If you have $10 and put it in a bank -- and you get 1% interest per week. Is this rapid acceleration in the growth of your money?
Yes, because of several factors. First, I can be relatively assured that the interest will continue, making the annual interest rate 52.14%. You cannot say this will be the case with COVID at all. Second, the weekly interest rate doesn't go up 1% one week, down 2% the next, up 2% the following, flat the following and then up 1% again. It remains relatively constant. Lastly, interest is compounded. Case rates aren't necessarily. COVID doesn't do that. In the vacuum of one week, saying I have 10$ and I got 1$ in interest isn't RAPID ACCELERATION by any stretch of the imagination.
Thanks, Here4Money. This is a very clear and concise thought that added a great deal to...well, something.
Another sign of our total COVID-19 response failure in the U.S. They have had months in North Dakota to get Contact Tracing into place -- and did nothing. Overwhelmed by cases, North Dakota tells residents with COVID-19 to do their own contact tracing https://www.inforum.com/newsmd/coro...with-COVID-19-to-do-their-own-contact-tracing North Dakota is now asking residents who test positive for COVID-19 to inform their own close contacts of the diagnosis as a recent surge in new cases of the virus has overloaded the state's contact tracing operation. The state Department of Health sent out a tweet Tuesday, Oct. 20, saying contact tracers are "experiencing a backlog of COVID-19 case investigations, causing a delay in calls." The announcement advised residents who have tested positive for the virus to fill in as contact tracers themselves by telling their own close contacts to get tested. The backlog means North Dakotans who recently tested positive have been waiting an average of three days to learn of their diagnosis instead of the usual one day. The state announced late Tuesday night that 50 soldiers from the North Dakota National Guard will be shifted from notifying close contacts to calling residents who have tested positive. Officials are also developing an automated system for notifying positive residents, according to a news release. In the past, news of positive tests results was delivered exclusively by employees working on the contact tracing operation. North Dakota's contact tracing operations for K-12 schools, universities and health care settings will continue as normal. Gov. Doug Burgum, who has frequently held up the operation as a success of his administration's pandemic response, said reshaping the state's contact tracing strategy is necessary to "prioritize what’s most important" amid the mounting case load. “This temporary situation required an immediate and significant shift in resources to provide results in a timely manner to individuals who test positive to protect their health and slow the spread of COVID-19,” Burgum said in the news release. The health department's change of course comes as the state announced a pandemic-high 1,036 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. North Dakota has reported by far the most COVID-19 cases and deaths per capita in the nation over the last week. The contact tracing process, which lies at the foundation of disease control, is meant to help officials track the spread of the virus and isolate residents who test positive before they further transmit the illness. Health officials say the already arduous practice has been made more difficult in the state by a minority of residents who have refused to quarantine after contact tracers identified them as close contacts of a positive case. North Dakota disease control chief Kirby Kruger said last week there are about 400 employees from the health department, public universities, the National Guard and the private sector working to contact residents who test positive and their close contacts. Kruger said the state's mostly part-time contact tracers had until recently been able to keep up with a goal to reach 85% of newly diagnosed residents within 24 hours, but rising case counts had proved a challenge. Kruger did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication Tuesday. Fargo Cass Public Health spokeswoman Holly Scott said the agency also has a backlog of cases and recently asked the health department for help with the burden. Scott said she didn't know how many cases sit unassigned to contact tracers or when the agency's load became too much to lift. She added that the agency hasn't heard anything about a change in strategy from the state. Grand Forks Public Health took the step of asking residents to act as contact tracers a day before the state. The unconventional move became necessary as the workload outpaced the number of case investigators, said Michael Dulitz, Grand Forks County's COVID-19 data director.
Contact tracing has been tried all over the world. Some countries seemed to have pulled it off to some degree. Most failed miserably.
Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea and other countries were all very successful with Contact Tracing. Implementing proper Contact Tracing is one of the five core foundational items on why you have a lockdown. You are using time in your lockdown to get Contact Tracing into place. Once Contact Tracing is in place then you can ease your lockdown - secure in the knowledge that you can trace the contacts of infected people and have them quarantined/tested. Effective Contact Tracing requires funding and scaling up for the effort. Note that U.S. has been very successful in recent years in performing successful Contact Tracing for outbreaks of TB, measles, and other diseases. These contact tracing and testing efforts stopped these diseases from spreading in the community. The contact tracing efforts are primarily owned and driven by County health departments. Unfortunately many states actually cut existing contact tracing funds to local county health departments when COVID broke out (which can only be attributed to politics). Other states did not increase funding to county health departments to a level needed to keep up with tracing a much higher COVID case count load. Durham County in North Carolina is a prime example of failing to fund & scale a very successful county contact tracing operation for COVID. Durham was very successful in tracing and eliminating TB breakouts centered around Northern High school in 2017 and again in February 2020. They were successful in the first months in N.C with COVID-19 this year with tracing every single case -- until the wheels fell of the wagon when the case numbers climbed but their staff of under a half dozen people stayed the same. Durham County was one of only three counties in our state that was able to effectively do strong contact tracing -- the other two were very rural counties - while Durham is urban/suburban.
I guess you and I have a very different definition of what success looks like. To me, this is not it.
And yet - Germany has Contact Traced every single one of those new cases. How many COVID cases have been contact traced in the U.S.? Will Germany's effective Covid strategy work again as it enters a second wave? The first wave taught us that if politicians and scientists work together, they have more chance of beating this virus https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/19/germany-covid-second-wave-virus The 4 simple reasons Germany is managing Covid-19 better than its neighbors Coronavirus is surging in Europe — but less so in Germany. Here’s why. https://www.vox.com/21495327/covid-19-germany-coronavirus-cases-deaths Germany coronavirus cases: Why is Germany's COVID cases so low? GERMANY, like many other European countries, has suffered considerably at the hands of COVID-19 - but as a second wave begins to take off, why is Germany not seeing as sharp a rise? https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...-germanys-covid-cases-so-low-angel-merkel-evg "Germany has reported a record number of COVID-19 cases this week - but the number is still significantly lower than that of its European counterparts."
CDC updates definition of 'close contact' to individuals with COVID-19 https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/202...t-to-individuals-with-COVID-19/7621603320096/ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday altered the definition of what constitutes "close contact" to a person infected with COVID-19. The CDC updated the guidance to define close contact as being "within 6 feet of someone who has COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or more" over a 24-hour period. The agency previously defined close contact as being within 6 feet of a confirmed case for 15 consecutive minutes. Wednesday's update follows a report by the CDC stating that Vermont health officials discovered that a 20-year-old male correctional facility employee contracted the coronavirus after 22 brief interactions over 17 minutes with six individuals who later tested positive for COVID-19. "Available data suggests that at least one of the asymptomatic [incarcerated or detained persons] transmitted SARS-CoV-2 during these brief encounters," the report stated. The report said the correctional officer wore a microfiber cloth mask at all times but the people he interacted with did not wear masks "during several encounters in a cell doorway or in the recreation room." The correctional officer also wore gloves, a gown and goggles. "The article adds to the scientific knowledge of the risk to contacts of those with COVID-19 and highlights again the importance of wearing face masks to prevent transmission," the CDC said. In a press conference Wednesday, Jay Butler, the CDC's deputy director for infectious diseases, said the United States is "unfortunately seeing a distressing trend, with cases increasing in nearly 75% of the country." He noted that wearing a mask takes on increased importance this fall and winter as Americans will spend more time indoors, raising the risk of transmission. The United States reported 60,300 new COVID-19 cases nationwide on Wednesday for a total of more than 8.28 million cases and about 221,100 deaths nationwide, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.