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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


InkaUtexas

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5 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

So if you want to go work in NYC, and your bosses say no, you probably should STFU and stay home.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-austin-nurse-fired-after-going-to-new-york-to-help/269-6b3bbc3e-342d-49c9-b39a-ebc2fb71ef42

She was told she'd lose her job and not work at another Ascension hospital again.  She still did it.  Have no reason why.

There is a program if she wanted to travel, but it would involve going where the system needed her, not where she wanted to go.

 

How humanitarian of her! Oh wait, she really did it for the $10k/week and free hotel and chose to risk getting covaids and losing her normal job?

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I'd like to see an interview with her husband.

Reporter: So, your wife is going to leave for two months, and is bravely going to care for covid patients in New York City!

Husband: She's very brave and really cares about people.

Reporter:  She's leaving you home alone with a 4-year-old and 18-month-old twins.  And she knows that if she goes, she will be losing her job in a top-tier hospital, and will be banned from working in any hospital of one of the largest healthcare providers in the nation.

Husband:

spacer.png

 

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For your afternoon livestock update. Pork values seem to be leveling off as we left the 119 cutout high in place, but its still edging higher. We ran 320K today which is about 20% better than the low, and we are supposed to get Sioux Falls, and Worthington back next week. If we can get that, I think we can be close to 380-400k by the end of next week which probably gets us fairly unfucked on hogs with the culling that's been done. Getting those plants back and the back end fab shops for product end should ease the belly run up as well.

Cattle wise we the cutout is slowing down, but still edging higher. I'd guess that $470 on choice tops us out if we don't before then. We ran 86K today keeping the 8-10% increase week over week intact, and the packers paid much better money(with the DOJ breathing on them pretty good now) If we can stay on this improvement pace and be running over 92K by middle of next week, we could have cattle close to moving normally at that point. Cattle futures locked limit higher for the second day in a row too, so we are starting to see some confidence there. 

Barring a huge food service push, I'd guess we will see retail restrictions last through the end of next week, but after that it should be expensive but normal availability until we restock cold storage and such. 

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I'd like to see an interview with her husband.
Reporter: So, your wife is going to leave for two months, and is bravely going to care for covid patients in New York City!
Husband: She's very brave and really cares about people.
Reporter:  She's leaving you home alone with a 4-year-old and 18-month-old twins.  And she knows that if she goes, she will be losing her job in a top-tier hospital, and will be banned from working in any hospital of one of the largest healthcare providers in the nation.
Husband:
Z93uwT.gif
 

Lol...feel for the guy
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1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Scroll down to infections and testing (second chart) and click on daily tests.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas

ETA: I should add that the chart is interactive, so you can slide your cursor along the line to see the exact daily figures. Looks like there's a few days lag on the data though.

Thanks for that.  So it looks like we quadrupled our testing capacity over the month of April.  At only 5% testing positive, with our population, what amount of testing for active virus do we realistically need?

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Also looked a the case breakdown and death breakdown by age. 24.4% (3,004) of the cases are from people 60 and up.  That group represents 80% (354) of the deaths. Bump it to 50 and up and you have 43% of the cases and 90% of the deaths.

50% of the deaths are 75+ and only represent 7.4% of the cases.  If you are over 75 and you catch this according to the Texas data you've got a 24% chance of dying. fuck

Also, AA represent 15.3% of the cases and 13.5% of the deaths.  Hispanics are 38% of the cases and 22% of the deaths.  White people are 28% of the cases and 37% of the deaths.  They do have 14% of cases unknown by ethnicity and 25.7% of deaths unknown by ethnicity so those numbers could move around.  They do not have a category for the fats.

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13 minutes ago, StruggleBus said:

Yeah, I'm not sure what the point of that story was

I'm guessing she's hoping to get Ascension to back down in some manner.

And it wasn't just a matter of her going off and helping out, she would still have to self-quarantine for two weeks when she got back, so they would be missing her services for a couple of months.

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3 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Also looked a the case breakdown and death breakdown by age. 24.4% (3,004) of the cases are from people 60 and up.  That group represents 80% (354) of the deaths. Bump it to 50 and up and you have 43% of the cases and 90% of the deaths.

