NDSU grad

You’ll probably never know how it works in terms of efficacy. It will be interesting to see what kind of side effects there are though.

Dude. You were wrong about Covid being highly contagious. Forgot about it and move on. Here’s a link to help you out. It’s from that far-right organization the CDC though so I don’t know how credible it is. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-brief-sars-cov-2.html

This is true. However, saying ‘COVID-19 slightly more contagious than influenza’ doesn’t scare people and make headlines.

I wouldn’t say COVID is highly contagious. It’s pretty much middle of the road and pretty comparable to influenza.

I’m obviously speculating. We’ll never have 70% vaccine acceptance, but you have to remember that this isn’t the first time a virus has jumped from another animal to humans. It’s very likely that this coronavirus will affect humans with similar effects to the 4 coronaviruses we currently deal with. It certainly will be less virulent as time goes on.

Correct. Hopefully Burgum will have the courage to reduce mitigation efforts as these metrics come down.

It will be different depending on where you’re at. States/countries that have imposed stronger mitigation efforts will see this drag out. In North Dakota active will plateau in the next 14 days. They’ll decrease pretty slowly and hospitalizations and deaths will lag. By the time a vaccine rolls out on a wide scale we’ll probably have daily cases in the low hundreds. Next year at this time we’ll probably have a daily caseload in the mid double digits. This is presuming we still have testmania going on. Hospitalizations will be a handful a month with maybe a death or two per month.

Your prediction about bars, restaurants, etc. will only come to fruition if we continually to quarantine healthy people. This virus will flame out like all other viruses do. My only concern is how we as a society react when it does. For example, the CDC issues travel guidances for countries based on COVID levels. Level 1 is a daily case rate of 5/100,000; this would equate to 38 daily cases or less in North Dakota. The CDC recommends masks and distancing at this level. We’ll have levels in this range forever, so what’s the end game?

You think this virus is the ‘worst’ in world history, or North Dakota’s case count is the worst in the world?

It’s a fair comment, but most public health officials have stated it would take about 3 weeks for those to have any effect. Biology is a better explanation.

Yep. It also seems cases have been affecting the 80+ demographic at about a 40% greater rate than the general population. This is presuming the age demographic data I found in the web is reliable, but it seemed logical. Presuming a large percentage of that demographic lives in long term facilities the 80+ crowd in North Dakota may reach some level of immunity faster than the general population. You’d expect hospitalizations to lag but they seem to be falling somewhat with positivity rate. This may lead some credence to my theory that the elderly were getting infected at a greater rate than the general population. Next 10 days will be telling.

If you believe the models that state actual infections are 4-6 times the true number of cases we’d be at about 39% of North Dakota’s population infected. That’s using the low end of the model projection. True herd immunity probably isn’t reached until you hit 70%, but I’ve read where 40% is where transmission will start to go down. I hope this is the case.

Agreed.

That was yesterday’s numbers. Today’s are even better. Active cases below 9000. I think we may have plateaued in terms of active cases and hospitalizations, but probably need another 10 days or so of data.

This was fear about promoting from the get-go. That it was better than distancing. Every time I'd see 1000 people in a protest with masks on it would make me cringe. But the way mask-wearing was being promoted transmission would be impossible. It was so messed up.

What’s your obsession with hand-washing? All mitigation factors shouldn’t be weighted evenly. Distancing is responsible for about 95% of the mitigation. Mask-wearing about 4.9%, and washing hands about .1%.

Serious question. What’s the penalty for not complying?

LOL

Great news guys. Katie Couric is going to shed a light on the COVID situation in North Dakota. I can’t wait for this fair, balanced, data-driven take on the current situation.

I would add many public health officials to that list. Apparently they don't care about mental health, especially childrens'.

There's been 65967 confirmed cases of Covid in North Dakota. There's many models that try to determine the number of true infections based on positivity rate and confirmed cases. Conservatively, you can probably multiply confirmed cases by 4 to get true infections. That would put North Dakota at 263,868 infections as of today. Thats' 34.7% of the population. About halfway there, but that doesn't mean daily infections doesn't start to drop before that. Also, it appears the 80+ demographic is getting infected at a greater rate than the general population in North Dakota, possibly due to long term care settings. I think this is why hospitalizations will continue their downward trend.

Mitigation efforts, particularly complete lockdowns, will keep case numbers down. But you have to keep those measures in place for perpetuity, or until a vaccine is developed. That’s just not a logical option. We’ve seen all across Europe, the east coast, and Israel what happens when strict mitigation measures are relaxed.

This is a screenshot of the dashboard. Click on the public data download button and it gives you all the raw numbers. The only thing is doesn't break down is deaths and hospitilazations by age, just cases.

Possibly. The total deaths are the same.

Looking at the spreadsheet the NDDOH puts out there was 5 deaths attributed to COVID yesterday. I wonder where the discrepancy comes from. All the other numbers match up with what you posted.