Are America's Hospitals Becoming Overwhelmed? (theatlantic.com) 312
New Mexico's governor announced plans to allow hospitals "to ration care depending on a patient's likelihood of surviving," according to the Washington Post.
But in fact, many of America's hospitals are now "overwhelmed," reports CBS News, adding "A record-breaking 227,00 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Friday alone — the first time the daily case count has topped 220,000, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University."
Two co-founders of the COVID Tracking Project offer this assessment of the state of America: On Wednesday, the country tore past a nauseating virus record. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, nearly double the record highs seen during the spring and summer surges. The pandemic nightmare scenario — the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide — has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to die needlessly...
Many states have reported that their hospitals are running out of room and restricting which patients can be admitted. In South Dakota, a network of 37 hospitals reported sending more than 150 people home with oxygen tanks to keep beds open for even sicker patients. A hospital in Amarillo, Texas, reported that COVID-19 patients are waiting in the emergency room for beds to become available. Some patients in Laredo, Texas, were sent to hospitals in San Antonio — until that city stopped accepting transfers. Elsewhere in Texas, patients were sent to Oklahoma, but hospitals there have also tightened their admission criteria....
The bulk of evidence now suggests that one of the worst fears of the pandemic — that hospitals would become overwhelmed, leading to needless deaths — is happening now. Americans are dying of COVID-19 who, had they gotten sick a month earlier, would have lived.
But in fact, many of America's hospitals are now "overwhelmed," reports CBS News, adding "A record-breaking 227,00 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Friday alone — the first time the daily case count has topped 220,000, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University."
Two co-founders of the COVID Tracking Project offer this assessment of the state of America: On Wednesday, the country tore past a nauseating virus record. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, nearly double the record highs seen during the spring and summer surges. The pandemic nightmare scenario — the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide — has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to die needlessly...
Many states have reported that their hospitals are running out of room and restricting which patients can be admitted. In South Dakota, a network of 37 hospitals reported sending more than 150 people home with oxygen tanks to keep beds open for even sicker patients. A hospital in Amarillo, Texas, reported that COVID-19 patients are waiting in the emergency room for beds to become available. Some patients in Laredo, Texas, were sent to hospitals in San Antonio — until that city stopped accepting transfers. Elsewhere in Texas, patients were sent to Oklahoma, but hospitals there have also tightened their admission criteria....
The bulk of evidence now suggests that one of the worst fears of the pandemic — that hospitals would become overwhelmed, leading to needless deaths — is happening now. Americans are dying of COVID-19 who, had they gotten sick a month earlier, would have lived.
"Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
You know a few years back about the hand wringing over death panels by right-wing anti-medicare-for-all types? Well here you go, the death panels exist because your private health care system was only designed to care for the wealthy and is still overwhelmed.
In other countries (eg everywhere with a public health care system) they are not presently overwhelmed, but it's also probably not fair to blame this entirely on the medical system in the US, as most of it has to blamed directly on the orange clown in the white house, who tried to dismiss the pandemic as hoax, and cost the US substantial preparation time, as well as making the right-wing "my freedumbs" people into super-spreaders.
So it's only fair now to ration care to those who made every effort to protect others. If they didn't then, well you dug your own grave.
Re:"Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong. I am, like you, a supporter of public health-care systems. I wish the USA would wake up and join the rest of the world in this regard.
But I don't think the overwhelming of hospitals with COVID-19 cases in the USA is caused by private health-care. Every system, private or public, will have limited resources that require triage. If anything, a private health-care system can and has affected outcomes by implicitly rationing care to those who can afford it. Perhaps that's putting it a bit too simply, but it is a tenable argument.
Rather, as you say, it is caused by a "live free or die" mentality in (too) many Americans, egged on by a prevaricator-in-chief who has encouraged people to scoff at the danger. Simply put, Americans and their leaders have been reckless to a degree unlike other parts of the world. And now the chickens have come home to roost.
Re: "Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
In most places that have (more or less) successful health systems, its main responsibility is prevention
Re: "Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
In Europe, many doctors are paid a fixed salary.
In America, most are compensated by fee-for-service.
This leads to a different mindset. There is no incentive for the American healthcare system to emphasize prevention or healthy lifestyles.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hilariously, the US has one of the best socialized preventative public health care systems in the world, which is really the kind that counts for a pandemic.
But when an actual pandemic hit, most governments and people decided to ignore the CDC or pick and choose their advice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The declining average lifespan and higher infant mortality rate in the USA shows you to be full of shit.
Re: "Death Panels" are real (Score:4, Interesting)
You just made up a bunch of bullshit. You may have a point about 20 week births but everything else is wrong. Do you have any sources showing the breakdown of how the USA is number one across the board?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know a few years back about the hand wringing over death panels by right-wing anti-medicare-for-all types? Well here you go, the death panels exist because your private health care system was only designed to care for the wealthy and is still overwhelmed.
In other countries (eg everywhere with a public health care system) they are not presently overwhelmed, but it's also probably not fair to blame this entirely on the medical system in the US, as most of it has to blamed directly on the orange clown in the white house, who tried to dismiss the pandemic as hoax, and cost the US substantial preparation time, as well as making the right-wing "my freedumbs" people into super-spreaders.
So it's only fair now to ration care to those who made every effort to protect others. If they didn't then, well you dug your own grave.
Quoted against the censor trolls with mod points, though I don't fully agree with you.
Mostly I feel sorry for the medical professionals. Most of them sincerely care about their patients as human beings. Plus some of them will catch Covid-19.
Meanwhile, "He whose name need not be mentioned" is only focused on some scam to get "his case" to "his" Supreme Court. And most of the GOT (nee GOP) is okay with stomping on the idea of democracy.
