That's a great point. My dumb first analysis assumed equal testing for various groups. Tons of undiagnosed people, we have to remember.
I read it on the news but reading the story puts you at a higher risk cohort. Now my cholesterol high because of poorly worded, vaguely concluded story and my love for bacon fat...also Corona's fault #BeWhale
testing is free in Houston. I know several people getting tested weekly because they have jobs that require seeing people often.
We've had 8 days now of over 100,000 new infections. Many states ICU's are at or nearing capacity. I heard the other day an interview with a doctor of a major hospital in SD saying that they are going to ration care. All the predictions that we were going to see a bad Fall are coming true.
@Nook Haven't visited this thread in awhile so just saw the news that it has hit your family. Very sorry to hear that and hope for a speedy recovery. Unfortunately before this is all over most of us are going to be personally affected by this. It's been clear to me since May that we as a county and a society haven't been serious about stopping this. Everything happening now was predicted.
It’s almost as if experts know what they are talking about sometimes. I pray for our people this winter. It’s been very sobering to see more and more people in this BBS community impacted.
The virus is exploding out of control, worse than ever, and we have zero leadership on this. Trump never did much about it in the first place (and that is a generous statement), especially since he's only cared about the election. Now that he's trying to Pinochet his way into a second term, there's no one at all at the wheel. Biden's team is seventy some-odd days away from stepping in (and that might be after they drag Cheetos Jesus kicking and screaming at 2 am from the White House). (Parenthetically, will Trump aim for maximum TV time ["make sure they come get me during prime time news hour, that's when all the old white people are watching"] if he's escorted out so that he can enrage the loyal seething horde?)
Lot to say about this, but this thread is at it's best when it's just about the virus and the pandemic and not the politics. I know they intertwine, obviously, and lots of people have probably died that didn't have to die. Anyway, I have comments about the VP and will take those to the D&D forum.
Yes, it's difficult to extricate politics from this. I can leave it at, "We literally have no leadership over this right now." And we had 144,000 cases in one day. That's insane. A couple of months ago Fauci was saying we would see 100,000 cases per day and that was supposed to be a major-league sucky number. My wife will start working from home, too, next week (hopefully we don't kill each other) and not too soon.
I know why in GR and IT and others like Czechia. Here - and most of centraleastern Europe like Czechia, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia etc, the first wave basically almost didn't happen. It was more like a little bump than a wave. We locked down very fast in the beginning of March because of what was happening in Milano that turns out was almost 1 month ahead...so long before it managed to spread. The ICUs were left empty and the tent hospitals without a soul.. And people were scared shitless by what they were seeing happening in Milan and Bergamo. So even though it was like the Occupation in WW2 where you almost had to go to the black market to buy masks and pay a fortune for one - 10 euros for 3- and people were sending masks to relatives like they were sending food to starved - everyone was following the rules. And even if you didn't want to follow them, your neighbours and the police made sure you did. So the tiny Covid that was around died off and along with it took down the flu (and traffic accidents) The ICUs were probably the most empty they have been in history. Along came the summer almost covid free even with sports and opened borders and tourism. People thought it was over but it wasn't. So in reality the first wave was like a prelude and this is the real first wave. In Italy on the other hand the difference is that it has hit the south along with the north. In the first wave the wave barely reached south of Rome. But in the south the hospitals are much worse so... you get terrible scenes like yesterday where patients waiting on the corridors for a bed to free, found a dead person in the toilet. I am not going to post the video because it is really awful. But yeah..we can't say that the virus has become more deadly because except for Belgium, Netherlands, Spain , France the UK and Italy the rest of Europe didn't have such wide spread in the population in the spring.
The reason why we don't have aid for states in need is purely political. No one is governing now and people will have to wait until mid Jan (optimist!) for a shift. It's Survival of the Fittest for the states who didn't want to be tread'on...
Right - but not everyone feels they need testing if they just have a cough or fever. But someone suffering from high anxiety likely would. So your self-selected sample of people getting the free testing is going to be people more concerned about it.
Random and frequent testing, especially if it's free is good because it can find asymptomatic people. I believe everyone now is highly anxious about COVID so a cough or fever would trigger someone to go get a free test.
Anyone who has had close contact with a contagious person should get a free test 5 days after exposure if we want to contain the spread.
People are right that correlation does not imply causation, but more than anything covid is an inflammatory disease. It’s not really just a resp virus. That’s why our current regimen is aimed at stopping that inflammatory cascade. People are getting neuropaathy etc which is not simply a predisposition etc.actually behaving more like a vasculitis, rheumatoid condition
