Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department (PHD) reports 70 new COVID-19 cases during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.
Of the 70 new cases, 65 are related to the outbreak at the Federal Penitentiary in Lompoc. PHD Director Dr. Van Do-Reynoso confirmed the significant rise in numbers at the prison is due to increased testing as prison staff work to test 100% of its population to slow the spread of transmission.
Inmates who test negative are separate from those who test positive. However, the majority of inmates who test positive have mild to no symptoms, stated Dr. Do-Reynoso.
The county is now reporting 613 total cases, 172 are related to the outbreak in the Lompoc prison while 441 are in the community. Of the 441 confirmed community cases, 355 have fully recovered, 43 are quarantined at home, 24 are hospitalized with 10 in the intensive care unit (ICU). There have been 9 deaths. Further details on each case can be found here.
The state-operated community testing site that opened in Santa Maria on Tuesday completed 116 tests for residents, the results are pending.
A testing site at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara is scheduled to open on Thursday and another site at the Anderson Recreation Center in Lompoc is scheduled to open on Friday. All three sites will be open for the next 60 days.
These sites will help PHD to quickly identify positive cases that can be isolated to limit infection.
Community members are encouraged to take advantage of this local testing option. Tests are administered regardless of language, insurance or immigration status, and can be billed to your insurance or provided at no cost.
Testing is by appointment only and Santa Barbara County residents can make a request online at https://lhi.care/covidtesting or by calling 888-634-1123.
Due to the outbreak in the prison and an increase in community testing, PHD is reevaluating the way they present data and will implement changes in the coming days.
Cottage Health Numbers
Below is a status update as of May 6, 2020.
· Cottage Health is caring for a total of 225 patients across all campuses.
· 169 are acute care patients; 204 acute care beds remain available.
· In surge planning, capacity is identified for adding 270 acute care beds.
· Of the 169 patients, 17 patients are on ventilators; 58 ventilators remain available (adult, pediatric and neonatal ventilators).
· Of the 169 patients, 18 are in isolation with COVID-19 symptoms; 13 are confirmed COVID-19 positive.
· Of 18 patients in isolation, 7 patients are in critical care.
· Cottage has collected 4,633 cumulative test samples: 234 resulted in positive, 4,311 resulted in negative, and 88 are pending. In most of these tests, patients did not require hospital admission.
SLO & Ventura Counties
As of Wednesday, San Luis Obispo county reports 208 total cases. Of those, 160 have recovered, 48 are quarantined at home, 5 are hospitalized with 3 in the ICU, and there has been 1 death.
Ventura County reports 608 total cases. Of those, 419 have recovered, 170 are quarantined at home, 23 are hospitalized with 11 in the ICU, and there have been 19 deaths.
Why are they not reporting deaths in these numbers? There have been deaths. Also, the SB County numbers do not add up.
5% of Cottage tests were positive, and county-wide 11.4% of all tests done were positive. Nationally, 15.4% of tests have come back positive. Keep in mind that these positives account for only 0.3% of the total population. I’m curious to see what impact the new testing centers will make on these numbers, because I keep reading comments about how most people are probably infected and asymptomatic. The numbers thus far do not support that hypothesis.
5:25 – because the government is lying and out to get you….. BOO!
Easy to be confused. Are the Cottage numbers included in or are in addition to the county numbers? County claims 24 people hospitalized with 10 in ICU. Cottage claims 225 people in hospital and 169 in acute care including 18 with COVID symptoms but only 13 confirmed. What’s with the other 5? 7 patients critical. Is that in addition to or including the 10 in ICU? Then, if you add up the numbers for community test positives, they simply don’t add up. The bottom line, and then number that would actually disclose *your* risk of running into someone who has COVID and can get YOU sick is, well, a mystery. But go ahead. Freak out. Cover yourself. Avoid walking your dog. Using the county’s numbers for test-positives, increasing that by a factor of 10, dividing by the number of people in the community, the risk of bumping in to someone with COVID is really, really, really small. They wont tell you that.
