent of people have had enough and the fear of indefinite economic collapse on a nationwide scale outweighs the fear of a disease - no matter how infectious or potentially harmful it is to the elderly and medically vulnerable. The market is still propped up because corporations "got theirs" in terms of recent stimulus/printed assistance dollars - small businesses and hourly workers are totally skewered by the shutdown.

It's a dirty, rotten shame for kids of all ages to have to be going through this - the longterm impact of disrupting their routines, scholastic development, and preventing them from socializing and participating in their hobbies/interests is a vastly underestimated side effect of the measures we are putting ourselves through, IMO. It's one of those impacts that doesn't carry an easily quantifiable dollar value or physical health statistic with it, but it's devastating for other reasons that are probably longer lasting because it will impact the rest of their life. I consider myself fortunate to be a few decades removed from my high school/collegiate years so I'm not dealing with this personally as a young adult, and have kids who are young enough to hopefully avoid significant disruption in their lives because they are at the start of elementary school. That said, I can see how hard it is for my 1st grader to not have public gymnastics/swimming activities or not have the ability to see her friends in person at school and not get that socialization with her peers. It's got to be much worse for people on the edge of adulthood basically getting their lives shut down.

100% this - and effective treatments would be ones that can be implemented in concert with an improved testing approach. It won't be one magical chemical treatment that will magically cure every serious case - there will be multiple treatments for various stages of the disease, and those treatments will be much easier to apply with a more prepared medical system as this initial surge of infections wanes. Improved testing will be something along the lines of statistically significant population antibody testing to better gauge the actual number of people who have not come into contact with coronavirus and therefore still have no immunity, combined with more rapid Covid-19 testing to limit the extent of infection clusters and isolate them faster. Waiting for a vaccine to feel comfortable isn't a realistic option. Getting a better understanding of Covid-19 (which is happening on a daily basis), improving modeling parameters to better forecast impacts of future infection spikes, and adapting improved testing regimens will give us a high level of confidence on how to deal with this virus while living our lives - without needing to shutter everything again. IMO the high level of infectiousness of Covid-19 and growing evidence it isn't as lethal to younger populations and those with healthier immune systems makes it a virus that the world would benefit building a herd immunity against if it can be managed. My gut tells me by the time there is a vaccine for Covid-19, there won't be a worldwide demand for distributing it with the goal to prevent outbreaks - similar to what happened with the SARS vaccine development. It will have value being distributed to vulnerable populations regardless of when it gets developed. What definitely needs to happen is the full development of a viable Covid-19 vaccine that includes appropriate trials, so it can serve as a good starting point for potential future outbreaks of viruses in the same family of coronavirus. From what I gather that wasn't completed with SARS, and that unfortunately prevented researchers/scientists from having a more advanced starting point on a coronavirus vaccine.

too much Easter whiskey for this guy...lol

To piggyback on the previous post, MN dept of health officials are suggesting that as many as 100x as many people have been infected by coronavirus in the state as what their current 1600 total confirmed cases based on testing total. That would be roughly 30 percent of the state's population, which would actually be incredibly good news provided most of that discrepancy is asymptomatic or minor symptom cases considering the low death and hospitalization rate thus far. Honestly nobody really knows just how many people have already come in contact with coronavirus. Only way to better quantify that is with antibody testing, which needs to happen on a reasonably large percentage of the population over the next 1-2 months.