50% of the deaths are 75+ and only represent 7.4% of the cases.  If you are over 75 and you catch this according to the Texas data you've got a 24% chance of dying. fuck

Also, AA represent 15.3% of the cases and 13.5% of the deaths.  Hispanics are 38% of the cases and 22% of the deaths.  White people are 28% of the cases and 37% of the deaths.  They do have 14% of cases unknown by ethnicity and 25.7% of deaths unknown by ethnicity so those numbers could move around.  They do not have a category for the fats.

This is America.  We're all the fats.

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4 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

Also looked a the case breakdown and death breakdown by age. 24.4% (3,004) of the cases are from people 60 and up.  That group represents 80% (354) of the deaths. Bump it to 50 and up and you have 43% of the cases and 90% of the deaths.

50% of the deaths are 75+ and only represent 7.4% of the cases.  If you are over 75 and you catch this according to the Texas data you've got a 24% chance of dying. fuck

Also, AA represent 15.3% of the cases and 13.5% of the deaths.  Hispanics are 38% of the cases and 22% of the deaths.  White people are 28% of the cases and 37% of the deaths.  They do have 14% of cases unknown by ethnicity and 25.7% of deaths unknown by ethnicity so those numbers could move around.  They do not have a category for the fats.

this is exactly why the elderly care facilities are getting hammered.  this thing is hell on 75+ year old folks and especially those that aren't healthy(which is why they are in care facilities usually in the first place).

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1 minute ago, dcar00 said:

this is exactly why the elderly care facilities are getting hammered.  this thing is hell on 75+ year old folks and especially those that aren't healthy(which is why they are in care facilities usually in the first place).

Truth, but not new. Flu/Sepsis/Pneumonia do the same every day.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

So if you want to go work in NYC, and your bosses say no, you probably should STFU and stay home.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-austin-nurse-fired-after-going-to-new-york-to-help/269-6b3bbc3e-342d-49c9-b39a-ebc2fb71ef42

She was told she'd lose her job and not work at another Ascension hospital again.  She still did it.  Have no reason why.

There is a program if she wanted to travel, but it would involve going where the system needed her, not where she wanted to go.

 

 

As the father of 2 year old twins, it's clear this bitch just wanted a vacation from the kids.

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2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

So if you want to go work in NYC, and your bosses say no, you probably should STFU and stay home.

 

I know of a nurse in the St David's system that did the same....so far she still has her job....between the 3 weeks she was in NY and then the 14 day quarantine when she got back...well you can do the math at how long she was off from her "full time job". My guess is that they will be looking for a reason to let her go "soon"

Edited by Hpara759
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Anyway, this week was civil war. In 1860 right before the civil war, Mississippi had more millionaires than any other area in the world at that time.


That chattel devaluation was a hit.

True fact: Every Southern slave state viewed slaves as personal property save - - Louisiana. Voodoo Civil Code said slaves were immovable* property. (*Real property to you heathen Common Law miscreants. )
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So glad we are not facing this problem. Economic impact on South Africa's beer industry is real. 

https://apnews.com/495c95058d4c04e13512c71b7c360269

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African Breweries, one of the world’s largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer as a result of the country’s ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on March 27 and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities. The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.

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3 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

So glad we are not facing this problem. Economic impact on South Africa's beer industry is real. 

https://apnews.com/495c95058d4c04e13512c71b7c360269

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African Breweries, one of the world’s largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer as a result of the country’s ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on March 27 and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities. The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.

400 million bottles of beer on the wall, 400 million bottles of beer.  break one down, sweep it around, 399,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall

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16 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

400 million bottles of beer on the wall, 400 million bottles of beer.  break one down, sweep it around, 399,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall

Free Nelson Mand....errrr...free the booze.

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45 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

So glad we are not facing this problem. Economic impact on South Africa's beer industry is real. 

https://apnews.com/495c95058d4c04e13512c71b7c360269

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African Breweries, one of the world’s largest brewers, says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer as a result of the country’s ban on alcohol sales that is part of its lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa stopped all sales of alcohol when its lockdown came into effect on March 27 and the brewery has seen beer pile up at its production facilities. The brewer is seeking special permission from government to move the beer to other storage facilities. The transport of alcohol has also been outlawed in South Africa.

Put it all on a boat to Mexico, they are out.

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2 hours ago, B00M said:

 

As the father of 2 year old twins, it's clear this bitch just wanted a vacation from the kids.

She was gonna spend $10k of that $20k she earned on a set of bolt ons and leave with her new sugar daddy from SoHo.  