Re:"Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly I feel sorry for the medical professionals. Most of them sincerely care about their patients as human beings. Plus some of them will catch Covid-19.
It was reading this article [independent.co.uk] about a nurse's tweets [twitter.com] that really got me angry about this. Imagine your relatives with their last conscious words screaming in anger at the nurse who's trying to save them instead of getting the chance to talk with their children for the last time because they completely misunderstand what happened to them and why. If I was an American I would have great difficulty forgiving Trump or anyone with high levels of education and understanding who still provides him with support.
Re:"Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen some of those stories, too. It seems incredible what cognitive dissonance can do to people. Yeah, everyone tends to believe what they want to believe, and everyone was born a fool, but the percentage who "get better" is depressingly low. I feel sorrow for the damage they do, but I don't feel like they've earned much if any actual pity. And Covid-19 has no capacity for mercy no matter how pitiful the victim.
I wonder how many of them learn from their experiences in the cases where their stupidity doesn't actually kill them and they recover from Covid-19. 10%? 20%? I would wager it isn't a majority. Negative optimism to hope that at least their family members might learn more from the evidence than the victims do?
As for the persistent supporters of "He whose name need not be mentioned", I think that's a somewhat different aspect of the problem. Yes, some of them are so sincerely stupid or so proudly ignorant, but I think many of them, especially many of the most visible supporters, are doing it for selfish monetary reasons. In some cases I even think they are paid specifically to fake ignorant stupidity to create bandwagon effects for various focal aspects of the raging stupidity. I even speculate that their professional efforts are further amplified by microtargeting using huge troves of personal data mined to find the best targets for brainphishing and the best bait to brainphish the targets with.
(But why was my comment moderated Informative?)
Re:"Death Panels" are real (Score:5, Insightful)
f I was an American I would have great difficulty forgiving Trump or anyone with high levels of education and understanding who still provides him with support.
That's what's so shocking to me about the last election. 74m people think this is better than an alternative. At this point I'm in the very odd position to be living in a country where at least 23% of the people think that a criminal grifter who has undermined a pandemic response and an election is a better choice than a guy who looks like a pretty typical member of that same party.
What's worse to me is that the rest of the Republican party has lined up behind him. They refused to consider impeachment, and the direct result of that was a mishandled pandemic to the point that we're losing about a 9-11 terrorist attack worth of people every day, and we're headed rapidly to a half million dead. At this point, it's likely that the only other event responsible for more loss of life in all of US history will have been the civil war.
I don't see myself or a lot of other people forgetting that sort of evil depravity.
Re: (Score:3)
If it helps, at least 80 million Americans agree with you. If you want a more sobering, realize 74 million Americans don't.
I at least understand billionaires who voted for Trump because, well, they can fly to their private islands or shelter on their yachts. But they are getting paid to shit on the country. I don't get the non-billionaires though.
Re: "Death Panels" are real (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh the non-billionaries are just told they can be rich too if they support this leadership. That the policies are about providing opportunities to amass wealth. They just don't see the game is rigged against them.
Re: This isn't right (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
UK is not rationing care yet, England just had a month long lock down, now have tier system for what restrictions there are on every day life. Basically you're talking out your arse.
In the UK there has been no care rationing it's true and that's 100% down to the politicians (even that idiot Boris to give him the credit he's actually due) being willing to lock down when it's needed. However we have had most people kept at home longer than they would in some other countries and, whilst the majority of our death rate is down to our relatively old population, it's definitely true that Germany has done a better job. Which brings us on to another lie in the grandparent
but no one anywhere public or private builds a system with that much spare capacity to deal with a nationwide surge in cases like COVID is generating
Apart from the UK stu
Re: This isn't right (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't agree on this. I mean, obviously a New Zealand or Taiwan schedule of limited brief lockdowns would be better, but even with their fairly vicious lockdowns, the Australians are ending up much more free much earlier than us and economically the damage is nothing like what we have. We have 25k infected in a million. If we take an optimistic long Covid rate around 2% that still means 400 odd people per million taken out of the economically active pool and needing long term care. In the end it's going to be more. My guess is that means years and years of economic hangover. By comparison the Australians will have about 10 people per million and are basically finished with most of the issues. Even if it does come back it's likely to be got rid of quickly.
One of the big things is that I think it's going to be really difficult to keep people careful as the vaccines come out. Even if they haven't had it themselves they will start believing that everything's over. That means that, following from people not being careful at Christmas, the start of next year is likely to be awful. Bad for us, worse for our friends in the states and economically the start of a real realignment of the world. I'd much rather get this whole thing finished this year rather than have years and years of economic hangover. There's definitely some speculation in there, but I think there's a good chance I'm right.
Re: This isn't right (Score:5, Informative)
Well in fairness, our lockdowns have been far more relaxed than some of our peers on the continent and the police much more chilled. I'm grateful for this. And then there are my in-laws in Melbourne who have been locked down much more stringently for far longer, and they've barely had any COVID-19 by comparison. I hope things work out for them in the long run and they don't get locked down again so they can feel justified for the pain and effort, but I'm happy we haven't had this.
A little bit of inconvenience for Victorians means that Victoria has now had 36 days straight of no new Covid infections, and there are no infections still hospitalized. A far cry from the several hundred infections/day and 700+ dead of 6+ weeks earlier.
This was accomplished because the people chose to work together for the common good, rather than place their individual freedoms to the forefront. Of course there were some who didn't like it, but overall the greater majority complied.
And this was the same for all the other states, resulting in Australia now being virtually 100% free of Covid.
