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Massachusetts coronavirus numbers going up again; latest hotspot is a Springfield hospital

COVID-19 Update: Free Asymptomatic Testing Launching in 8 New Communities

CommonHealth reports that the state has now reported more than 200 coronavirus cases a day for the last four days - the first time that's happened since mid-June.

At his daily press conference today, Gov. Baker reported that an employee of Bay State Medical Center returned from a trip to a hotspot somewhere else in the country and was "lax with respect to wearing a mask" and infected several other workers and several patients. WBZ reports the tally so far is 23 employees and 13 patients.

Baker said Massachusetts Covid-19 hotspots now are related to "gatherings," such as that party in Chatham.

Baker acknowledged that Covid-19 numbers have "ticked up" in recent days, but that the state remains in far better shape than in April and May.

He added, "the virus will not take the summer off and neither can we." In April and May, the state was seeing positive test rates "north of 10%" and that the rate now is below 2% - but that people need to realize Covid-19 is still out there and they still need to take precautions.

He said that the state got complaints about that harbor-cruise ship and that the Boston Public Health Commission is now investigating.

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Comments

We cannot return to normal - in particular, we can't have full-time in-person school - with case rates even staying flat where they are now, much less rising. A lot of people are still not taking this seriously enough, even in our alleged suppression success story.

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Cases are not "going up". There were 4 days of 200+ confirmed cases because there were 16,133, 13,104, 11,330, and 9,780 tests conducted. ONE day of a 2+% positive rate doesn't mean anything.

Today's numbers were released, 182 cases, 10,291 tests. Back to a 1.8% positive rate. Are cases now "declining"?

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The state rate went to 2% because there was enough cases from the areas that are high to bring the state there. Not all cities and towns everyone below 10% some are still near 20% positivity rate. If you live in one of those places the states low amount isn’t too relevant to your life or to your children going to your schools

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I looked at the most recent report on municipalities, and the only ones with more than 10% were small towns west of Worcester. At that, there are only a few of them.

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It's entitled people like yourself who will infect other people and shut the economy down again.

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How is quoting numbers an indication of being entitled? What makes you think the person has thrown out their mask and is spending their day spitting on people?

There's a lot of space between "Full Lockdown" and "Everything is Open Go Crazy".

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Which will keep the economy closed forever.

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Yelling about cases going up without understanding why shows a lack of critical thinking.

There is an outbreak in one hospital? Great, we know where it is so focus on containing it.

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The state hit a low of 27.1 cases per million (7 day moving average) on July 5. After today’s uptick and all the ticks since July 5, we are up to 44.3 cases per million (7 day moving average) based on confirmed and probable numbers. It really seems like the governor is downplaying it. I guess we can hope that the upward curve doesn’t go more vertical.

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Where's the uptick?

Date Molecular New Molecular Positive New Molecular Missing
7/1/2020 10938 219 2.0%
7/2/2020 10313 224 2.2%
7/3/2020 6097 98 1.6%
7/4/2020 2972 62 2.1%
7/5/2020 4881 101 2.1%
7/6/2020 12654 241 1.9%
7/7/2020 14936 241 1.6%
7/8/2020 14391 215 1.5%
7/9/2020 12833 250 1.9%
7/10/2020 13073 226 1.7%
7/11/2020 7461 116 1.6%
7/12/2020 5089 89 1.7%
7/13/2020 14713 261 1.8%
7/14/2020 15025 226 1.5%
7/15/2020 15019 291 1.9%
7/16/2020 12025 221 1.8%
7/17/2020 11135 187 1.7%
7/18/2020 7452 118 1.6%
7/19/2020 5228 63 1.2%
7/20/2020 11325 232 2.0%
7/21/2020 11303 183 1.6%
7/22/2020 10434 203 1.9%
7/23/2020 9893 181 1.8%
7/24/2020 8023 177 2.2%
7/25/2020 4200 100 2.4%
7/26/2020 1790 28 1.6%

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The 30 day trend is most certainly up

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A return to normal would be packed bars, games in stadiums, and no masks. No one serious is suggesting that.

The numbers going up are not good but they also aren't alarming. (Yet)

I don't know the right answer for schools but I do know few kids get useful learning from Zoom. You just can't expect a child to be able to watch the screen and pay attention. It's hard enough when they are actually in the classroom.

Everything is a trade off. What's worse: Losing a year of education or the potential risks of COVID? It's not an easy question and I don't trust anyone who provides a knee-jerk answer one way or another.

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An outbreak IN A HOSPITAL isn't alarming?

What color is the sky on your planet?

Everything is a trade off. What's worse: Losing a year of education or the potential risks of COVID?

This is a false argument and I'm tired of seeing it. If everybody is in the exact same boat, how do you "lose a year of education"?

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No, you don't entirely loose a year of teaching but few teachers or parents would say a k-12 student learns nearly as much via Zoom as they do in the classroom. Zoom sucks for teaching, particularly for younger children.

There are many K-12 teachers and admins in my family. They aren't hankering to get back to the classroom but they also are under the impression this is going to be a major setback for children.

There are things which can be done to make classrooms safe. It involves a tremendous amount of testing with same-day results. It also involves parents and students doing what they're told. And if there is a flair-up of cases things need to be shutdown in a hurry.

But it is possible to resume in-class education. It's not fun and it's not cheap. But neither is pretending Zoom (and other systems) are going to be productive for the next school year.

