Coronavirus General Discussion

[dualstow]

Coronavirus: Packed New York parks are ‘slap in face to medics dying on frontlines’, says ER doctor


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 1588602459

Except that statistically, very few of the people in the parks are the ones showing up to the emergency room in respiratory distress from COVID. The rare cases of healthy young people succumbing are highlighted in the media, but they're a very small slice.

..

But aren't they vectors?

I guess it's no big deal if they truly have no contact with anyone else after they all spread it to each other in the park. At one of the three near me they were playing frisbee for f's sake. Spreading their decidedly unprecious bodily fluids around. (I was on the perimeter, on the sidewalk).

[pp4me]

When you consider "the price of a life" there isn't going to be one number that fits all. It matters how many years of lost life you're talking about. For most of the COVID victims it's a few years, at most. The average COVID victim is 79 years old. Life expectancy at that age is on the order of 8 years (longer if you're a woman, shorter if you're a man). For COVID victims it may be a bit shorter since the sicker people in that population will be more susceptible. That's not nothing, but it's totally different from, say, a 40 year old dying. And maybe really hard to compare to the impact on the life of that same 40 year old by tanking the economy. I just wish a conversation like this could come through in news reporting, instead of the sensationalized "you will kill people if you go play in a park."

I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I say this as someone who is 71 years old who watched both parents waste away in nursing homes for years as they both lived well into their 90's. The cost, not only to their own life savings but to society in the form of medicare payments was enormous.

What I learned from my parents experience is, as the Bible says, "There is a time to live and a time to die". Even though I'm considered to be in a high risk group I intend to live as well as I can in the years I have left, taking sensible precautions, but otherwise not wasting energy worrying about dying from some damn virus. If I get it, I get it, and if I do so be it. At least there will hopefully be some money left to leave to my kids.

[ochotona]

I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I'm not sure the savings will materialize because we still will throw the kitchen sink at every elderly COVID patient. There will be a lot of money burnt up in those final three weeks.

I'm certain you're right, though. But then someone will scream, "Death panel!" And sinks will be thrown.

[dualstow]

...
I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I say this as someone who is 71 years old who watched both parents waste away in nursing homes for years as they both lived well into their 90's. The cost, not only to their own life savings but to society in the form of medicare payments was enormous.

What I learned from my parents experience is, as the Bible says, "There is a time to live and a time to die"

I get that to an extent. It doesn't sound heartless, especially coming from a 71-year-old. However, what are the "hard decisions" that we'd be making if Nature didn't do it for us? To bring them home with us rather put them in a nursing home, or to axe them like they do in some jungle tribes? Put them out on an ice floe?

My parents are in their 80s and so far they've still got excellent quality of life. I worry about them especially since they plan to board a plane this summer.
However, you have a point. Putting coronavirus aside, I'm not looking forward to watching either of them "waste away" in a home.

[dualstow]

Costco, the club retailer, has started to limit the amount of meat customers can buy at once.

The company, which attracts shoppers who want to buy in bulk, said in an update on its website on Monday that fresh beef, pork and poultry products would be “temporarily limited to 3 items” per member.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/busi ... virus.html (something of a dynamic link. It might not be good next week).

[Tortoise]

Sounds about right. When I was grocery shopping at Vons yesterday, although the meat section looked reasonably well-stocked, an employee announced over the intercom that fresh meat purchases were limited to two items per customer. That was the first time I had ever heard such an announcement there.

[ochotona]

In our project planning for Q2 and Q3 2020, our base case is now that the re-opening fails, and we have to continue working with our clients as we have been lately - 100% remotely.

[Kriegsspiel]

Coronavirus: Packed New York parks are ‘slap in face to medics dying on frontlines’, says ER doctor

The real crimes are the videos of nurses doing choreographed dances to shitty songs.

[dualstow]

Looks like I might have compiled the list below for nothing, but anyway here’s one more:

• Healthcare Jobs
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10718&p=196279#unread

Where?

I didn’t know the answer, either, but I typed “health care” into the search box, and something magical happened:

Health Care During the Coronavirus Outbreak - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10470&p=187920&hili ... re#p187920

DIYbio: the free market's answer to health care pricing - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9888&p=175914&hilit ... re#p175914

Health Care Reform - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9705&p=171465&hilit ... re#p171465

The Health Care Cartels - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9693&p=171163&hilit ... re#p171163

Senate Health Care Plan - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9093&p=162226&hilit ... re#p162226

What a Texas Town Can Teach Us About Health Care - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6532&p=107992&hilit ... re#p107992

Why Health Care is so Expensive - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6405&p=105723&hilit ... re#p105723

Health Care - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5986&p=96901&hilit= ... are#p96901

There are more, but my cat needs brushing.

