[slartibartfast01]

I’m sure the boss of the apprentices you refer to would shout “Fake news!”

Or they were being sarcastic.

[aslyfox]

. . . Given who is in charge at the WH and the idiotic things they say every single time the mic is on, I'm not sure I trust their apprentices.

I think that " comment " has been explained away:

Actually, that video has been reported on, and Fox News' John Roberts stated that it was " sardonic humor and sarcasm... There is NO vaccine. And it is NOT a hoax."

Read more at: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/14-general-talk/404129-coronavirus.html#ixzz6KkI4pxjR

[Racer X 69]

At work per CDC guidelines we are instructed to clean various surfaces.
We were using Clorox wipes but they are no longer issued to us.
We now use a 70% alcohol solution in a spray bottle and disposable cloths.

In our stock room I was amused to see them dispensing the alcohol solution.
It comes in clear long necked wine bottles with cork stoppers, in standard cartons from a commercial booze distillery.

Chris

Well at least you can gargle with it and suffer minimal side effects.

[photoptimist]

I’m sure the boss of the apprentices you refer to would shout “Fake news!”

Indeed! He prefers the sycophants on "Faux News" (although he doesn't pronounce the "aux" as the French would!)

[Rondec]

It is worth noting that the statistics for medical errors include:
A) Cases where the patient would have died without medical attention, but a correctly applied medical procedure would have more or less been guaranteed worked.
B) Cases where the patient would have only a certain (possibly slim) chance of dying despite "perfect" medical attention, but the procedure was not applied correctly - decreasing the chances of the patient.
C) Case where the treatment provided actively hurt the patient.
B) An incompetent doctor basically kills a perfectly healthy patient.

A) and B) would have resulted in deaths nonetheless, C) and D) could be counted as "medical error deaths". At least, assuming that those numbers aren't further confounded by the definition of "medical error".

The precise definition here is very important: does making a controversial call in the operating room when there's no time to think count? Do we count "there weren't enough hospital beds"? Do we count "the patient didn't have health insurance and only sought treatment when at death's door, while having undocumented underlying conditions that led to a wrong call by the doctors"?

A single number (or range) seldom tells a whole story. Proper interpretation of data is crucial, or else you end up with damned lies (and statistics).

Of course. The British Medical Journal contains a lot of assumptions that are problematic. A patient in an ICU is given the wrong dose of antibiotic and later dies. There is of course no guarantee that giving the right dose of antibiotic would have saved the patient nor that the wrong dose hastened their end, but it certainly is a medical error and the patient died.

Some other thoughts not on that...

That said, I have a problem with the equating of an acute problem -- COVID-19 with chronic problems -- heart disease, cancers, etc. Somehow the fact that we have lots of people die every year from chronic conditions makes it OK to allow a bunch more to die with COVID? The same with medical errors. They are a problem and should be improved (having wide spread electronic health records and such should be helping at least some as they have built in checks and balances for medication interactions, dosing errors, etc), but fixing them has no impact on deaths from COVID.

In addition, somehow when social distancing starts to work and cases and deaths start to slow, a group of people is quick to say, "See, it wasn't as bad as you predicted it would be." As though it would be better to have a million deaths in the United States than 70,000. If a doctor tells a patient, "If you don't take this medication, you are going to die," and the patient takes the medication and lives, it doesn't quite seem right for them to complain about the outcome.

For whatever reason, the south and midwest have been relatively spared in the US. I have no idea why, but almost half of the US cases lie in the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Maybe it is population density (although parts of Florida are pretty densely populated too), but certainly the cases per million are way lower in the rest of the country. Maybe that will change if they "restart" the economy in Georgia, but my guess is that people are going to continue being pretty careful, even as they begin to do things again and maybe there won't be as big a jump as some think there will be.

---------- Post added 04-26-20 at 04:53 PM ----------

Mistakes made by medical professionals kill between 250,000 and 350,000 people every year in the US. Yet there is not one person calling for change. They seem to have no problem standing on that hill. Also in the US there is great pressure to list every patient who has the virus who dies list the virus as the cause of death. This no matter that the person may already nave several other underlying causes going on. For a person who has these underlying health problems is the virus the cause of death or the other health issues that they suffer from. Just about any illness could kill them.