This data is a bit concerning, as in addition to the extension of the full quarantine through May 8, it further advocates for a 50% quaranitine into July or August to achieve the mitigation that they're hoping to achieve, which could include an extended closure of bars and restaurants. It also predicts, as noted 2-3 waves of this over the next 12-18 months. And am I reading it correctly that they're assuming 22,000 deaths JUST in Minnesota? Yes, but that's over the course of the full pandemic, which is a very long time because it is based on 100 percent of the population becoming infected at some point, and based on no progress with treating the systems that lead to deaths/hospitalizations during that whole time - neither if which will be the case. The combination of a medical system that can handle the spikes, social distancing measures that can be done without shuttering everything, evolving treatments/therapies, and IMO further evidence that this virus isnt as nasty as originally feared will keep actual deaths well below modeled deaths. I think even their revised model still overestimates what the ICU need will be during future peak infections, and the asymptomatic/minor symptoms rate still used in the modeling is still lower than what it will actually prove to be. And given the fact MN is still well under 100 deaths and its average age of death is now 88, I dont see 20k more deaths happening by the time coronavirus is a societal afterthought. These models were developed based on limited available testing during initial outbreaks, so hopefully the second, third, and however many other spikes can be managed much more gradually using testing to isolate clusters before needing to shut everything down.

I 100% agree with the post. Why is it that out of 328 million Americans, only 2.5 million have been tested so far? This is absurd. The federal Task Force needs to be focusing a plan to impliment tests on a massive scale in order to open the country back up safely. It's either that or wait for a vaccine and the earliest I've heard one would possibly be ready by would be September. My fear is that we will do neither and decide to trade human lives for economic stability. 2.5 million tested based on the testing method they've used is actually a decent amount - sure they could have done better, but this isn't like taking someone's temperature. Nobody else in the world has come close to that total in terms of total testing - Germany is probably the current gold standard in per capita testing, and they've started some antibody population studies as well. Plus, a test for Covid-19 is a snapshot in time for the individual tested. A vast majority of those tests have come back negative - that's great for the person at the time of the test that they didn't have coroavirus, but it tells us nothing about whether they picked up the virus the next day. I'd also guess a decent chunk of the total testing done has been on medical personnel who have been tested more than once simply because they are treating patients or are working among high risk populations/patients. There just isn't the capacity to do wide scale Covid-19 testing on hundreds of millions of people repeatedly - they need to reduce active infective cases back down to isolated clusters and rebuild a testing program from there. The only population-wide testing that has value at this point after this extended period of sheltering in place would be antibody testing - doing that on a nationwide scale for even 5% of the population would make a huge difference in determining how many millions of people likely haven't yet come in contact with the virus, which would drastically improve modeling parameters for the 2nd/3rd waves of infection this virus will bring starting this summer. It's very important to understand that social distancing/shelter in place doesn't end the risk of the virus to people who haven't been infected yet, nor has it led to any of the modeled death toll reductions aside from giving the system time to have what they deem sufficient ICU capacities - it's bought time to prevent this initial surge from overwhelming the hospital system that would have led to unnecessary deaths, and has given many areas time to increase ICU bed capacity to better manage peak infection rates later this year. The reductions in modeled death rate over the last week or two have come solely from virus parameter adjustments as more becomes known about coronavirus. It's Ro (infection rate) is higher, avg hospital length stay is actually lower, asymptomatic infection rate is higher, and vulnerabale populations/cormorbidity risks are more well known than the initial models guestimated - those are actually all good things that will lead to fewer deaths from this virus. And waiting to reopen the world until a vaccine is available isn't an option - pushing too fast to distribute an uncertain vaccine could lead to even more problems. The MN dept of health provided some specifics on their modeling, and this recent round of forecasts essentially point to reaching diminishing returns across the entire pandemic arc (12-18 months depending who you ask) of strict shelter in place measures by early May. Their most recent decision point was whether to try and keep vulnerable populations sheltered in place for an extended period and letting everything else back open this weekend, or extending the shelter in place order the next 4 weeks. The modeled death toll actually was very similar with those two options, however they opted to keep the order on everyone the rest of this month because it extended when the peak ICU need will be out into mid July instead of early June, buying the medical system more time to prepare. From May forward, their current modeling projects little to no positive impact on estimated deaths by continuing shelter in place policies into the summer/indefinitely - it would just drag the timing on when those occur out further. These timeframes may differ for different countries or different states in the US' instance, which is why I really hope the next phase of this isn't a one-sized fits all approach. Large swaths of the country shouldn't have to wait to reopen until New York is in a better place to do so, nor should New York or other initial hot spot areas have to reopen before they are ready. Once the calendar rolls into May and assuming things start opening back up then, antibody testing plus the current Covid-19 testing to try and isolate infection clusters will be the key to preventing the need to do another nationwide shelter in place order and keeping future waves of infection manageable. We are going to need to live with this for a good amount of time before a magic bullet presents itself - might sound scary at the moment, but there will likely be a combination of treatment therapies, testing, and slowly increasing herd immunity that will prevent things from spiraling out of control again for this particular virus.