Re: This isn't right (Score:4, Informative)
Whilst what you say is basically true, the lack of problems was achieved by excluding old people from hospitals beyond what should have been acceptable [bbc.co.uk]. However I primarily meant that Sweden was one of the crazy countries that have been needlessly running coronavirus high when they could have been running it much lower, like your Scandinavian neighbours. Should have been clearer. Apologies.
Re: This isn't right (Score:5, Informative)
Norway has a covid fatality rate of 6.17 per 100K population.
Finland has a covid fatality rate of 7.12 per 100K population.
Denmark has a covid fatality rate of 14.95 per 100k population.
Sweden has a covid fatality rate of 69.4 per 100K population.
Source (3rd table, sort by covid fatality rate). [jhu.edu]
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody is denying Sweden's disastrously high fatality numbers. But people have not been dying because hospitals are overloaded. People were dying because hospital care could not save them.
Though to be fair there has been some reports of elderly people who were put on palliative care to reduce the pain, instead of being taken to hospitals. There has been some debate whether that was always a correct decision or not.
But hospitals have so far never been overloaded. In fact that has been the focus of the Swedis
Re:This isn't right (Score:5, Informative)
It's news to me that the UK is rationing care. And I'm in the UK. And the NHS.
The ethical debates around restricting/removing care if there was a complete overwhelming of the system were started back in the first wave, so that clinicians could have a protocol to follow, rather than blindly making "off the hip" calls, which can be psychologically damaging (you're literally THE person who make a call who lives and who dies, and having to do so repeatedly).
The UK is in lockdown at the moment to stop thhttps://science.slashdot.org/story/20/12/05/1723247/are-americas-hospitals-becoming-overwhelmed#is being needed. And also, the large population centres where the most risk is have "Nightingale Hospitals", which are emergency sites that can take care of a massive overflow from the main hospitals, all with ICU level care for COVID cases.
The threat of "running out of capacity and thus having needless deaths" was taken very seriously months ago, so the UK's critical care capacity is vastly greater than it was at the beginning of the year, giving enough capacity to take care of all the expected cases, plus a healthy margin of error. So your quite about nobody public builds that spare capacity is demonstrably wrong.
Re:See? Told you, shoulda gotten COVID earlier... (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are dying of COVID-19 who, had they gotten sick a month earlier, would have lived.
Should've gotten sick a month or two ago, then you'd be immune by now and the hospitals wouldn't be overrun. Instead, everybody waited until winter, which is the worst time...
Most stupid comment so far right at the beginning. If they had all gotten sick a month or two ago, then hospitals would simply have been overrun at that time. It is _absolute_ numbers that overwhelm hospitals, the cause or time is entirely irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:See? Told you, shoulda gotten COVID earlier... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:See? Told you, shoulda gotten COVID earlier... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...This is the kind of crap radicalized Trumpists spew because they can't handle a reality where they can't get a haircut / latte / lap-dance.
You'd be wise to not try and politicize that shit, unless you want people to start naming off all the fucking Democratic Hypocrites busted for violating their own strict statewide lockdown rules...
The alternative to Trump in your comparison should not be a Democrat. Just think of any of the people who ran against him in the primary [wikipedia.org]. The problem in this case is not Conservatives; it's not Republicans. The problem is Trumpists. Specifically Donald Trump has been a failure as a president and with anyone else about 200,000 Americans would be alive today who are not now. Plenty of other right wing leaders worldwide have done fine. Even for us in the UK, our own mini-Trump, Boris has done nowhere nearl
Re: (Score:3)
"100m Americans already have had COVID-19."
Wrong, not even 15 million. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
That number is probably actually on the low side. Up to May 1, the coronavirus cases in the U.S. had a 5.4% CFR. The nominal CFR since then has been running about 3.1%. So in all likelihood, there were about 1.85M cases by May 1 that would have been detected had there not been a shortage of tests in the early days, rather than 1.06M. That would put the actual total more like 15.19M.
This still leaves the open question of IFR, however. Current consensus estimates put the IFR at around 1.15%. Based on th
Re:See? Told you, shoulda gotten COVID earlier... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:See? Told you, shoulda gotten COVID earlier... (Score:4, Insightful)
We have working vaccines which means COVID does respond to antibodies. If the immunity was fleeting than vaccines wouldnt work either.
No one knows how long the immunity from vaccines last either. Come July we may find out that some or all vaccines need annual booster shots to keep up its effect.
The best approach is to kill off Covid-19 asap, before it mutates to something even worse.
Some are (Score:5, Informative)
Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:4, Insightful)
...Norfolk, VA. They've filled the space designated as their COVID ward...
I went to look for overall national hospital utilization and came across this CDC page [cdc.gov]....
It looked like a great resource, until I realized it hadn't been updated since July!!
That to me is nuts, a centralized account of what hospitals are getting full where, would the the ultimate guide as to how much of a real problem COVID is in your area.
It's the most important data that could really make people behave a lot more rationally as it was easy to follow, unlike the metric of "cases" which means nothing if you do not know the hospitalization rate around you. I've known several people who have had Covid with extremely mild symptoms and if a lot of people are like that, of course they will not treat Covid seriously without understanding just how many people are going to hospitals.
So why can't the CDC provide a centralized report on this that is updated at least daily? This seems like exactly the kind of thing that is a perfect fir for them, indeed at this point it's probably all they should be working on.
Re:Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:5, Informative)
>So why can't the CDC provide a centralized report on this that is updated at least daily?
Because reality was starting to make the President look bad, so he leaned hard on the CDC to shut down the flow of public information. That's always a risk when the chief executive of your organization is more interested in perpetuating his own narrative than getting the job done.
