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Pandemic Tipping Point?

We tracked the Covid-19 numbers for the last six weeks here.  That was entirely in the SIP timeframe, but things are loosening up in multiple directions now.  Restaurants are reopening for dine-in service, non-essential stores are allowing limited numbers of people at a time, and churches are resuming live services; outdoors and with waivers in some cases.  Essential stores are pretty crowded; Lowe's for example.  The county as had several large demonstrations where social distancing was ignored.  It feels like we might be at a tipping point in the coming week or two, so here are the baseline figures today from the county site at SMChealth.org.

In our county of 759,000 people 46,480 have been tested (about 6%).  The positivity rate has been declining and is now 5.4% — meaning we have either 2,528 or 2,553 cases –both numbers appear on the same data page.  That's about 335 cases per 100,000.  NYC has 2,460 cases per 100,000–more than seven times as many.  The age distribution of cases in San Mateo County has shifted to younger people with 50% being in their 20's, 30's and 40's.

Let's see how things look again in a week.

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58 responses to “Pandemic Tipping Point?”

  1. Joe

    I originally thought Santana was going to break the ice and do a show at Shoreline soon, but the music app I was reading just announced his show for a YEAR and two weeks away. Damn. Was hoping they would just sell every fourth or fifth seat staggered by row. Not a terrible idea actually.

  2. Joe

    Here we go. As of yesterday:
    The county’s new health order, effective immediately after being released Wednesday afternoon, loosens restrictions on multiple businesses including gyms, race tracks, salons, barber shops and hotels for tourism. Family-friendly venues allowed to operate include zoos, museums, theaters, campgrounds and outdoor recreational facilities. Adult venues permitted to operate include wineries, bars, casinos and card rooms.
    ——————-
    What isn’t included in that list? Church services of more than 100, but not much else.
    We are at 2,678 cases and positivity has dropped another .2% to 5.2% as 5,388 more tests have been done since last Sunday (4 days ago).

  3. hollyroller@gmail.com

    There is no benefit to go to a church other than a social event.
    Lets face the truth of all religion-
    It is based on Faith.
    Faith is the same as a wish.
    Try to get a business loan and tell a Banker your collateral is Faith.

  4. Joe

    Checking in after the first weekend of a more open activity, we now have 2,285 cases–up 147 in four days of reporting. The positivity dropped another .2% to 5.0%. This should be a very telling week.

  5. Joe

    Today’s count is 3,083, up 798 in five days (+35%). Ouch. Monday tied April 3rd as the highest day ever with 79. Positivity dropped another .1% to 4.9%. I’m betting the County backs-off on some reopening like SF and Marin have done. The question is how? It will be hard to put the dining genie back in the bottle.

  6. Joe

    The County reporting maybe through for the week because of the Fourth. And it was a big week for new cases, 3,441–up 358 since my last report including the biggest day yet at 86 on Monday. Every day this week was >60 which is a first.
    64.5% of cases are people under 50. Several people have noted some lax behavior out there and BPD had to intervene in a mask-no mask altercation at the Farmer’s Market this week.

  7. Joe

    They updated the numbers today–another big day yesterday: +87 and they added 2 to last Monday so it is still the highest day at +88.

  8. Joe

    Checking in at the end of the week, we find yesterday was a new all time high for new cases by a lot–108. We added 508 this week and it’s skewing younger. The racial make-up popped out of the data more so than in the past (at least for me) as half of the the total since day 1 are Latino/Hispanic. That would appear to be double the percentage of the population: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanmateocountycalifornia
    SF is backing off of more business reopening that were due for Monday. We’ll have to see what the County thinks about this with positivity stable at 4.9% and hospitalizations also pretty stable.
    The county reformatted the website so city data is easy to find. B’game has 84 cases so far.

  9. Joe

    Here is the weekly check-up on the numbers. San Mateo county is the only Bay Area county not locking back down yet, but David Canepa is quoted in today’s Chron saying he expects that on Monday. The county dashboard added a new metric called R-eff that gauges how many other people an infected person will infect. Greater than 1.0 means the rate the virus is spreading is increasing– it’s 1.10 now in the county.
    Our count is 4,465 up 1,024 in two weeks. Positivity ticked up to 5.0% — basically flat on almost 90,000 tests. Men have caught up to women and Latino/Hispanic is still running at twice the population percentage.
    Burlingame has 101 cases; about the same as Millbrae and dwarfed by San Mateo’s 827 cases. San Mateo is 3.4 times our size but has 8 times as many cases. Chew on that!

