USA: COVID cases have not been rising exponentially ... until now.

[My Pet Orangutan]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[sfstaxprep]

1. We're In For A Heap Of Trouble

And the media along with 48% of the population, couldn't care less.

It's a runaway freight train, and it's far too late to stop it now.

[My Pet Orangutan]

2. Cull the herd; strengthen the master race.

[StarryNite]

4. You're right.

[moonscape]

5. Truly horrifying, terrifying. n/t

[Blue Owl]

3. Thanks, Donald

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. According to

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries, 132,540 cases yesterday.

The kinds of sarcastic, dumb, and inappropriate things I want to post, I'll refrain from posting.

The only thing I'll say is that I am honestly surprised that India, with some one billion people more than we have, is lagging so far behind us in cases. Although, to be fair to them, their testing is almost non existent.

[marybourg]

8. I heard the interesting hypothesis that because

there are so many diseases endemic there, they have greater overall immunity than us, even to a “novel” virus.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. I have also heard that their numbers are vastly greater, as in at least

100 times more, than published.

Although there's a lot to be said about the immunity gotten from being exposed to lots of diseases. I've read various things about this, and apparently the human immune system is designed to be exposed to lots and lots of diseases in the first ten or so years of life. And if the human survives, he/she will probably be just fine for the next 30-40 years, after which he/she will somewhat decline in immunity. But the survivors get to become the elders of the tribe and pass wonderful wisdom down to the next generations.

Personally, I'm a huge believer in the immune system. I got sick A LOT when I was very young. Not just the basic measles/mumps/chicken pox/rubella and who knows what else. (I was born in 1948, which is relevant here) I also got influenza any number of times growing up. I'm pretty sure I got the Asian flu in 1957. I can tell you that the last time I had flu (if I'm even remembering this correctly) was in the mid-1960s. I'm pretty sure I did not get the Hong Kong flu of 1968. But as a consequence, I feel quite immune to any subsequent flu epidemics. I'm extraordinarily healthy, especially for someone my age. I'm 72. I would NEVER tell someone else not to get a flu shot or anything else. My own sons got vaccinated with the various vaccines available when they were young. They did both get chicken pox. Now there's a vaccine for that. Good. Oh, and I do need to get the second shingles shot for the new, improved shingles vaccine.

Completely trivial piece of information. My older son actually got Fifth Disease when he was not quite two. Not very common. Here's the wiki article on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_disease

But if you are correct about the endemic diseases in India conferring a greater overall immunity to things like this Corona Virus, then that's proof of the need to be exposed to lots of things.

In all honesty, it is a real problem that so many people have underlying health issues and would not be around if this were fifty or more years ago.

[marybourg]

11. Agree with you.

Personally, I never had the flu, even in the '57 pandemic when I rode city buses to get to my overcrowded high school. I credit having had the measles at 2 weeks old, which is usually fatal. It may have reved up my immune system. So much so that now I have 2 or more autoimmune diseases!

[Mariana]

15. Actually, measles tends to have the opposite effect.

Measles does long-term damage to immune system, studies show

Two studies published yesterday in Science and Science Immunology illustrate how the measles virus causes long-term damage to the immune system, creating a form of immune amnesia that can leave children at an increased risk of illness from other diseases for years.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/11/measles-does-long-term-damage-immune-system-studies-show

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. I've seen that, but if that were true, all of us who got measles

before there was a vaccine, which means essentially all of us, would be fucked in terms of immune systems. Somehow, I doubt that.

I know I can only speak for myself, but after an early childhood of getting sick a lot, up to about age 7, I came through with an utterly amazing immune system. I think a lot of those early childhood illnesses had to do with living in subsidized housing, around LOTS of other little kids, being exposed to anything and everything, was actually a good thing. In my kindergarten year of school, I was sick a lot and missed lots of school. The next year, 1st grade, I missed exactly one day of school. And my record ever since was similar.

