Mendocino County Confirms 4th Case of COVID-19
Press release from the County of Mendocino:
The Mendocino County Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan has confirmed a fourth case of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in Mendocino County. Like the other three cases in Mendocino County, this case is thought to be travel related and does not appear to indicate community spread. The individual is from Inland Mendocino County, is in stable condition, in isolation at home with active public health monitoring, did not require hospitalization, and poses no risk to the public at this time.
Regarding the new COVID-19 case, Dr. Doohan stated, “Public Health was notified this afternoon of a fourth COVID-19 case. This person is on home isolation, doing well and does not pose a risk to the public. The individual is being actively monitored by public health along with their primary healthcare provider. The healthcare facility where this case was identified used proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and handled this case in an exemplary manner that protected their healthcare workers, staff and patients from exposure.”
Like the third case, this individual was identified through the Public Health Lab system in coordination with our healthcare providers. Across the nation, the current situation for COVID-19 testing is highly problematic due to shortages of the test sampling materials and limited testing capacity. In response to this challenge, Mendocino County Public Health has developed a process for facilitating COVID-19 testing for our healthcare partners. Currently, the Mendocino County Public Health department can facilitate testing through our affiliated Public Health lab, located in Santa Rosa. Given the current restricted access to COVID-19 testing supplies and resources, the testing that Public Health facilitates is upon request by healthcare partners such as clinics and hospitals for symptomatic patients from the following categories: healthcare workers, public safety personnel, people of high public health risk (nursing home residents, incarcerated people, homeless), high risk exposure (due to travel or contact) and emergency room and hospitalized patients in whom the test result will change management of the patient.
Anyone who is tested for COVID-19 MUST remain in isolation until further directed by their clinician who ordered the test. People who are sick and being evaluated for COVID-19 can spread the disease unless they stay in isolation away from other people.
The Public Health facilitation of COVID-19 testing is a top priority so that our healthcare partners can increase testing efficiency and ensure that individuals most at risk can be tested promptly.
Below are the COVID-19 testing numbers as of March 29, 2020 at 3:00 p.m.
Public Health Lab:
- Negatives: 42
- Positives: 2
- Pending: 14
- Total:58
Commercial Lab (Quest):
- Negatives: 101
- Positives: 2
- Pending: 28
- Total: 131
Of the four positive cases, one has recovered fully and three are in active public health monitoring and following Center for Disease Control home isolation guidance.
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Welp, looks like they still don’t have much in the way of tests…
Looks like they are not going to tell you how many they have in the county but they certainly know who they are going to blame ahead of time
“Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced the new regulations on Monday after Australian newspapers reported Chinese companies had snapped up Australian medical supplies in recent weeks for shipment to China.” https://www.wpxi.com/news/world/latest-us-seeking/TBYSZR2JNCLOQ43X3TMLRVABT4/
“Blank said government labs in the U.S. are competing for supplies with larger commercial labs and governments around the world. In conference calls this week with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some lab staff warned that they may have to shut down testing within days due to lack of components, Blank said.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/coronavirus/2020/3/20/21188654/coronavirus-testing-supply-shortage
“A spokesman for Qiagen, a top supplier of the reagents, said the pandemic was “challenging our capacity to supply certain products” and that it would increase production in facilities in Germany, Spain and Maryland. The company will also hire additional employees and adjust staffing to cover three shifts, working seven days per week.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-11/coronavirus-testing-kits-lack-key-ingredient-causing-confusion
“As the coronavirus took hold in Wuhan earlier this year, staff from the Chinese government-backed global property giant Greenland Group were instructed to put their normal work on hold and source bulk supplies of essential medical items to ship back to China.
A whistleblower from the company has told the Herald it was a worldwide Greenland effort – and the Sydney office was no different, sourcing bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes, hand sanitisers, gloves and Panadol for shipping.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/chinese-backed-company-s-mission-to-source-australian-medical-supplies-20200325-p54du8.html
“China made half the world’s masks before the coronavirus emerged there, and it has expanded production nearly 12-fold since then. But it has claimed mask factory output for itself. Purchases and donations also brought China a big chunk of the world’s supply from elsewhere.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html
Any comment on Dr. Fauci’s projection of 100,000 to 200,000 US deaths from this outbreak? Panic mongering?
Yes. The panic mongering ugliness comes not because covid-19 isn’t a serious illness but because the people selling the panic are only making a difficult situation worse. They have zero power to change anything except their own behavior and no positive influence encourage others to behave well too. That includes the comment that Fauci expects 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. What he really said was “To be honest with you, we don’t really have any firm idea,” Fauci said. “There are things called models. And when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions. And the model is only as good and as accurate as your assumptions. And whenever the modelers come in, they give a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario. Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I have never seen a model of the diseases that I have dealt [with] where the worst-case scenario actually came out. ” and “”Looking at what we’re seeing now,” Fauci said, “we’re going to have millions of cases” in the United States, and it is reasonable to expect “between 100,000 and 200,000” deaths. But he cautioned that “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection, when it’s such a moving target, that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.” And “Based on the available data, which are very limited in the absence of wide testing, it surely is not safe to assume that COVID-19 is only slightly more deadly than the seasonal flu. But neither is it reasonable to assume that the disease is 13 times as deadly. The truth, as Fauci says, is likely to be “somewhere in the middle.””