There are a lot of people on UHub who pretty much want a full-scale lock down until there's a vaccine. That really isn't feasible. Other countries are learning to take precautions and manage cases.

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The health of the human population or a year of education??

This ain’t even a question. I know we’re all little worker bees in an automated digital world now but we’re homo sapiens at the end of the day.

We’ve lived for 100,000 years, 99.95% of which with little to no “education”.... Wee did so by trusting our instincts, and actively avoiding dangers to our health and well-being.

I’d scrap the entire year of education completely to save lives. This one year of schooling isn’t truly essential to our overall well being-and it’s not even remotely close.

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No, you don't entirely loose a year of teaching but few teachers or parents would say a k-12 student learns nearly as much via Zoom as they do in the classroom. Zoom sucks for teaching, particularly for younger children.

You shouldn't feel singled out when I say this, because it's true: things suck for everyone right now. Everyone is taking a hard hit. I agree that yes, it is possible for the larger "us" to do things better, and that might -- MIGHT -- allow a return to in-person education for kids. But "we" aren't doing better. "We" don't have the kind of coherent public policy and national priorities that would allow for what you want. Given that, my concern is that any efforts to alleviate the pain at any one particular point are simply going to cascade it onto others. You say "It's not fun and it's not cheap." So who bears the cost if you get your solution? Who of all those already struggling is going to have to assume more risk and more expense in order to create in-person education?

No one sane and truthful is pretending that a year on Zoom is going to be equivalent to a year of in-person education. But things suck all around. In seeking solutions for your area of concern, whatever that is, I think we all need to consider the impact on others.

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The problem is that in order to start school back up, we'd need to see R0 down around 0.8. But we want to start BOTH schools and universities up in September, and R0 is at 1.08, five weeks out, and trending up, not down.

We're going to see a bounce with each opening; the point is to actually actively respond to that bounce and bring transmission down to a level that lets us open the next thing.

We should have delayed phase 3 to August 1, or replaced the state-hired contact tracers as they quit. We need all 1500 contact tracers for 200 new cases/day; 700 isn't going to cut it. A number of municipalities have left the state program and are trying to go it alone (Watertown and Somerville among them), because the state tracers are overwhelmed.

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People coming into the state in a hurry ahead of the August 1 deadline. Without testing, without quarantining, headed to vacation spots. This will end well.

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Just so they can vacation in MA.

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And they can be brought back if needed.

Every Rt estimate I have seen has had wide ranges, such as from 0.86 to 1.23.

Of course there was going to be a small increase. Flatten the curve was never no cases or only a decrease.

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That Rt number is garbage. I assume you're getting that from RT.live? They aren't using accurate numbers. They're lumping in positive antibody tests w/molecular tests, BUT not adding antibody tests run into the denominator.

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covid19-projections.com has had the most accurate predictions to date. Their numbers and methodology is solid.

They currently report MA is a Rt of 1.01.

The Rt level is deceiving anyway. The number is going to be lowest when cases begin to recede after a major spike (see Arizona) but they'll normalize to around 1.00 until there is a vaccine or far better testing and tracing.

In the short term better to have a low number of cases and Rt around 1.01 vs having a high number of cases and Rt at 0.8.

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...the only problem is that when I clicked on your link, you added the U-Hub url, (i.e. https://www.universalhub.com/comment/reply/107263/covid19-projections.com) and when I tried that, it gives me a page error.

The correct link is https://covid19-projections.com/.

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But I hope not because if that’s the case school is likely closed until 2022 and that is a real problem.

I do wish school was a higher priority than opening the casinos.

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Really, though, can someone clue in Charlie Baker?

Gov. Baker reported that an employee of Bay State Medical Center returned from a trip to a hotspot somewhere else in the country and was "lax with respect to wearing a mask" and infected several other workers and several patients. WBZ reports the tally so far is 23 employees and 13 patients.

Good thing he is now going to be instructing people to quarantine when arriving in Massachusetts starting … on Saturday. It's been clear that rates were rising steeply in other states since, oh, early June. What has he been doing for the last 7 weeks? Going to his time share in Utah?

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a lot of the recent rise in Mass have been imported cases from people traveling to higher-prevalence areas and bringing it back, as the anecdata here would suggest. You'd think if you worked in a goddamn hospital you'd be pretty damn careful traveling and then not go straight back to work, right? But given that we apparently have a population of idiots, it's really too bad the gov couldn't see it fit to put some policies in place in time to make a difference.

Ah, who am I kidding, he's a white guy and he's doing a heck of a job.

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Ok, everyone else can worry about schools and universities etc.what Im interested in,when are the strip clubs opening.

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Yeah, when are those girls gonna have to show me their titties again to get their bread and stop collecting unemployment from MY taxes, huh? The worst thing about this whole "economy shutting down" thing is I don't get to exercise my right to pay money to see live naked women.

Guys, it's really important we get the schools back open so strippers can be forced to go back to work. Stop UI socialism. Make them ladies dance for me again.

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Can’t you hire a solo dancer if the market demand is low and the supply is high?

Otherwise, enjoy your cams.

I guess...

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"Social Distancing."

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A party of 50, a health care worker, but no problems with protesters/rioters. Who’s shitting who.

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Who’s shitting who.

You're shitting yourself, when you equate protesters with rioters, and when you display your ignorance so flagrantly. I've been to some of these protests, and what I saw was universal mask usage.

You're shitting yourself, all right. Load right in your pants, buddy.

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