Re:Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:4, Informative)
A slightly adversarial relationship like you have with your boss. I'm not clear on the exact details - but he's definitely got substantial authority over them - for example it fell on him to appoint replacements for top members of the pandemic response team after many of them suddenly quit in 2018, (which he never did)
Then there was the tidbit about how he changed the pandemic reporting guidelines in August to cut the CDC out of the loop after they consistently refuse to get on-message, and had hospitals report case numbers directly to the new HHS program instead. And in October, when they suddenly dramatically downgraded their recommended precautions in response to his pressure. Etc,etc,etc.
Re: (Score:3)
I think they're saying it because it's true, and was commented on in the news back when it happened, and specifically, the administration required hospitals to report this stuff to HHS, who could be trusted to fudge the figures for him, rather than to the CDC, who kept maliciously telling the truth even when it looked bad for him. That's one of the major functions of the "executive branch" -- running all the federal agencies. And, in some cases, running them badly.
So, in a way, you're right. The information
Re:Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:5, Insightful)
So why can't the CDC provide a centralized report on this that is updated at least daily?
The current administration governs based on "gut feelings" do you really want data and science to mess with the gut feelings?
Re: Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:3, Informative)
Also in July Trump adminstration, stopped allowing data to be dispursed and the hhs ( under a trump appointee)was put to in charge of data collection. We haven had good dAta since July because of republican liars.
Re:Would sure be great to know which ones... (Score:5, Informative)
I went to look for overall national hospital utilization and came across this CDC page [cdc.gov]....
It looked like a great resource, until I realized it hadn't been updated since July!!
That to me is nuts, a centralized account of what hospitals are getting full where, would the the ultimate guide as to how much of a real problem COVID is in your area.
It's the most important data that could really make people behave a lot more rationally as it was easy to follow, unlike the metric of "cases" which means nothing if you do not know the hospitalization rate around you. I've known several people who have had Covid with extremely mild symptoms and if a lot of people are like that, of course they will not treat Covid seriously without understanding just how many people are going to hospitals.
So why can't the CDC provide a centralized report on this that is updated at least daily? This seems like exactly the kind of thing that is a perfect fir for them, indeed at this point it's probably all they should be working on.
Why can't they? Because Trump's HHS took away that responsibility from them in July of this year. [cnbc.com] What you're seeing is the last data that the CDC had before Trump's HHS cut off the flow.
I agree that managing this information is in the CDC's bailiwick. Maybe you should tell that to the White House.
Re: Some are (Score:5, Informative)
Because elective surgery can rapidly turn into critical surgery on the table.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah. We had to postpone an "elective" surgery for four months, and that's four months during which my spouse couldn't walk most days and was in screaming agony at least one day a week. But hey, technically "elective".
Re: (Score:2)
You're joking right? There's a difference between being non-critical and being healthy enough to discharge. Hell you lose the title of critical before you're even able get up and go to a bathroom unassisted.
Re:Some are (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Also, "non critical" with medical help and monitoring can be or very fast become "critical" without. Even a wound-dressing changed incompetently can kill a person.
In Chris Christie's case he checked himself in (Score:2)
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Hospitals are health care complexes. They have the equipment and expertise to handle emergencies that arise during surgery. The emergency room is a small part of a hospital, both physically and budgetary.
Re:Why based on need? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should young people partying on the beach because they're sure they won't suffer negative consequences get higher priority in triage because more likely to recover with treatment than my parents who went grocery shopping?
Sadly it is because all a hospital will know is that they are a young person who is more likely to survive the disease than an old person. They do not know whether the young person got it by being an idiot or by simply grocery shopping themselves. This is why we need sensible restrictions and strict enforcement of them because, if we had that, the chances are hospitals will not get overwhelmed.
Here in Alberta we have the same problem: a premier who is more interested in the economy and libertarian ideology than sensible, temporary restrictions on personal liberty to keep things under control until the vaccine can be distributed. While things eventually got so bad that they have put in some restrictions finally we have the highest daily case rate of anywhere in Canada including provinces with more than three times the population and they recently asked the federal government and the red cross for field hospitals.
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We seem to have lucked out in Ontario. We elected the brother of the crack smoking mayor, described as Trump North, but he's doing much better than expected.
Bad as it seems though, Canada's still at a fraction of the cases and deaths per capita the US is seeing.
Re: (Score:3)
There are a lot of people who will tell doctors, while being diagnosed, that COVID is a hoax. Those people are the idiots running around maskless. We don't have to suss it out. We don't have to do something technically easy but ethically/privacy/morally/socially evil like get cell phone companies to act as narcs. These idiots will confess if asked - as long as their asked before it gets so bad they need a ventilator.
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Sounds like quibbling over how bad it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always fascinating to see relatively conservative websites like what Slashdot has become try and address how "not so bad" a record number of human deaths from disease is, in the middle of a pandemic.
I mean sure - 10,000 deaths in 4 days (many states not reporting deaths on any given day, so you kind of have to bundle them together to get a representative number) - it's only 3 or so September 11ths, less that one a day!
I can see the wheels turning in folks heads though - that denial/justification motivation - that "well, if we stretch that over a year, it's still only a small percent of the population being lost"... as if it hasn't increased - as if diseases don't spread exponentially the less you prevent that spread.
People evidently needed some level of immediate personal proof before they believed a major disease really existed near them.
Well - that proof is is basically every community now.
And if any other justification we've ever had for a war in the past, or other major reaction to human tragedy motivated anything... wearing mask and maybe putting our shared tax money into careful vaccination usage might be wise - even from a modern conservative perspective.