https://reason.com/2020/03/30/as-trump-imagines-2-2-million-deaths-from-covid-19-in-the-u-s-a-top-federal-disease-expert-cautions-against-believing-worst-case-scenarios/
In other words, it could be that bad or it could not be that bad DEPENDING ON HOW PEOPLE BEHAVE in the face of uncertainty. And that’s really what Fauci said- it’s uncertain. And people don’t behave sensibly when frightened. Made cautious yes. So instead of constantly beating the drums about doom when no one really knows anything, try beating the drum on what we can do to try to improve the end result. In fact, I can’t see any attraction to doing otherwise.
Interesting observation of the Spanish flu in 1918. Those who caught it later in the outbreak didn’t get as sick; https://buckrail.com/covid-nothing-new-have-we-learned-anything/
“One curious development noted by doctors of the early 20th Century is the later in the pandemic someone got sick, the milder the symptoms and less likely they would die from it.
Survivors of the first wave enjoyed significant resistance to the second and third waves, offering compelling evidence that all were caused by the same virus. Compare that to the 1889-90 pandemic, which also came in waves, where it was the third wave that was the most lethal.
In the Spanish Influenza outbreak, even if isolation only slowed the virus, it had some value. One of the more interesting epidemiologic findings in 1918 was that the later in the second wave someone got sick, the less likely he or she was to die, and the milder the illness was likely to be.
This was true in terms of how late in the second wave the virus struck a given area, and, more curiously, it was also true within an area. For instance, cities struck later tended to suffer less, and individuals in a given city sickened later also tended to suffer less.
West coast American cities, hit later in the spread, had lower death rates than east coast cities; and Australia, which was did not experience the second wave until 1919, had the lowest death rate of any developed country.
Further, in the 1918-19 pandemic, someone who got sick four days into an outbreak in one place was more likely to develop a viral pneumonia that progressed to ARDS than someone who got sick four weeks into the outbreak in the same place. The earlier patients were also more likely to develop secondary bacterial pneumonia, and to die from it.
Late in the winter of 1919-20, the third wave of the plague swung through the U.S. to clean up anyone missed in 1918. The world’s deadliest disease, in terms of mortality in a set amount of time, finally fizzled in summer 1920.”
Sometimes variants of a bug that cause too much illness too fast kill off too many of their hosts to survive for very long and the weaker variants pass on to more people. Hopefully this happens here.
You’re right nope. Coughing and a 102 temperature will not get tested. Turmup said he doesn’t like bad numbers so the fewer tests the lower the bad numbers are
The bad part is that the fewer the tests, but still recording the number of deaths, skews up the mortality percentage, making it far higher than it really is.
Possibly not all deaths of COVID are being reported as COVID either. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronavirus-update-dead-covid19-doctors-hospitals
Kym- You are correct. My second hand info is from a good friend, an intelligent nurse down in Santa Rosa who informs me that the Cause Of Death (COD) in some cases is being listed as “viral pneumonia”. Even though everybody involved is pretty sure it is Covid they are not allowed to say so w/o a positive test. And they don’t have enough tests so they are not wasting them on dead people! Every county in the Bay Area has experienced at least one of these. So…take numbers with a big grain of salt! I guess people love numbers- maybe it gives them some feeling of control? But these numbers – cases, deaths, recoveries- are very unreliable. Well…we can use them as bottom, lowest possible numbers I guess! But the real numbers are somewhere above the posted numbers. In the case of infected people possibly MUCH higher.
Thanks Kym and Farce. Kind of suspected that.
Maybe it skews the percentage of people infected who die, but not of people who get ill enough to compel a test.
There are too many statistical confounds this early in the expanding outbreaks to have a clear shot at a mortality rate of any kind. The set closest to one from which meaningful conclusions can be derived is from China, where the number of cases is approaching some background level where the number of new cases will be in equilibrium with those recovering or dying. Through the outbreak, the number of deaths comes to about 3.5% of confirmed cases. That’s in the ballpark of what the Texas doctor has reported from his experience: 81% mild symptoms, 14% hospitalized (non-critical), and 5% critical. As reported elsewhere, the prognosis for critical patients on ventilators is not good.
We should keep in mind that thoroughness of testing, while potentially skewing comparative data from different healthcare systems, is itself an aspect of performance of a healthcare system.
China’s numbers might not be much better. Some controversial things there as well.
South Korea’s might be better.
Oooo now I’m panicked, .004% of the population of Mendocino has it. Be afraid, run and hide.
Those are the ones that have a positive test. Note the part about how few tests have been done?
