Coronavirus (non political)

I have now mastered drinking beer and listening to music on my balcony by myself. Going out almost sounds weird now.

I spent a lot of time at my local Hooters. I hope that when things open back up I have the patience to wait at least 2-3 weeks before I go there or any other restaurant. Because you're always going to get the bumrush crowd like ^^^ that are going in guns blazing.

I have now mastered drinking beer and listening to music on my balcony by myself. Going out almost sounds weird now.

I spent a lot of time at my local Hooters. I hope that when things open back up I have the patience to wait at least 2-3 weeks before I go there or any other restaurant. Because you're always going to get the bumrush crowd like ^^^ that are going in guns blazing.

As freaked out as I have been at times, and you have all unfortunately had to listen to my doom and gloom rants, for which i apologize for, there are moments of clarity where I acknowledge that essentially, the daily life of my wife and I remain essentially unchanged.

Both of us are homebodies, and the only place we both went to other than work, was the grocery store, or Lowes / walmart, etc... Even before the pandemic happened, we rarely went out to eat, and we didn't even go to the movies except a few times a year.

Through this whole thing, we have both been still going to work every day. Truth be told we only encountered a horrible line once at Walmart in Stephens City very early on, it might have been around the 3rd week of March.

Since then the Martins and that Walmart that we shop at has always had what we needed. I was lucky and had a decent supply of TP when this started, and for the last two weekends i have seen it on the shelves again in plentiful supply. Same with the canned foods, meat, etc. I understand that some cities are having intermittent meat shortages, but not here so far (knock on wood).

I am like you, i am very used to how we are living / have been living and i probably won't rush to go back out right away, i will let it die down over the next few weeks, with VA expected to go into "Phase 2", in the beginning of June. I think by then, things will look a lot more "normal".

I'm fine with staying in most of the time, I just miss having the option of going out

The results I give are extremely conservative (i.e., probably overstate the number of cases continuing past 14 days.) The numbers for total cases were

April 30th: black: 7,821, white: 4,935, and latino: 3,651.
May 14th: black: 11,328, white: 7,479, and latino: 7,864.

The chance that an unrecovered"old case" is out on the street is small (either dead or sick enough so they're not going anywhere.)

This is as opposed to new "unrecovered" cases, where the symptoms may not be incapacitating. Consider the new cases (as of May 14th vs. April 30th):

black: 3,507, and less than half (44.8%) of the cases that existed on April 30th
white: 2,544, and about half (51.6%) of the cases that existed before April 30th
latino: 4,213, which is about 1.15 times (i.e. 115.4%) of the number of cases before April 30th.

Now consider that the proportion of the state population of each group is
black: ~30%
white: ~50%
latino: ~10%.

So the latino numbers for new cases per population* is 8 times what it is for whites and about 3.5 times what it is for blacks. This (along with what I see in the street and my neighbors) leaves me with the general sense they are not getting the message and don't care if they infect somebody. (We worry about some of our latino friends who, for example, have diabetes; I just try to let them know the numbers and find out if we can help them.)

I should also note that the latino rate of increase is about double that of the white and black on EACH DAY, so it's not a statistical anomaly.

*New cases divided by the population pct.

Mike, I guess as you are a scientist, I am asking what hypothesis you are stating. If I read it right then these would be how I would state your hypotheses:

#1 PG County has the largest section of the outbreak, and should be avoided.

#2 Latinos in Md have been less willing to follow the stay at home order as it is meant to be followed, and therefore non-Latinos should avoid contact with Latinos to reduce the chance of community spread from that specific group.

#3 The Actual Recovered numbers are significantly higher than the reported based on the number of new cases and assuming a 14 to 21 day infection time.

If those are your hypotheses, I generally agree with 1 and 3. Although I think #1 is skewed by the major outbreaks in nursing homes in PG and Riderwood in Montgomery which is actually right on the border of PG if you could somehow pull out those flash points that happened early on, you might see a different statistical variance. But I don't really think that is possible.