For the last decade, the New York state Department of Health has been aggressively closing hospitals and forcing others to reduce the numbers of beds in those that remain open. How much of this is at fault? A few years ago the state of NY auctioned off hundreds of surplus respirators. The governor ordering nursing homes to take in Corona virus patients. This bringing the virus to those most vulnerable.


One problem in New York City is the well known underground parties being held in supposedly closed venues. Then there were the college student placing their own desires in the forefront because they seem to think that they have some sort of God given right to spring break partying. What exactly are colleges teaching today? Even during the annual summer polio summer epidemics the healthy people were not quarantined.


Like it or not herd immunity is the only way this virus will become controllable. According the "the experts", a vaccination is either 6 months or two years away. Which number is correct? Sweden is taking the right approach. Second and third wave outbreaks will be much less there than in countries that try to keep their populations under house arrest.


Interesting hot mike conversation between two employees at the White House while they wiped down the area before a press conference. One was heard to say that he was not worried because he was already vaccinated. While the video is out there I have heard of no major news outlet looking into this.

I commented on the study done in New York. It is not adequate to give a real prediction as it sampled 3000 individuals from around the state at places like super markets. In addition, obviously the people who would be out and about would be significantly more likely to have been exposed to COVID than people hunkered down at home (who knows how many of those there are?). That said, if you do the calculation based on 14 percent of the state of New York having had COVID-19, the mortality rate is more like 0.75 percent. Which is seven and half times worse than influenza. And that's with 14 percent of the population affected. Bump that number up to 50 percent and you are talking 65,000 deaths in New York alone.

Sweden for some reason gets bandied about a lot as a paragon of something. But it is at 18.000 cases and 2200 deaths and clearly is still climbing. It is a similar size to the state of Virginia which is at 13,000 cases and 450 deaths and seems to be peaking right now, hopefully starting to see a decline next week.

Vaccines are under testing right now. People have gotten them (not the person who made this comment however), but I think the estimation is that it will take 18 months from the beginning of research to finish testing and get a decent supply out to those who need them. But Johnson and Johnson is working on one and the University of Pittsburgh is working on another. There are several being tested in Europe. No one knows for sure which if any of these will pan out but testing is underway and honestly that makes me feel better, even if it is still aways off.

[aslyfox]

latest from Kansas:

COVID-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) Quick Stats (Preliminary Numbers, Subject to Change) Updated 4/26/2020
• There were 3,174 cases from 76 counties with 118 deaths reported as of 10 a.m. • There have been 485 of 2,439 cases that have been hospitalized. • There have been 23,053 negative tests conducted at KDHE and private labs. • Age range is 0 years to 99 years (median 47 years) • There have been 828 positive tests at KHEL and 2,344 at private labs. • 1,559 cases are female and 1,593 are male and 22 unknown.

https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/962/4-26-20-update-numbers

my county

Eighty-four of the 101 people known to have been infected by COVID-19 in Shawnee County have recovered, according to information shared Saturday on a community impact dashboard made available on the website of the county health department.

Twelve people were continuing to receive treatment for COVID-19 while five had died of that disease, said information posted on that site at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

The site indicated the county’s number of known COVID-19 cases had risen to 101 Saturday from 100 on Friday.

The site also indicated that:
·44 people in Shawnee County were awaiting results Saturday of testing conducted for COVID-19.
·2,329 had tested negative.
·102 were being monitored for the potential presence of the virus.

The health department indicated last week that after Saturday, it didn’t plan to update the community impact dashboard again until Monday.

County has 101 known COVID-19 cases, 84 recoveries - News - The Topeka Capital-Journal - Topeka, KS

[brewmaster15]

Not sure if this one has come up...

Westport Ends Controversial Coronavirus Drone Program Amid Uproar | Westport, CT Patch

Admittedly, I do not like drones.. they do have some uses that I think are positive but mostly I can do without them. That aside... the article is interesting on several levels..

I should note that Westport was the site of CTs first major epicenter attributed to a large party..I have to wonder if the experience and press made the town more amenable to drone tech being used.

Its also of note that they don't say what they would have done with the data collected.
Al

[aslyfox]

Not sure if this one has come up...