I am no expert by any means however I am a medic. The tests are being given to those who qualify. You cannot just simply get sick and assume you need to be tested. The media gets things jacked up for folks. First tests are not available then they are then nobody is getting tested and then now they are come on quit telling half truths. If you have the criteria you will get tested, fever, dry cough, sore throat and difficulty breathing. These are also signs of the flu and other illnesses that do not even reflect covid-19. So please quit jumping on the bash government bandwagon and inform yourself outside of any news agency from NY or LA. This will help to reassure you of what is really happening. There is a huge excess of unused brand new ventilators sitting in hospitals, so yes the feds have done everything they have been asked to do. Masks are not so abundant thanks 3m for contracting in China, but they are coming.
One last note for folks to do STAY HOME!!!! I have been on duty and seen way to many people going out and congregating in places. If this continues cause you all know more than Doctors, first responders and nurses I wish you good luck in staying healthy cause you wont.
Politics are not needed in this time were all facing so if you love the president and hate nancy or the other way around just STFU nobody in a hospital, ambulance or fire engine cares.
Testing is difficult to get. Mendocino County says so in this press release, “Across the nation, the current situation for COVID-19 testing is highly problematic due to shortages of the test sampling materials and limited testing capacity.”
No government agency on the face of the earth thinks they have enough resources to do their jobs as directed. That would be accepting blame and blame is always part a politician’s job to inflict on others.
The release did not say how many tests are available. Only threw in the bit about their being problems with national, ie not their’s, supplies. I do not blame them. It’s not their fault that the number of people demanding tests can’t get them.
Somehow there is this idea being repeated that testing everyone would have saved us. But that ignores the fact that was always impossible. There are usually 20,000,000 flu cases each year. No one can test that many people.
South Korea did better than the US partly because they had a bad experience from SARS and were better prepared. But also luck played a hefty part- their first cases were in a small easily tracked group of people so they could focus their resources on a physically limited area, not all over the country at the same time. They did not ever consider testing everyone. Even everyone with symptoms. That would not have been possible even in a small area country 51 million. It certainly was not possible in a country both physically much larger and more populous like the US. And now, with the whole world needing the same materials, it’s getting harder all the time.
Why it’s important to understand is that, when this crisis is over, there will be political choices to be made. If the US follows the same path as it has for the last twenty years, those choices will be influenced by massive misunderstandings and finger pointing, leaving us in even worse shape for the next crisis.
If there is no problem, then why did Dr Anthony Fauci from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases say earlier in March, “The system is not really geared to what we need right now… let’s admit it…”The idea of anybody getting it [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that. I think it should be, but we’re not.”
I never said there was no problem. I said that it is not an easily solved problem. Certainly not one solved by demands. The point is that no one was ever getting a test on demand, even in South Korea, even if they paid for it. And the South Korea model would not work here.
Dr. Fauci is part of what went wrong. He is been head of NIAI for 40 years. “The administration of President Donald Trump was tripped up by government rules and conventions, former officials and public health experts say. Instead of drafting the private sector early on to develop tests, as South Korea did, U.S. health officials relied, as is customary, on test kits prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some of which proved faulty. Then, sticking to its time-consuming vetting procedures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration didn’t approve tests other than the CDC’s until Feb. 29, more than five weeks after discussions with outside labs had begun.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep-idUSKBN2153BW
What Fauci said later was “And then when we realized, when the CDC realized, and the FDA,that both the system itself as it was set up, which serves certain circumstances very well, was not well-suited to the kind of broad testing that we needed the private sector to get involved in,” he continued. “The regulatory constraints, which under certain circumstances are helpful and protective of the American people, were not suited to the emergence of this particular outbreak.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/03/17/dr-fauci-the-cdc-testing-delay-for-wuhan-virus-is-certainly-not-the-presidents-fault-n2565112
And that was the failing he was talking about. Not making the test available to everyone because he has also said the exact opposite.
There is a shortage of tests and yes, of course, not everyone can be tested. BUT the more that are tested and isolated if infected, then the better the efforts at reducing infection.
Yes.
Plus, the more that are tested with milder symptoms, the more we know are recovered and have some immunity. The more who have some immunity, the more who can care without worry for those who have Covid, and the more can go back to work.
Testing is useful in many ways. And. We do not have enough tests to even guess what our numbers or projections of anything are.
S. Korea is barely a success story when compared against Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and others.
They inacted tight screening procedures at their airports.
Those are the success stories.
The need for 10 million tests was never realized, and they have controlled their numbers consistently for a much longer time.
S. Korea’s failures in screenings created their need for tests, in which their success story began to emerge, thus highlighting our multiple failures – on such bigger scale.
That is not true at all.
Let’s battle!
What do you contest?
Again, the PRE-Covid daily death rate in the USA is 7452/day, one every 12 seconds…more than 50,000 ppl die per week. Google it for yourself. The whole world is going through the stages of grief, rightfully so. Have confidence to look up these stages of grief & process them with yourself, then help your family & others. Making time to contemplate your own mortality will give you more inner power to move through anything that arises in life. The thing that happens to all of us is that we get returned to our sender, when it’s our time. By contemplating this, death becomes less scary.
So stay safe, STAY Home-not being afraid of death doesn’t mean to act a fool.
Covidiot Panicdemic