I think you are reading the data from number 2 backwards though. I do believe it is significant that the Latino population is less likely to abide by the stay at home order (I admit this is from my walks in the park and the numbers of groups that I see that would be considered larger that 10 or not practicing social distancing so it is not a scientific number). But if we accept the untested assumption that Latinos are less likely to abide by the order, the expected numbers would be an expected higher infection and mortality rate. We see just the opposite in Md. Using your numbers (black: 5,071 cases; white: 3,531; latino: 4,943) Latino and Black active cases are basically equivalent and given the ethnic makeup of PG county, that is not completely shocking. In fact the low number of deaths in the Latino group (black:708; white: 731; latino: 137) should actually have us looking at what factors they have incorporated communally that may have a better effectiveness then stay at home orders alone.

The results I give are extremely conservative (i.e., probably overstate the number of cases continuing past 14 days.) The numbers for total cases were

April 30th: black: 7,821, white: 4,935, and latino: 3,651.
May 14th: black: 11,328, white: 7,479, and latino: 7,864.

The chance that an unrecovered"old case" is out on the street is small (either dead or sick enough so they're not going anywhere.)

This is as opposed to new "unrecovered" cases, where the symptoms may not be incapacitating. Consider the new cases (as of May 14th vs. April 30th):

black: 3,507, and less than half (44.8%) of the cases that existed on April 30th
white: 2,544, and about half (51.6%) of the cases that existed before April 30th
latino: 4,213, which is about 1.15 times (i.e. 115.4%) of the number of cases before April 30th.

Now consider that the proportion of the state population of each group is
black: ~30%
white: ~50%
latino: ~10%.

So the latino numbers for new cases per population* is 8 times what it is for whites and about 3.5 times what it is for blacks. This (along with what I see in the street and my neighbors) leaves me with the general sense they are not getting the message and don't care if they infect somebody. (We worry about some of our latino friends who, for example, have diabetes; I just try to let them know the numbers and find out if we can help them.)

I should also note that the latino rate of increase is about double that of the white and black on EACH DAY, so it's not a statistical anomaly.

*New cases divided by the population pct.
There are so many factors that simple statistics may or may not account.
For Example,

you don't have a way to account for time from infection to time or reporting which alone could likely skew one populations number tremendously. I think you could make an effective argument that whites and blacks are more likely to go for medical response sooner than latino families. This effect is for different socio-economic reasons, but clearly isn't accounted for in simply parsing the numbers like you did.
You don't account for clusters near possible outbreaks that may be unrelated to race ie nursing center that become a major factor
You don't take into account what actions in the black or white community may have lead to a specific drop outside of community spread.

for me the bottom line is you are taking a personal observation - latinos seem less concerned about social spread (which I agree based on personal observation) and then using statistics in a way that includes many confirmation biases without any use of "clean" statistical data (anonymized and representative) that could confirm or deny your point.

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I had to go to the hated Walmart yesterday. My small town pharmacy closed down end of last year and CVS prices are 3x Walmart's or more for meds. The extra 50 mile round trip to Walmart and my hatred of the place is easily over come by saving $200+ a month. Any way they had one way aisles and only one entrance to the store open, which happened to be the one furthest from the pharmacy. Just going to the pharmacy I ended up walking 4x as much as I normally do. I wonder what genius dreamed that up? The pharmacy patrons are mostly elderly and some don't look to be in too good of health. If they were going to have one entrance open it should have been the one right next to the pharmacy. The people working the pharmacy complained to management about the set-up and it fell on deaf ears.

1st time I've been inside of an actual grocery store in probably 2 months. Line is 50 people deep. Will be the last time for another couple months. I'd rather starve.

Another thing apparently being hoarded: Propane

Went to CVS, they were all out. And the guy at 7-11 said I got the last one.

1st time I've been inside of an actual grocery store in probably 2 months. Line is 50 people deep. Will be the last time for another couple months. I'd rather starve.

local Giant here in Maryland has about 95% of everything. TP meat ,chicken all good but are out of some strange stuff like "yeast" to bake with . Can't find it anywhere. No lines per say maybe one or two people in front of me.