Day 202: Not So Unexpectedly

Brazil has topped 3.5 million cases and India is a day or two away from three million cases. In the US, #3 Florida has somehow crept up on #2 Texas, and may surpass it soon. All of the top three states are barely over 10,000 deaths, with death rates per capita that are quite low compared to the first wave states.

The New York Times describes the ongoing economic plunge (after a slight blip last week) as "unexpected", though they're never surprised when coronavirus case numbers pop back up after a lull. The economy is still bleeding from a thousand not-so-tiny lockdown-inspired cuts, like Governor Cuomo closing the malls, of all things, in New York City over ventilation issues that somehow don't obtain elsewhere in the state or in New Jersey.

On the mink front, there's apparently been a reprieve of the mink of Denmark. Despite the discovery of a fourth infected farm in North Jutland, officials have decided to enforce strict sanitary measures rather than kill all the mink like they do in the Netherlands (now at 33 mink farms culled, for an estimated body count of 1.5 million mink). In fact, the Dutch neovisicidal maniacs have threatened the entire mink population of the country if COVID-19 persists into late August.

On the big brother front, your Fitbit knows whether you have COVID-19 before you do:

Since launching a study to see whether its wearable activity trackers could pick up on the early signs of a COVID-19 infection, Fitbit has enrolled over 100,000 participants across the U.S. and Canada and is now delivering its first, preliminary results 90 days later.

That includes at least 1,100 users who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. By tracking subtle changes in a person’s heart rate, breathing, physical activity and quality of sleep, Fitbit aims to develop an algorithm that can highlight potential cases before symptoms start.

So far, the company said its devices have been able to detect nearly half of COVID-19 cases at least one day before the participant reported any of the disease’s symptoms, such as fever, cough or muscle aches.

Massachusetts' cases are up a quarter of a percentage point again today.