Rural Oregon and the Corona Virus.

[hurleyjd]

Dave: Maybe you can add some information on this.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/really-help-coronavirus-overwhelms-rural-150252759.html

 

[Bez]

Infections does not equal deaths.
Testing simply shows those who have it or might have it.
Not all who get it show symptoms.
Total population according to the article is 77,000.
Total deaths that are claimed to be from it are 9
9 divided by 77,000 times 100 equals 0.0116 of one percent.
I suspect more people die of old age than this.
Or of car accidents.
They do not list any mitigating factors either - age, health, and more.
Continue testing and you will find even more.
That does not mean death.
In fact more people get over it than die.
Just my thoughts - take 'em or leave 'em.
Best to all,
Bez

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

As always Bez cuts to the heart of the matter.

 

[Dave]

First I need to share some details about Eastern Oregon. Some of this is off memory but I did research this a few months ago. There is about 11 counties in what I would call eastern Oregon. It is an area that if separate would be about the size of the 36th state. With a population one quarter of that of the least populated states. Five of the counties have 0 to 2 confirmed cases of the corona virus. Baker county where I live had one case back in early May. The last couple weeks that has jumped up to 13. None of the people has been hospitalized. The cases jumped up as they did more testing. As of a few days ago they had tested 691 people. That is about 4.3% of the county population. That is where all the new cases were found. People weren't sick. They just got tested for one reason or another. A few weeks ago there was a big jump in Union county. It went from half a dozen cases to over 200. They were all traced back to a wedding in Island City. Out of area people involved and no social distancing occurred.

Now about Umatilla County. It has had over 50% of the cases in eastern Oregon. That has been going on for a while. It is basically across the river from Benton county in Washington (Tri Cities area, Pasco, Richland , and Kennewick). Benton county and west into Yakima county have been real hot spots in Washington. A fair number of people living in Hermiston Oregon (Umatilla county) work across the river in the Tri cities area. Another common thread is that Umatilla, Benton, and Yakima all have a lot of irrigated agriculture. At the risk of being labeled a racist there are a lot of Hispanic people working on the farms and processing plants. They tend to socialize a lot in the larger community of Hispanic people. I don't know how much of a factor that is but it does seem there is more Corona virus in those areas.

 

[greybeard]

The article is less about the number of deaths, or the number of serious cases but much much more about the strain it has put on a county with minimum health care facilities and healthcare workers. We can't (or shouldn't) expect doctors and nurses to work 18 hr days for weeks and weeks on end caring for the sick, as they have to treat every case as if it is life threatening even if it's a relatively minor case, and the same holds true for any disease. Add contact tracing to the workload and I can see where a county with limited resources would be overburdened and the works at end of their rope.
My county has about 1/3 (28,500) the population of the Oregon county, has only one hospital, and if we had a like % cases per total county population, I very much suspect our health care system would be stretched to breaking as well, but our county is within 45 miles of Houston metroplex so it wouldn't be hard to get help.
All the article is really saying is a small county's healthcare workers need some help.
It doesn't emphasize or place any big importance to the death rate or how many are serious or hospitalized.
Anything else is just reading into the article something that simply isn't there.

 

[hurleyjd]

First I need to share some details about Eastern Oregon. Some of this is off memory but I did research this a few months ago. There is about 11 counties in what I would call eastern Oregon. It is an area that if separate would be about the size of the 36th state. With a population one quarter of that of the least populated states. Five of the counties have 0 to 2 confirmed cases of the corona virus. Baker county where I live had one case back in early May. The last couple weeks that has jumped up to 13. None of the people has been hospitalized. The cases jumped up as they did more testing. As of a few days ago they had tested 691 people. That is about 4.3% of the county population. That is where all the new cases were found. People weren't sick. They just got tested for one reason or another. A few weeks ago there was a big jump in Union county. It went from half a dozen cases to over 200. They were all traced back to a wedding in Island City. Out of area people involved and no social distancing occurred.

