Author: Bear

The CDC released an interesting study, Community and Close Contact Exposures Associated with COVID-19 Among Symptomatic Adults ≥18 Years in 11 Outpatient Health Care Facilities — United States, July 2020. This part in particular got my attention:

Reported use of cloth face covering or mask 14 days before illness onset
Never: 3.9%
Rarely: 3.9%
Sometimes: 7.2%
Often: 14.4%
Always: 70.6%

So much for masks. I’m in the “rarely” category and if I got ChinCOVID, I never even noticed.

U07.1 is the ICD-10 code for death by SARS-CoV-2; ChinCOVID. Or maybe ChimCOVID. Or, “Well, it could’ve been ChinCOVID.”

Through an interesting coincidental confluence of news reports on COVID deaths in my area, an obituary, and DPH ChinCOVID reports, I discovered an odd little detail. One of our recent deaths was in a area nursing home…

…where he was on hospice. You know: end of life care. Because he was already dying of something else.

But… COVID.

Let’s lead with the good news. This is what the new daily cases graph (by date of onset) looks like in Georgia.

That peak is July 6; three months ago. As you can see, new cases are dropping like a flamed out F-4 Phantom.* The state lifted its lockdown May 1st. Around here, the only people you ever saw wearing masks were folks with co-morbidities obvious to the average eye, those in stores requiring masks, and damned near no one else.

To date, I personally know exactly one person who who tested positive. That person recovered months ago, and no else in that household ever popped positive.

The bad news is unconfirmed rumors I’ve heard about a long term care facility in my county. Most of the details can’t be confirmed without — probably — violating HIPAA, so I won’t repeat the shocking claims. But the state’s Long-Term Care Facility COVID-19 Report is certainly suggestive.

Residents: 44
COVID-positive Residents: 32
Resident COVID Deaths: 7
Residents Recovered: 27
COVID-positive Staff: 39

Whatever the truth of the rumors, ChinCOVID is clearly out of control in there. I didn’t log the numbers before, but the last time I looked at the report, I think deaths were at four.

The fact is, my entire county has logged 16 ChinCOVID deaths, and seven of them came out of one single 44-resident facility. I strongly suspect the state DPH is watching this facility very closely now; an investigation is certainly warranted, in my view. From the beginning of this “pandemic” until late September, the county had kept deaths down to ten. Suddenly we surged with seven more. Cross referencing the COVID-19 Status Report with the LTCF Report, I think those seven were this facility (again suggestive, not conclusive).

Another suggestive data point is that only people people under the age of sixty have died of ChinCOVID in my county (as of 10/3/2020). Nine deaths were 80+ years-old. Suppose seven of those were in a nrsing home?

* Those were still in service when I was in the Air Force, and the morbid observation/joke was that they had the glide ratio of an aerodynamic brick without the engines. But… damn; watching them take off at dusk with afterburners was cool.