Read a story on JSonline yesterday about a 34 (I believe) year old who was originally from Brookfield. The young man was a runner, had even done ultra-marathons, so I am guessing he was not overweight and he was in very good shape. Anyway, he was working in New York caught and succumbed the the covid virus. If a person like that can't fight this virus who can. That may be the case, but there are handfuls of very healthy people under 50 who die every year from very random diseases one would never expect them to - genetics and specific target organ health can be a very random thing. Overwhelming evidence that Covid-19 is hardest on elderly - specifically elderly with weakened immune systems or comorbidities. I'm pretty certain just about any able-bodied person under 50 who dies or even gets hospitalized becomes newsworthy, at least on a local scale. The fact that those stories aren't everywhere means the lethality of Covid-19 on younger people isn't close to the main concerns surrounding who gets it.

Doesn't all of this data cited here rely on equal testing rates, though? What are the number of tests conducted in Iowa vs. Wisconsin? To date, WI has tested roughly 0.58% of its state population based on the above numbers, while Iowa has tested roughly 0.47%...not exactly the same but also not drastically different per capita. Since WI has larger population centers than IA, I'd expect both its infection and testing rates to be a bit higher in the groups actually tested to this point. I don't like using test result totals to extrapolate and compare statewide infection rates, as the datasets are skewed heavily towards likely cases showing symptoms and frankly aren't statistically significant anyway due to testing limitations. In an ideal world widespread testing can help us move past our current state, particularly if it involves antibody/immunity testing - hell, even NY state has only tested 2% of its overall population at best, and these tests are really just snapshots in time for individuals that aren't providing the more important information on who has antibodies in their system that may be indicative of a level of immunity to the virus. Furthermore, I'd guess a good percentage of total testing numbers to date are for medical personnel treating patients that have been tested multiple times.

I keep seeing this, but the modeling parameter of time is basically the one parameter that is known with absolute certainty - meaning the initial assumptions of community spread rate during this period of social distancing/shelter in place through August and most importantly hospitalization/lethality rates of this virus for the general population were wildly off, particularly for large portions of the US that aren't densely populated. Don't get me wrong, that's fantastic news for public health and I'm happy this is the modeling flaw compared to Covid-19 effects being worse. Social distancing/shelter in place surely does work, but that's not why the initial models appear to have been significantly incorrect - it's not that we're really good at it as a country (as evidenced by swipes about ice cream shops and jogging paths), it's that the potential difference between doing nothing and fully sheltering in place as a society isn't as drastic as it was originally believed to be for this particular virus. I guess my overall point is decisions based on these initial models got us to present conditions, which is in a state of indefinite uncertainty as to when we can reopen society anywhere close to "business as usual", and as actual data is processed it's becoming more apparent that the medical system as a whole could have withstood a more measured approach across a huge portion of the country - particularly when compared to the longer-term strain it's going to be dealing with now. My sincere hope is that society at large comes to this realization quickly and changes its approach to live with the presence of Covid-19, before the 2nd wave of economic destruction that is coming for public sector/white collar workers becomes insurmountable to re-establishing life anywhere close to what we all knew it just one month ago. Maintaining the current status quo into the summer just isn't a reality we should embrace knowing what the long term result of that approach would be.