[Kriegsspiel]

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
. . .
Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.



Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.

Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue.
link

[Kriegsspiel]

[dualstow]

In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later.

So just steer clear of the brown acid?

[pp4me]

Been hearing the number 66k deaths from CV all over the place lately but here is what it says on the official CDC website....

Looks like they are using the number of pneumonia deaths to get that figure. Just another example of misinformation.



https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

[Dieter]

Counterpoint -- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... HAwZQc-gQ0

[Tortoise]

The most recent several posts in this thread remind me of Scott Adams, who finally had a come-to-Jesus meltdown on his podcast last night.

He's generally a big supporter of the concept of government, but last night in a curse-filled tirade, he finally concluded that most of what the government and various experts have been telling us about Covid-19 and even the flu are lies and bullshit.

He had previously been under the impression that flu deaths are typically "counted," i.e. he thought doctors will often write "influenza" as the cause of death for certain people. Then he saw that several ER doctors recently discussed this with each other and discovered that none of them had ever personally witnessed or documented an "influenza death" in their entire career.

That led to some interesting follow-up questions that eventually led Adams to the discovery that annual flu deaths are almost entirely estimated using mathematical models, not actual counting of deaths. And that's when he lost it and concluded everything the government and experts have been telling us is bullshit predicated on more bullshit.

[pp4me]

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
. . .
Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.

There have been 3 pandemics in my lifetime. In addition to the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, there was the 1957-1958 H2N2, and 2009 H1N1.

If you have no memory of any of those, join the club. I don't remember a single one.

I doubt that will be true of this one. The government has made sure of that but if all the nonstop fear-mongering and extreme measures turn out not to have been justified I think they are going to have a serious "boy who cried wolf" problem the next time.

[WiseOne]

When you consider "the price of a life" there isn't going to be one number that fits all. It matters how many years of lost life you're talking about. For most of the COVID victims it's a few years, at most. The average COVID victim is 79 years old. Life expectancy at that age is on the order of 8 years (longer if you're a woman, shorter if you're a man). For COVID victims it may be a bit shorter since the sicker people in that population will be more susceptible. That's not nothing, but it's totally different from, say, a 40 year old dying. And maybe really hard to compare to the impact on the life of that same 40 year old by tanking the economy. I just wish a conversation like this could come through in news reporting, instead of the sensationalized "you will kill people if you go play in a park."

I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I've wondered about the same thing but never wanted to voice it. I remember an infectious disease specialist that I trained under who said "Pneumonia is the friend of the elderly." Same idea with COVID.

Also, I realized that comparing life expectancy of a nursing home resident to life expectancy of the general population at the same age isn't valid. The average nursing home stay is 2-3 years, which means the life expectancy of the average nursing home patient is just 1 to 1.5 years. And that's 1 - 1.5 years of a generally poor quality of life.

That's why I stopped giving my 84 year old mother with now rapidly advancing Alzheimer's a hard time about going out every day to run errands. When I was trying to keep her from leaving the house, she got so depressed and anxious she had a full blown panic attack one day and I rushed over to check on her. She was incredibly happy to see me, and the depression/anxiety improved right away. So I said, screw this. It's not worth it. It's bad enough that she had to stop some of her favorite activities, which is I think part of the reason why her cognition is deteriorating as fast as it is. And the thought had crossed my mind that COVID might just be the perfect exit strategy. If I asked my mother which she would choose, COVID now or nursing home later, I think she'd take the COVID without hesitation.

[pp4me]

Here are two headlines one right after the other on Google News....

"New mutation indicates that the coronavirus might be weakening, study says"


"Study reports mutant coronavirus. It may be more contagious"

My suggestion for whoever at Google decides what stories to link to and what the headlines are going to be is that if the headline is going to contain the words "might be" or "may be" or "could be" then it's useless information that is going to do nothing but get us all confused. So don't even bother posting it unless you have some actual facts to share.

[Tortoise]

Here are two headlines one right after the other on Google News....

"New mutation indicates that the coronavirus might be weakening, study says"


"Study reports mutant coronavirus. It may be more contagious"

My suggestion for whoever at Google decides what stories to link to and what the headlines are going to be is that if the headline is going to contain the words "might be" or "may be" or "could be" then it's useless information that is going to do nothing but get us all confused. So don't even bother posting it unless you have some actual facts to share.

At some point we decided as a society that it's illegal for individuals to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, i.e., that's one boundary that our First Amendment freedom cannot cross.

I often wonder if we'll eventually decide as a society that it's also illegal for the media to effectively yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater by pumping out fear-mongering or misleading articles that are devoid of verified facts and information. It could be argued that the effects of such articles can potentially be much worse than a group of a couple hundred people trampling each other to death trying to reach the exits.

