COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[MatthewG]

Horrific video shows coronavirus particles from runners can infect you even if you’re 2m away – The Sun

You people are allowed to go for one run a day. Your allowance is one per day. ALLOWED. But it's that bad here too.

To avoid any risk, I'll start isolating myself in an empty field.
With this in mind I better do some 'star jumps' when I go out for my "one a day" as I don't want to make Mr Hancock angry...

Coronavirus: 'Sunbathing is against the rules', says health secretary after Britons break lockdown restrictions to enjoy warm weather | The Independent

We've got it all going on over here; helicopters circling the skies, a weekly (Thursday evening) round of applause for the NHS, the emergence of budding artists (rainbows in the windows) and media advertisements on when wash to your hands. Just to keep me sane, I would appreciate you going over this crisis again on your weekly podcast. Thanks

[jfsully]

The Media are busily denouncing any information contrary to the Faucian Position as a "conspiracy theory." Any suggestion that the healthcare industry has an incentive to skew diagnoses in the direction of COVID-19 is immediately labeled a "conspiracy theory without evidence."

Hospital Reimbursement for Uninsured COVID-19 Cases May Total $42B

Hospitals do not have the luxury of not providing services to non-paying "customers," and they should be reimbursed appropriately for their work. Caring for patients in an ICU is very costly due to expensive equipment and staffing, and they're paying a lot of overtime to nurses intrepid enough to stay on the job. The critical care part of this will probably be break-even at best for hospitals. The shutdown of "elective" procedures, however, will be financially devastating to hospitals, and I would expect to see a wave of hospital closures after this. Anyone who sees this as a hoax-for-profit on the part of hospitals and doctors hasn't looked at the whole picture. Hospitals have invested in remote field-hospitals to care for the big wave of patients, and they will be out some decent bucks if that wave doesn't materialize. I don't put it past hospitals, like any business, to try to financially capitalize on something like this, but it's going to be tough for them to make money here. And if they wanted to concoct a scam, they have perfected many other better ways to do it than this. I'm sure I'm missing some small angle, though, which is why I will never make it as a hospital administrator.

[Gerald Boggs]

I didn't catch the whole discussion, but someone on NPR said something to the effect 'We're more concerned with making sure civilization survives' This fear-mongering is out of control.

[CommanderFun]

Rockefeller-Led Team Launches Initiative to Study COVID-19 Genetic Vulnerability | GenomeWeb

I'm thinking this hypothesis is on the right track. Comorbidity doesn't entirely explain the variation in outcomes. But this idea does, at least in my opinion. In short, the real danger isn't the virus, it's some kind of obscure genetic mutation that is common enough that it is making a percentage of people who contract a virus that is no big deal to most into something very nasty for those unlucky enough to have said mutation. Maybe if they can isolate and sort it out, they can make more of the minority of severe cases match up with the majority of non-severe ones.

[Yngvi]

I'm not a fan of the way Youtube has handled themselves in many situations (if it weren't for Patreon, a lot of important content and information would not thrive), but in this case, they seem to be demonitizing all coronavirus stuff, regardless of what points are being made.[/url]

But, I do not know if it is true in the specific instance of the video makers I posted. I think they have been demonitized for about 3 months now. I don't think the Corona virus demonitization started until more recently...
My impression is that speaking against the Chinese Communist Party CCP has been an offense punishable by demonitization for quite a bit longer.

Agreed. And any international organization that is controlled by them (the WHO and the UN) should not receive funding from or be viewed with any legitimacy by any western country.

..but from a medical standpoint this is not "just a flu."

...First you try to pretend it's just a flu.

Let's reconsider this:

Is it not "just the flu"? Corona viruses cause a typical ifluenza-like illness. Non-pandemic years in the U.S. just before WWII caused a total .4% death rate out of the total population.... That would be the same death rate in a normal flu season as the worst-case scenario projections for the (Chinese Communist Party) CCP virus - equivalent of almost 2 million

The CDC thinks it is similar enough to "just the flu" that they have decided to implement and continue to follow influenza protocols.

The flu causes pandemics. The flu is highly contagious. The flu makes many people gravely ill. The flu kills many people. The flu overwhelms hospital capacity. it appears very similar to a moderately bad flu year so far.

The only differences seem to be that the flu does not shut down the economy, cause mass hysteria or give the government special powers.

I still like this paper to put the flu in context:
Trends in Recorded Influenza Mortality: United States, 1900–2004

[Mark Rippetoe]

Just to keep me sane, I would appreciate you going over this crisis again on your weekly podcast. Thanks

We'll be doing a follow-up podcast very soon.

Hospitals do not have the luxury of not providing services to non-paying "customers," and they should be reimbursed appropriately for their work. Caring for patients in an ICU is very costly due to expensive equipment and staffing, and they're paying a lot of overtime to nurses intrepid enough to stay on the job. The critical care part of this will probably be break-even at best for hospitals. The shutdown of "elective" procedures, however, will be financially devastating to hospitals, and I would expect to see a wave of hospital closures after this.

And this obviously incentivizes hospitals to code for COVID-19 in as many cases as possible. As I've mentioned, in WF we have one empty hospital and one mostly empty hospital, and for some bizarre reason the doctors considered non-essential are prohibited from practicing "elective" procedures. How many melanomas are going undiagnosed right now?

I appreciate your perspectives on this board, and I have for a long time. I'm buying the beer when I get to Boston.

I still like this paper to put the flu in context:
Trends in Recorded Influenza Mortality: United States, 1900–2004

Interesting paper.

Conclusions. The considerable similarity in mortality seen in pandemic and non-pandemic influenza seasons challenges common beliefs about the severity of pandemic influenza. The historical decline in influenza-classed mortality rates suggests that public health and ecological factors may play a role in influenza mortality risk. Nevertheless, the actual number of influenza-attributable deaths remains in doubt.

He may wanna run that by Dr Birx given she’s clearly stating they are doing exactly that on national tv!

Yeah, she fucked that up pretty badly. Look for her to be scarce soon.

[Eric Larousse]

Breaking news from political radio. China and other countries are reporting that previously infected are now becoming reinfected.

If this isn’t true I wouldn’t expect this shutdown to be over anytime soon.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Does this sound plausible to you, Eric? Are we all going to die?

[Matt James]

Just heard that the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls is closing for 3 days because 80 of their employees are infected. 3 days doesn't sound like long, but they process a lot of pork. "18 million servings" of meat a day, whatever that means. Pork prices are already pretty low here in MN/SD/IA and this isn't going to help.

[Eric Larousse]

I don’t know what to believe. We are getting conflicting information from both sides of the isle. Workers not showing up for work out of fear but yet the death toll is substantially under the early predictions.

We almost had a near mutiny in the post office because supervisors were not following cdc recommendations.

I’m Just reporting what I see and hear that’s it.