Read on Twitter
I am going to do a thread on re-opening because the country is re-opening up too quickly.
Most of the country should open up over the summer, not May 1st like Trump suggested. Trump knew early on the country would contain by July and August, and said this, if we socially distance correctly. However, the Administration saw what sheltering in place was doing
for unemployment and was scared how that would affect Trump’s re-election that Trump opened the country up too early and more people died than necessary and the US has prolonged the time it will take to contain.
In China, they contained quickly by wearing masks, sheltering-in place, testing appropriately, contact tracing and not isolating people in their homes to prevent household spread.
Because the US broke sheltering in place too early, took a while to wear masks, and actually the President does not wear masks NOW, setting a bad example, undertests, does not contact trace, forces many people to isolate in their homes, the US has the most deaths in the world.
Jared Kushner purposely pushed for undertesting because he did not want to “spook the markets” which has led to more unnecessary deaths because via testing appropriately and contact tracing you can prevent future outbreaks, but by not testing the US numbers “don’t look as bad.”
Based on serological data, about 12 million (4%) Americans have been infected not 1.6 million, but the US has not been able to detect this because of the undertesting that has occurred in the US.
Nonetheless, I don’t want the US to go into economic ruin either. But I want the country to open up safely to prevent further spread and to ensure economically the country is on safe footing.
One thing that I like that California has done is chart out the number of cases and deaths for each county helping one to know when a county is safe to re-open.
There are several counties in the California that have no deaths and should be able to re-open now as long as people don’t leave their respective counties.
Again proven methods to prevent #COVID19 from spreading.
1)Shelter in place
2)Wearing masks
3)Hand washing
1)Shelter in place
2)Wearing masks
3)Hand washing
4)Test, trace, isolate
5)Teleworking
6)Limiting gathering size
5)Teleworking
6)Limiting gathering size
I want to get the country re-opened to a point where we don’t have to rely so heavily on shelter in place only so our economy can get back on track.
I still recommend 2-6 when you re-open, but I want to talk about how to ensure you are at a comfortable place to re-open to prevent further outbreaks.
So as I was saying California has charted based upon county the number of cases and deaths in each county.
Based upon number of deaths, I can approximate about how many people should be infected in a community because the case fatality rate for #COVID19 is around 1%, meaning for every person that dies there are 100 other people in the community with the disease on varying level of
severity, with most people having mild case of the disease.
So for Sacramento where I am from they have 57 deaths but only 1258 were found. In reality that means more like 6000 people have the disease and Sacramento is undertesting by 5-fold and that is why they did not catch all these cases.
To rectify this issue, Sacramento could open up 5x more testing centers and encourage everyone and their contacts to come in and get tested to find more people with the disease and have them isolate in the hospital if sick enough or other housing by the state with staffed
HCWs to ensure they are safe to prevent household spread.
Also since 40% of people can spread it before they have symptoms or never show symptoms that is why it is important for people to wear masks (to prevent spreading it without knowing you have symptoms) and to be tested immediately if they have been exposed to someone known
to have the disease.
#COVID19 is a preventable disease. The key is to ensure no one gets it by preventing future outbreaks, by testing, tracing and isolating appropriately, in the absence of no vaccine.
I would recommend to increase testing, tracing, isolating in underserved communities (low-income, Black, Latinx, Native) because they seem to be hit the hardest by the disease.
However, if these communities do not contract the disease by ensuring increased testing, contact tracing, and isolating, they are likely not to die from the disease because they have not caught it. Your job is to ensure that these underserved communities never get #COVID19
in the first place so that they don’t die from #COVID19.
So for example in California, Blacks are 2x as likely to die from the disease compared to many other racial groups, although for the country Blacks are 3x as likely to die from #COVID19. And Blacks are 7x as likely to die from #COVID19 in Kansas.
What likely is the difference in dying #COVID19 from the disease based on geography, it is likely an issue of policy and awareness across the country. If it a genetic race issue Blacks in California and Kansas should be dying at the same rate relative to whites and that is
not the case.
You as politicians can prevent racial health disparities by overinvesting to ensure that Blacks in your communities do not catch #COVID19 by overtesting, contact tracing, providing places to isolate and masks to level the playing field for this racial health disparity.
The racial health disparities where likely caused by the underinvesting in low-income and Black, Latinx, Native communities in the beginning of this pandemic so this can be undone by over-investing NOW.
Nonetheless, if you look at the California dashboard there are some counties that can open NOW because they don’t have any deaths, and as long as people wear masks, hand wash, have testing, tracing, isolating in place, and limit gathering size, ensure that when people do
things indoors they are at least 6 feet apart these counties can re-open up safely.
However, China waited 2 weeks, (the amount of time for a typical quarantine) after they had no deaths to re-open.
For Sacramento, the last reported death was on May 16, so Sacramento should wait until June 1st to think about re-opening but still ensure Sacramentans wear masks, hand wash, have testing, tracing,
isolating in place, and limit gathering size, and ensure that when people do things indoors they are at least 6 feet apart.
However, I recommend Sacramento needs to open 5 more testing sites, preferably, in lower income communities with POC, and have a contact tracing plan in place before they can start re-opening come June 1st.
California as whole will likely not be able to open up until sometime in July because there are still people dying in Southern California and they are not testing enough, contact tracing enough to re-open safely. Yet, Northern California the spread has not been as bad because
of early shutting down so it can open more safely now.
I hope this thread helps and I am open to feedback on my suggestions.
Because Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia opened up too quickly they have had an increase in deaths where they are having their epidemiologists manipulate data to cover up the increase in deaths. Please be truthful and do what is right by your constituents.
I never really offered my thoughts too much on re-opening because I needed more data on safe re-opening as well I wanted the country to focus more on stabilization. Although Trump unfortunately was bringing up re-opening in early April and mid April and we see how
disastrous this has been for our country.
Keeping fingers cross that Sacramento/the country will wait a few weeks more before re-opening and increase testing, contact tracing and its isolating abilities before re-opening so the US does not experience too many more deaths.
Keeping fingers cross that Sacramento/the country will wait a few weeks more before re-opening and increase testing, contact tracing and its isolating abilities before re-opening so the US does not experience too many more deaths.