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2 hours ago, Hpara759 said:

I know of a nurse in the St David's system that did the same....so far she still has her job....between the 3 weeks she was in NY and then the 14 day quarantine when she got back...well you can do the math at how long she was off from her "full time job". My guess is that they will be looking for a reason to let her go "soon"

I imagine it’s based on your speciality and more importantly, how cool you are with your bosses.

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No Austin evictions until August

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/austin-mayor-to-ban-evictions-citywide-until-august-24/

Quote

Austin Mayor Steve Adler announced at Thursday’s City Council meeting he will be extending his moratorium on evictions that was expected to expire on Friday.

Landlords will not be able to issue notices to vacate to their tenants until July 25.

That means the earliest date renters can be physically evicted is August 24. 

This lines up with protections many local renters already have under the CARES Act, passed by Congress in March.

Quote

While the Mayor’s new order extends eviction protections citywide, there are no laws in effect that absolve tenants from paying rent entirely.

Quote

The amended order comes on the same day city council members extended its rent ‘grace period’ until August 24.

 

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Tomorrow will finish up 8 weeks of  WFH SIP. Didn't shave today and I've been wearing sweatpants the last two weeks. Honchos sent out an email today that we're going to continue this thru at least the end of the month. I did get a company branded cloth face mask in the mail yesterday, so that was nice of them. Think I should probably go to Wal-Mart in the next week or so and lick a door handle and try to get this over with as soon as possible. Hang in there America, we got this! 

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23 minutes ago, Okie State said:
58 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:
Few places have done that. Buddy in Kenya was saying getting any booze can be quite the adventure right now. 
 
 

Insanity.

no shit.  if you are going to go lock down the populace needs to be somewhat medicated.

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I don't follow this thing real closely but I got curious and the intertrons are telling me the US has had roughly 60K deaths from this thing in the last month, more or less. Is that accurate?

Is there any indication that that rate is going to slow down anytime soon? 

Is it still possible that some of the numbers we heard initially, 200K-300K deaths, is still very much in play here?

What's the quick and dirty as far as we know right now?

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1 minute ago, El Diablo said:

What's the quick and dirty as far as we know right now?

We're transitioning into a looser period of restrictions after the initial lock down, at least in Texas.  Nobody knows how this will play out.  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.  Wash your hands and wear a mask and avoid unnecessary interaction with strangers. 

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NYT

Siap, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavirus-outbreak.html#click=https://t.co/umJUgjbGkt

 

Tldr, 70% of TX infections traced to NY (only 4% from WA) genetically. Not sure of sample size, I didn't see that number in there but I sped read

Spoiler

 

Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks

The coronavirus outbreak in New York City became the primary source of infections around the United States, researchers have found.

By Benedict Carey and James Glanz

May 7, 2020Updated 3:23 p.m. ET

1292

New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country.

The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast.

The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts.

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Continue reading the main story

“We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.

Early analysis of genetic samples indicates that more infections across the country came from a line of the virus associated with the outbreak in New York City, shown in red, than from a line associated with the outbreak in Washington State, shown in yellow.

Percent of genetic samples related to each area

Washington State

New York City

100%

50%

0%

50%

100%

States on the West Coast

Washington

53%

42%

California

32%

50%

Viruses that spread from Washington early on carry a distinct genetic signature.

 

But even on the West Coast, samples related to New York are common.

Oregon

30%

50%

Alaska

80%

0%

Other Western states

Wyoming

31%

69%

Texas

4%

70%

Arizona

6%

84%

Utah

9%

89%

Idaho

0%

98%

Midwestern states

Illinois

27%

45%

Minnesota

15%

72%

Wisconsin

4%

78%

Ohio

0%

88%

Iowa

0%

100%

Southern states

Georgia

0%

30%

Virginia

11%

78%

Every sample from Louisiana, a hot spot for the virus, was related to New York.

Louisiana

0%

100%

Northeastern states

Connecticut

12%

81%

New Jersey

7%

93%

Maryland

0%

92%

The genetic line associated with New York can be traced back to Europe.

New York

1%

94%

Massachusetts

0%

94%

Note: Scientists have thus far sequenced only a small fraction of total infections, so the distribution of genetic lines could change as more samples are analyzed. States with fewer than 10 samples were left off the chart. Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Wyoming all had fewer than 20 samples. Percentages may not add up to 100 because additional genetic lines are omitted.

