Thanks for sharing, that was an incredibly well written article. I'm not sure how to feel after reading it, except, we don't know enough about this virus yet, but it's fascinating to see what they are finding through research. If anything, this just proves how reckless humans can be when they start pretending to know solutions when the research does not support the stance. For example, promoting herd immunity when in fact, this has not been thoroughly researched. As many have been anticipating, this will be an issue for the next couple of years until we have all the data sorted and truly understand how to move forward. There are people on both sides of the spectrum, those that want to open everything and those that want to keep "stay at home". Based on what we know about this virus, it seems that both sides are too extreme and we just need to find some common ground that can help us maintain the number of severe infections low. It appears that likely a large percentage of the population will eventually be infected, which is something we all have to accept, however, we need to keep practicing good hygiene and giving space to those around us. Wearing masks should really be implemented unfortunately and places should not be packed to the maximum limit moving forward. I don't have faith that humanity can uphold these practices, but the best we can do is look after ourselves and continue educating the masses on the importance of social distancing and being clean. Leadership in government needs to be really strong and I wish we could get partisan politics out of the way and just start thinking of ways to educate the public and also start helping many transition to a different way of life as we know it.
Does anyone actually know how they classify covid only deaths? I'm looking at the CDC data and I don't fully get it. Do we have to add in stroke + covid or does that even exist? Are stroke deaths elevated right now? I can't find the data and I can't figure out what I need to do. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data I think for this set you have to add pneumonia + covid to the covid totals and then subtract that number from the pneumonia deaths to get the accurate pneumonia and covid death totals.
Mike D'Antoni on wearing masks: "It's not that hard." "It’s not for you. But it’s for everybody else. You can’t do that? Are you serious? It just drives me crazy. That’s the stuff of being selfish. ... It just takes a loved one to die."
The California State University system just announced they will cancel in-person classes for the fall.
Had a 45 minute call with a lifelong friend today after a series of texts. He is a nurse that went to work in NYC. A couple of things really stood out... He said that the care in New York is an absolute joke and a nightmare. It’s chaos, too many are not on the same page and there is a real lack of leadership. He said they are treating patients for Covid and totally ignoring any underlining conditions. Often patients are left in their s*** and p***. Every time he starts a shift he knows the patients will be dirty. He said he feels like he’s setting the standard and some are starting to follow his lead. That said he’s incredibly disappointed overall in people. He’s questioned doctors on a number of occasions for doing what he feels is awful treatment. He said he has not seen one patient under the age of 55. He’s seen deaths changed on charts from something other than Covid to Covid. He says it’s because the hospitals are paid 100% of anything Covid related. Anyone that is basically a healthy person beats Covid and ends up being released fairly quickly. He hasn’t seen one “healthy” patient not beat it. Also says he’s not saying healthy people haven’t died, but not from what he’s seen himself.
The common ground is distancing to get the curve near zero, then test, trace, and isolate on massive levels. The "choice" we have right now is a false one set up more along political lines than public health needs. We've pissed away a couple of months with half-assed measures and now it will be tough to get the number of new cases way down. But, it will be even tougher to do tomorrow.
The system there is running ragged. More articles about the deteriorating mental health of frontline healthcare workers are popping up. With the flood of people, I'm guessing it's less about humanizing happy endings that take more time and work without guaranteed success and more about managing throughput without the wheels coming off. We tend to forget those workers are our safety belts. Complaining about empty hospitals in order to joyride seems like testing the system until it breaks. Only then do we "fix it" and demand answers... In this "fixed" world, where do we get replacement healthcare workers who are fresh and mentally ready to take on even more people? Oh right, the furloughed P.A. who specializes in boob jobs...he's totally itching to jump into the fray.
The best thing people can do is to proactively maintain their health through exercise and diet and also actively manage any of their underlying conditions. This will improve all health outcomes and it is simply by far the most important thing to do. I was trying to address this point earlier in the thread and maybe I didn't do a good job. Even if you have underlying conditions you can dramatically reduce risks by managing them. For example, well controlled diabetes has a 90% lower mortality rate than diabetes that is not controlled well. I was pushing for masks relatively early with people around me and they are needed in the correct situations. If you are indoors with some kind of shared air conditioning and around a lot of people then it's probably necessary to wear a mask. If you are outdoors or out somewhere without large groups of people in immediate contact with you then you don't need to wear a mask. They aren't needed everywhere and the mask shamers here in Austin are really annoying. They are walking on the uncrowded sidewalks with masks and don't seem to understand the situational use of them. Beyond that the recognition of the care, hygiene, masks, etc around the elderly and the long term care facilities that they might be living in is extremely important. This group is at risk to many things but covid is just devastating.
I wish I had a better understand of what exactly New York was doing with the nursing homes and why their nursing home deaths are so much lower as a percentage of deaths than everywhere else. It doesn't make sense.
First I was like... Then I was like... ...but it's not really slowing down over here, so yeah. I agree with the extension, but can kinda-sorta see (if I squint and close one of my eyes a little bit) why others wouldn't. Won't get into that here though.
Heard this story a couple months ago... I think from a podcast. Now on CDC site: And this, on the now-infamous Korean clubber:
No offense to your friend who is a nurse, but often as is unfortunate, nurses are left out of the treatment plan and do not understand what is going on in terms of attributing stuff because everybody is running around frantically, and data/guidelines are changing by the minute. There are cases that are COVID that repeatedly test negative. Other markers such as LDH, d-Dimer, imaging findings, leukopeni aare all present. These individuals HAVE covid especially the ones that clot. You have to justify COVID, and if you don’t well that’s malpractice and physicians are very careful about that as it’s their license. It’s easy to hear something a friend who may work in healthcare or not; but it’s really important to vet stuff and get multiple sauces. Hope your friend stays safe. Every single person working on covid can tell you it’s being underreported right now. I’ve personally a number of people under 50 pass, so again the whole hyperbole about young people being excluded is a bit far fetched
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/ Numerous readers have asked us about such claims, some of which imply that hospitals are making money by simply listing patients as having the disease — when in fact the payments referenced are for treating patients. And while some of the posts imply that fraud may be afoot, multiple experts told us that such theories of hospitals deliberately miscoding patients as COVID-19 are not supported by any evidence.
I’m telling you what he said, not what my thoughts are with all of this. I didn’t say he excluded young people, I said he hasn’t had one patient under 55 in the month he’s been there. Doesn’t mean I don’t believe young people cannot be affected. I will say if you think nurses don’t know what’s going on, you’re sadly mistaken. On the changing of charts, I believe him. He’s been nails in my life for over 30 years. Please don’t mistake my relaying a message that I don’t take this whole thing seriously.
Well said. New York is so crazy because they're paying anyone and everyone tons of money just to be a warm body to give care. Of course care is lacking. It was mass panic and mass overload.
Even with isolation, I read estimated the infectious rate is n=1. Linear is better than exponential, but still no bueno esp if people are starting to take more risks.