What do you think though? Will what we call conservatism now ever decide that responding with shared effort to a shared challenge is worth any level of cooperation?
Or have we moved past that stage - and even a major human tragedy like this is to 'corrupted' by the whiff of liberals that it must be rejected at all costs?
Is that what half the nation really believes now?
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes.
The Conservatives still in denial that I know (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of that is just plain selfishness bordering on psychopathy. But some of it is, at least in my experience, a profound lack of imagination.
This is how/why you'll see Conservatives make 180s when it hits them personally. It's not that they're hypocritical, it's that they literally don't under
Re: (Score:2)
A good percentage of the population are pleading and giving prayers to a false god for four more years of their dear leader. That is where their concern is right now. And to make it more ironic this is the subsection of the population that likes to think of themselves as "pro-life".
Re:Sounds like quibbling over how bad it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look Canada is doing way better than the US... their death/million is 1/3 of ours. So you can stop with the Bullshit
And yes Trump could have done a lot... for starters he could of set an example for all his cult followers to wear a damn mask. Instead, he politicized mask-wearing which has resulted in 10's of thousands more deaths.
He could have taken leadership and coordinate PPE supplies to states, he could have worked at providing reliable information and brought to bear Federal assistance just like the gov't does with wildfire-fighting which has a lot of similarities to a pandemic - for example, he could have assembled teams of Hot Shots to be initial attack resources with testing and advice to local health care workers.
Re: Sounds like quibbling over how bad it is. (Score:3)
This is very easy to search but we are basically already guaranteed that outcome.
US deaths in WW2: 291,557
Current US fatalities from COVID-19: 284,339
Facts to consider. One, WW2 was over 4 years and COVID-19 is around 9 or 10 months since the first recorded case. In a month, COVID-19 will likely have killed more Americans that all of WW2. If we had to guess which number is more underreported, likely it's COVID-19, as the military takes tracking deaths an intricate part of its organization. A more interest
You ain't seen nothing yet (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think it's bad now, wait till winter kicks in properly and the voting and Thanksgiving and Xmas surges kick in, and then you'll see what a true collapse looks like. It's going to be pretty medieval.
Yes, but we can't do lock downs (Score:5, Insightful)
We're unlikely to get that though. At this point we're all part of a simple political calculus. If the stimulus is blocked the economy will crash. Voters will blame the party "in charge" (e.g. Biden & the Dems) and give back control of Congress in 2022. Then more obstruction will happen and again voters will blame Biden & the Dems and hand the Whitehouse back to the Republican party in 2024. Most likely with Mitt Romney as president.
It was a tactic started by Newt Gingrich, and you can read about it on his Wikipedia article. As long as you're willing to risk everybody's jobs, livelihoods and lives it works great.
TL;DR; we're all being held hostage for political power.
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That depends on what Republican voters' opinions of Trump are in 3 years time. Romney is clearly setting himself up as the Republican who opposed Trump. That will either work well, or fail catastrophically.
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Oh, no. We'd better have those illegal immigrants out in the streets begging for food and spreading Covid, God forbid we be humane to them. SuperIdiot.
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It's a different issue. Therefore it shouldn't be made a pre-condition for something completely different.
If your employer suddenly turned round and said you being paid this month involved you having done a round trip of all the US coastal cities on your own time, and having spent three days in each one picking litter up from the streets, all costs your own and STILL having to do your day job at your desk in the one office supplied to you, then I think you'll see how ridiculous all these riders are. They
Just in the US (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
(1) America is short for US of A. Always has been.
(2) Brazil (to choose the second largest country in the Americas) is doing pretty shit right now too.
Standard for mass casualty events (Score:2, Insightful)
For better or worse, this is standard for mass casualty events. You have a wreck of a passenger train, and yeah, you're going to triage the casualties because there is an imperative to save as many as possible.
Should COVID have become a mass casualty event? No, but it now is what it is, and this is the consequence of poor government leadership, inadequate healthcare (increasing co-morbidities), and the selfishness of a good chunk of the population.
COVID is particularly sustainable (Score:2)
That affects public reaction. We expect humans in nursing homes to die because that is what they go there to do though it's unfashionable to say so. I'm old too and elders often shed illusions about death those young enough for denial cherish. Our society can easily process the dead when they are of little or no FUNCTIONAL value. We shrug off the deaths from heart disease, smoking etc because most of the dead are old and long finished contributing to the economy except as consumers.
Old people are supposed t
Most prosperous country in the world (Score:2)
Rationing health care... How fucked up is that??
Re:Most prosperous country in the world (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, the US has always rationed health care. Only normally it's bureaucrats in insurance companies who get bonuses based on denying care that are doing the rationing.
But yes, it's fucked up.
Re: (Score:2)
The US has always rationed Health Care through the filter of who can pay.
Ironically the hardest hit rationed section of the population is the working poor - the people who work low-end jobs, or people who work for companies that don't provide health-care or provide shit policies. These are the people who make the country run daily.
Obligatory.. (Score:2)
Well, Trump did warn us the US would be "sick of winning".
Yes, they are (Score:3, Informative)
Here is a story about how the Republican governor of Iowa has caused the hospitals to be overwhelmed [theatlantic.com] by parroting the lies of the con artist.
Back in October, some smaller hospitals were already being overwhelmed [miamiherald.com] and some larger hospitals were unable to take patients from elsewhere due to a shortage of beds.
Ohio is being overwhelmed [msn.com] with the surge in covid cases appearing in its hospitals.