Source: Nextstrain

By Derek Watkins

The central role of New York’s outbreak shows that decisions made by state and federal officials — including waiting to impose distancing measures and to limit international flights — helped shape the trajectory of the outbreak and allowed it to grow in the rest of the country.

This is your last free article.

Subscribe to The Times

The city joins other densely populated urban hot spots around the world, starting with Wuhan, China, and then Milan, that have become vectors for the virus’s spread.

Travel from other American cities also sparked infections across the country, including from an early outbreak centered in the Seattle area that seeded infections in more than a dozen states, researchers say. Even if New York had managed to slow the virus, it probably would have continued to spread from elsewhere, they say.

But the Seattle outbreak proved to be a squall before the larger storm gathering in New York, where, at the end of February, thousands of infected people packed trains and restaurants, thronged tourist attractions and passed through its three major airports.

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During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country.

Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus’s march across the country, researchers say.

“It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread,” said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research. “I keep hearing that it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s not true. It’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our own fault.”

A lack of testing obscured the true extent of the outbreak for months, and officials acted on incomplete and sometimes conflicting information. The enormous growth of New York’s outbreak partly reflects its volume of international visitors, especially from Europe, where most of its infections came from.

Dani Lever, communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized federal authorities, describing an “enormous failure by the federal government to leave New York and the East Coast exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no Covid cases throughout the entire month of February.”

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said that Mr. Trump had acted quickly. The president blocked most visitors from Europe starting on March 13, more than a month after he restricted travel from China.

“Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe — an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread,” Mr. Deere said.

The travel that helped spread the virus includes New York residents who left the city and non-New Yorkers who visited or passed through the city. Now that infections are dispersed around the country, travel from New York is no longer a main factor shaping the progression of the epidemic, researchers said.

As states around the nation begin to relax their restrictions, the findings demonstrate that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent those actions from affecting the rest of the nation.

Image

Research showed that by March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections.Credit...Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Geneticists have analyzed and shared more than 2,000 samples of the virus from infected people. As the virus infects new people and replicates, it picks up mutations along the way. These mutations typically do not change the behavior of the virus, but they can provide a signature of a virus’s origin.

 

Most samples taken in Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin and many other states carry distinct mutations that can be traced back to viruses introduced into New York.

Over all, Dr. Grubaugh estimated, infections spreading from New York account for 60 to 65 percent of the sequenced viruses across the country.

Other scientists ntists said that they would like to see more samples before calculating precise figures. But they agreed that New York’s prominence in seeding the national spread appears to have begun in early March, two weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place.

“New York acted as the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places,” said David Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.

The most commonly detected viruses tied to New York have a distinct genetic signature linking them to outbreaks in Europe. Those spreading from Washington State have a signature linking them directly to China.

Benjamin M. Branham, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the airports, said that before the flight restrictions from Europe, the federal government’s Customs and Border Protection “only screened passengers from China,” not from Europe.

How the Virus Got Out

We analyzed the movements of hundreds of millions of people to show why the most extensive travel restrictions to stop an outbreak in human history haven’t been enough.

March 22, 2020

At this stage, scientists say, genetic fingerprints alone are not sufficient for pinpointing the source of the viruses. But travel patterns and case histories of early known cases support the idea, they said.

“It is a combination, still, of what genomic epidemiology and shoe-leather epidemiology is going to tell us,” Dr. Engelthaler said.

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Continue reading the main story

Scientists modeling the progression of the disease nationally said the prominence of New York as a national hub was broadly consistent with their findings, although the picture was still emerging.

“I would say this is not surprising in a sense,” said Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. “The picture emerging is consistent with numerical models.”

Earlier research by Dr. Vespignani showed just how rapidly, and invisibly, the outbreak exploded in New York. By March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections, his research group showed.

 

New York and Washington State are not the only sources of the outbreak. Other large domestic hubs contributed to the spread, scientists believe, and a more diverse genetic mix is still seen in some places around the country, particularly in the Midwest and parts of the South.

Even as domestic travel began to drive the outbreak, some infections were still seeded around the country by international travelers, geneticists said. It is possible, experts said, that some of the virus samples attributed to New York may have instead been seeded in other cities by direct flights from Europe, or from travelers laying over in New York before traveling elsewhere.

