Corona Virus Crisis Discussion Thread

**Gistok** · April-24-21, 08:55 AM

Some sports teams will offer "vaccinated" seating sections....

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/24/us/do...rnd/index.html

I wonder if this gets more popular when more people are vaccinated? One would imagine that if these areas fill up during sporting events, that the venues would expand this type of arrangement.

**Dumpling** · April-24-21, 09:10 AM

Really I am pretty impressed by all of the measures that
most of us are taking to stop the spread of coronavirus and
its variants. All of it, informing the public, keeping everyone
updated, has taken over a large section of mainstream media.
Everyone, you are doing good.

Moving on to Michigan Capitol Confidential, the Mackinac Center
mouthpiece news site. [I'm not a big fan of the Mackinac Center
and am slanted so there. But they are a big influence on
Michigan thinking and opinion.]

I want to give them credit for homing in on a particular
phenomenon: various states and various regions of the
world seem to be better at keeping overall cases down
than other states do. Capitol Confidential could look at
various instances of this and go in depth into what is
going on.

Capitol Confidential posted a New York Times map that shows
that Michigan is getting high rates of cases during the current
UK variant COVID-19 surge:

'COVID Knows No Boundaries' - Michigan Excepted? – Michigan Capitol Confidential

This was posted 4/23/2021. If you check it out, indeed
most of Michigan is bright orange and red and indeed it all
stops right at the Michigan border. What are the best
explanations for that? Does youth sports fill the bill? Few children
are vaccinated, so COVID-19 is more likely to spread within
groups of children. Are youth teams in the state border counties
more likely to play opposing youth teams in neighboring Michigan
counties or in neighboring Ohio and Indiana counties?

The Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard shows Indiana counties
as having higher case rates overall. This occurred earlier in the
pandemic, so for the current surge, there is a higher immunization
rate among children as well as adults in those Indiana counties.

Even if youth teams in Michigan border counties were to play as
often in Ohio and Indiana counties as they would in other
Michigan counties, the transmission during the current surge
would be less there.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

In case everyone's pandemic dread has worn off, there is
apparently a new variant of COVID-19 in India that bypasses
the sinuses and throat, causing false negative
test results and going straight for the jugular of the lungs.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/...-experts-76609

**401don** · April-24-21, 12:12 PM

The more we are finding out about the virus the worse it appears to be. As long as herd immunity isn't reached, which is extremely unlikely globally, the virus will continue to mutate, something it's very good at doing. These mutations will require constant adjustments to the vaccines and booster shots, possibly every 6 months. So if anyone tells you they don't care if others get vaccinated they are crazy.

**Gistok** · April-24-21, 12:29 PM

It's the health care workers that I also feel sorry for... if this is the new normal... then people may be looking for other professions to get into...

**oladub** · April-24-21, 04:34 PM

Open borders are a problem when trying to control the spread of Covid. Factcheck insists that "The Biden administration has made no changes to COVID-19 testing policies for either U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol."
at least for those who get caught. Arizona's Democratic Governor has sent in 250 National Guard troops to promote some order. The border patrol has been dumping groups of illegal non-citizens of in small Arizona towns. The Mayors and Governors fear outbreaks and wonder what they are going to do with them if they do get sick.

India is having a terrible time with Covid now but the U.S. is not one of the countries forbidding travel to and from India. This might be a larger problem for northern tier states. Perhaps each state could require a two week quarantine for anyone on those planes if the federal government doesn't.

**401don** · April-24-21, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by oladub

India is having a terrible time with Covid now but the U.S. is not one of the countries forbidding travel to and from India. This might be a larger problem for northern tier states. Perhaps each state could require a two week quarantine for anyone on those planes if the federal government doesn't.

Canada closed its border with India a couple of days ago so our truckers and vacationers in the U.S. will just bring the virus back with them. This is the problem you speak of, with one country closing its borders if others don't. It's never ending. Meanwhile the India variant is already in Vancouver anyway.

By the way, there was another thread about walking across the Ambassador bridge. I and others assumed it probably stopped before 911 but definitely wouldn't have been permitted after that. Turns out many Canadians are getting around Canada's quarantine process for those flying back to Canada by flying into Buffalo and then simply walking across the bridge at Buffalo or Niagara Falls and having someone pick them up on the Canadian side. It showed people toting their luggage on tv this week.

**Dumpling** · April-25-21, 08:09 AM

Genomic surveillance researchers found 73 instances where
the U.K. variant was introduced into the United States and
they believe there were more introductions than that number.

Early introductions and community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 in the United States | medRxiv

In their survey, one subset of Michigan cases was derived
from a New York case that spread to Connecticut.

A separate introduction, maybe the one discovered at
University of Michigan, generated more cases. Figure
2D shows this one but lists it as being a subset of an
international clade, which are the gray lines in Figure 2D.

A subset of the Florida clade was found in Illinois. Florida
does not look like a major source of early Michigan
variant cases.

Ontario had 1,749 variant cases or more by March 28th
but most cases were in the regions around Toronto and
there weren't many cases in the Windsor-Essex area.
Ontario does not look like a major source of early Michigan
variant cases.

Youth sports cases are a significant block of overall
cases but they were not early foci of coronavirus spread
in Michigan.

That honor goes to the University of Michigan and Bellamy
Creek Correctional Facility. Businesses and hospitals
were subsequent sites of infection. Youth sports were
affected after that.

**Dan Wesson** · April-25-21, 12:57 PM

I remember this...
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor...k-variant.html

**Dan Wesson** · April-25-21, 01:00 PM

that article was back in january of this year.

**Gistok** · May-03-21, 11:18 AM

Just read this from Forbes Magazine about those who make or get fake vaccination ID cards [and have not been vaccinated].

“If you did not receive the vaccine, do not buy fake vaccine cards, do not make your own vaccine cards, and do not fill-in blank vaccination record cards with false information.” In this case, FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation and not Fun Bits Interactive or Fungi, Bacteria, and Insects. When the FBI gets involved, you know that the words “breaking the law” or “oh bleep” may not be too far away. Indeed, the FBI warning says, “the unauthorized use of an official government agency's seal [[such as HHS or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [[CDC)) is a crime, and may be punishable under Title 18 United States Code, Section 1017, and other applicable laws.”