No offense, but are you basing this on anything other than your own opinion, and is that based on any sort of medical, microbiological, etc. training? Yes and yes. Also, basing these sort of decisions only on what infectious disease experts recommend is a recipe for overreaction. Simulations WERE run for this type of selective quarantine, and the simulations consistently yielded worse results for 'flattening the curve' than the widespread social distancing efforts that we're currently undertaking. Using the same faulty assumptions other simulations initially projected the rosiest death total to be 100K Americans based on country-wide shelter in place restrictions through August? Those have already been revised down nearly 40% over roughly 2 weeks and will continue being reduced. And it's not flattening the curve for an entire population with the end result being no risk after people return to public spaces, no matter how long these restrictions are extended - it's trying to flatten the curve for a specific portion of a population while avoiding societal/economic collapse during the initial outbreak. Not a perfect approach, but neither is the current method - which will drag the population-wide acute hardship we all have to deal with out much longer.

Oh, I agree. But I think there's this odd feeling among a lot of people, especially the ones who want this to end right away, that the choice is to end the quarantine either next week otherwise it'll be 9 months from now with no options in between. I think the reality is, if we end it shortly, there's a much higher chance we'll have to go back in sometime in May or June, vs. waiting a bit longer than we might like right now so that we have less of a chance of a 2nd quarantine being necessary. To me it's all about assessing unintended consequences to these measures taken on what is mainly a one sized-fits all approach, and quickly realizing the long term cost far outweighs the short term benefit of not allowing coronavirus to naturally work its way through the majority of the population that isn't at significant risk. I'm not saying at this point we should open everything back up immediately for everyone, IMO the wrong approach was initially done based on unreliable data/fear and now we're stuck - what I think should have been done was to quarantine the elderly/immunocompromised as soon as it was apparent this disease put them most at risk. Buy them as much time as possible to avoid contracting this disease - try to extend the peak when they contract it into summer months, when elevated humidity levels would help to reduce how contagius it is (it's not necessarily higher temperatures in air, but more water content limits how far aerosol particles containing viruses migrate before being weighed down and dropping from breathing zones). That approach wouldn't be foolproof, but neither is this current approach and it would have focused on a much smaller portion of the overall population. Then establish social distancing protocols across the board for everyone else without shuttering the economy - work from home when at all possible. Restrict the number of people/patrons inside restaurants, bars, stores, arenas/stadiums, etc. - but allow them to remain open. Avoid interactions with eldery/immunocompromised as much as possible - part of that which would be difficult to implement is having medical support staff at nursing homes/elderly care facilities and hospitals basically self-quarantine or potentially live separately from their own families to prevent community spread from reaching them. Right now as it stands it seems most of the community spread still occurring is between medical personnel and patients, then taking it back home with them. Then let the younger and working-aged populations carry on with daily life as best they can while they also build up immunity - that would still hamper the economy but it wouldn't crater it, and assistance dollars could be more focused on rapidly building up PPE and testing materials along with medical system assistance instead of just throwing it everywhere at limited amounts which ultimately won't help. This approach would have allowed a majority of the country to work itself through Covid-19 and build up the herd immunity necessary to actually get it in check by this fall - without collapsing the economy. What we are doing now is going to inevitably allow it to crop back up and potentially lead to powers that be shuttering everything again, or even worse scaring powers that be into continuing the current shutdown much too long. Presently hospitals across the country are either furloughing or laying off staff because they are sitting empty. This even applies to facilities in rural New York. Makeshift hospitals thrown together by the military are being torn down in former Covid-19 hot spots after treating 0 patients. Assessing some of the few countries that didn't do widescale shutdowns or waited much longer than others to implement is starting to look like they fared equal to or even better than those that didn't - particularly in Europe. My biggest beef is we keep extending these country-wide stay at home policies for the most part because "social distancing is working and the peak is getting pushed further back", but then it's obvious that doing so raises concerns of infectious disease experts to reopen things for fear of the eventual resurgence of the virus, because there are too many people who haven't yet contracted it - there's still no appetite for providing a date or even a set of criteria that need to be met in order for life to re-open for the vast majority of people who aren't a high risk of being killed by Covid-19, because IMO there is too much paralysis based on projections. Unfortunately, those initial projections that are proving to be quite flawed got us to this point with nationwide shutdowns, and now there really isn't a good option to try and reopen things that won't look like we acted too quickly.

