April 11. Positives From New York and the Demise of the Flu
First of all, I am discontinuing the terribly time consuming table of daily percent increase, which I was doing for far too many states, anyway. It takes hours, and gives me a sore arm. So I will just be occasionally incorporating better graphics from non-commercial sources, since using commercial publications might lead to conflicts on a University website. It’s a tricky question, since the newspapers are making their Coronavirus coverage available for free, but still advertising for your subscriptions, which I subscribe to anyways. I will also be doing other things, and trying to read interesting Coronavirus articles. Despite our focusing on the science and mathematics involved in understanding the entire Coronavirus scene, the economic pressures on people and companies, the federal political scene that dominates our country has been dominant in failing to mount an effective fight. Not needing to follow the daily stories, means that I no longer have to listen to Trump’s two hour self praising sessions.
I was recalling an old story, that cash was analyzed, and cocaine was found on it, since occasionally it was rolled to sniff cocaine, and then mixed with other cash. So I looked up if the Coronavirus was being exchanged in cash. To my shock, there were 1.7 billion articles on that found by Google. I didn’t see a direct scientific study, but found some interesting ideas.
The one real telling article, was that the Chinese were recycling cash by cleaning it in ultraviolet light, which I was thinking about. But on top of that, they were locking it up for 14 days afterwards, before putting it back in circulation. Some articles also pointed out that everything, like germs and uncleanly contaminants, can be found on cash. All of these sound like reasons to clean our cash. My other thought was that minorities who largely work in the public sector, have to handle a lot of cash, and might increase their exposure.
Another story was that credit cards are not clean, either. While I see the market cleaning everything on the hour, they probably can’t clean the sensors inside the card readers. It is also contaminating when you have to sign a screen with your finger, or even pick up their attached pen to write your signature. You can tap your new credit cards now, but many places don’t use that yet.
There were the continuation of two positive indicators today. The first, is that the seasonal flus have almost died out, modulo the lack of a truly scientific reporting system. Here is this week’s graph, from the CDC. This shows the decline of influenza A and B, to where you can barely see it on the graph.
Whereas a few weeks past the country was solid red or high, this last week’s report shows mostly minimal or low. Some of the states without confining orders, like Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Carolina, still have high flu rates.
The second is that the decline in New York hospitalizations, ICU room admissions, and new intubations with ventilators are declining. I am showing the three day smoothed rates for the first two. The tragic New York death rate has at least seemed to plateau, since it reflects the intubations from a week or two ago.