[modeljc]

When you consider "the price of a life" there isn't going to be one number that fits all. It matters how many years of lost life you're talking about. For most of the COVID victims it's a few years, at most. The average COVID victim is 79 years old. Life expectancy at that age is on the order of 8 years (longer if you're a woman, shorter if you're a man). For COVID victims it may be a bit shorter since the sicker people in that population will be more susceptible. That's not nothing, but it's totally different from, say, a 40 year old dying. And maybe really hard to compare to the impact on the life of that same 40 year old by tanking the economy. I just wish a conversation like this could come through in news reporting, instead of the sensationalized "you will kill people if you go play in a park."

I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I've wondered about the same thing but never wanted to voice it. I remember an infectious disease specialist that I trained under who said "Pneumonia is the friend of the elderly." Same idea with COVID.

Also, I realized that comparing life expectancy of a nursing home resident to life expectancy of the general population at the same age isn't valid. The average nursing home stay is 2-3 years, which means the life expectancy of the average nursing home patient is just 1 to 1.5 years. And that's 1 - 1.5 years of a generally poor quality of life.

That's why I stopped giving my 84 year old mother with now rapidly advancing Alzheimer's a hard time about going out every day to run errands. When I was trying to keep her from leaving the house, she got so depressed and anxious she had a full blown panic attack one day and I rushed over to check on her. She was incredibly happy to see me, and the depression/anxiety improved right away. So I said, screw this. It's not worth it. It's bad enough that she had to stop some of her favorite activities, which is I think part of the reason why her cognition is deteriorating as fast as it is. And the thought had crossed my mind that COVID might just be the perfect exit strategy. If I asked my mother which she would choose, COVID now or nursing home later, I think she'd take the COVID without hesitation.

Great post! I'm 83 and thank you for this. Doing fine for now.

[Kriegsspiel]

It's been reported that 90% of all corona deaths in my locality are in nursing homes.

[CT-Scott]

I know this will probably sound heartless and appalling to some people (probably the same ones who don't want kids playing in the park) but I can't help but think of the beneficial effect COVID is having on reducing the enormous cost of end of life care in this country and others with aging populations. It's like nature is making the hard decisions for us that we aren't able to make ourselves.

I say this as someone who is 71 years old who watched both parents waste away in nursing homes for years as they both lived well into their 90's. The cost, not only to their own life savings but to society in the form of medicare payments was enormous.

What I learned from my parents experience is, as the Bible says, "There is a time to live and a time to die". Even though I'm considered to be in a high risk group I intend to live as well as I can in the years I have left, taking sensible precautions, but otherwise not wasting energy worrying about dying from some damn virus. If I get it, I get it, and if I do so be it. At least there will hopefully be some money left to leave to my kids.

Nursing / convalescent homes are horrible, depressing places. I grew up with one set of grandparents living in our house. Much later, my grandmother on my father's side went into a nursing home and it wasn't long before she was suffering from dementia and didn't know who I was. I realize that having your parents/grandparents live with you isn't a viable option for a lot of people, but I think it should be strongly considered whenever possible. I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people where multi-generational living is a norm where a smallish house isn't a deal-breaker, yet many of us probably live in much, much larger houses and probably have difficulty fathoming how we'd be able to "comfortably fit" our parents or grandparents in our home. Today, I live with just my wife and my 21-year-old daughter, in a fairly spacious house, and while I'm certain there would be some added conflict, I also think there is value to be found in having others (especially of different generations) living under the same roof.

[vnatale]

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
. . .
Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.



Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.

Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue.
link

All that was described above occurred while I was a senior in high school / first year of college. I was consciously aware of what was going around me as we used to get three newspapers a day, which I would read from first page to last.

Why is this the first time I'm ever hearing about this? Never heard my parents talk about. Never heard any friends talk about it. Never heard either set talk about someone they knew dying from the flu.

VInny

[vnatale]

In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later.

So just steer clear of the brown acid?

Dualstow!

How many times did you see the movie?

Vinny

[vnatale]

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
. . .
Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.

There have been 3 pandemics in my lifetime. In addition to the 1968 Hong Kong Flu, there was the 1957-1958 H2N2, and 2009 H1N1.

If you have no memory of any of those, join the club. I don't remember a single one.

I doubt that will be true of this one. The government has made sure of that but if all the nonstop fear-mongering and extreme measures turn out not to have been justified I think they are going to have a serious "boy who cried wolf" problem the next time.

I have possibly a slight memory of 2009. But nothing related to its severity as constantly reminded to us by our current president.

Vinny