Twelve Days After One Month

In the 12 days since October 31, and the month of October before that, we have seen Minnesota's COVID situation completely transformed. 

We went from having a positive test rate that was relatively stable for months — at just under 5% — to 9.5% by the end of the month to 30% today (with a 15.6% seven-day average today). (Cases were averaging around 3,000 on October 31 and are now averaging 4,900.)

We went from 60 new hospitalizations a day on October 1 to 150 a day on October 31 to about 250 today.

Deaths, as anyone who pays attention knows, lag positive tests and hospitalizations. They went from an average of 9 at the beginning of October to 18 at the end of the month to 56 today (with a current seven-day average of 30).

Our graphs, you can assume from all of that, look really bad, with a very steep incline at the right end. The graph-makers keep having to add new numbers to the Y axis. We've shot past all the old highs from spring, even in deaths now, which was the last hold-out.

They are all gathered for good comparison on these two almost identical-except-for-updating articles from MPR (October 31 and November 11). Here are a couple from the November 11 article, just for shock value:

What happened at the beginning of October? I think it's a combination of the weather getting cooler and people moving some get-togethers that had previously been outside to the inside, COVID-fatigue leading to laxer behavior overall, school starting, Mafia Mulligan's superspreader events in the state, Sturgis ripples, and cross-border effects from all of our viral neighbors. But the pattern — whatever the causes — is very clear.

The only good news, for those of us who live in Saint Paul or Minneapolis, is that our "dense" cities appear to have the lowest rates of incidence in the state, about 75 per 100,000, while multiple rural counties have numbers of 2,000–3,000+ per 100,000, as shown in the MPR link.

Our governor yesterday announced some weak responses, including closing bars and restaurants at 10:00 p.m. and limiting the number of people inside a bit more. He's letting himself be hamstrung (in my opinion) by Republicans and the fact that Democrats failed to retake the state Senate in the election. In response, our less-right-wing newspaper ran stories with headlines like this:

 

and

"Targeting" bars and restaurants: as if anyone is doing this on purpose. A "blow" to restaurants: as if it's intentional, rather than an outcome that is a result of the virus.

Those two stories ran on the same page as a story with this headline:

So it's not as if the Star Tribune editors didn't have a counter-message staring them right in the face as they wrote those headlines.

Since we have no federal government — because of a soft coup in process by a narcissist and a bunch of cowards who are too afraid to stop him — we're on our own. 

Obviously, when the government says it's okay for sit-down, indoor eating and drinking establishments to be open (even for limited hours), that is read as meaning it's safe to carry out those behaviors when it clearly is not. 

All of these businesses need to be closed except for takeout and they need to be financially bailed out so they can come back after there's a vaccine, which is now in sight. 

This is so damned stupid. But here we are, being killed by people who don't believe in government.