The calculation you propose comes out to 1.4%. I guess people can argue it those odds are high or not. Would you take a job where you might not get paid 3 of 200 days you work? I wouldn’t. Conversely, that “low” number also means that 98.6% of people are still not immune.
@CSP that is 1.4% of confirmed cases. I’d love to know the actual rate when likely hundreds of thousands (if not more) have been asymptomatic, mildly symptomatic, or ill with the virus in the first three months of 2020. That actual percentage is a fraction of a percent, guaranteed.
Tests will be provided at no cost.
What about treatment? Who wants to be tested, discovered positive, forcibly quarantined, deprived of income, and presented a bill at the end of the day by Cottage Hospital? The for-profit health system sucks big time. The only way we can vanquish this virus is through socialized health care. When are people going to wake up?
If you are hospitalized, tell them you don’t want to be placed on a ventilator. In NY, 88% of those who were, died. Also, tell them to “prone” you. Essentially they place you on your stomach and it opens up your lungs so you get more oxygen.
Sweden’s healthcare professionals are very concerned about the political, not medical, decision to not follow the lead of the other Scandinavian countries and enforce physical distancing. In effect, their healthcare workers and nursing home population are being sacrificed in an experiment that isn’t working well compared to their neighbors. This has nothing to do with a socialized safety net, which would have saved many lives here among those too poor to seek care.
CHIP and LINA: I figured someone would point out the lack of a lockdown in Sweden. However, despite that, the infection rate in the US is 0.38%, while in Sweden it’s barely 0.25%. They have fewer infections per capita, which means their staggeringly large fatality rate, compared to the US, lies in the difference between our healthcare system and their. End of story.
I’m not at all keen on socialized medicine. However, I don’t think you are being fair to Sweden. Their fatality numbers are higher in large part because they attribute many deaths to the virus that the US and other countries would not. For example, a death attributed to heart failure in the US would be attributed to the virus in Sweden if the deceased tested positive, even if the cause of death was completely unrelated to the virus. There is a big difference between dying with the virus and dying from the virus. I think a great deal of caution is required comparing statistics between different countries due to differences in how deaths are categorized.
And yet all their neighbors with single-payer healthcare systems are doing much better, so it’s not the healthcare system that is causing the poor outcome – it’s the let everybody get sick policy.
Source?
MAC: Let’s look at Sweden and their neighbors and compare them to the US. All of the numbers I’m going to present were calculated from data that is freely available (population, positive cases, and number dead). If you take the mortality rate (%) and divide it by the percent infected you end up with a dimensionless number that I believe is a good indicator for the fitness of a country’s healthcare with respect to this pandemic. For this healthcare factor (%fatal/%infected), big numbers are bad and small numbers are good. Here are the factors for the US, Sweden and its neighbors, ranked from best to worse. US (15.36), Norway (18.14), Denmark (29.47), Finland (43.66), and Sweden (51.80). Norway isn’t too bad, the rest are terrible, and the US still is the best. So much for the benefits of socialized healthcare.
Are you actually saying that under socialized medicine you wouldn’t be “forcibly quarantined and deprived of income?” I thought President Obama did a good job with implementing “Obama Care.” It works great for lots of people. And Medi-Cal is like socialized medicine. It’s free and available here.
