COVID-19 day 141 : 📈 1,979,928 cases; 112,006 deaths : 09 June 2020
How not to hold an election in a pandemic; Court rules Brazil must share coronavirus data with the public, its case rate is twice the US; unknown number of DC National Guard have tested positive
It’s day 141 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. Five states held primaries.
🛑 How not to hold an election in a pandemic
In 2018, then Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp ran for governor against Georgia State Representative Stacey Abrams. He won with 50.2% of the vote, the closest race since 1966.
Rather than demonstrate leadership and begin the process of replacing an aging voting system (circa 2002) while Secretary of State, Kemp punted. Due to the mess he left behind, in 2019 a judge in ruled that 2020 elections would be conducted by hand, on paper, should the state not get a new system installed. That fall, the state moved forward with Dominion Voting systems: $104 million for giant touchscreens attached to printers which provide scannable (and recountable) paper ballots.
“What Georgia is trying to do basically blows my mind,” said Dwight Shellman, an election official at the Colorado secretary of state’s office… “We had 2 1/2 years to do it, and it was challenging,” Shellman said. “I can’t imagine implementing the number of counties Georgia has in, what, two months? Three months?”
In Colorado, the Dominion equipment was installed in 50 counties for about 5% of the population. (Most people in Colorado vote by mail.) Georgia has 159 counties.
In January, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described the voting system being prepared for the soon-to-be-postponed 24 March presidential primary:
It’s the largest rollout of elections equipment in U.S. history, with more than 75,000 computers and printers destined for 2,600 voting precincts across Georgia.
It fell flat on its face Tuesday. Imagine if they’d tried to use it in March.
Judges told counties to keep the polls open longer.
Georgia is just the latest state that has seen widespread problems with holding an election during a pandemic. Longer than usual lines have been reported in cities across the country, with many forced to shutter some polling locations because of a lack of staffing.
In Georgia, there was a meltdown of new voting systems put in place after widespread claims of voter suppression during the state’s 2018 governor’s election, with scores of new voting machines reported missing or malfunctioning. Hourslong lines formed at polling places across the state, and some people gave up and left before casting ballots…
But those who had voted in person before Tuesday at early-voting sites had already reported long waits — in some cases up to seven hours. New rules for social distancing and disinfecting voting machines had caused many of those delays.
Georgia should have invested in vote-by-mail technology. And anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to implement a new voting system the year of a presidential election is delusional.
For November, states are going to need to do three things:
Allow anyone who wants an absentee ballot to have one; distribute them early; and allow them to be postmarked on election day.
Hold early voting for at least three weeks before the election, including weekends. Consider letting voters sign up for the day that they want to vote in person.
Learn from how some grocery stores managed crowds: have staff work a check-in area. Have voters sign in and provide a phone number (call or text). Advise that they’ll get a call or text 15 minutes before it’s time to get back in line: keep the lines short and let people go back to their cars or homes if they live close. Have some buses in the parking lot for those who might have arrived using public transportation. Remember, it will be cold and could be wet.
🦠Tuesday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,979,928 (1,961,185) cases and 112,006 (111,007) deaths, an increase of 0.94% (0.95%) and 0.90% (0.43%), respectively, since Monday (Sunday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.13% and 1.17%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 21,006 (21,338) cases and 1,078 (1,126) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.66% (5.66%).
Today’s case rate is 598 per 100,000; the death rate, 33.83 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 553.42 per 100,000; the death rate, 32.08 per 100,000.
Note: numbers in (.) are from the prior day and are provided for context. I include the seven-day average because dailies vary so much in the course of a week, particularly over a weekend.
🔬 Research and medical news
[STAT News] asked 11 experts in infectious disease, epidemiology, and pandemic preparedness how to avoid the mistakes, poor decisions, and incompetence of this spring. We asked them not to invoke magic; advice like “develop a vaccine” is obvious but not very helpful. We also asked them to look forward more than backward.
