"Alamo Drafthouse Arizona Theatres File For Bankruptcy"

[Lyle Romer]

Not sure what news you read Lyle, but both Texas, Florida and Georgia have seen spikes. Atlanta area is still a hot bed for the virus. Neither Govt is logging these extra deaths so they can make themselves look good. Georgia's spike was about two weeks ago and it has since plateaued. If you are interested in keeping tabs on whats actually happening then this link is the place. Note the charts in the lower right corner are all still increasing.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Stop with the conspiracy theories. The states are logging the deaths. They just put them in the day they occurred not the day they were reported. Johns Hopkins sources the data from the States. They don't have some alternate source of death data. The difference is that Johns Hopkins (and worldometers.info) count new deaths on the reporting day. If there were a total of 500 deaths in a state yesterday and then 510 today, they report it as an increase of ten. The states put them in the day that the death occurred.

Here is the Georgia site:

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

Click on the deaths tab and you can see the peak occurred on 4/16 and the average has been declining. They have the past 14 days shaded as additional deaths that are reported in the coming days are likely to be included in those days.

Here is the Florida site:

https://experience.arcgis.com/experi...8ddedb9b25e429

The dashboard currently only displays the last 14 days. You'll notice that 5/31 shows 1 death but worldometers.info (and I'm assuming JHU) shows 9. That's because the State put them into the day the death occurred, not because they are hiding them. If you watch over the next several days, 5/31 will show an increase.

Of course the charts in the lower right are increasing. They are charts of running totals. They can't decrease. It's the rate of increase (in deaths) that is important. The rate of increase in cases is due to the drastic increase in testing.

[Lyle Romer]

I can't edit the last post to add this. If you don't believe my research about there not being any spike related to the reopening, then maybe the lead medical reporter from ABC news is credible enough:

https://twitter.com/ericMstrauss/status/1266136090806755329

JUST IN:
@ABC looked at 21 states that eased restrictions May 4 or earlier & found no major increase in hospitalizations, deaths or % of people testing positive in any of them. [SC, MT, GA, MS, SD, AR, CO, ID, IA, ND, OK, TN, TX, UT, WY, KS, FL, IN, MO, NE, OH] via @AMitrops

[Bobby Henderson]

We're far from being "out of the woods" with this SARS-CoV-2 thing unfortunately.

Regarding Georgia specifically, the daily rate of new cases is stuck in a plateau ranging between 600-800. Distribution of new cases is not even. Trend lines are going down in some counties, but going up in others (particularly South Georgia). Overall, Georgia is still a pretty active state with SARS-CoV-2 cases, even if new case levels are holding steady. Hopefully daily new cases will start dropping soon. All of the Deep South states still have serious problems.

Daily rates of new cases are still increasing in California and Texas. Nationwide there are all sorts of localized hot spots. The hot spots are often in retirement/assisted living facilities, meat processing plants, prisons and other places where social distancing is limited, like church gatherings or other social events.

Here in Oklahoma our hot spots have happened in those places. Guymon, OK had one of the highest per capita rates of COVID-19, thanks to an outbreak at a pork processing facility. They ended up with nearly 1000 confirmed cases, ranking their county just behind Tulsa and Oklahoma City for biggest state-wide totals. Now the little town of Hugo is the state's latest hot spot; they attributed their spike in new cases to social gatherings that happened after their Phase II re-opening plan went into effect.

We're doing pretty good here in Lawton; we've had a total of 290 cases so far, with 3 deaths and 266 recoveries. Comanche County now has one of the best trend lines in Oklahoma. Most of our cases were in the county jail. Most businesses are re-opened, but with limitations. I'm hoping our local movie theaters can re-open soon. But with Hollywood holding off til at least next month the theaters are going to stay shut.

I'm pretty concerned about the possibility of a big upswing in new cases from all the protests in big cities and the thousands of arrests that have followed.

Then there's the International angle. The SARS-CoV-2 trend line is going way way up in Brazil. Mexico looks far from reaching its peak. India has a long way to go. It's likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus will rage South of the Equator through the Summer. Then it may move back North for what many are predicting will be a second wave this Fall.