Heck, as an adult, I worked at DCA, Washington National Airport, as a ticket agent. After a bit over ten years, I left the job and left behind over 100 days of unused sick time. Which to this day I still regret. If I could go back in time, I'd figure out how to use a whole lot more of those days. No, I did not get paid out for those days. I simply used fewer than one day a year in sick time, never got any thanks, never got any benefit, and gave away a whole lot of money to the company.

I'm currently 72 years old and the healthiest person I know. Especially at my age. I'm constantly befuddled by how many of my age mates, and lots who are younger, are sick all of the time.

Maybe the real problem on this planet is not just that there are some 7 billion people, but that a significant percentage of them really shouldn't be here.

[Mariana]

19. Everyone's different, so you never can tell.

Measles zonked my immune system. It took more than a year for it to get back to normal. In the meantime, I caught everything. I was a strong, healthy kid before measles. The weirdest thing is I was vaccinated, but I was one of the very few whose vaccine didn't take for whatever reason. One of my classmates also got measles at the same time, but all the other kids' vaccines worked and they were immune.

I think a lot of it is the luck of the genetic draw. My daughter was born with an amazing immune system. She's 25 and has never had an ear infection, a sinus infection, strep throat, bronchitis, a urinary tract infection, or anything like that, not once. Occasionally she gets a cold, but that's it. OF course, she's always had access to adequate nutrition, shelter, clothing, exercise, and sleep, which helps a lot. She's also had all of the routine vaccinations.

There's no need to be befuddled that so many of your age-mates are sick all the time. That's due to the wonders of modern medicine and sanitation. Not so long ago, sickly people like that usually didn't live to be 72. Now many of them do, because they can keep the high blood pressure or the diabetes or the chronic infections or whatever it is that ails them under some control. It's a good thing.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. You've made good points.

So one of the things we might need to be thinking about is whether or not it is a good thing that sickly people get to stay around because they are supported by modern medicine.

I will say, that when I think about this, I'm somewhat befuddled. On one hand, I want to promote the survival of the fittest. On the other, I know plenty who don't fit the definition of "the fittest." In the past, we were used to people dying. In modern times we expect everyone to live, regardless of their medical condition. There is not an easy solution.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. I was an infant when my older sister got chicken pox.

Mom took me to the doctor who gave me a gamma globulin shot, something that was far more common those days. It was intended as an immune system booster. I was born in 1948, so this was probably mid-1949. Mom once told me that I did not break out in the poxes, but I had the other symptoms, such as fever. For what it's worth, some 40 years later when my two sons broke out in chicken pox, I didn't break out, proving I was immune.

Oh, and older sister apparently had a very severe case of chicken pox. Mom once said she thought that might have been somewhat like smallpox. Sister had bad scars on her forehead for many years after.

[Mariana]

14. The lack of testing is certainly a factor.

They may be undercounting the dead from Covid-19, too.

I wouldn't count on it being due to some natural immunity. We're really still in the early stages of the pandemic, and it's way too early to read much into comparisons of numbers in different countries. It very much remains to be seen if India's infection and death rates stay relatively low.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. I agree that natural immunity is not very likely to be

an explanation for low numbers. Low testing is probably more likely.

I've been saying for some months now that we just need to give India time. It will be a bloodbath there.

[Mariana]

20. It's looking like weather may also be a factor.

In the long run, warmer places may prove to have slower spread and fewer cases per per million people of Covid-19 than colder places. However, it's still way too early to draw any such conclusions, when we're less than a year into the pandemic, and it has infected such a small percentage of the population.

[BigmanPigman]

7. Yup, I check out those numbers several times a day...

Check out the European countries...even worde than us but they started getting new highs before the US did. Now their deaths are creeping up too...Russia, France, German, Italy, Poland, etc.

[Dem2]

10. N. Dakota passed a milestone

Highest case-rate in the world.

[marybourg]

12. Thanks, Sturgis motorcycle rally!

[Ms. Toad]

13. They actually have twice before, but we took action to stop the two earlier periods

of exponential growth. We haven't taken any new steps this time when the growth started to be noticeable. The first one triggered the stay at home orders; the second one triggered a substantial numberof mask orders.