Coronavirus (COVID-19) is too exciting for adults to discuss (CLOSED)

[sparcboxbuck]

I'm saying that if we're going to raise our brow at others, doesn't that apply here too?
Florida has been reported for months to be the polar opposite of the towns that may be overreporting covid. Withholding nursing home data (for awhile) and not reporting hospitalization data.

Now they allegedly fired someone who is claiming she was pressured to alter data. Even if it turns out she's lying and not "them" there's still a lot of gamesmanship with the data.


Meanwhile Houston appears to be maxing out in some spots :(
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-hospitals-hit-100-base-ICU-capacity-15372256.php?utm_campaign=CMS Sharing Tools (Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

Thread response related to the above


1/ Houston, TX hospital capacity update:

“What you’ve been hearing is a report that we are at 97% or so capacity...Exactly one year ago, it was at 95%. It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s - 90s. That’s how all of us operate hospitals...”

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

Coronavirus: could it be burning out after 20% of a population is infected?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-could-burning-20-population-125914328.html


Interesting article suggesting that it may be flaming out around the 20% mark total.

Also noted that even among cruise / military ships testing was only finding 20% infection rates... coincidental? Maybe.

Either way, this thing is strange. Between the antibodies for those infected seemingly going away, the number of asymptotic, and what appears to be some limiting factor and the TCell response that some have which seems to be a pre-immunity... this is a very strange virus.

Coincidentally, a co-worker of mine was telling me this morning about his daughter who just got out of 14-day quarantine since returning back from college in Washington state, and while there she was studying virology. She had told him what she had learned about some of the more famous viruses and how they tend to burn once they either seem to hit a certain threshold percentage of a population or simply replicate too fast when they are highly lethal (I think an example of this was MERS where it was killing people before those people could spread the disease and after a while no one was infected). Now, I personally am not totally convinced that this virus will "peter out" once a certain percentage gets infected (this is different than reaching "herd immunity")...however, I am convinced that the virus is not as bad as many fear and that we'll continue to see the death rate steadily decrease. Right now the mortality rate among confirmed cases is about 4.8%, way down from the peak of about 12.4% on Apr 21st (373,472 cumulative active cases on Apr 7 and 46,358 cumulative deaths on Apr 21st, assuming the average time between contraction and death is 14 days).

 

[charlohiottean]

If 100m stands for 100 miles, then yes, appropriate measures.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

150,000 deaths by mid-July
https://fox6now.com/2020/06/24/new-...-150000-american-covid-19-deaths-by-mid-july/

You posted this on Thursday (Jun 25th). The death toll at the end of that day was 126,977. The 7-day-moving-average for deaths over the last three days has been 591, 593, and 591--an average of about 592 deaths a day. Extrapolate that out to Jul 15th (inclusive) from the today's death count of 128,783 and you get 9,472 new deaths for a total of 138,255 which is way below what the prediction was (an increase of 23,000).

 

[Honor&Glory]

bullshit. I can’t pimp slap a scUM’er from that far away.

 

[jwinslow]

Ryan and Urban were well ahead of the curve

Thread response related to the above


1/ Houston, TX hospital capacity update:

“What you’ve been hearing is a report that we are at 97% or so capacity...Exactly one year ago, it was at 95%. It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s - 90s. That’s how all of us operate hospitals...”

And hopefully those icus clear out as quickly as average. That was the complication in March in hotspots.

This is encouraging from a few days ago

Doctors and nurses also have learned how to better treat Covid-19 patients after three months of its presence, said Callender, who joined Memorial Hermann in 2019.

"We're seeing a slightly lower rate in terms of the number of typical hospital bed patients who convert to a need for ICU hospitalization. We're also using ventilators less frequently," he said. "We have more drugs at our disposable that we know help limit the severity and duration of the illness. So overall we're faring better than we did just a couple months ago."

 

[Taosman]

"Deaths are down. But maybe only for now."
An important point to keep in mind is that it takes time before people infected with the coronavirus get sick enough to die. “Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said at a congressional hearing last week. A month ago, there were fewer COVID-19 cases per day, so death rates now could be reflecting those numbers. Some experts expect death rates will rise over the next month to reflect the current surge in cases, according to the Washington Post.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-covid-19-cases-deaths-235947917.html

 

[jwinslow]

Thread response related to the above


1/ Houston, TX hospital capacity update:

“What you’ve been hearing is a report that we are at 97% or so capacity...Exactly one year ago, it was at 95%. It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s - 90s. That’s how all of us operate hospitals...”