[Buck Wilson]

Just a little bonus talk about mold here. The theater I work at (10 plex built in 04) has consistently had issues with humid air and mold in the summer over the years. The building was built in an area that has natural groundwater seeps, and it's exacerbated by the HVAC programming(unoccupied mode ~14 hours a day, set warm even in occupied mode), HVAC engineering(building operates at a pretty significant negative air balance, drawing in unconditioned humid air all summer) and the HVAC equipment itself(variable speed compressors would go a long way to solve the issue). Needless to say, I was expecting it to be a petri dish after all this time closed, but was very surprised on a recent visit to find that the air was less humid and musty than it was when we were open! I'm curious to see how it'll be in these coming weeks as it's really starting to get warm here now. Anyways, here's a couple pictures of mold at this theater, in normal open operating conditions-
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I also had the opportunity to visit a soon to be demolished, 30 year old 8 screen plex that had sat empty for over a year with severe roof leaks. Not a pretty sight, of course. Here's some pictures of that-

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Rest in peace, my dear Plaza

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Stop with the conspiracy theories.

No conspiracy theory Lyle. They don't bother logging the deaths in retirement homes in at least several States. In fact the woman who was in charge of the Florida Covid death web site was fired because she refused to report wrong statistics so they would look good for reopening. They do the same thing here in Tennessee re: retirement home deaths. IN the end it's gonna come back and bite them.

https://cbs12.com/news/local/woman-w...m-her-position

[Lyle Romer]

No conspiracy theory Lyle. They don't bother logging the deaths in retirement homes in at least several States. In fact the woman who was in charge of the Florida Covid death web site was fired because she refused to report wrong statistics so they would look good for reopening. They do the same thing here in Tennessee re: retirement home deaths. IN the end it's gonna come back and bite them.

https://cbs12.com/news/local/woman-w...m-her-position

So, it is a "fact" that she was fired for refusing to report wrong statistics because she said so? The dashboard that she is in charge of gets the data from the health department. They publish ridiculously detailed daily state level and county level daily reports in PDF format. The statewide report includes a line by line listing of information about every single one of the over 57,000 cases. They include nursing home deaths broken out (which account for literally half of all the deaths in Florida). They even put out a separate report specifically with data of deaths at every individual long term care facility.

The dashboard is just displaying the data in a format that you can easily analyze by county and zip code. Also, the media reports make it out like this woman coded up the dashboard as the "architect." The dashboard uses software from arcgis. If anything she just worked with them to create the database fields and charts that it would generate.

Additionally, each county has its own health department which has access to all the raw data and is providing much of it to the state. Don't you think that if the data reported by the state didn't match what the counties have that they would object or make a public issue out of it? Especially the 3 southeast counties that couldn't be more politically opposite of the Governor?

One thing I have learned in my life is not to take any media "news" report at face value. To even get the other side of the story requires clicking on a link within the story to read another story. I don't just trust the Government implicitly either. I do my own research.

Living in Florida I have been following the COVID data very closely and verifying that the statewide data jibes with other sources. It does. The only "controversial" aspect is that Florida (like at least several other States) does not include deaths of non-residents in the death total (but does include Florida residents who died out of State). 2.5% of the cases are non-residents. Since all of the nursing home residents are Florida residents and they represent half of the total deaths, there are probably around 1.28% (33) more deaths that occurred in Florida than are reported if the mortality rate is the same. "Hiding" 33 deaths while reporting 2,566 does not seem like it would have a great effect on reopening plans.

I can't speak for the other states you mentioned because I haven't done the research myself but, with respect to Florida, it is 100% a conspiracy theory being spread by people who, for some unknown reason, don't want things to reopen even with all kinds of social distancing and PPE protocols in place.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Lyle, That data doesn't enter itself. People enter it, and those people were told to enter different figures to reflect being able to reopen. End of story. Also Arizona is seeing a huge spike in Covid cases because of both the reopening and the protests. 1900 cases in one day. Watch for that in other states that did not safely reopen.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Those protests are also getting hold here. Without judgement about the protests themselves, I'm afraid the timing of those "public mass gatherings" is pretty unfortunate and may lead to another spike, possibly rendering many of the reopening efforts fruitless...

[Lyle Romer]

Lyle, That data doesn't enter itself. People enter it, and those people were told to enter different figures to reflect being able to reopen. End of story.

What evidence is there (other than the word of the person who was fired) that they were told to enter different figures? What, specifically, were they told to enter differently? Even the person who was fired (I don't think she was actually fired, just removed from controlling the dashboard) doesn't make any specific accusation. Instead of "End of story," tell me exactly what data was altered and why that data reflects being able to reopen.

Florida has been "reopened" in full "phase 1" since 5/18 with most of the state entering a limited "phase 1" a week before that. There has been no spike in hospitalizations. This is a fact both from the official data and from direct knowledge I have of several hospitals to "sanity check" the state data. The data that led to the original "limited phase 1" (which was basically the whole state except for the three southeast counties with the worst outbreaks) was data from the period BEFORE she was was removed. If she refused to alter the data, then the data that led to "phase 1" was accurate, even if you believe her story.

