COVID-19 in Ohio

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by WRnative

The November 12 Univ. of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation COVID-19 death projection for Ohio by March 1 is 14,879, suggesting greatly increased stress on Ohio's hospitals. The IHME projects universal mask wearing would reduce the death toll to 10,000.


https://covid19.healthdata.org/unite...aths&tab=trend


Historically, the IHME projections have understated the death toll of the epidemic, likely due to the unanticipated inept federal, state, and local government public health responses, magnified by the Trump/Republican fostering of anti-mask, anti-social distancing culture.


https://www.ideastream.org/news/stat...ies-one-expert


https://www.10tv.com/article/news/he...a-5febed74e4ac


Perhaps a Biden administration robust COVID-19 epidemic response will finally temper the actual death/projected death ratio.

Originally Posted by tribecavsbrowns

IHME's projections have been terrible, consistently way off (in either direction) since the pandemic began. Still, they're faithfully cited by the major media outlets for some reason. IHME is funded by the Gates Foundation. I'm not saying that's the reason they've become the media's favored forecast model despite consistently poor performance, but I think it's an interesting coincidence.

As noted in the first post above, the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected 15,000 COVID-19 deaths in Ohio by March 1. Ohio COVID-19 deaths on Nov. 12 were 6,496, per the interactive graph here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/ohio/

Despite the efforts of one poster to besmirch the IHME, halfway through February on Feb. 14, Ohio COVID-19 deaths already total 16,346.

I've personally become desensitized to the inane COVID-19 response in the U.S. and all of our nation's ongoing political failures. Sometimes reality imposes itself, such as when I read about Australians and New Zealanders living their lives without masks, social distancing, or FEAR OF A COVID-19 INFECTION. Both nations almost have eradicated the virus without vaccines but through the use of strict and effective public health measures not employed in Ohio and the U.S. These include lockdowns when there is any appearance of the virus, travel bans, robust testing and contact tracing, and mandatory and enforced quarantines for those exposed to the virus.

Watching the Australian Open grand slam tennis event, and hearing players talk about the hard quarantine they experienced in order to play in the tournament, I'm even more amazed by the lax response to the COVID-19 virus in the U.S.

<<As with all players who went through hard quarantine in Melbourne, Brady was not allowed to leave her hotel room for practice sessions on court.

Players had to train inside their hotel rooms during the 14-day period of isolation, although some were in quarantine for just over two weeks....

Brady said she was always mindful Australians returning home had to go through hard quarantine for two weeks.

"We weren't the only ones doing hard lockdown, every Australian who comes home has to do the hard lockdown," she said.>>

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-...eight/13156642

Australia's borders generally remain closed to non-Australians unless exemptions are granted, such as to participants in the Australian Open.

https://www.health.gov.au/news/healt...nal-travellers

At the beginning of the Australian Open, there were no limitations on attendance. Then cases were discovered in a Melbourne quarantine hotel, so the entire state of Victoria entered a 5-day lockdown even though there are only 20 active cases of COVID-19 in the entire state with a population of 6.4 million. Victoria wants to protect its citizens from ANY exposure to the highly infectious and reportedly more deadly U.K. variant, which dominated the cases reported in Victoria.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN2AD02D

<<LONDON — U.K. government scientific advisers say the COVID-19 variant now predominant in the country may be up to 70% more deadly than previous variants, underscoring concerns about how mutations may change the characteristics of the disease....

“The higher transmissibility means that people who were previously at low risk of catching COVID (particularly younger fitter females) are now catching it and ending up in hospital,″ Strain said. “This is highlighted by the latest figures for hospitalization that now suggest almost 50:50 male to female ratio compared to this being predominantly in men during the first wave.″>>

https://wgntv.com/news/uk-study-find...0-more-deadly/

<<Scientists have found seven separate but similar variants of the coronavirus that have emerged within the United States and appear share a similar genetic mutation to more contagious U.K. and South African types, raising concerns that the U.S. may have to deal with multiple variants of the virus that likely spread more easily....

As the U.S. witnesses a sustained decline in Covid-19 cases, the more contagious U.K. and South African variants remain the biggest concern. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, told the New York Times Saturday that the variants were the “big wild card” and warned if people failed to adhere to public health measures, those variants could “take off on us.” While the British variant is more contagious, the variant from South Africa appears to some extent to blunt the effectiveness of existing vaccines, according to limited, early data. Emergence of similarly threatening homegrown variants could compound the challenge, but knowledge about mutations within the U.S. remains woefully limited as the country has sequenced genomes from less than 1% of all coronavirus samples.>>

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladit...h=4c42dc2f6402

Ohio's population is over twice that of Australia, but Australia has reported only 909 COVID-19 deaths.

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...try/australia/

Perhaps more importantly, Australia has reported only 28,900 COVID-19 cases, compared to 939,350 cases in Ohio. Case totals generally reflect the healthcare costs and health deficiencies suffered by a society.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/ohio/

Ohio and the U.S. generally ignore the immense cost of treating COVID-19 patients who are hospitalized. Even more distressing is the lack of emphasis on the long-lasting health deficiencies associated with even asymptomatic COVID-19 infections. Neither Ohio nor the U.S. have made an effort to quantify the financial and general health costs of the COVID-19 epidemic on our society.

See the discussion in post 100 in this thread.

https://www.city-data.com/forum/ohio...l#post59789811

See posts 106 and 112 in this thread.

https://www.city-data.com/forum/flor...l#post60310998

https://www.city-data.com/forum/flor...l#post60364401

Of course, in Australia, children and young adults have not suffered the educational deficiencies that we've imposed on our younger generations by not managing the COVID-19 epidemic aggressively.

[GalileoSmith]

Governor DeWine has given statistical goals for lifting restrictions due to Covid-19. It basically comes to a less than 415 new cases per day averaged over a two week period in Ohio. In the last few days Ohio is been averaging about 1,700. If that sounds like a long way to go, at the beginning of February that figure was about 3,700.

[Natural510]

I like that he’s set a standard rather than shooting from the hip for popularity points like other governors. Ending the curfew should get most peoples’ lives back to normal. The mask ordinance really should not be a big deal for most rational people at this point.