  10. Peter Garrison

    Read in the local paper that Canepa is against shutting down our as our patients include Sn Quentin inmates and patients from Southern California.

  11. uhap

    Pandemic?
    There are 7,800,000,000 people on the planet. (https://www.worldometers.info/ on the planet)
    Deaths are 603,000 covid deaths
    https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map — if you believe they are accurately counted and they aren’t counting people that were going to die by the end of the year with other diseases, or crashed their motorcycle but were carrying markers for the disease, etc.
    603,000/7,800,000,000 =
    0.00007730769 or 0.0077%
    Pandemic?
    really?
    Worth destroying the world’s economies? really?
    We have been played.
    I could understand reacting the way we did in February, maybe March when we didn’t know how deadly this was. But now 8 months into this thing, with the death rate so low and the successful and cheap treatments available something else is going on.
    Welcome to the new world order, and if my Burlingame neighbors and friends think they are going to get out of this thing unscathed owning their homes and enjoying the good life with the fruits of their nice portfolios they are fooling themselves.
    Sorry this is not going to end well for you because you bought into this stuff because, you know, Orange Man Bad.

  12. Cassandra

    Mayor London Breed’s interview in Vogue may be the turning point as she calls out how the white performative wokeness has done nothing for Blacks in SF. The personal attacks and destruction of property has gone too far. She would “throw grits at them.”
    People are starting to understand that Marxism and Socialism is just a way for the elites to use OPM (Other People’s Money) until the revolution eats her children.
    In the progressive Vogue magazine!

  13. Phinancier

    In support of uhap’s point we are entering earnings season and anyone who tells you what it will be like is full of tea.
    I think uhap is expecting a double dip. There’s a pretty good likelihood of that.
    And to his other point about your houses if the professional flight to far places causes the housing market to flatten; probably won’t drop but it has before, and you can’t AirBnB it to make up for lost income we could see some changes in mindset. Then the question becomes how long Newsolini gets away with his power trip?

  14. uhap

    Cassandra, per your reference I went and read the vogue interview. I did not interpret the article the way you did. That mayor is just another leftist race hustler.
    From my personal relationships I can say that people are NOT waking up to what socialism and marxism goals are. My lefty friends remain comfortably convinced that the goal is honorable and viable and if anything is wrong it is because people put a bad orange man in the white house. Sadly I find that my community of friends is shrinking by mutual choice. So be it.

  15. uhap

    Phinancier, a double dip assumes that the market can bounce back. I am more worried that this purposeful damage to the economy is going to finish off the power of the dollar and cause an earth shattering rebalancing of wealth. We are printing money to keep our wall street portfolios in the black while main street dies. And we can’t keep printing money.
    Instead a new currency will be established. One would think it is all part of a plan, but that would involve conspiracy thinking and I will not go there. But Rosa Koire (“hidden agenda”) seems to have it figured out.

  16. Joe

    Here is the weekly update on the numbers as we passed through 5,000 cases county-wide yesterday (5,022). Last Monday was a new high water mark (+138), but the new case count for the week (+557) has been low enough to keep the county “open”.
    R-eff dropped a bit to 1.03 and the positivity rate help stable at 5.1% on almost 100K tests (recall there are about 760K people in the county).
    Burlingame added 8 new cases for a total of 109 compared to San Mateo adding 68 this week. About 10% of all cases are in long-term care facilities.

  17. uhap

    I don’t see a lot of people putting up links here so I will not do that but I highly recommend a video that came out today. It’s a group of doctors on Capitol Hill talking about Covid, going against the lockdown. The West African doctor practicing in Houston is extremely passionate and will tear at your heart as she talks about her experience with hydroxychloroquine. She’s a couple minutes into the 43 min video.
    I watched it on youtube this morning but that link went away.. Hmmmm.
    But I did find it again with a different link on youtube. I don’t know but maybe that will also get taken down. So instead of posting brokenlinks I suggest just going to youtube and searching for “American Doctors Address COVID-19 Misinformation with Capitol Hill Press Conference”.
    If all of that video is suppressed by youtube you can find it on bitchute. Look for
    “Dr. Stella Immanuel”

  18. BillyGBob

    Dr. Immanuel also believes you can get cysts by dreaming about sex with demons. You should watch more of her stuff; sometimes cat sit mazey can be quite entertaining.