On top of all the new cases, hospital workers are being overwhelmed [cnn.com], both physically and mentally [msn.com], as they work day after day without rest. Hundreds of hospital workers, mainly nurses, have died after themselves contracting the virus while others have quit. You have a heart attack and need treatment? Good luck getting care with the staff shortages [jsonline.com].
So yes, hospitals are being overwhelmed, and with Thanksgiving over but Christmas and New Year's around the corner, expect the number of cases and deaths to keep soaring [usatoday.com]. Oh, and don't forget about those death panels [theguardian.com], which were instituted as far back as March, as hospitals are forced to decide who should get treatment [ibj.com].
Re:Yes, they are (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd take anything The Guardian says with a pinch of salt (at least as far as the tone goes). Everywhere in the world has set up ethical panels to determine protocol on provision of care for when the service gets overwhelmed.
What The Guardian is saying is a "Death Panel" (note the heavily emotionally loaded term, designed to immediately set you against it) is little more than a clinical ethics panel to say "When we are faced with a probable lack of clinical resource due to numbers expected coming in from the population compared to our limited ICU resources, how do we handle this". This is of course, the correct way to deal with it. Very sensible, and the world at large has been doing this since the first wave of COVID.
I work in a hospital, and I've planned the changes required to my own department, and been involved with the planning for the surrounding departments as well, to ensure we can all continue service. So yeah, I know what overloaded is like. It's been exhausting since the start, and we're all frazzled. That's because the numbers of trained staff are present in numbers that are sustainable for predicted events plus error margin. We've blown right past that, and without huge investment, capacity doesn't expand much. Interestingly, this seems to have worked better in socialised medicine as the Government has pulled spend to the infrastructure and added a healthy extra capacity at places identified at the most risk (i.e. the UK's Nightingale Hospitals etc.). But that's a slightly different debate.
Yes, I'd expect the holiday season to cause another spike. But that's entirely on people.
I still don't understand why you're so caught up on people making clinically essential decisions on an ethical basis about who gets care, when this event predicts a resource requirement that goes way beyond expected ability to provide. That's practical and ethical. Please stop making it out to be something nefarious because it's not (and yes, I've served on both research and clinical ethics boards, so I know what goes on in them and why).
Re: (Score:3)
It's being called a "death panel" because that's the term the GOP used when it was fighting against universal healthcare. Some people need a reminder that the "death panel" is not an exclusive feature of single payer healthcare.
Re: (Score:3)
As a follow up, Idaho now has soldiers triaging patients in parking lots [go.com] due to the massive rise in cases. They're even preparing their death panels:
Now, hospitals are planning what to do if there aren’t enough workers or beds available in an entire region. Health care workers would have to choose who gets treatment and who doesn’t.
“That's really when we're at risk for what's called the ‘crisis standards,'" said Hill, noting that the state would decide when to institute them. "We're very concerned in the next two weeks.”
Idaho's crisis plan divides the sick into categories, prioritizing those with life-threatening illnesses or injuries who are expected to survive and giving only comfort care to those who aren't.
Rate patients on a score ranging from 1 to 8 (Score:2)
- The first number ranging from 1 to 4 based on breathing, kidney, liver, heart function, nervous system platelet count.
- The second number ranging from 1 to 4 based on patient's long term health as the likely hood of dying in the next 12 months using age and health history.
It's all about throughput (Score:3)
Looking at the data, we had three major spikes in caseload so far. The first was concentrated in the Northeast and I lived through it in NYC. Until things shut down and the volume went down it was pretty crazy...no one really knew how many people were going to get sick, hospitals were indeed overwhelmed and the city was digging temporary cemeteries. The second spike was more generalized in other parts of the country and for whatever reason the patchwork of rules and treatment improvements was able to keep hospital capacity to reasonable levels. This spike is way more generalized across the whole population and it seems like it's a throughput problem this time. Fewer people are dying for now because treatments are improving. Hospital stays are also shorter, and fewer people need to go to the hospital. (Either the first rounds got the most vulnerable, enough people are listening, and/or the virus is adapting to not kill its host.) But when you have even a small percentage of the population needing the services of a system not designed to cater to that level, all at once, you're going to have a problem.
Here in NY, they're planning for yet another round of insanity as all the idiots gathering for Thanksgiving and Christmas get each other sick. Ever since the beginning it's been all about reducing the influx and maintaining throughput without having to resort to measures like building more hospitals and finding healthcare workers from somewhere. Problem is since it's almost everywhere now, it's hard to move people around to keep up with the demand. Hopefully enough people will listen, people won't need hospital care, and we can hang on until most people are either infected or vaccinated.
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct of course strictly speaking that ultimately it is the result of the actions of individuals but it is also true that Trump and his cronies have actively promoted that mentality in his followers by pushing fake conspiracy theories and acting like not wearing a mask was a point of political honor.
Whereas if Trump had repeatedly urged people to be cautious, wear masks, avoid unnecessary gatherings and so on, that most definitely would have resulted in more people doing so.
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
There are irresponsible individuals, but they have mostly taken their cues from Trump and other Republicans who have:
1. Minimized the outlook ("It will be gone by Easter"),
2. Made it an article of faith that masks are not necessary
3. A catastrophic approach to acquiring and distributing necessary supplies, such as PPE.
4. Etc.
So, yes, the severity of the outbreak is in part Trump and the Republican's fault.
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's more about leadership and unified propaganda.
When Muslim leaders actively put out a death threat against a group of people, for instance - it's fair to reply negatively to those leaders and those that follow those leaders, without blanket labeling the folks that aren't following those leaders.
In this case, there are leaders that are calling for reduced or removed reactions to a growing pandemic - a pandemic that on its own will harm the economy and businesses unchecked - by justifying it confusingly with the idea that changing behavior to not kill people will harm some companies.