Only if there was an accurate projection for number of cases/deaths estimated of people who would normally contract Covid-19 and potentially die from it had there not been in-person voting, and it could be compared to actual data 10-14 days from now. Since all the models aren't being utilized/viewed to be reasonably accurate in projecting actual data 1 week to 10 days from now anyways, there won't be any proof - just opinions, unfortunately. That's not slamming the models, it's just the reality of not enough data being available for them to reasonably forecast those type of variations at a level as local as a state-wide primary election at this point. Something that will eventually be brought into focus, particularly for cases that unfortunately result in deaths, is what the remaining life expectancy for those individuals would have been had they never gotten infected by the disease. The one absolute with everyone's life is that it unfortunately will come to an end one day - as more data pours in while the response to Covid-19 evolves, determining on average how many years of life it took away from its victims will be critical to assessing whether the initial global response was the appropriate approach after it gets compared to longterm damage done to the lives (health, economic, etc) of everyone who lives through this pandemic - which by the way is shaping up to be 99+% of the world's current and ever-growing population, much of which lives in parts of the world without significant medical or economic resources to severely restrict everyday life to try and slow down a virus from spreading. Specifically in the US, for example, I believe the overall average age of death of people confirmed to have gotten Covid-19 is around 80 years old. Who knows where that number will settle, but I doubt it slides anywhere close to 70. In most cases where people who were younger than 80 passed away, underlying health issues that modern medicine has helped to manage outside of Covid-19 and otherwise prolong their lives also played a role in their immune system's inability to survive. MN just had its highest one-day total of additional deaths of people who were confirmed to have the disease, 11...that brings its total to 50 souls. What was surprising to me is even with nearly a 30% spike in total deaths after a single day, the state's average age of death with this virus increased to 87. Not comparing the two specific viruses from a medical/infectious sense, but the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic had an average US age of death in the low 40s - it impacted children and younger adults with developing/otherwise healthy immune systems much more drastically than Covid-19 has. Aside from issuing a bunch of hand-washing placards in airports, little else was done in terms of economic/way of life -hindering actions across the globe, including in the US. IMO the main reason more wasn't done to prevent H1N1's spread was the outbreak took place immediately after the developed world narrowly missed another depression economically due to the 2008-2009 financial collapse, and there just wasn't the economic buffer to even think of attempting similar measures that have largely been enacted recently. The 2009 H1N1 outbreak wasn't nearly as infectious as Covid-19, but the people it killed on average were decades younger and generally healthier than what we are seeing now. Just think of where the world would be right now if coronavirus was as lethal on children/healthy adults closer to their physical primes as H1N1 was during its initial outbreak...