  19. Ugh

    Are u people even serious right now?!

  20. BillyGBob

    I wish I wasn’t, because some folks are taking her seriously.

  21. JP

    My chances of getting cysts are about the same as the Wuhan poo.

  22. Barking Dog

    Viable TV
    Youtube

  23. Joe

    The Saturday check-in is incomplete because there’s no Friday data on the County website. For the week thru Thursday:
    Cases: +522 (5,544 total)
    Positivity: 5.2% (up a tenth)
    Confirmed in hospital: 57
    Burlingame cases: 118 (up 9)
    I received this from a local workout business today:
    “San Mateo County has been on the watch list as of Wednesday due to increasing COVID-19 cases and continued to be on the watch list for 3 consecutive days. Unfortunately, we will need to temporarily close our doors for at least 3 weeks, or until case numbers go down and San Mateo County allows us to reopen.”
    I don’t get it unless Friday was some sort of blow-out new case day. Scott Morrow’s 7/20 statement is his latest here: https://www.smchealth.org/coronavirus-health-officer-updates. But if you look at “the curve” and the positivity rate, it doesn’t compute. And as he drifts into politics and making judgments about what is “immoral” in mult-decade trends, he starts to lose credibility as a public health officer.

  24. Joe

    The City newsletter has some details that explain:
    Yesterday, the County of San Mateo was added to the 3-day enhanced monitoring phase for the State’s watch list. (Learn more about the State’s monitoring list here.) If the number of positive COVID-19 cases per 100,000 San Mateo County residents doesn’t drop below 100 cases per day by end of day tomorrow, the State’s watch list restrictions will take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, August, 1.
    This means the following industries or activities must shut down, unless they can be modified to operate outside or by pick-up: gyms and fitness centers; places of worship and cultural ceremonies, like weddings and funerals; offices for non-critical infrastructure sectors; personal care services, like nail salons and body waxing; hair salons and barbershops, and shopping malls. Shops that offer tattoos, piercings, and electrolysis may not be operated outdoors and must close. Personal care services like hair salons can operate outside provided they follow State guidelines and the local municipality approves. The City of Burlingame has not determined yet whether or not such services will be permitted outside.
    ————–
    But I have to ask: if the new cases are within a couple of percent of the prior week and the positivity rate is within a tenth of a percent, what number is really driving this?

  25. Cassandra

    Resist Underground?
    Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

  26. resident

    Guaranteed the pandemic will end on November 4th. Schools will magically reopen. Bars will reopen. Hair will be cut. All will be forgiven.

  27. Cassandra

    If Biden wins.

  28. Corkalina

    I see no data that ties the businesses being told to close to the increased cases. And the labeled businesses that I have patronized are following Covid-19 protocols. What I see is higher rate of infection amongst Latinos, hot spots in East Palo Alto and Redwood City. Furthermore, deaths are predominantly occurring in the 60-100+ categories.
    I believe our civil liberties are being trampled upon. In a fashion I’ve never seen. Perhaps masking and social distancing may not slow the spread? Or maybe rioting does.

  29. BillyGBob

    Wow. Time to stockpile tinfoil because the Dear Leader Donald crazies are coming out (or just being less-selective about repeating troll-bot talking points). You honestly think this is about the US election? If so, then every European & Asian sports league shut down their season (and then only reopened without spectators) in response to efforts to influence the US election.

  30. Joe

    Thanks all. The back and forth is fun and somewhat informative. Regarding BGB’s comment, perhapshe would care to address the Euro approach to schools reopening on schedule verses sports leagues.
    I stopped by the County site since not getting Friday’s count on Saturday was bugging me. And it should have bugged me: Friday 90, Saturday 84, Sunday 37. All below 100, so it seems the reshutdown is not proceeding via the established protocol.

  31. BillyGBob

    European countries are reopening schools only after infection rates drop below a certain threshold, regardless of whether it’s on-schedule. Similarly, sports leagues restarted only after rates were below a threshold, though that threshold was apparently higher than the one for schools (possibly due to a more-controlled environment and a significantly smaller number of people involved).

