COVID-19 General Thread for Colorado Springs

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by dr.frog

... leaving things up to individuals to do "what they feel they need to do to be safe" ...

That's a big part of why that condo collapsed in Florida a few weeks ago. People just aren't sophisticated in complicated matters and reduce things to bumper sticker simplicity.

[dr.frog]

COVID incidence in El Paso CO is back up over 100/100K, after having been in the 50s in late June and early July. Test positivity now 6.28%. This is not good. :-( We're at 55.8% fully vaccinated now.

https://www.elpasocountyhealth.org/c...data-dashboard

[otowi]

Yes, it looks like El Paso is in the running for the worst large county in the state - https://www.westword.com/news/covid-...OUd8d92SNKdWqg

[dr.frog]

Big jump in the El Paso county case rate the past couple days; we're now at 210/100k/7d. That's up 20% since last week, almost 4x higher than this summer's low in early July, and 6x higher than last year at this time.

https://www.elpasocountyhealth.org/c...data-dashboard

I don't think it's a coincidence that local schools started the week before last. I see 3 new school-related outbreaks listed (click through to page 7). It is just nuts to me that we are dealing with a more-contagious variant and instead of taking more precautions to limit spread, we have done away with all the ones we had last year, and the people we are putting at most risk are *children*, for god's sake. :-(

[mtngigi]

Originally Posted by dr.frog

Big jump in the El Paso county case rate the past couple days; we're now at 210/100k/7d. That's up 20% since last week, almost 4x higher than this summer's low in early July, and 6x higher than last year at this time.

https://www.elpasocountyhealth.org/c...data-dashboard

I don't think it's a coincidence that local schools started the week before last. I see 3 new school-related outbreaks listed (click through to page 7). It is just nuts to me that we are dealing with a more-contagious variant and instead of taking more precautions to limit spread, we have done away with all the ones we had last year, and the people we are putting at most risk are *children*, for god's sake. :-(

I watched a news piece this morning - a nurse in S. Dakota's posts went viral, so she was being interviewed. She says the many (un-vaccinated) people coming to the hospital sick with Covid are denying that's what they have. One stated she thought she had lung cancer. Their governor is not doing her constituents any favors. It's everywhere, and it's beyond nuts.

[Vision67]

Hospitals move to "orange-red" level, unvaccinated COVID-19 patients driving the surge

https://www.csindy.com/news/local/ho...3c4e71d04.html

"Local hospitals have seen more than 150 COVID patients in the last week, Public Health said in a news release, the highest level since the beginning of the year when the winter surge was declining. The new spike is driven by the unvaccinated.

"This change indicates hospital capacity is strained and local hospitals are experiencing resource and staff limitations," the release said.

“UCHealth’s hospitals in the Pikes Peak region continue to see record numbers of patients needing care for COVID and other health conditions. This morning, our hospitals in the region were caring for 90 patients with COVID – a number not seen since early January,” Dr. David Steinbruner, chief medical officer for UCHealth Memorial, said in the release."

[dr.frog]

I was supposed to have outpatient foot surgery next month at Memorial Central, but I was just notified today that they are cancelling all such elective surgeries (what they call "tier 2") at least through the end of November because they are full due to COVID. :-( Not sure if that means full of COVID patients or full of patients with other problems who have been transferred from other hospitals that are full of COVID patients. I was kind of afraid this would happen.... my doctor's scheduler thought they might be able to do it in December or January now, but if things follow the same pattern as last winter I'd guess that's not very likely. I hope the various vaccine mandate deadlines that are approaching (military, government contractors, health care workers, etc) plus the real-soon-now availability of vaccines for children will keep hospitalizations/deaths well below last winter's peak.