National nurse union calls for CDC to reinstate mask mandate
Source: WSOC
“Right now, we know that there’s about a 22% increase in COVID cases in the last two weeks,” Burger said. “That’s significant. That tells you that the voluntary mask-use policy is not working. We need clearer guidelines.”
The union sent a letter this week to the CDC that indicated their concerns, which include rising case counts, hospitalizations and the emergence of the Delta variant.
“What we’re concerned about is that a variant will occur that will work its way around the vaccine that we currently have, and then we’re back at square one again,” Burger said.
The letter stated, “More than 40 states have seen an increase in daily new cases over the previous two weeks, and more than 25 states have seen an increase in hospitalizations.”
Read more: https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/national-nurse-union-calls-cdc-reinstate-mask-mandate/2WWPKOWRUNBORGEXUWIVEMDQHA/
= new reply since forum marked as read
So I guess that this idiot is a fan of gun control - tell her that you sure agree with her about that! If there were fewer guns on the street, fewer people would be getting shot - though if there were actually fewer police, there would be fewer police shootings, your neighbor can't have it both ways. But I know it's not supposed to make sense, these uninformed ramblings never do. 
Even here in New York, we still have plenty of them, too. I didn't see any Trump signs back in 2016, but this time there were actually banners! Including the creep right across the street - and the house across the street from my polling place!
idiot that our friend here has to live next door to. 
Grocery store, pharmacy, gas station, bank, everywhere. And it was enforced - even the local Walmart had a mask checker at the entrance. But starting this month, the signs have changed, masks are only required for the unvaccinated - and we know how well the honor system works. I rarely see a mask these days, about half of the employees, like at pharmacies - and me. And I was fully vaccinated at the end of March. But despite the increase in cases, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. 
we need masks on or the variants will keep a move on...
not to mention there is evidence now that a vaccinated person can spread the variant and not know it.
Minnesota Public Radio is eliminating its daily "Covid in MN" report beginning Saturday because:
And the Health Department has stopped reporting cases on the weekend, so I'm not real sure how to read their reports anymore.
Per New York Times Our numbers of daily new cases are still quite low (3 per 100,000 population compared to the U.S. average of 9 per 100,000), but they are increasing: +97% in the last 2 weeks (7 day average ending July 15 compared to 7 day average ending July 1), in other words almost exactly a doubling in 2 weeks.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
the poor Health Department staff are just "burnt out".
And as it is, PA lost it's Health Director to Biden 
(Rachel Levine - now in HHS) and we lost our Philly Health Director Tom Farley due to a scandal that bubbled up over the disposition of the remains of some of the deceased MOVE children... So both entities sortof went into a stasis.
I don't know how many times we have cycled through this the past year and a half. It's literally like putting out a fire and they see some smoldering debris still left in a corner somewhere but sortof wave it away assuming it will snuff itself out. Yet it doesn't and sparks from it reignite fresh new fuel to burn again.
It's not like we don't have historic data including plots of peaks (waves) and troughs (ebbs) of past pandemics. But too many are like "Well we got this, so move on". NO we ain't "got this". It got US!
the Philly School District just announced yesterday that they WILL require masks this fall and will have air purifiers in every classroom/shared space in the schools. Realistically, this is the ONLY way they can attempt to mitigate old, piece of junk buildings that lack proper or functional ventilation and/or are chronically plagued with mold, asbestos, and other contaminants. As long as they are maintained properly, the benefits will be amazing because they will take what are essentially "sick buildings" and finally improve the environments within them.
As much as they talk about the prevalence of asthma in juvenile black and brown communities, they always blame it on "smoking" and rarely on the buildings they are in much of their day, with non-potable water, leaking pipes and roofs, inconsistent heating, lack of cooling of any kind beyond fans, and a prevalence of mold trapped in ceiling tiles and on walls.
by Oona Goodin-Smith and Kristen A. Graham
Updated Jul 15, 2021
Equipped with air purifiers in each classroom and planning to require anyone in schools to wear a mask, the Philadelphia School District will welcome back its 120,000 students in all buildings on Aug. 31 for the return of full-time in-person learning for the first time since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, district officials announced Thursday.
“We have taken every precaution and added some precautions ... to ensure that we have appropriate mitigation strategies,” Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said during a news briefing at Juniata Park Academy. There, officials displayed the three types of air purifiers that will be placed in classrooms and throughout the district’s more than 200 buildings by the end of July.
Using ActivePure Technology originally developed by NASA, the purifiers can eliminate 99% of the novel coronavirus within three minutes, said chief operating officer Reggie McNeil. They also eliminate other viruses, bacteria, mold, and fungi on both surfaces and in the air.
“It started off with testing out for the space station,” McNeil said. “It’s been tested by independent laboratories. It’s been tested in schools. It’s been tested without being in space. So, we’re pretty confident on the product.” Money for the purifiers — a $4.5 million investment — came from federal funding, predominantly provided by the American Recovery Act, Hite said.
https://www.inquirer.com/education/philadelphia-school-district-reopening-masks-air-purifiers-2021-20210715.html
School District COO Reggie McNeil
That's a FAR cry from this, which was the original "solution".