How the world can avoid screwing up the response to Covid-19 again. STAT News, 05 June 2020.
🎦 Recommended viewing
Erin Bromage, professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, wrote an essay in May about risks and risk management (shared here) which has subsequently been viewed more than 18 million times on his blog, published by the BBC and translated into multiple languages. Tara Parker-Pope, founding editor of the Well podcast, interviewed him on Monday 08 June.
💃🏼 Life hack
Face mask use is a social contract. My mask protects you; your mask protects me. But face masks are not perfect and they need to be used in conjunction with other measures to lower risk of infection such as physical distancing and hand washing.
More from Professor Bromage: What’s the deal with masks? 29 May 2020.
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, Around the country; 2, Around the world; 3, Politics, economics and COVID-19;
4, Case count; 5, What you can do and resources
⓵ Around the country
According to the Washington Post, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico, North Carolina, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah have all seen their highest case counts in June. Case growth is in communities with fewer than 60,000 residents.
Texas has hot spots in prison and meatpacking plants.
California is one of many states with a steadily increasing case rate.
Yet the state that is home to Hollywood said “let’s go to the movies!” on Monday.
The rules call for theaters to limit capacity to 25% or no more than 100 moviegoers. That guidance adds theaters to a long list of entertainment and other businesses that can start reopening as California relaxes its stay-at-home order.
⓶ Around the world
The Supreme Court has forced Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro to resume reporting key coronavirus data.
Brazil's government, caught in the throes of South America's worst coronavirus outbreak, abruptly ended public access to much of its past data earlier this month, instead sharing only the number of new confirmed cases each day.
Brazil is the fourth most populous country in the world; with more than 38,000 deaths, it is in third place behind the US (112,000 deaths) and the UK (41,000).
Brazil reported 1,272 new deaths on Tuesday; the US, 999. Brazil reported almost twice as many new cases as the US, 32,091 to 18,514. Expect Brazil to pass the UK in total number of reported deaths in about four days. The President, like Trump, is threatening to withdraw from WHO. More than 1.1 million Latin Americans have been infected.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
❌ The first news reports of COVID-19 and protests comes from DC, where an unknown number of National Guard troops have reportedly tested positive.
❌ Nursing homes are one of the highest risk environments for COVID-19, both for staff and residents. How have I missed that they have received almost $5 billion in federal stimulus funding to cover costs associated with the virus, including testing? And are asking for more?
❌ President Trump will resume campaign rallies in two weeks.
⓸ Case count
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. There is also a lag in reports of cases and deaths making their way into daily results; this lag is visible in predictable declines for both reports containing weekend data.
🌎 09 June
Globally: 7 039 918 cases (108 918) 404 396 deaths (3 539)
The Americas: 3 366 251 cases (54 864) 183 950 deaths (2 146)
US: 1 933 560 cases (17 848 new) with 110 220 deaths (474 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 7,238,611 (7,119,736)
Total deaths: 411,277 (406,542)
Recovered: 3,371,716 (3,293,975)
🇺🇸 09 June
CDC: 1,956,421 (17,598 new) cases and 110,925 (550 new) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,979,928 (1,961,185) cases and 112,006 (111,007) deaths
State data*: 1,971,021 (1,953,413) identified cases and 105,999 (105,046) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 21,048,183 (20,615,303)
Take with a grain of salt. The CDC and at least 11 other states have begun combining the number of tests for active infections with the number of antibody tests, which boosts the total number of tests and thus drops the percentage who test positive.
View infographic and data online: total cases and cases and deaths/100,000.
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.00 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
The virus was not created in a lab and the weight of evidence is it was not released intentionally. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data in January suggested that the virus might have developed elsewhere.
⓹ What you can do
Stay home as much as possible, period.
Digestive problems may be a symptom.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s COVID-19 Memo :: COVID-19 Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
📊 Visualizations: US, World
🌐 Global news(at WiredPen)
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