One counterpoint to my other reply, it appears that they're cancelling electives down there, which is dreadful news for the hospital. I'm not sure if this happens frequently but cancelling revenue often seems unsustainable



It certainly seems like they're trying to increase capacity and that this isn't business as usual, but everything is so political and bitter right now

And all of the links are from two days ago

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

One counterpoint to my other reply, it appears that they're cancelling electives down there, which is dreadful news for the hospital. I'm not sure if this happens frequently but cancelling revenue often seems unsustainable



It certainly seems like they're trying to increase capacity and that this isn't business as usual, but everything is so political and bitter right now

And all of the links are from two days ago

I work for a medical supply company. I've had 3 different people opine that they expect my company is swimming in cash right now. Quite the opposite.

Yes, elective surgeries were canceled all over the country as a result of this. The division for which I work produces robots that assist with joint replacement surgery. Those surgeries went from hundreds a month to zero very quickly. They are starting to pick back up, and some surgeons are planning to work so much over the next few months that they will end up doing as many surgeries for the year as they otherwise would have.

The hit to the elective surgery industry is massive, for now. But for many of those surgeries, joint replacement included, those surgeries won't really be canceled, they'll be postponed. That fact won't erase the economic problem by any stretch of the imagination, and it comes with a human cost of thousands of people spending several more months with pain and disability.

Side note: The surgeries are starting to pick back up because methods have been developed to safely perform these procedures, not because of the state of the epidemic (rather in spite of it) and not because of economic pressure.

 

[ORD_Buckeye]

Thread response related to the above


1/ Houston, TX hospital capacity update:

“What you’ve been hearing is a report that we are at 97% or so capacity...Exactly one year ago, it was at 95%. It is completely normal for us to have ICU capacities that run in the 80s - 90s. That’s how all of us operate hospitals...”

"all of who" exactly? The guy isn't in the hospital business. He's not a doctor or a public health expert. He's not an academic in a related field. He's not even based in the Houston area! He's a silicon valley tech bro who describes himself on linkedin as a "growth hacker."

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aginn

 

[Jagdaddy]

Coronavirus: could it be burning out after 20% of a population is infected?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-could-burning-20-population-125914328.html

Interesting article suggesting that it may be flaming out around the 20% mark total.

Also noted that even among cruise / military ships testing was only finding 20% infection rates... coincidental? Maybe.

Either way, this thing is strange. Between the antibodies for those infected seemingly going away, the number of asymptotic, and what appears to be some limiting factor and the TCell response that some have which seems to be a pre-immunity... this is a very strange virus.

I've chosen at this point to simply take reasonable precautions (mask indoors in public places and outdoors if I can't keep distance from people lots of hand washing, reduced trips to grocery stores, restaurants, etc.), stay in decent shape and caught up on sleep to minimize the odds of complications in case I get infected anyway, and only casually follow the news because I don't have any illusions that I understand much virology or pandemics and what the long-term effects of surviving a moderate but symptomatic or severe case are.

This is encouraging from a few days ago

Doctors and nurses also have learned how to better treat Covid-19 patients after three months of its presence, said Callender, who joined Memorial Hermann in 2019.

"We're seeing a slightly lower rate in terms of the number of typical hospital bed patients who convert to a need for ICU hospitalization. We're also using ventilators less frequently," he said. "We have more drugs at our disposable that we know help limit the severity and duration of the illness. So overall we're faring better than we did just a couple months ago."

It's almost as if even just delaying rather stopping the spread might actually save lives, Who'd a thunk it?

 

[Jake]

Florida being Florida.

 

[Jagdaddy]

This is interesting. A study suggests that a secondary effect of avoidance of protests cancelled out or more than cancelled out any primary effect of COVID spread from protests.

https://coloradosun.com/2020/06/30/police-protests-coronavirus-spread/

And here's the study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf

 

[Jagdaddy]

Florida being Florida.

I'm pretty sure I'd want something blocking both her breath and her trench stench.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

"Deaths are down. But maybe only for now."
An important point to keep in mind is that it takes time before people infected with the coronavirus get sick enough to die. “Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said at a congressional hearing last week. A month ago, there were fewer COVID-19 cases per day, so death rates now could be reflecting those numbers. Some experts expect death rates will rise over the next month to reflect the current surge in cases, according to the Washington Post.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/why-covid-19-cases-deaths-235947917.html

And right on cue. I keep showing how the death rate continues to fall, even after weeks from virus contraction. But, feel free to dig up any doom-and-gloom article you can Google.