Now about Umatilla County. It has had over 50% of the cases in eastern Oregon. That has been going on for a while. It is basically across the river from Benton county in Washington (Tri Cities area, Pasco, Richland , and Kennewick). Benton county and west into Yakima county have been real hot spots in Washington. A fair number of people living in Hermiston Oregon (Umatilla county) work across the river in the Tri cities area. Another common thread is that Umatilla, Benton, and Yakima all have a lot of irrigated agriculture. At the risk of being labeled a racist there are a lot of Hispanic people working on the farms and processing plants. They tend to socialize a lot in the larger community of Hispanic people. I don't know how much of a factor that is but it does seem there is more Corona virus in those areas.

Thanks Dave your knowledge on this and your reply.

 

[Dave]

I went and looked up the current numbers by county.
Baker 13 cases
Malhuer 473 5 deaths
Wallowa 15
Union 379 2 deaths
Grant 1
Harney 1
Lake 24
Crook 20 1 death
Wheeler 0
Umatilla 1,227 9 dead
Morrow 176 1 dead
Gillam 2
A total of 2,331 confirmed cases, with 18 dead in all of Eastern Oregon. Things to note; Umatilla has the highest population by far and over 52% of the cases. Malhuer is on the far east side less than 50 miles from Boise and the whole Boise, Nampa, Caldwell with high population. Union and Morrow are on the east and west sides of Umatilla. Those 4 counties, Umatilla, Union, Morrow, and Malhuer account for the vast majority of the diversified irrigated agriculture in eastern Oregon. Thus farm workers and processing plants.

 

[Dave]

The eastern Oregon counties have a total population of 220,395. The Corona cases works out to 1.08% of the population. The death rate for eastern Oregon population is 0.008%. In Umatilla county it is 1.57% of the population have a confirmed case and 0.0011% have died from it.

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

The eastern Oregon counties have a total population of 220,395. The Corona cases works out to 1.08% of the population. The death rate for eastern Oregon population is 0.008%. In Umatilla county it is 1.57% of the population have a confirmed case and 0.0011% have died from it.

Good luck Dave, sounds like a real breakout is underway up there.

 

[Bigfoot]

Most interesting thread I've seen in a while.

 

[Dave]

I just thought of another factor. I-84 the east west freeway across Oregon runs through Morrow, Umatilla, Union, Baker, and Malhuer counties. That is the four counties with the highest infection rate plus little old Baker County. People traveling to or from Portland or Seattle headed to Boise or Salt Lake drive across those counties. I see lots of out of state license plates headed both directions on the freeway. People have to stop for gas, food, etc. What did they leave as they past through?

 

[hurleyjd]

The reason I posted this article was to highlight that a lot parts of America in the rural areas are pretty short handed and overwhelmed on dealing with this. Also lot of areas in Texas if you are 100 or so miles from a large city may have only one Physicians assistance taking care of a complete county. A lot of times this county will have a high population of elder people.

 

[Dave]

The reason I posted this article was to highlight that a lot parts of America in the rural areas are pretty short handed and overwhelmed on dealing with this. Also lot of areas in Texas if you are 100 or so miles from a large city may have only one Physicians assistance taking care of a complete county. A lot of times this county will have a high population of elder people.

True this article is about rural hospitals. With a little research I found that Umatilla county has 3 hospitals. Malhuer county which is next in number of corona cases and population has a pretty good size one (been there, wife had knee surgery there) plus several just across the river in Idaho. One that is literally about 2 miles away. Next in both cases and population is Union county. The web site for their hospital says they have 25 bed ICU and over 700 employees. It must be a pretty good size operation. Next in case numbers is Morrow county. They have a hospital. Higher population but much lower is case numbers is Baker. We have our own hospital but no cases of corona admitted to the hospital. I missed Crook county which has a slightly lower population than Union county but much lower in number of cases. I am pretty certain that Wheeler doesn't have a hospital. But not many people live there. The population is only 1,332.