For that reason, some scientists said they would like to see more samples before linking the majority of infections in the United States to New York.

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Continue reading the main story

“I think that’s probably the story line that’s going to emerge, but I’d like to see more data,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Mount Sinai in New York.

A New York Times analysis of travel data supports the idea that the chains of infection originated in New York, experts said. The number of cases across the country was closely related to how many travelers each place received from New York in early March, based on anonymized cellphone tracking data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence company.

“It looks like most of the domestic spread is basically people traveling out from New York,” said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York. The virus swept through the area in March and has killed more than 1,000 people.

“You can figure out, with travel patterns, that the most likely thing to have happened is those came into New Orleans directly from New York,” Dr. Grubaugh said.

Josh Holder, Michael Crowley and Derek Watkins contributed reporting.

 

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8 minutes ago, GringoSalado said:

NYT

Siap, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavirus-outbreak.html#click=https://t.co/umJUgjbGkt

 

Tldr, 70% of TX infections traced to NY (only 4% from WA) genetically. Not sure of sample size, I didn't see that number in there but I sped read

  Hide contents

 

Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks

The coronavirus outbreak in New York City became the primary source of infections around the United States, researchers have found.

By Benedict Carey and James Glanz

May 7, 2020Updated 3:23 p.m. ET

1292

New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country.

The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast.

The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts.

ADVERTISEMENT

Continue reading the main story

“We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country,” said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.

Early analysis of genetic samples indicates that more infections across the country came from a line of the virus associated with the outbreak in New York City, shown in red, than from a line associated with the outbreak in Washington State, shown in yellow.

Percent of genetic samples related to each area

Washington State

New York City

100%

50%

0%

50%

100%

States on the West Coast

Washington

53%

42%

California

32%

50%

Viruses that spread from Washington early on carry a distinct genetic signature.

 

But even on the West Coast, samples related to New York are common.

Oregon

30%

50%

Alaska

80%

0%

Other Western states

Wyoming

31%

69%

Texas

4%

70%

Arizona

6%

84%

Utah

9%

89%

Idaho

0%

98%

Midwestern states

Illinois

27%

45%

Minnesota

15%

72%

Wisconsin

4%

78%

Ohio

0%

88%

Iowa

0%

100%

Southern states

Georgia

0%

30%

Virginia

11%

78%

Every sample from Louisiana, a hot spot for the virus, was related to New York.

Louisiana

0%

100%

Northeastern states

Connecticut

12%

81%

New Jersey

7%

93%

Maryland

0%

92%

The genetic line associated with New York can be traced back to Europe.

New York

1%

94%

Massachusetts

0%

94%

Note: Scientists have thus far sequenced only a small fraction of total infections, so the distribution of genetic lines could change as more samples are analyzed. States with fewer than 10 samples were left off the chart. Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Wyoming all had fewer than 20 samples. Percentages may not add up to 100 because additional genetic lines are omitted.

Source: Nextstrain

By Derek Watkins

The central role of New York’s outbreak shows that decisions made by state and federal officials — including waiting to impose distancing measures and to limit international flights — helped shape the trajectory of the outbreak and allowed it to grow in the rest of the country.

This is your last free article.

Subscribe to The Times

The city joins other densely populated urban hot spots around the world, starting with Wuhan, China, and then Milan, that have become vectors for the virus’s spread.

Travel from other American cities also sparked infections across the country, including from an early outbreak centered in the Seattle area that seeded infections in more than a dozen states, researchers say. Even if New York had managed to slow the virus, it probably would have continued to spread from elsewhere, they say.

But the Seattle outbreak proved to be a squall before the larger storm gathering in New York, where, at the end of February, thousands of infected people packed trains and restaurants, thronged tourist attractions and passed through its three major airports.

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During crucial weeks in March, New York’s political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country.

Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus’s march across the country, researchers say.

“It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread,” said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research. “I keep hearing that it’s somebody else’s fault. That’s not true. It’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our own fault.”

A lack of testing obscured the true extent of the outbreak for months, and officials acted on incomplete and sometimes conflicting information. The enormous growth of New York’s outbreak partly reflects its volume of international visitors, especially from Europe, where most of its infections came from.

Dani Lever, communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized federal authorities, describing an “enormous failure by the federal government to leave New York and the East Coast exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no Covid cases throughout the entire month of February.”