You almost literally have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting CV in Janesville. Being able to get out and do simple fun things like that are healthy for your mental state. High stress creates more health issues and potential death than CV in most areas of the state, and country for that matter. t this point everyone is (or should be) painfully aware of the risks. If you are old or otherwise compromised, stay away from people. If you must interact with said people, take all necessary precautions. That's where we need to be, otherwise it's very close to the time to open up the stores and restaurants and start getting back to normal. There are plenty of counties in Wisconsin that are reporting their first cases this week, this thing is now picking up in a lot of the smaller population counties now, this is not "close to time to open up the stores and restaurants." Down here in Houston, we are now up to 1,380 for the city and have been adding more and more people every day - 400 on Monday and 170 on Tuesday (some due to back log tests, which means there have been a lot of people moving around the city not knowing they could be spreading it) and on average about 80 per day last week, so no, it is not "close to time to open up the stores and restaurants." We are still weeks away from being able to be in public without worrying about it wide spreading. If we had more strict actions taken early when this was starting to take off, we WOULD be at the "time to open up the stores and restaurants" like South Korea, because they took this seriously and took extreme measures to make sure it didn't blow up. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ I agree that people should be aware of the risks of this virus by now, but yet there are still a ton of idiots who don't think this will impact them, or think it is a joke, and are ignoring the social distancing and other measures put into place to knock this out. South Korea is going back to restricting everything again because cases are once again spiking. Basically if you do really well with a total social lockdown and were the original model of lots of testing during an initial spread, you are just as subject to it flaring up again when you try reopening society. And tracking daily confirmed case totals isn't a good way to view how many people may unknowingly be still moving around with the virus - at this stage in testing across most of the country, most all of it is done on people who have shown symptoms or who came in contact with a known case, and those people are instructed to self-quarantine while awaiting results. I highly doubt there's a mob of millenials and college kids who ran down to a Houston clinic to get tested for Covid and have been on a citywide bender for the past week-10 days spreading germs like crazy until their results come in. MN now extending its shelter in place order until May 4....yippee....the state saw 5 people die who had Covid-19 yesterday, 1 the day before. Never mind the average age of death in this state of people who had Covid is 86 and they pretty much all would have been in serious jeopardy had they picked up a bad cold instead of Covid, let's put a half million + MN folks out of work and not have any sort of stated plan on how things open back up to allow the rest of the state to get infected while we dig out of this mess - which will need to happen at some point to move past this. I feel like actually doing a really good job on a state level of social distancing just sets us up for waiting too long to move past it and causing greater pain in the long run. While not surprising, it's also frustrating that of the roughly 1150 confirmed cases to date in MN (about 650 of which are recovered and no longer contagious), at least 300 are medical staff that were infected by treating or being around patients. So about 1/3 of all MN cases are people trying to care for the other 2/3...In my book that's not community transmission in public spaces, although I'm sure that's how they register in databases. Meanwhile there are stories cropping up in states where the increased deaths due to suicides are outpacing Covid-related deaths. Hopefully there will be some modeling done pretty soon on how to flatten that curve.

You're certain of that in every single case, or is that just based on the pictures you happened to see online? And none of those people in any case touched the same pen that happened to be unsanitary (meaning not one got missed in between the flurry of voters)? Or the same door handle? I understand that precautions were taken in most places, but to assume that little transmission was possible yesterday seems like absolute fallacy to me. I get it, but this election also comes multiple weeks after people have largely been sheltering in place - I don't think there were people hooked to ventilators getting pushed through the voting lines anywhere yesterday, so folks who were obviously ill had a pretty high likelihood of staying home. For their own sake, I'd hope many people who are in the higher risk populations also chose to stay home instead of voting - they do have that option if they are wary of getting infected. It sucks that voting took place under these circumstances, but it also sucks roughly 25% of the working population in America currently doesn't have a job right now, too. Equating every time someone comes within 6 feet of somebody else on a bike trail, ice cream shop, or polling place as a recipe for sky is falling community spread wears thin really, really fast. The in-person primaries that occurred in late February/early march, including super tuesday, were the ones that were much, much more likely to increase community spread - not one that took place well after many of these measures were implemented. And how different was the risk in going to vote compared to the public routinely frequenting grocery stores for food and touching the same grocery items/breathing the same air everyone else in that building does?