Also Arizona is seeing a huge spike in Covid cases because of both the reopening and the protests. 1900 cases in one day. Watch for that in other states that did not safely reopen.

Where on earth are you getting your data from? Neither worldometers.info nor the Arizona website shows 1900 cases in one day. Also, confirmed cases per day is not a valid metric to analyze trends due to the increase in testing. A higher percentage of cases are being confirmed because there are more tests being run. Arizona did more than 3 times the number of tests per day in May than they did in March and April. Due to all the mild and asymptomatic cases, the more you test, the more you will find.

The relevant data to see trends are hospitalizations and deaths because both will be roughly consistent as a percentage of the actual number of infections. In Arizona, hospitalizations have remained essentially flat since the end of March. Deaths have a lot of day to day variation but on average are flat or slightly decreasing. There is no evidence of a "spike" in the outbreak in Arizona (or any other State that I've looked at).

You need to understand that, without a complete quarantine (not what was done but literally locking everybody in their home including "essential" workers), the virus will not go away without a vaccine until there is herd immunity. Depending on how long immunity lasts after infection, herd immunity might not be possible with curve flattening. The entire goal of the phased reopenings is to restart the economy and keep COVID related hospitalizations relatively flat so that the healthcare systems are not overwhelmed. At the same time, efforts are being made to keep the most vulnerable people from getting infected.

Controlling outbreaks requires increased testing. Increased testing will always lead to an increase in documented cases due to the characteristics of this virus. It is impossible to eradicate this virus with "mitigation" and it has never been suggested that it is possible.

[Lyle Romer]

Those protests are also getting hold here. Without judgement about the protests themselves, I'm afraid the timing of those "public mass gatherings" is pretty unfortunate and may lead to another spike, possibly rendering many of the reopening efforts fruitless...

Or there could be no spike and give evidence that large outdoor gatherings don't present a problem with respect to the spread. It will take a few weeks to be able to draw any conclusion.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Lyle, Believe what you want to but there are definitely areas in Floriduh, AZ, and other parts of the country where it's spiking. I await the result of the protest rally spikes in the next week or so as the Covid has a 2 to 14 day incubation period. As you can see in this article is it spiking in Palm Beach County right as I type this. Wait till they re-open Epcot and Disney World and it'll spread and grow rapidly. Oh and by the way... I will absolutely believe the woman who was fired RE: what happened because the FL gov is a corrupt POS just like the last one was. The red party has literally turned FL into a shithole.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronav...inu-story.html

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Lyle, This data just in from the CDC... whom I absolutely believe. Things are not looking very good ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/counties-...175408245.html

[Marcel Birgelen]

Or there could be no spike and give evidence that large outdoor gatherings don't present a problem with respect to the spread. It will take a few weeks to be able to draw any conclusion.

Besides the info Mark just posted, over here in Europe, it started to initially take up speed after a few of those mass-gatherings. A town across the border here in Germany became the first real hot-spot around here after their annual "Carnaval" celebrations. In Italy, many cases seem to be linked to a soccer game and an Austrian After-Ski-Party-Town called Ischgl (can I buy a vowel?) also became a prime hotspot and source of many infections over Europe. So, until now it doesn't look that good for mass-gatherings. Now, this all took place in relatively cold weather, but I'm not so confident that "hotter weather" will do much in large crowds. It may be hard for the virus to survive on surfaces exposed to a lot of UV light, but most transmissions seem to be human-to-human and not via surfaces.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

but I'm not so confident that "hotter weather" will do much in large crowds

Correct! Not quite enough is known about this still new to us virus to say that hot weather and temperatures will kill it, or mute it....

[Lyle Romer]

Lyle, This data just in from the CDC... whom I absolutely believe. Things are not looking very good ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/counties-...175408245.html

I don't have time to research and write more now but the example of the "problem area" in Hamilton County, FL is (as stated in the article) related to a correctional institution and has nothing to do with negative effects of reopening anything. Yet, the article brings up the Governor being accused of downplaying the situation and spins it as negatively as possible.

Since that outbreak, the county has returned to a handful of positive tests per day. Only 5 people in the county have been hospitalized and nobody has died (at least not yet).

It doesn't matter how many positive cases there are. What matters most is the age of the cases. 85% of the deaths in Florida are people 65 and over.