Need more of them in Congress. 
Each dot is one of the 50 states.
for a 3D plot.
(the snaphots over time that you animated)
Third dimension is time. 
(as a former chemist who has done 3D plots)
But 3D plots are still cool looking although your plot with the animation does convey the same thing without an actual labled scale.
but with "curves" and show the moving data for each of the states... So if you rotate it around you can see the trend
Thinking -
X would be each state (which is basically "fixed" )
Y could maybe be a positive cases/vaccination rate ratio
Z would be time
The "over time" plot would run as little hills and valleys for each state. My brain is trying to visualize something like this -
What a ratio would look like plotted and the meaning of it, might be interesting to evaluate (at least if it verifies proportionality - and notably if there was enough data for Delta cases vs others as an overlay, which is still difficult to do at this juncture due to the cost/time associated with genetically verifying any of the variants).
They acted on old information, rather than using other countries experiences with delta variant to get *ahead* of the problem.
It teaches the body to recognize it IF you get infected by it, which means your body can then respond with antibodies to fight it - AFTER getting infected. But it doesn't keep the virus from entering the various openings in your body that lead to your respiratory system and the rest of your major organs, which that virus can attack like your kidneys (renal system), vascular and respiratory systems, digestive tract, and nervous system.
By having the vaccine, they have said over and over that it reduces SEVERE illness but it doesn't eliminate having ANY illness at all.
This will be forever!!!111!!!!!!!!
There's a difference between "fear" and "common sense", which includes "awareness/caution", because this virus is still "novel".
And since you bring up "safe sex", which might involve use of condoms to keep STDs at bay (like syphilis and gonorrhea, as well as BOTH HiV and HPV), then certainly THAT makes sense as an analogy to wearing a mask when it comes to COVID-19.
This is never going to go away until there is a near 100% vaccination rate! It's has nothing to do with common sense because the other side doesn't have any!
Did you know that there are large numbers of healthcare workers and first responders/emergency personnel (like police, fire, EMS workers) who have refused to be vaccinated? 
Many of them are insisting the reason is that the vaccines are only approved for "Emergency Use" vs what will probably happen by this fall - a full "traditional" approval.
So it's not just all "the other side". And no it will not "go away" as long as common sense is thrown out the window.
If you implement a layered strategy for reducing the ability of the virus to get established in some "host" by reducing the means for transmission between hosts, then you reduce the ability for it to mutate. I.e., any "breakthroughs" can mean that although the body might have had enough antibodies to attack and eradicate much of the viral load, you still might have some virus that manages to "survive" those antibodies, and THAT is what suggests a mutation has resulted - IF the cells with that mutation can stay viable in that new configuration and replicate. In most cases, they can't and don't. But in other cases they might, and off it goes into a spread mode.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/us-vaccine-demographics.html
So when people post here that the unvaccinated are disproportionately stupid or assholes, it implies that people of color are too.
whether it's due to lack of access, language barriers, or gullibility to the rampant misinformation spread on social media. And they sure as hell aren't Faux Snooze watchers. And many of them make up a big chunk of the nursing home and long term care facility personnel, who deal with patients in sometimes congested situations, yet refuse to be vaccinated even as their patients are vaccinated. These were the very types of facilities that experienced the bulk of the fatalities early on in the pandemic.
There are also places with upwards of 40% of medical personnel unvaccinated - https://www.axios.com/survey-hospital-workers-refuse-covid-vaccine-d69d801a-3b17-49d5-a7be-c844fc378fe7.html
And that includes here in my area of PA - https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2021/04/19/covid-in-pennsylvania-nearly-half-of-nursing-home-workers-in-pennsylvania-have-declined-covid-19-vaccine-report-shows/
(as of April 2021)
And the only thing helping many of them hang on as long as they have (if they haven't already been infected, and/or hospitalized, and/or have died from the disease, or left the field) is access to PPE (like N95 masks and other protective clothing) that the average person doesn't have access to.
by trying to put it all on "one side" vs accepting the fact that "common sense" doesn't mean pointing a finger at "the other side" for what they are not doing while blindly not doing enough yourself to mitigate this problem. It's not a "single" solution problem because of the nature of the virus, its means for transmission, and the extent of the disease that it can potentially inflict.
So it's way more complex than the "just get a vaccine and you're home free" message. The vaccine is a critical part of putting this behind us, but it needs to go along with other mitigation strategies.
There was some interesting speculation just over a year ago, that presented different possible scenarios of what could happen going forward from the publication time, showing variations of the intensities of waves associated with the pandemic (publication done in May 2020, pre-vaccine) - https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/01/three-potential-futures-for-covid-19/
Scenario One: Small waves as far as the eye can see
Scenario Two: History redux
Scenario Three: The worst Groundhog Day
Well a year later, we saw what happened (data March 2020 - June 2021) -
(graph from here - https://www.valleypres.org/For-Patients/Covid-19/Facts.aspx)
