Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

A minister in Boris Johnson’s government said the U.K. won the race to approve a coronavirus vaccine because it’s a “better country,” threatening to amplify a row over Britain claiming credit for the shot.

“We’ve got the very best people in this country and we’ve obviously got the best medical regulator, much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have,” Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told LBC Radio on Thursday. “That doesn’t surprise me at all because we’re a much better country than every single one of them.”

Sweden Shuts Schools; Germany Extends Lockdown: Virus Update

 

virus fatalities top 2,600
Sweden Shuts Upper Secondary Schools (8:24 a.m. NY)

Sweden will close all of its upper secondary schools, or gymnasier, for one month as part of a package of renewed measures to slow the spread of Covid-19. On Thursday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the nationwide closure as necessary, saying “there will be a day when things return to normal, but that day isn’t here yet.’

The move to online education reverses a policy decision from May, when the government said that high school and university students could return as normal in the fall semester. It said at the time that people up to 19 years of age are less affected by the virus.

 

Same thing at the beach where I reside. The adult kids and younger adults have ignored the mask and social distancing rules even when they were mandatory early in the year. Short of throwing people in jail, it’s not going to change.

 

My bad, $175 Billion. Oops.

CARES Act Provider Relief Fund.

And stop with the "we don't know if hospitals are making money from Covid patients" garbage. With the money from CARES Plus billing the insurance only someone who is partisan wouldn't know they are making money on those individuals. And why do we continue to use a faulty PCR threshold? Who benefits from the US using a faulty PCR threshold? Follow the money.

 

Like just about everywhere else in Florida, my county has now exploded... so much for competent leadership in the Sunshine State.

 

Again, show me the proof. It's easy to make allegations, show me the proof. How much is it costing providers, and how much is it making. It's a pretty simple process. Revenues, expenses, show me the numbers.

Who does it benefit? How about patients and healthcare providers? Even now we have folks who are clinically very suspicious to have COVID yet still require multiple tests to get a positive result.

 

I know you are being purposely obtuse because you know they are making money on the Covid patients. But keep your head in the sand. We won't see a "real" audit because hospitals won't disclose that they made a crap load of money on Covid patients because that will cause a backlash. They will say the CARES money was to offset other losses. Using PCR tests as the qualifier for Covid is stupid. The drug companies don't use just a positive PCR test for who they use in their Covid studies. Wonder why?

 

If hospitals were truly gaming the system for profit, then why postpone voluntary procedures, which are the most profitable? Keeping these procedures on the books would increase profit and expose more people to COVID at the same time, which would lead to more hospitalizations. For the hospital, if they are truly gaming the system for COVID profit, this would be win-win!

But hospitals shut down these procedures because they are medically unnecessary and put people at risk for COVID that don't necessarily need to be exposed. And the last thing hospitals want are more COVID patients. For one, having more COVID patients increases infection risk to hospital workers, and staffing shortages are becoming an issue. And yes, COVID patients means less overall revenue for the hospital, as profitable voluntary procedures are postponed, and other revenue sources dry up.

These are the facts. Deny or ignore them if you will, but as the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.

 

In before we hit 1,000 pages!
And people are still spewing conspiracy nonsense about the numbers. How many conspiracies do you have to make up before one is actually real? Asking for a friend.

 

We crossed the 9-11 threshold for deaths, the 100,000 hospitalized threshold, and the 200,000 daily deaths threshold.

Meanwhile, the leader of the country is throwing a lie-strewn pity party, at least when he’s not playing golf.

 

They were the poster-country for not taking the virus seriously, correct?

 

Let’s check in. Worldometer Covid-19 deaths per million population, Sweden and its neighbors, as of today:

Sweden. 689
Denmark 147
Norway 65
Finland 74
Germany 212

Sweden looks better when compared to the US at 844 but not to its neighbors. Sweden should be doing much better, they’re not, and the other countries are much closer to normal.

 

Second this. Like most on here, I don't make frequent use of the ignore feature, but in this case, it's worked out great.

 

So you don't have proof. Not only do you not have proof now, you're already setting up excuses about why you won't have proof in the future either. I'm supposed to just believe you, or else I'm being obtuse. Did I get that right? I can see why election fraud makes sense to so many now--it's obtuse to want proof, we should just all be good little sheep and believe whatever Newsmax says.

I get that you don't have access to the information necessary to really calculate the revenues and expenses in treating COVID patients, that's fine. In the absence of any proof, you presume a scenario that fits your narrative, I get that too. The thing I really don't get is why you're acting like you just realized yesterday that the business model of hospitals is to make money treating patients. I mean, they get paid for all sorts of treatments, if it's so easy to defraud the government or insurance companies, why don't they do it with everything else?

Why not make the flu test more sensitive? Providers get paid for treating the flu, pharmas get paid for making Tamiflu, and PPE makers get paid for masks and gloves. More fraud, more money, why not? If a heart failure patient comes in with fluid in his lungs, you can always say there might be a pneumonia hiding behind that fluid, so why not diagnose all of them with pneumonia? Many of those patients smoke too, so why not diagnose them with COPD exacerbation too while we're at it?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You think the same way as my MIL. She's married to an anethesiologist, her daughter is an OB/GYN, and her SIL is an internist, and she still believes hospitals make up COVID numbers. If we can't convince her, I sure as heck ain't gonna convince you. I just hope my message reaches some open-minded individuals who are legitimately considering the arguments on both sides.

 

So what I got out of this is you know hospitals are making money off of the Covid patients like I said. Cool, thanks for acknowledging it. I don't think the election was "rigged" nor have I ever voted for Trump. Providers don't get EXTRA money from the Govt for treating the Flu. If they did, I'm sure hospitals would be pushing that like crazy. So you are making my point for me.

 

No proof, but he has a feeling and that is good enough.

 

Now that we're crossing the 1,000 page threshold...