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said that Mr. Trump had acted quickly. The president blocked most visitors from Europe starting on March 13, more than a month after he restricted travel from China.

“Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe — an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread,” Mr. Deere said.

The travel that helped spread the virus includes New York residents who left the city and non-New Yorkers who visited or passed through the city. Now that infections are dispersed around the country, travel from New York is no longer a main factor shaping the progression of the epidemic, researchers said.

As states around the nation begin to relax their restrictions, the findings demonstrate that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent those actions from affecting the rest of the nation.

Image

Research showed that by March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections.Credit...Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Geneticists have analyzed and shared more than 2,000 samples of the virus from infected people. As the virus infects new people and replicates, it picks up mutations along the way. These mutations typically do not change the behavior of the virus, but they can provide a signature of a virus’s origin.

 

Most samples taken in Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin and many other states carry distinct mutations that can be traced back to viruses introduced into New York.

Over all, Dr. Grubaugh estimated, infections spreading from New York account for 60 to 65 percent of the sequenced viruses across the country.

Other scientists ntists said that they would like to see more samples before calculating precise figures. But they agreed that New York’s prominence in seeding the national spread appears to have begun in early March, two weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place.

“New York acted as the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places,” said David Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.

The most commonly detected viruses tied to New York have a distinct genetic signature linking them to outbreaks in Europe. Those spreading from Washington State have a signature linking them directly to China.

Benjamin M. Branham, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the airports, said that before the flight restrictions from Europe, the federal government’s Customs and Border Protection “only screened passengers from China,” not from Europe.

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At this stage, scientists say, genetic fingerprints alone are not sufficient for pinpointing the source of the viruses. But travel patterns and case histories of early known cases support the idea, they said.

“It is a combination, still, of what genomic epidemiology and shoe-leather epidemiology is going to tell us,” Dr. Engelthaler said.

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Scientists modeling the progression of the disease nationally said the prominence of New York as a national hub was broadly consistent with their findings, although the picture was still emerging.

“I would say this is not surprising in a sense,” said Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. “The picture emerging is consistent with numerical models.”

Earlier research by Dr. Vespignani showed just how rapidly, and invisibly, the outbreak exploded in New York. By March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections, his research group showed.

 

New York and Washington State are not the only sources of the outbreak. Other large domestic hubs contributed to the spread, scientists believe, and a more diverse genetic mix is still seen in some places around the country, particularly in the Midwest and parts of the South.

Even as domestic travel began to drive the outbreak, some infections were still seeded around the country by international travelers, geneticists said. It is possible, experts said, that some of the virus samples attributed to New York may have instead been seeded in other cities by direct flights from Europe, or from travelers laying over in New York before traveling elsewhere.

For that reason, some scientists said they would like to see more samples before linking the majority of infections in the United States to New York.

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“I think that’s probably the story line that’s going to emerge, but I’d like to see more data,” said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Mount Sinai in New York.

A New York Times analysis of travel data supports the idea that the chains of infection originated in New York, experts said. The number of cases across the country was closely related to how many travelers each place received from New York in early March, based on anonymized cellphone tracking data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence company.

“It looks like most of the domestic spread is basically people traveling out from New York,” said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York. The virus swept through the area in March and has killed more than 1,000 people.

“You can figure out, with travel patterns, that the most likely thing to have happened is those came into New Orleans directly from New York,” Dr. Grubaugh said.

Josh Holder, Michael Crowley and Derek Watkins contributed reporting.

 

 

At this point the evidence is pretty solid that the focused travel restrictions towards China were likely effective is slowing spread from the East, but not sufficient.  We have to be prepared to close all international travel given the global nature of commerce and movement today. 

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49 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

CFRs for Travis county by age group.

 

Age (yrs)  
20-29 0.3%
30-39 0.2%
40-49 0.9%
50-59 1.3%
60-69 3.7%
70-79 8.6%
≥ 80 19.7%
Total 2.7%

That’s confirmed tests, right? So divide that by what-4? 8?  Something like that for actual kill percentage? 

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2 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

That’s confirmed tests, right? So divide that by what-4? 8?  Something like that for actual kill percentage? 

It is the data off the travis county arcgis with some division applied. I don't know what the right factor to adjust for for unconfirmed cases. If you made me throw a number out I would go with 3 or 4 overall, but in reality there is probably a differential across the age segments. 

Edited by Anastasis
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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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