Here is an interesting article about Sweden’s approach compared to others. It also explains a lot of the differences in how deaths are attributed to the virus, or not, in different countries. https://reason.com/2020/04/17/in-sweden-will-voluntary-self-isolation-work-better-than-state-enforced-lockdowns-in-the-long-run/
CHIP: Yes, it’s an interesting article, but with lots of problems. First, it’s outdated and I’d like to see them update it given how rapidly things have progressed in the past 3 weeks. Second, it’s thin on actual data and the few numbers they assert as facts have no references. Lastly, it’s far from dispassion and even caps off the article with a political statement. Still, it poses some really interesting ideas that could explain Sweden’s numbers, but without serious evidence for those statements it remains conjecture. Additionally, with respect to padding of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, one could easily look at the deaths from cancer and heart attacks in nursing homes for the past decade, make a baseline, and subtract it from the new numbers as a crude form of correction. This should be trivial since the article, two paragraphs before, claims that Sweden has a “disturbingly nosy government” that keeps track of everything. I get that there may be issues with over- and under-reporting worldwide, but is it so large that it really explains why so few people in Sweden test positive, but their mortality is so high? As I’ve affirmed several times, I don’t believe it’s because they haven’t shut down their country, otherwise the positive cases should be larger because the virus is spreading. I’m saying that their healthcare system is not as great as some people have been claiming. Swedes are either in poor overall health to begin with and more susceptible to bad outcomes, they’re not protecting their vulnerable in nursing homes, or they’re simply not willing or able to put in the same effort into saving patients who end up being hospitalized. Again, I’m so glad I’m not in Sweden or relying on a similar model of healthcare.
Yup, it’s the HIPPA thing. Basically, it’s none of your business unless you have a right-to-know. That could be immediate family, insurance company, the person you gave power-of-attorney to, Google…whatever. Who would ever want to carry a tracking device? How about: anyone/everyone/all of us with a cell phone. Isn’t it strange when you look up ‘Kitty Pajamas’ on the Googs, a day later, you gettin’ ads for PJs for the kitties on your mobile phone, tablet, and all of your contacts get the same ads.
@11:26 Ha just roll them over it will clear their lungs. How about standing them on their heads? Somersaults? The Hokie Pokie?
I think I am getting more worried about the rise in crime than the virus–I worry for the masked men and women (now police) now trying to stop a new class of desperados. A mail robbery in 2020? And on Canon Perdido (lost canon). Or maybe, it is a person so lonely without family, they need to read other people’s love letters home. Oh well, this happened in the old historic district! Who can say if was a person who wanted to get back a love letter full of forgiveness or hate? Or an anonymous letter sent to the Government with a list of “illegal” local drug dealers now that “drug seduction” is legal. In these COVID Loneliness moments–all sorts of explanations come into focus. Had to be someone who knew someone who mailed something, and who wanted something, and somehow knew how to break the door open. Got cameras! Hello that is the front area. More on this please.
It’s obvious you have no idea what you are talking about – and only typing to make yourself feel important.
It has been said there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. (attributed to Mark Twain). As someone who taught social statistics, and uses them occasionally to debunk dangerous thinking. They are dangerous as instruments of influence and persuasive in the face of a weak, or missing argument. I am going crazy watching this spectacle of multiple and confusing spreadsheets of massive data. What does it all mean? The cliche: “Follow the science”? As Deming, father of the Quality Movement asserted,” If you weigh yourself a hundred times a day, you will not lose weight if nothing else changes”. Just for the record, people who thought the earth was flat followed the “science”, which is still about trial and ERROR, observation and best guesses, not ultimate truth, very humiliating later when one is wrong. Science is about ongoing inquiry, and other confusing findings that promote inquiry, more than certitude and arrogance. Every day now, we face confusing opinions by so called “experts” who should tell us to be on the lookout for what we DON’T know, cannot see, and they cannot either. Here is a new interpretation looking at beloved “data” banks : ” Very interesting, smokers are less likely to get this, says CDC and other researchers, but then in another study, people with chronic lung issues from smoking are highest risk.” Should we all start smoking again? Here is a statistic: China has the largest population of smokers, 316 million or so, the size almost of our whole population. Their death rate is 82,000 from this (really?) 1.4% ? More die from smoking–over a million each year. So who can we believe? Remember all those experts describing an elephant. All the blindmen described something different as an elephant and could prove it . And the composition of elephant dung is the only thing real and provable. Only the high risk get a test? But only if they have symptoms? How then do we know the real survival rate and guidelines for the onset? History will love this pandemic just like those last ones. It ‘s the assumptions and models that kill. And I thought “computer viruses” were the worst killers of economies. Let’s just focus on how to keep this in the “mild state”. Let’s ensure we have products we need readily accessible for “less contagion” when we return to commerce since we don’t know who is actually contagious. I’ll wear a mask, wash my hands, but won’t smoke. And a test is only a dip in the river of time flowing. So much humor to help us: “If you have a glass of wine in each hand you won’t touch your face…” True or is it?
