34 Comments - efudd - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 2:47 pm: “pick a lane” Don’t have to. Dabrowski slings the tripe, Bishop runs with it, at least two days. A month from now, when most, if not all states have closed back down, Dabrowski will run some garbage about how Pritzker should have waited before going into Phase 3 and 4. Bishop will be on it like stink on the Center Square. - Grandson of Man - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 2:48 pm: We need leadership to keep reminding us of what got us to our recent success, and to have plans in case we lose significant ground. We can’t be afraid to scale back reopening if necessary. We worked so hard to have our success. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 2:49 pm: We need to follow the lead of other states like Michigan and roll back indoor service in bars and restaurants, close the gyms. We know now that this virus is airborne. People. Annoy protect themselves with a mask while eating and drinking. People expel and consume more virus during heavy exercise. Wait until Monday to announce it, effective Tuesday or Wednesday, or the aforementioned businesses will be packed this weekend. Make masks mandatory inside businesses that do remain open with no exceptions. The plans to reopen schools in a month are in jeopardy. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 2:50 pm: “People cannot protect themselves” - illinifan - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 2:52 pm: The governor needs to return to regular pressings. Maybe not daily but often enough to keep the message out there of what is expected. If not kept front and center everyone will relax their guard. - harp5339 - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:00 pm: == The governor needs to return to regular pressings. == Maybe he doesn’t want to be asked why the state moved into Phase 4 before adequate contact tracing was in place. - Ouch - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:04 pm: Florida, with nearly twice our population, had 1,371 on June 10. Just putting this in perspective. - Nick - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:18 pm: This is I think the first time in more than a month that the one day positivity rate was over 3. Not good, obviously. I’ll keep beating the drum of taking a new look as to allowing restaurants and bars to re-open for indoor service. - Wood Chuck - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:19 pm: * which would you rather have? * The case count has always been a bogus number, solely dependent on the amount of testing going on. Positivity rate, hospitalizations, and mortality are the only reliable indicators of what is really going on. Florida’s mortality number is very surprising given their large elderly population. - Nick - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:20 pm: Deaths in Florida in the last two days have been the highest than any two days previous throughout the entire pandemic. For their sake, I hope your post ages well. - Rich Miller - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:21 pm: Wood Chuck, that person used a dishonest metric. Deleted. Move along. - Wood Chuck - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:22 pm: * We know now that this virus is airborne. * No, we do not know that. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:23 pm: @Nick - The positivity rate is a relatively meaningless statistic. It only tells you whether there is enough testing available, not whether the pandemic is growing. The number of positive test results has doubled in a week. The pandemic is growing. - 1st Ward - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:23 pm: @Numbers this is far from over. Too early to compare covid deaths in Illinois to Florida or another state. The hot spots and deaths in March - May included Illinois it’s now shifted. Florida is reporting about one hundred more deaths per day than Illinois now. Your comment may not age well come mid-August/September and beyond. - Oswego Willy - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:24 pm: === Illinois has half the number of cases, BUT double the number of deaths - compared to Florida.=== I can’t think of any state right now that would trade with Florida currently, or in the past 10 days, or in the coming days as lagging indicators catch up. Florida is doing so well GOP folks are opting out of the convention in Jacksonville. This is a global pandemic… the globe sees the United States failing, and a finer point, states choosing to be less restrictive still seeing the first wave surge… that’s the first wave… we haven’t even gotten to a second wave. I’m proud of the Governor and his crew. It all hasn’t been perfect, but they have made sure the science and the people were most important and not making decisions where money is more important than lives. We all, meaning me too, all of us, need to do our best, wear a mask, social distance, and trace… and work with officials in all aspects. The world is watching, they are saying “do better” and our state is trying to do its best, it’s up to us to do our part. - SSL - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:29 pm: Wear a mask. It’s not that hard. - Wood Chuck - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:30 pm: * The positivity rate is a relatively meaningless statistic. * The positivity rate is the number of positive tests per individuals tested - probably the best indicator we have. About the only thing better would be random testing of individuals, with or without symptoms. - Moderate Mom - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:32 pm: People are acting like Covid 19 isn’t a problem anymore. In my area they are having huge parties and shaming mask wearers. Meanwhile the Northeast region hospitalization rate is increasing in a worrisome way per the Restore Illinois site. The Northeast region was at -86% hospitalization rates on June 25 and today its -43%. Pritzker needs to start the pressers again. People aren’t taking this seriously. It is making me so angry that public non-compliance is going to rob my children and so many others from being able to return to school next month. And for those who don’t have children consider this: schools need to be open so parents can work. A significant portion of the economy is sidelined when schools are closed like this. - Nick - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:33 pm: Paine, I’m not sure if ‘relatively meaningless’ is right. After all if you test 10K and get 300 positive cases, versus 20K with 600 cases, you can say cases have ‘doubled’ but our understanding in terms of how widespread the virus might be in the wider community shouldn’t really change. But, as it seems like lately, if our case counts are going up not just because we’re testing more, but because those tests are picking up a higher proportion of positive cases (higher positivity rate), then that’s an especially poor sign, and would be indicative of higher community spread. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:37 pm: Let’s review Florida’s mortality figures on November 1. The projection for Florida is 17K deaths now. For Illinois, it’s 8,900. - Rich Miller - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:40 pm: ===The projection for Florida is 17K deaths now=== Yeah. And Florida’s positivity rate is 19.6 percent. So much for “meaningless.” - Ouch - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:45 pm: I think at this point IMHE is pretty discredited. Time will tell. It seems like people’s predictions are based more on politics than good science. Of course the science has a lot of uncertainty right now - Pundent - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:48 pm: Each of these measurements has it’s own inherent value. I wouldn’t characterize any of them as meaningless or over-index on one vs. the other. We do however need to keep a close eye on hospitalizations given our finite resources. The other data points are leading indicators that we could have a problem. And with regards to Wirepoints, they’re making the same arguments that were used to reopen FL, AZ, and TX early. Didn’t exactly work out well. - ZC - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:51 pm: Another day where I really wish we had more data journalism / public comments about where this new spike in cases is coming from. What I’m afraid of, sort of what a commentator pointed out above, is that without a robust testing and tracing system in place - right now - the positivity rate alone isn’t giving us very much insight at all, about what we should be doing / closing next. - Frank talks - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 3:54 pm: I agree with @illinifan if we’re not talking about it people are not staying vigilant. Folks are making fun of the southern states not paying attention to our new cases rising. IHSA did no favors to this with their original idiotic rules that helped cause the outbreak in Lake Zurich sports camps. Maybe if they weren’t a for profit organization they’d actually care about the kids not bottom line. - Nick - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:01 pm: Right. I don’t think the point is to hold any one metric above the other, or say any are meaningless, we have to consider the whole. While also being aware that, especially if thanks to more testing we’re catching rising cases early, that some metrics will lag others. - Lynn S. - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:05 pm: Saw the case count. Said lots of words that would get me banned here. Things might be looking really grim on the 1st of August. And sorry (not sorry) regarding Florida. Hopefully they’re about to get some sense whacked into their thick heads. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:05 pm: From Johns Hopkins: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/testing-positivity “If a positivity rate is too high, that may indicate that the state is only testing the sickest patients who seek medical attention, and is not casting a wide enough net to know how much of the virus is spreading within its communities. A low rate of positivity in testing data can be seen as a sign that a state has sufficient testing capacity for the size of their outbreak and is testing enough of its population to make informed decisions about reopening.” Again, the positivity rate only tells you if you have enough data to make an informed decision about reopening. A low positivity rate means you have enough testing and enough data, it does not mean you should reopen or remain open. I agree Rich, the high positivity rate in FL suggests that their current case count does not reflect how many people out there are actually infected and that things are indeed much worse. Our low positivity rate suggests that things are exactly as bad as our positive case increase suggests. It’s a secondary stat, like sample size, and yes, relatively meaningless. It is a positive sign that we have enough access to testing, but it does not mean infections are not growing. Testing without contact tracing leaves you with only the blunt instrument of lockdown phases. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:14 pm: @Nick - True, if the increased availability means were are catching cases earlier that is great, although now there are delays in testing results is not great. Also, Rhode Island has had to downgrade its ballyhooed claim that they have tested 25 percent of the state. It turns out only 16 percent of Islanders have been tested, the others were actually duplicate tests. I do have a concern that we may have people in Illinois that are being retested, especially at this point in the game, and that if there is a large enough group being retested it can much the data. Don’t get me wrong, if ER staff and nursing home staff want to get tested every day I am for it and I think we should pay for it. But if part of your sample is IDPH testing and retesting high risk folks repeatedly it would be nice to have the data disambiguated. I also wish these numbers were reported by county and included demographics like gender, race and age range for a better understanding. - Thomas Paine - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:17 pm: Also, there is going to be some squawking about mortality rates. Understand that mortality rates have dropped because the medical community has gotten much better at recognizing COVID over the last four months and much better at treating it. Not because scientists and public health officials didn’t know what they were talking about four months ago. - JoanP - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:18 pm: =Florida’s positivity rate is 19.6 percent.= And Miami-Dade County had a positivity rate of 33.5% yesterday, with a 24% rate over 14 days. Duval County, where the Republicans plan to have their convention, is at 20%. - Jibba - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:19 pm: I think we already should move back to Phase 3 given the rising cases and positivity, soon to be reflected in hospitalizations and, sadly, deaths. In-person school relies on squashing the case load so that contact tracing can be done. We are already beyond that. - Nick - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:20 pm: John Hopkins is correct In that an overly high positive rate is indicative of a lack of testing. And a low positive rate would suggest that testing capacity is currently adequate. But what John Hopkins is not saying is that those are the ONLY things the positivity rate may tell us. That’s a logical leap. After all what’s the difference between a state having adequate testing capacity, and suddenly not? Rising case counts are not always, let alone the only, indication of increasing community spread. - 1st Ward - Friday, Jul 10, 20 @ 4:22 pm: I googled neighboring states corona virus reporting (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio). They are all going up. Wisconsin 2nd day in a row of record number of cases; hospitalizations jumped the highest in over a month this week. Indiana - cases highest since beginning of May hospitalizations up from last week Michigan - Cases rising since mid-June with highest case count since early May but hospitalizations flat week over week Ohio - Largest single case count reported today 7 of the highest 10 daily case counts recorded since July 1. Hospitalizations up 19% since June 21. 4th of July was last weekend. How many people in Illinois went to neighboring states? Next week or two will be telling to where Illinois is headed. 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