  32. Bruce Dickinson

    Folks, the way CA/the County counts the cases per 100,000 in population is really poorly worded and made no sense to me as I was doing the number in my head. So, Bruce Dickinson dispatched one of my assistants to look into it and this is how it’s calculated: You take the cumulative new cases over the past 14 days, add them up and divide by the population of San Mateo County then multiply that result by 100,000. Again, the way it’s referred to on the various websites is so misleading. So basically you need for there to be less than about 54 new cases per day for 14 days before SMC gets off the watchlist.
    Bruce Dickinson’s able-bodied (and well-paid) staff comes through again! AND you guys and the City of Burlingame get all these consulting services for free!

  33. Joe

    Thank you as usual, BD. Now we know we will be closed down for quite some time even though the positivity rate has barely budged (5.3% today). More testing equals more cases. No deep analysis needed to figure that out.
    On the bright side:
    Now, with just three weeks to go, Democrats in each house are showing hard feelings over which remaining proposals deserve a vote and which will have to wait until next year.
    Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat and chair of the Judiciary Committee, lamented in a July 23 letter to Assembly members that she was left with the “unpleasant task” of making the “extremely difficult and frustrating” choice to shave dozens of bills from the 80 assigned to her committee.
    She isn’t the only Senate committee chair on the spot culling bills. Sens. Steve Glazer and Richard Pan told us about their own hard decisions trimming their calendars.
    —————–
    A lot less damage emanating from Sacramento this session!

  34. Joe

    We have a Big Oops here since July 25th–a week and a half ago and encompassing the timeframe that SM County re-closed many buinesses:
    County health officials are leading blind through a statewide coronavirus resurgence following news of a technical problem at the state level which has resulted in the distribution of incomplete lab testing data.
    Callagy warned the public to not rely on the county dashboard data, calling the numbers inaccurate.
    As of the weekend and until the county is removed from the watchlist, all indoor dining, hair salons, barbershops, gyms, and places of worship were required to close. Callagy, like many other local officials, said the restrictions are unwarranted and do not address the root cause for why the cases have surged.
    https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/officials-leading-blind/article_8f716ad2-d799-11ea-8a7b-0be0ff8450c3#utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1596722405&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline
    You have to love that last bit.

  35. Barking Dog

    https://www.sfgate.com/coronavirus/article/San-Mateo-County-watch-list-Scott-Morrow-state-CA-15464983.php

  36. Bruce Dickinson

    Bruce Dickinson knows that some people have been griping about Scott Morrow and his last statement (which I think was hard to swallow because there was so much truth in it), however in my book, just taking into account everything he has said, he seems to be one of the few voices of logic and reason amid the chaos. He is absolutely right in that what is transmitting COVID are the gatherings of families and friends..it has zero to do with nail salons, barber shops and other businesses being open. In fact, by closing things down more, you are actually promoting people to get together at home with more family and friends and creating more potential virus spread. The opposite ban should be happening (controlling behavior at home), per his suggestion to really slow down the spread.
    This is what you get when you have a Nanny State that tries to dictate every aspect of your life. It’s pretty clear that some of these measures and statistics (including the one I had my able bodied staff calculate for edification) are pulled out of someone’s derriere and really say nothing about how badly the virus is actually spreading and the overall risk to the community.
    San Mateo County looks like it’s in pretty good shape to me, and anyone advocating that there should be zero cases just isn’t grounded in reality. All these protocols were about “flattening the curve and based on the hospital data, there is more than enough headroom to handle the cases.
    Zero sickness is a fantasy outcome and reflects a really narrow understanding of what humans have faced in the past (e.g. Polio, Spanish Flu, Smallpox, etc).
    We have lived way too comfortable lives..time to get a Street Smarts education from Professor Dickinson!

  37. Joe

    The news that the state’s data is bad took a bit of wind out of the sails for reporting said data, but here are the reported changes for the last 11 days:
    Cases: Up 1,096 to 6,640. Right at 100 per day.
    Positivity: 5.4% up .2%
    Burlingame cases: 130. Up 12 in 11 days.

  38. resident

    Biden on August 12
    Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday called for a nationwide mask mandate to help fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
    “Every American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Del.
    Like I said, right after Election Day

  39. Joe

    Here’s the Saturday check-in on the data:
    Total Cases: 8,074
    Positivity: 5.6% (very stable)
    R-eff: Big drop to .77 (the average number of people a case will infect, no indication of why the drop)
    Burlingame cases: 172
    The banners proclaiming the data is still incomplete from the state are still everywhere on the County site.

