When will we play Table Tennis again?

If I had some comorbidities and lived in the Netherlands, I would walk around in a gas mask just to make a point.

This is an article from Bloomberg saying that the shutdown has increased hunger. I've read an article that I suppose I could go back and look for that summarized the effect of the shutdowns. They looked at a lot of factors including a huge drop in charitable giving. They estimated amongst all the factors that for every life lost by the virus we have lost 29 lives because of shutting down. I seriously doubt that's accurate, but there's a lot to consider.

If you're a hammer you see every problem as a nail. Epidemiologists goal is to stop the spread, and they're not really concerned about the effects. That's for somebody else to consider. Dr. Fauci has said as much many times. Steve mnuchin's job is to worry about the economy. Somebody has to balance the two.

The short-term solution seems to be printing money. That's all fine and good to a certain point, but once people don't trust the dollar or America's bonds anymore they'll expect a higher return and then we're in really big trouble. If we issue bonds somebody will have to pay them back probably our kids eventually. If we just print money then inflation is about to eat our lunch when the economy does get going again.

That's the real world. 

My colleagues say things have been on a razor edge but trending slightly better, depending on what you look at.  The key is to look at multiple metrics.  New Covid-19 hospitalizations has steadily trended down this week.  Depends a little on which hospital you look at and it is requiring a lot of coordinating to send patients from hospital A to hospital B.  BUT, I have to point out that Houston is incredibly dense hospital infrastructure per capita.  There are also refrigerator trucks at several places to store bodies.

A big issue has been testing and getting results back quickly.  Hospital systems have their own testing capabilities for patients who are present at the hospitals. Getting reagents makes my friend who runs the clinical lab at one of the hospitals really nervous.  But at other testing centers, getting results back takes so long it is pretty much useless for contact tracing. 

The situation is much worse some other parts of Texas.  In the Rio Grande Valley it seems that the situation is basically like New York.  The hospital infrastructure there is not like here.

Clearly I don't think it is possible to make any conclusion by comparing total number of cases in July in Texas compared to March in NYC based on tests.   HOWEVER there are many other types of data that do portray the situation more realistically.  This week the number of tests that have been coming out POSITIVE here is above 19%, and much higher for some subsets of the population (for example Hispanic people, where it approaches 40%).  Fortunately this this is down from 26% earlier this month.  Even the governor wants to see it below 10% (most infectious disease specialists would say lower than that).  The virus is still racing through the city, but maybe is slowing a little.  There is also the fact the percentage of ICU units in Houston and Texas in general currently occupied by Covid-19 patients is still very high, but for now, not exceeding capacity.  Regarding new hospitalizations at Texas Medical Center hospitals, yesterday 198 people were admitted with Covid-19, down from an average of 250 or so around July 4.  That is a genuine trend.  The number of Covid-19 patients in ICUs in at the Texas Medical Center is at an all-time peak.  That is a lagging indicator, as are deaths.  Some people stay critically ill for a long time before getting better or dying.  But note that this is one of the key statistics for measuring how Covid-19 affects a hospital system.  Covid-19 is right now using 6-times as many total hospital resources as it did in the last week of May.  Another point is that elective surgeries are not allowed here, which is a huge financial problem for hospitals.  Finally, Texas is fairly steady at ~170 deaths/day.

So there is kind of a summary.  Anyone who is suggesting or hinting that we ought not to be taking this seriously is an idiot.

It's hard to read the Houston data because all of Texas shows this huge Spike in one day of like six hundred and some. Apparently they changed  the method of data collection to using death certificates  and entered a bunch at once?

College football teams are seeing lots of positive tests.  Kids being kids.

Supposedly Lou Williams left the bubble for an excused reason, but was seen at a strip club. And he's one of the older players. Most of the NBA players or a lot of them are barely 20, and we know that age group isn't the best for distancing and such. So I wouldn't be surprised if you're right although I hope that you're not.