It's not all of conservatism - but it is a huge percentage of those folks that are following conservative leadership on these issues almost exclusively compared to anything else.
And it's fair to say that it is the leaderships fault for mis-leading their followers in these cases - in this case Trump.
It's all an important part of us deciding as a nation how we want to proceed - since we're a culture that elects leaders that both shape opinions and make decisions that are binding on the nation.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say it's more akin to blaming Al Qaeda or ISIS for Islamic terrorism. It's their leaders advocating it. While there might be a few others Muslims who decide to commit terrorist acts, the majority are going to be following the lead of an organization they belong to.
The Republican leadership, including Donald Trump, advocated people not wearing masks even long after it was proven to be airborne (at least October). They also advocated "not letting the virus control your life" and traveling to visit family during Thanksgiving (late November) and Christmas. If their followers took their advice, they were spreading a plague.
There are also emergency powers regarding the production of medicine, PPE and ventilators that Donald Trump did not activate and large portions of the US emergency pandemic supplies that are still in warehouses. In fact, he used his emergency powers to confiscate PPE from states that didn't support him politically and added it to the national stockpile.
Meanwhile, most local Republican officials took their cue from Trump, with Republican sheriffs refusing to enforce stay at home orders or mandatory bar closings. Meanwhile Republican governors issued executive orders specifically forbidding cities from enacting more stringent limitations than the state's (note, that was entirely a Republican governor move) if their local circumstances warranted (or, more likely, because the state refused to put sufficient restrictions in place in the first place.)
Democratic leadership advocated wearing a mask and social distancing.
Re: (Score:2)
rather than the selfish behavior of irresponsible individuals, irrespective of political affiliation
Not quite. It's not "selfish" to follow the guidance given to you by the government in charge of managing a pandemic. And what was that guidance? "I won't be wearing a one [a mask]". Lack of rules, and lack of guidance is absolutely the fault of the administration in charge of response. Just look at the number of calls to the poison hotline in March/April relative to 2019. Do you think people selfishly tried to drink bleach?
What is selfish is thinking that rules don't apply to you, and that trait is not uni
Re:Republican/Democrat/Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Really what's at fault here is the notion that everything is just an opinion, and one opinion is as good as any other.
If you went back fifty years or so, Republicans were more pro-science and Democrats were more populist and science skeptical. Back then the Republicans were a regional party because they were unable to obtain legislative seats or electoral votes from southern states. In the 1970s they set out to break the solid Democratic South by coopting the Democrats who were most alienated by the increasing acceptance of alternative lifestyles (gays), feminism, and the civil rights movement. One of the key groups was Christian Evangelicals
The Evangelicals introduced the party to approach to science informed by Intelligent Design. ID was (ironically) was based on the very postmodernist sociology that old-line conservatives had been railing against in academia. In the "Strong Program" of postmodernist sociology of science, there is no truth, only opinions and power, elites and marginalized groups. You can see that template in action here in the responses to this article: the seriousness of COVID-19 is just the opinion of a scientific elite, which uses its power to marginalize less powerful groups.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Tell you what mate, seeing as you don't trust doctors to tell the truth, make a pledge here and now that you're not going to seek medical treatment in the future. Then you can, quite literally, fuck off and die, and the rest of us can dance on your fucking grave.
We all know you won't, though. We all know that the minute you need help, just like the cocksucking little shit bag in the White House, you'll talk shit about how you know better than the fucking medics right up to the minute that you yourself ne
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Interesting)
... you'll talk shit about how you know better than the fucking medics right up to the minute that you yourself need treatment, at which point, surprise fucking surprise, you'll suddenly not only trust the doctors again, you'll demand you get the best and everyone else can fuck right off. Because that's the kind of cunt you are.
In my town, a local pastor of an Evangelical church defied mandated protocols and proudly claimed you either have to have "faith or fear"
Well, when he came down with Covid we found out he had "fear" because he got his ass to the ER real fast. He ended up in ICU for over a week. He would have died if he didn't.
When he got out he made a flowery speech thanking all the health care workers that took care of him and told them how grateful he was. He wasn't grateful or he would not have knowingly endangered their lives with his neglect. His church continues with defiance today and recently invited evangelical asshole charlie kirk to give a speech.
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please, spare us... Trump did pretty much exactly what he should have done. And for what it's worth, he got COVID-19 at an almost ideal time. Hospitals weren't overrun back then, and he only spent a few days in the hospital anyway. If a few more people had been getting infected a few months ago when hospitals had plenty of capacity, there would be less problems with them getting overrun now.
LOL. Trump did what he should have done? You mean all the gathering without a mask (especially indoor)? Or do you mean the part where he replaced Fauci (with someone less competent, and then replaced her with someone even less competent), but then went running back to Fauci as soon as he himself was sick?
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Insightful)
So how many of those others could expect a Marine helo to land on their front lawn to take them to the hospital for cutting edge treatment, all at no cost to them?
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Insightful)
And before the second asshat joins the chorus to tell me it's only the weak, with comorbidities, who were slain, answer me this: If someone should don his cape and mask to go out night after night, day after day, selectively killing (mostly) the weak, you cool with that? It won't be a tragedy, and that person a monster? And you won't be a monster for trivializing it?
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, but that's probably 200k from COVID and 100k from other factors caused by the lockdown.
This has been checked. Lockdown temporarily reduces death from many other causes. There will be subsequent extra death, e.g. due to cancer treatment delays, but these are not yet in the statistics. The situation is actually worse than the people pointing to excess deaths are stating.
