Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Now we will see who got a timeout

 

The military is sending in 50 doctors and nurses to help with a big outbreak in San Antonio. I think the article said there's like 1,100 hospitalized Covid patients.

 

Are you saying we would be happy if more people were dying? What a hateful, nasty, thing to post.

And btw, the mortality rate is dropping, thanks to the medical professionals and researchers, but new cases are breaking records, especially in states that insisted on opening early.

 

Hundreds of thousands had ICU stays?

 

Geez. I jump on late tonight and find you guys acting like we just lost to UGA again because Grantham sucks on 3rd down.

See what I did? I ragged on some of you while getting a dig at Grantham.

Now off to bed I go.

 

What is early? Was their a scheduled opening date? And yes. There are some people...hopefully not here...petty enough to be happy if thing turn for the worse. I mean have you met the human race?

 

I am just gonna start deleting my own posts. That will knock this back a few pages alone .

 

can't resist, maybe Cuomo will send a hospital ship up the san Antonio river. or build a bed complex next to the Alamo.

 

400 +/- pages to go. Not worried ........yet.

 

Many international graduate students are on assistantship appointments. While classes may be online, certain activities (lab work, inventory, materials acquisition) require physical presence. Even if their duties consisted of teaching/instructing/grading online, I'm not certain about the logistics or legality of paying a G.A. while out of the country. These individuals paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to obtain visas and study in the U.S. and our government wants to thank them by arbitrarily sending them home? That stinks out loud.

 

I've just taken to putting people on ignore if I don't think they're arguing in good faith. Makes it easier to stay out of the fracas (because my natural inclination is to jump right into it lol).

 

Was there a guideline about having two weeks of decreasing cases before opening? I think there was something like that and many states eschewed it.

 

Two mods enter, one mod leaves!!

 

The Administration probably wants to force Universities to open in the Fall so that they will not have to send International students back. Because you know this virus will magically disappear by Fall.

 

Might be my favorite comment ever!

 

So you never would explain how you got a death rate of .005%. I have no idea how you arrived at that and you wont say. But here's some actual numbers. In Florida, since the start of April, an average of about 39 people per day have died from covid. If we carry that out for a whole year we have 14,235 deaths. Florida has a population of 21.48 million. Do the math, and in Florida 1 in 1509 people would die from covid in a year. According to the national weather service, the odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year are 1 in 1,222,000 (I realize that these odds would be higher in Florida). So the odds of dying from covid are far greater than the odds of getting struck by lightning.

And to put a potential 14,235 Florida covid deaths in perspective, in 2018 there were 3114 traffic accident fatalities in Florida, so covid would be more than 4 times more deadly than traffic accidents. And in 2018 there were 1107 murders in Florida, so the covid mortality rate would be nearly 13 times greater than the homicide rate.

Bottom line, your minimizing the impact of covid by comparing it to lightning strikes is way way off base, and kinda offensive even.

 

Nurses Who Battled Virus in New York Confront Friends Back Home Who Say It’s a Hoax

After aiding coronavirus patients in New York City, nurses face relatives and friends who refuse to wear masks or don’t believe the virus is real.
Nurses who traveled from across the country to work in New York City hospitals saw the horrors of the coronavirus up close. They rushed patients to overcrowded intensive care units, monitored oxygen levels and held the hands of the sickest ones as they slipped away.

But now that many of the nurses have returned home to states in the South and the West, they’re facing a new challenge: persuading friends and family to take the virus seriously.

“A few times I’ve lost my temper,” said Olumide Peter Kolade, a 31-year-old nurse from California who grew up in Texas and spent more than three months treating patients in New York. “When someone tells me that they don’t believe the virus is real, it’s an insult. I take it personally.”

 

I should have said hospitalizations. There have been over 300,000 hospitalizations related to Covid 19.

Setting that error aside, my point is that folks that think that the only thing that matters is the death rate might want to broaden their thinking a bit. A hospitalization with a deadly disease is a bad thing, in or out of the ICU. Louisville seemed dismissive of anything but the rate of death.

More importantly, the President said that "99% of the positive cases are totally harmless". Well we have had just over 3 million cases now. By the math, only 30,000 have been harmed. Of course we have 130,000 dead and 300,000 have been in the hospital.

Right now about 21,000 are in the hospital and about 6,100 (29%) are in ICU beds.

Case rates are going up. Hospitalizations are following the case rates at a less steep rate of increase. That is likely a combination of the case rates going up partly because of increased testing and partly because of the lower age of the infected population.

Death is a further lagging indicator. It is going up less steeply as well. Likely due to the lower age of the infected population and the doctors learning better treatment protocols. For instance, they are using blood thinner and steroids much more commonly now.

Some folks on this board, and in the oval office, want to go for simplistic statements about death or incorrect statements about the percentage of people that experience a totally harmless infection. I think it is worth pushing back on that thinking. 130,000 dead, 300,000 hospitalized, over run ICUs, strained staff is a lot of bad outcome. It is a lot worse than it sounds to inaccurately say "99% of the positive cases are totally harmless" or "If your actual chances of dying from Covid this entire time have been 0.005% (and that's not even factoring in the age effects), then the panic would seem to be a bit overblown, would it not?"

The poster that I was responding to with the .005% comment doesn't have the math right. Even if he was talking about the total population, .005% of 330,000,000 citizens is 16,500. He probably meant a half of a percent. Let's say he did. I've got about 4,000 people that work for me across 15 states. If a half percent of them lose their lives to Covid 19, that is 20 dead people.

We don't need to exaggerate what is going on, but we sure don't need to pretend like death rates won't follow hospitalizations, hospitalizations won't follow case rates. The trend lines are going the wrong way on cases and hospitalizations and the likelihood is the worst outcome is going to turn in the wrong direction before long.

Setting aside the dead people, which the President seems capable of doing with little thought, when you look at the 21,000 people, and growing, in hospitals right now - they have a lot of friends, family and coworkers that are being impacted. I think sometimes we forget that in all the bickering.