  40. Cassandra

    Based on the CDC’s data, 94% of people have died with coronavirus, along with one or more other underlying health issues. The CDC’s Aug. 28 update stated that there were 167,558 COVID-19 total deaths, which means 10,053 died solely of coronavirus alone with no other health conditions.
    The CDC’s figures are derived from provisional death counts, which are based on death certificate data received and coded by the National Center for Health Statistics.
    Compare with number of businesses ruined?

  41. BillyGBob

    So…if i get your “logic”, if I have a torn ACL (certainly an underlying health condition) and get killed by a DUI driver running a red light because my leg couldn’t get me out of the way, my death can not be used as a reason to try to reduce or eliminate DUIs. Or God forbid, I was born with an autoimmune disease that meant I couldn’t fight off covid….thanks for sacrificing me on the altar of someone else’s economic benefit.
    According to the CDC, 47% of US adults have health conditions that put them at risk for severe COVID-19. That’s why we lock down, wear masks, and wash hands.

  42. The HepCat

    It’s not “someone else’s economic benefit”. It’s every freaking person’s economic benefit. The whole dang country. The lockdown is hurting millions of people in ways we don’t even comprehend right now, so yeah. Meander up to the alter.

  43. Barking Dog

    https://thedcpatriot.com/bombshell-cdc-says-94-of-all-covid-19-deaths-had-underlying-medical-conditions/

  44. Joe

    Here’s the Saturday check-up:
    543 new cases this week (8,617 total), so less than 100 per day.
    Positivity stable at 5.7%
    R-eff stable at 0.79
    The county webpage for cases-by-city is unresponsive, so no update on B’game cases.
    It looks like playgrounds will be the next battlefield:
    Sheila Canzian, the Parks and Recreation director of San Mateo said in a statement that city staff share frustrations of residents, adding “not much in this pandemic has made sense,” but noted local municipalities cannot implement less restrictive guidelines than that of the state.
    https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/parents-call-for-playgrounds-to-reopen-following-expanded-business-operations-in-san-mateo-county/article_d909dd6a-ef21-11ea-93c7-4f9fa3c18be6

  45. Joe

    The County website resolved its problem. Burlingame now has 189 cases, so +17 this week.

  46. Joe

    Here is your Saturday check-in on the numbers since last week:
    New Cases: 460….less than 100 per day.
    Positivity: 5.7%….exactly the same.
    R-eff: .95….up about .2 but no explanation for why.
    New cases in B’game: 18
    And in news you likely won’t read in the Chronicle:
    Leaders of some rural California counties are accusing Gov. Gavin Newsom of improperly withholding federal coronavirus relief funds to force them to slow business reopenings.
    In an effort to support those county supervisors, California’s seven-member GOP congressional delegation on Friday asked the U.S. Treasury Department’s Inspector General to audit California’s approach to distributing the relief money.
    The letter says California is “creating winners and losers,” among counties with its approach and may be violating the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which was signed by President Trump in March.
    States were responsible for distributing the money to other local governments, including 95% of U.S. counties, according to the National Association of Counties, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Only 16 of California’s 58 counties got their money directly from the federal government.
    Mr. Newsom waited until he had signed the state budget on June 29 before allowing the money to begin flowing to the state’s smaller cities and counties.
    —————–
    One has to wonder if this is part or all of the reason why SMC is going so slowly in the face of modest numbers of new cases???

  47. Cassandra

    Have to stop voting for Democrats…
    So easy.
    Gov. Newsom complains about the climate about which he can’t be held personally responsible, but wastes money on HSR instead of investing the money in forest management.

  48. resident

    Where is the like button, Cassandra?

  49. hmm

    You mean those NATIONAL forests? So,a decade long drought, soaring temps and random lightning events that I have never seen in my 36 years here have nothing to do with these fires? Should they install irrigation out in the wilderness?
    PGE is off the hook this year however so blame the Democrats (?)

  50. Sign Me Up

    Regardless of Joe’s water concerns (that are well founded) the last two years have not been drought years. Last year was a huge water year and this year was not bad. This is terrible forest management plain and simple. Newsom can try to not let a good catastrophe go to waste with his climate change speeches but it still his and Jerry Brown’s fault. Plain and simple. Temperatures are not far off normal and lightning is not as rare as 36 year bay area people would like to think. It’s Paradise all over again. If Newsom wants to be president before Kamala he needs to do better.

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