September 25, 2020

Yesterday (Thursday) Harrison County had 2 new cases and Greeg County had 15. 

Google Maps now shows you where covid-19 cases are spiking
The news: Google Maps has added a new feature that lets people see the number of covid-19 cases per 100,000 people for any given area, with a label indicating if cases are trending up or down. In a blog post, Google said the functionality will start rolling out worldwide on both Android and iOS this week. In the US the information goes down to the state and county level, but in Europe just the national figure is available for now, so the feature will be of very limited use.

How it works: You open Google Maps, click on the top right-hand corner of your screen, and click on “covid-19 info,” Google Maps product manager Sujoy Banerjee explains in the blog post. Color-coding makes it easy to see at a glance how many new cases each area is reporting.

Where’s the data from? Google says the data comes from “multiple authoritative sources,” including Johns Hopkins, the World Health Organization, health agencies, hospitals, the New York Times, and Wikipedia.

The purpose: A crucial part of coping in this pandemic has been assessing risk. The idea is that this new feature should make it easier for people to decide where it’s safe to go and assess the safety of different activities, like sending kids to school or going on vacation.
(J. Harris: Not active on my Google Maps yet, but will be most helpful when available.)

The Road Ahead: Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond
(J. Harris: Wonderful, readable, understandable, and useful projection of what the next 18 months or so will be like if all goes well. This takes about 30 min. to read but worth the effort. It will help you plan for the immediate future, even mundane things like how large a turkey to buy for Thanksgiving.)
FROM THE SAME PUBLICATION: STAT:Covid-19 Preparedness: How ready is your county?
(J. Harris: Harrison County got a pretty good grade. Texas itself got a very low grade)

FROM JOHNS HOPKINS:

1. A city in Brazil where covid-19 ran amok may be a ‘sentinel’ for the rest of the worldWhat happens when a major city allows the coronavirus to rage unchecked?

If the Brazilian city of Manaus is any answer, it means about two-thirds of the population could get infected and one person in 500 could die before the epidemic winds down.

But since hitting a peak four months ago, new coronavirus cases and deaths in the city of 1.8 million have undergone a rapid and unexplained decline…
Now a group of researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom say they know why—so many people got infected that the virus is running out of hosts.
(J. Harris: This was a young population crowded up. The Blood Banks showed about 40% of potential donors were positive for the virus. )

2. SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence in Brazil: results from two successive nationwide serological household surveys(J. Harris: An extensive Brazilian virus survey which was repeated.)

Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.

~ Steve Martin

Why is it called “rush hour” when your car barely moves?

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