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we've had pandemics before, we've studied outcomes, and lockdowns aren't exactly free, but they generally reduce deaths. There weren't 100k deaths "caused by the lockdown". Furthermore, there's lots of non-lockdown things, like social distancing and mask wearing, that would have helped hugely, but weren't done.
Mostly, though... If you want to claim that there's extra deaths from lockdowns, don't offer speculative narratives and how you feel like lockdowns might lead to deaths. Offer real, solid, numbers. Epidemiologists have been writing about the direct and indirect effects of policies like this for over a century. We have studies and graphs from the 1918 pandemic, after all. So on one side, we have basically all the science that's been done in this field, regardless of political affiliations or country, for more than a century, and on the other hand, we have a small population of people, more than 95% of whom are right-wing, who are making claims contrary to that science and who offer no actual evidence, just speculations and vague handwaving appeals to "extra orphans from the lockdowns" without actually justifying or supporting the claim that the lockdowns kill people.
Also, no, covid's mortality rate isn't really "more in-line with the common flu". I know that was a popular thing to say early on, but it's stupid. Yes, it looks low if you disregard all the people who have other health problems, or who are old, and so on... But you know what? If you want to do that, you have to also look only at flu death rates excluding all the people who have other health problems, or who are old... And then you run into the problem that it's really hard to measure that death rate because it's so low. (I've never actually personally had anyone tell me about someone they know dying from "flu" who wasn't old and unhealthy to begin with. I've long since lost count of the number of people I know who know someone who died from covid, and not all the dead people were old or unhealthy.)
Re: (Score:2)
False numbers of dead (including anyone who 'looked' like they had it)
A death is counted as a covid death if that was the immediate cause of death. A doctor makes that decision when he/she fills out the death certificate. Either all the doctors across the country are liars, cheats, and corrupt or you are a stupid idiot.
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:5, Interesting)
The feeling that you have a kind of infallible BS detector means that in effect, you're worse off than if you were totally ignorant. Ignorant people can learn from new evidence.
The problem with common sense is that it's value depends on how familiar you are with the problem domain. If you'd worked in public health and had a feeling that this is all just BS, then that would be worth the rest of us paying attention to. But if you haven't put in any thought or work in the field, your BS detector is worthless. If your Aunt Tilly feels the spot on your arm must be skin cancer, but your dermatologist says, "it's probably a keratosis, but let's take a closer look," those are both just opinions, but that doesn't mean those opinions have equal weight, even if Aunt Tilly feels very, very sure and the dermatologist is a bit more guarded.
I worked for many years in public health, and people have been expecting a respiratory pandemic for years; it only feels like science fiction to you because it's become a popular disaster movie trope.
Re: (Score:3)
It's humbling how amazing these gods are, isn't it? It used to be that two people couldn't keep a secret, but now I see that you have figured out that someone has successfully pulled off a conspiracy where tens of thousands -- no, wait, hundreds of thousands, no wait [looks it up] -- over ten million health care workers have managed to keep the big secret, none of them ever slipping up. All it would take is one in ten million people to fail to live up to secure practices, to falter in their discipline. One
Re: (Score:3)
My wife is Peruvian, and SARS2 is ripping the guts out of the country (I suspect that there is a genetic component in the Andean people that makes them more susceptible). She's lost at least 4 first cousins, half a dozen other relatives, and multiple neighbors that she grew up with. Try and tell a Peruvian that COVID-19 is a hoax and they're likely to beat the crap out of you.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, research has shown that people will only double down on their beliefs when shown contravening evidence. I think what happens is that staking out a position on some issue requires an emotional buy-in. Once they've spent the capital for the buy in, to accept contravening evidence means for them to accept that they have been scammed, and thus implying they are stupid, or simply fooled, and thus not bright enough to see through the haze. They are convinced they aren't stupid and also very bright so th
Re: (Score:3)
It turns out there was no need for a second asshat. You can do the whole job -- respect!
Re:I've long ago decided too many lies about covid (Score:4, Informative)
This time, you lie.
Here is a link to the paper:
https://drive.google.com/file/... [google.com]
See all those watermarks with "Retracted .."?
Here is the commentary on the retraction. Note that it explicitly says that the article relied on false data and that it was retracted.
"Briand was quoted in the article as saying, âoeAll of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers.â This claim is incorrect and does not take into account the spike in raw death count from all causes compared to previous years. According to the CDC, there have been almost 300,000 excess deaths due to COVID-19.
...
Because of these inaccuracies and our failure to provide additional information about the effects of COVID-19, The News-Letter decided to retract this article. It is our duty as a publication to combat the spread of misinformation and to enhance our fact-checking process. We apologize to our readers. "
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/... [jhunewsletter.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, it's not the humidity. It's people corralling themselves into offices or buildings without masks for some stupid reason.
Re: Could it be the HUMIDITY? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
They were much like the trick the UK pulled in WWII where they fooled German bombers by setting up lights in the countryside while blacking out the actual city.
They had space and what could pass as beds, but staff and equipment weren't really there.
And yes, they got rid of them.
Re: (Score:3)
What happened to the Mobile hospitals & Carriers?
The carriers were not set up to handle coronavirus cases and were sent to unload the hospitals of other patients so they could use more beds for severe coronavirus patients. (Carriers are not suitable for keeping coronavirus patents isolated and would quickly become pesthoes if they were allowed onboard. But they're great for many other medical issues, especially trauma).
New York City's reaction was instructive: They demanded the navy ship take corona
Re: (Score:3)
I mean, that's how NY taxes work due to the large number of NYC commuters who live in Connecticut or New Jersey. Wouldn't you want people to know what they were getting into before they arrive?