U of Wash IHME...a few weeks ago it estimated a need of 240K+ hospitalizations near the virus' peak in the US - its most recent update a couple days ago reduced that estimate to roughly 120K. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/coronavirus-model-now-predicts-many-fewer-u-s-deaths.html

A very interesting and positive thing to track as we roll towards mid-April is how accurate the models used to drive policy decisions are in projecting cases requiring hospitalization....to date, these models have been pretty accurate in number of deaths in various parts of the country, however they have been consistently overestimating # of hospitalizations as we head towards the apparent 1st peak spread of Covid-19 across the country, sometimes to a very large degree. One would think if that continues the future death rate predicted by these models will also start to become less accurate. These models are based on having the measures currently in place happening, so it's not like the lack of actual hospitalizations compared to what the modeling predicted was due to shelter in place happening - it's because the models were wrong, and wrong in a good way since actual outcomes aren't matching modeled predictions. Since the models are updated almost daily, we are seeing death projections start to trend down from where they were even last week for the US, which is fantastic.

Agreed with this on the actual start date not being May 1....but get going on planning how to get things started by setting a date and working towards having things in place to get rolling when conditions are ok to start playing. The article about May baseball talks about 2-3 weeks of a restarted spring training, which likely puts any regular season baseball starting in late May or early June....that's nearly 2 full months away. Two months' time is an eternity with how this disease progresses, so things will look incredibly different across the US at that time.

Well there should be no shortage of hotel room availability right now...The logistics of this is far easier than playing games in 30 MLB cities, fans or no fans...most of these players already live in the phoenix area, so getting them to the area or providing them the option of occasional visits with family or friends is pretty feasible once rapid result testing is in place, which is tracking to be when the calendar rolls into May as well. Hell, they probably love the idea of playing games and not having to fly all over the country all summer long. Support staff are also far fewer if all the teams are playing in the same town, too. Restrict travel and maintain social distancing/isolation from the general public until rapid response testing has been widely adapted before even thinking of moving games to home MLB parks. Heck, even if come July/August most of the public is back to business as usual, I'd expect the MLB season to continue from Phoenix if things are going smoothly and not disrupting the flow of their season. I'd be surprised if any 2020 regular season baseball includes games with fans in home ballparks - that doesn't mean they can't play games if the right conditions are in place for them to happen. MLB is looking for ways to get the most games played on their original schedule as possible, and I commend them for that. The logistics of everyone sitting in their homes indefinitely makes less sense and isn't workable. Something has to give, and it starts with all sorts of businesses who are currently shuttered making plans on how to safely reopen. Waiting on things to get back to pre-Covid comfort for being out in public basically guarantees a business won't be around longterm, no matter how large or lucrative that company is. That includes sports leagues.

Sounds like they are shooting for starting the season in may, with the idea of opening up games primarily in arizona...probably spring training facilities and probably in empty stadiums. If viruses don't like heat, let's play ball in the desert, baby! In all honesty, players need to get paid and to do that they need to play baseball....similar to all the rest of us working stiffs, gotta work to make money. At some point the whole country and frankly the whole world will need to find ways to get back to work and deal with this virus, which IMO would probably have to happen as the calendar rolls into May, anyways...if not sooner.

I don't think MN has done extensive testing. They haven't, but the testing they have done (24000) has led to 789 total confirmed cases, a 3 percent infection rate on the people most likely to have contracted the disease. I'm sure there are many more infected that haven't been tested, but if most of those cases are asymptomatic and people largely follow the rules to slow the spread, then there wont be a spike in severe cases. All this economic damage isnt being done to "stop the spread" - it's to slow it. Absent a vaccine and even with one, there probably isnt a way to just end coronavirus by staying at home for five months only to not have a country anymore. The disease ultimately will run its course through the population. Frankly, if cities and population centers have too many people still congregating in tight spaces, there's zero point in continuing these stay at home orders for suburbia/rural areas of the country and the revised guidance needs to simply emphasize social distancing and give people the ability to use their heads. Maybe not right this instant, but as the calendar rolls into May something has got to change.