Why can’t the SB Public Health Dept share more details about the new cases?
“As has been their practice, public health officials refused to provide additional details about the latest COVID-19 fatality, including gender and the nature of the underlying health condition.“
I think you make an excellent point. Unknowns, uncertainties, and margins of error are a critical part of science. A true scientist should always disclose unknowns and uncertainties associated with his work. Presenting “science” as absolute truth is misleading.
That is very interesting to hear given all the panic about the desperate shortage of ventilators a few weeks ago. If this 88% figure is true, a ventilator sounds more like a death sentence than anything. So all that uproar about the ventilator shortage and scrambling to produce more vents was a complete waste of time???
MJACKMAN44 – I had a stats prof who had a saying “figures don’t lie but liars can figure”. Sage advice.
Most people that go on the vent DO come off. The average time for a covid pt on a vent is 11 days. They DO save lives and here locally at SB Cottage we have seen AMAZING success with them. NY and SB has so many differences, you can’t compare our situation with theirs. What’s going on there is extreme and people are waiting until they are seriously sick before going to the hospitals. If you have a fever and tight chest – get to the ER, don’t wait.
HIPPA
Yes, science is not perfect, but it is contributing to a better understanding of this disease and helping to track new outbreaks. This does take time and patience. The public wants answers today, and the press is trying to provide them. I would like to see people focus on what we know, namely that social distancing, wearing masks and washing our hands is helpful. These are relatively easy things to do. I do believe that more of our time and energy should be on doing what we can to rescue our economy, while staying safe. This disease might be around for a long time. We need to figure out how to live with it.
HIPAA, actually
Drivel…..
1036am: Studies showed the ventilators do more damage to Covid lungs because the damage the virus creates is different than other respiratory illnesses. Basically the strong forced inspiration from the vents caused fatal damage to patients that waited weeks to get treatment (due to the slow test result process).
It’s difficult to compare Sweden’s deaths to those of other countries for several reasons. First, they are among the worlds most conservative in attributing deaths to the virus. People who died of other causes but tested positive for the virus are counted as virus deaths, even when the virus had nothing to do with their death. Sweden’s neighbors and most other countries use different methodologies that attribute far fewer deaths to the virus. Sweden’s approach is also more sustainable than the “lockdown” type approaches used in most other countries. People in the US and other countries are becoming less compliant by the day, while the Swedes can sustain voluntary protective measures. In addition, Sweden is closing in on herd immunity. The spread of the virus will slow until it fizzles out and Sweden will stop seeing new deaths. After Sweden’s outbreak is over, other countries are likely to catch up to Sweden’s death count as they experience second waves of the outbreak. Rather than saving lives, the lockdown measures will result in the same loss of life over a slightly longer time period along with economic self destruction. Finally, other countries like the US will experience countless deaths caused by heavy handed government responses to the virus. Sweden has minimized the damage to its economy, unemployment, and all the consequences that come with that. In short, Sweden will be back to normal soon while other countries will continue to deal with the virus for months to come along with the economic fallout. A few months from now, I suspect most countries will wish they had taken Sweden’s path.
Advocates of socialized health care, such as Bernie Sanders, point to Sweden as the ideal model. You claim that such a model of healthcare “can vanquish this virus”. Let’s examine the differences between the US and Sweden with respect to SARS-CoV-2. The US population is 327.2 million, while Sweden has only 9.8 million. Despite this, the US death per million people due to SARS-CoV-2 is only 226, while in Sweden it’s 297 per million people. That’s a 31.4% increase! Hardly a selling point for the merits of socialized healthcare.