Westport Ends Controversial Coronavirus Drone Program Amid Uproar | Westport, CT Patch

Admittedly, I do not like drones.. they do have some uses that I think are positive but mostly I can do without them. That aside... the article is interesting on several levels..

I should note that Westport was the site of CTs first major epicenter attributed to a large party..I have to wonder if the experience and press made the town more amenable to drone tech being used.

Its also of note that they don't say what they would have done with the data collected.
Al

I was going to post about it when I saw a report about it being done but didn't when I read a follow up indicating they had stopped the program

[bobmaxja]

The problem is many countries is they dont count case or death in nursing home. It's seem Kansas report everything locally but been unable to confirm if their numbers are included in USA number.
All the numbers we see from World ometer or John Hopkins are not ral.
Good example, here in Canada, Ontario count all case after 14 days as Death or recover . In Québec, we need thedouble negative test

What are states already reporting?

As of April 23, 2020, 36 states were reporting some level of data about coronavirus cases and deaths in long-term care facilities, with wide variation in types of data being reported, long-term care facility definitions, inclusion of residents/staff, and frequency of updates (Table 1)

State Reporting of Cases and Deaths Due to COVID-19 in Long-Term Care Facilities | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Like my accounting manager said to me 1+1= What do you want as an answer?

[clackers]

Many have the belief that there are no Dwarf women, and the Dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground, which is of course ridiculous....

There may be Dwarf women in Middle Earth, it's just hard to tell ... is this Sam or Samantha Oakenshield?

[aslyfox]

this idea of gambling on reducing safe at home restrictions scares me

so I think I will post this about relying on " tips "

You Tube

You Tube

at least as good as what I am hearing from commentators and government spokespersons

[swanlefitte]

One thing i don't hear is reducing the chance of mutation. The more people get it gives gabillions more chances of a serious mutation. Less people less chance. Even with immunity by having it or by vacine a mutant strain might not be. A mutant strain might be more contagious or deadly or both.
Edit
Sadly not much known about this topis historically, let alone this time.

Because the only 1918 pandemic virus samples we have yet identified are from second-wave patients (16), nothing can yet be said about whether the first (spring) wave, or for that matter, the third wave, represented circulation of the same virus or variants of it. Data from 1918 suggest that persons infected in the second wave may have been protected from influenza in the third wave. But the few data bearing on protection during the second and third waves after infection in the first wave are inconclusive and do little to resolve the question of whether the first wave was caused by the same virus or whether major genetic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/

[Fogel70]

How can Sweden's be the correct approach? Currently, their per-capita death toll is 30% higher than US one and growing faster than the US rate. Moreover, Sweden is expecting the same levels of economic recession as the US. Thus, Sweden isn't saving their economy but they are killing more people.

You cannot really compare two countries as they are different.

But there are also similarities between US and Sweden. The mayor outbreak is in the largest city/state in the countries. New York and Stockholm, where New York has been hit much harder (higher per million death rate) than Stockholm, but Stockolm has 15% of the Swedish population where New York has 6% of the US population. So the lower per million death rate in Stockholm has a higher effect on per-capita death rate in Sweden. The effect on rural population in both US and Sweden is very low, but they may be hit harder later during the pandemic.

Sweden has not seen the same massunemployment as US yet, but as a small country it can not do much about the effect of the coronavirus recession to come.

[beholder3]

You cannot really compare two countries as they are different.

But there are also similarities between US and Sweden.

This disease is all about spreading by contacts. The US has a +50% higher population density than Sweden. Japan has x10 the US population density btw.

[Rondec]

You cannot really compare two countries as they are different.

But there are also similarities between US and Sweden. The mayor outbreak is in the largest city/state in the countries. New York and Stockholm, where New York has been hit much harder (higher per million death rate) than Stockholm, but Stockolm has 15% of the Swedish population where New York has 6% of the US population. So the lower per million death rate in Stockholm has a higher effect on per-capita death rate in Sweden. The effect on rural population in both US and Sweden is very low, but they may be hit harder later during the pandemic.

Sweden has not seen the same massunemployment as US yet, but as a small country it can not do much about the effect of the coronavirus recession to come.

Sure. There are lots of differences. The concerning thing to me, is that Sweden isn't supposed to peak till May 20th (based on current computer modelling) and that is still quite aways off. Long enough that some more shut downs could happen, I suppose.