End of week MN update: 789 confirmed cases, up from 742 yesterday...the daily total of new confirmed cases has been steady to dwindling for the last week+. This is based on the 24,000ish tests reported to date. They keep saying many more people have Covid-19 than what have been tested, which I'm sure is true...however if there isn't a pronounced spike in confirmed cases with a gradually increasing testing rate, the assumption of increasing spread starts looking more questionable the longer the state continues shelter in place and social distancing practices, of which MN is now 3 full weeks into implementing. I'm continuing to note that over half of the confirmed cases (410 to date) no longer require isolation - meaning they aren't of concern for requiring hospitalization nor are they a contagious threat to infect other people. This fact is likely relevant in many other states across the country but hardly ever gets discussed when the daily totals are published - even though IMO active/contagious cases are a much more valuable metric to track as time goes by rather than cumulative case totals. 22 people have now died in MN while having Covid-19, essentially all of which were elderly, had preexisting medical issues related to respiratory/immune system weakness, or both. While definitely a factor in what led to their deaths over the past 2-3 weeks instead of those deaths likely being spread out over the next 5 years, Covid-19 was not the sole cause. For perspective, based on the 2013 death rate data and the current estimated population, roughly 124 people die in MN every day without anything to do with coronavirus. After removing deaths and non-contagious/recovered cases in MN, that leaves 310 confirmed active cases that would be considered a health risk to both themselves and to the general public. 86 of those cases are in MN hospitals, with 40 of those in ICU beds. 310 in a state of at least 6 million residents. In this same 3 week time period - roughly 200,000 Minnesotans have filed for unemployment, which also likely underestimates the total number of working age people losing their jobs and having to rely on additional public assistance. That doesn't really account for the disruption of life inflicted on school-age children, particularly those that are hoping to enter college this fall or enter the workforce. The Feds have thrown some money at this to try and assist, but it will be the state governments that wind up bearing the lion's share of public assistance costs this economic shutdown will cause over the long run. My gut tells me as states start looking at the impact all these measures have on their tax revenues over the next month, governors are going to universally declare their states wide open for business again no matter what to try and get revenues coming back into their coffers. There's money in the CARES Act for State & Local program assistance - but not nearly enough to spread across 50 states to avoid massive budget deficits and widespread public sector job losses.

I for one am really looking forward to the political gymnastics state and local government officials are going to need to do when pleading for substantial tax increases later this year, right before an election - after they spent the spring basically dictating a complete shutdown of the tax revenue streams from the private sector while continuing their business as usual from a home office. To date, government-funded jobs have largely been exempted from the wide-scale layoffs and furloughs forced onto the private sector - but as the tax revenues coming from shuttered private businesses dwindle to nothing and nonexistent gasoline tax receipts due to limited/no nonessential travel create enormous budget shortfalls everywhere, there's gonna need to be a public employee purge just as the private sector is probably trying to regain footing.

The market overall has an awful lot of stress trying to drag it down further - uncertainty breeds panic and unfortunately the month of April looks like nothing but uncertainty from a business standpoint right now. Last week's rally sure looks like one of those dead cat bounces temporarily propping stocks up by Washington printing $, but my gut tells me it's going to drop further back to reach lows from a couple weeks ago and likely fall further down to find a true bottom. 6.6 million+ new unemployment claims over the last week reinforces that, unfortunately. The rebound isn't going to be instant, either. The only way out of this economically without facing crippling permanent job losses and business closures is to take the next couple of weeks to develop a risk-based set of criteria that local communities can use to assess how quickly they can reopen business. That includes expanded testing programs and continued hot spot area management. The country is too large to continue with a one size fits all approach indefinitely until New York is able to reopen, for example. Hot spots will undoubtedly pop up here and there in other parts of the country, which will need to be managed as best they can - but maintaining this current strategy across the country is going to lead to much larger longterm financial and health problems than the risk this virus presents to the population. I'm not saying to greenlight MLB Opening Day for May 1 and start packing stadiums/conference centers/concert halls right away - but there's got to be an end to this current wet blanket approach to manage social interactions by restricting businesses being open. Give people some benefit of the doubt for making good decisions in the workplace and out in public in general - after all, the people that are fools about this have continued to act as fools and make bad decisions even during the past few months.