We need a clear understanding of when this will end, ready or not.

It should have been stated clearly.
14 Days, refrain from social interaction and then we are going back to work.

Nearly everybody would have been willing to sacrifice 14 days.

Employers could have made informed decisions.

The news tonight reported that the average age of those who died in Italy was 81.

We all die sometime, not that it is good, just a fact of life.

How many life’s will be destroyed for each life saved (extended)?

quote:

Originally posted by Veeper:

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:
You're dead, but we're sorry....

China Apologizes To Whistleblower Doctor Who Warned Of Coronavirus In Early 2020

https://www.oann.com/china-apo...virus-in-early-2020/

The Chinese government has issued a “solemn apology” to the family of a doctor who sounded the alarm on the coronavirus at the beginning of the year. On Friday, reports stated the government exonerated and apologized to the family of Dr. Li Wenliang, who passed away from the virus about six weeks ago.

Is that the DR that died from a COVID-19 tipped bullet?

The last thing his paper face mask did was temporarily hold in the blood as his brains were being liquidated.

Fuck china and their mom. They owe the international community and I hope they are held to the fire.

blah blah blah

quote:

Blah blah blah

10 pages a day (last two days). used to be i'd find useful information, now it's pages of above.



i open drudge in a proxy, and select my reading (also loaded through the proxy). saved this one to a txt file:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/c...-america-11584618703
Coronavirus Testing Chaos Across America

As screening sites open and close, supplies run short and criteria for participation change, many can’t determine if they have the virus

By Dan Frosch in Santa Fe, N.M., Ian Lovett in Seattle and Deanna Paul in New York
Updated March 19, 2020 6:55 pm ET

Feeling sick on Friday, Rachael Willingham went to the doctor, who gave her an order for the new coronavirus test and sent her to a mobile clinic the Colorado health department had set up.

When she arrived at 9:45 a.m., a half-dozen police officers were blocking the entrance. She returned to the clinic that afternoon, but was told testing was over for the day.

Ms. Willingham called a number for the state health department and was told to come back Saturday at noon. She did, only to find testing had been moved to the Denver Coliseum. When she got to the stadium, she waited in a line of hundreds of cars for almost two hours, only to be turned away again with no explanation.

“It’s making this worse,” the 29-year-old said of the confusion over testing. “It’s contributing greatly to the sense of fear.”

As cases of Covid-19 have exploded across the U.S., state and local governments are taking on the task of testing for the coronavirus that causes it—and they have been quickly overwhelmed. Slowed by equipment shortages and struggling to keep pace, officials have set up a chaotic patchwork of testing sites, with access varying wildly from one place to another. Now some states and counties are pulling back, using their limited resources to test only the most vulnerable.

Testing is critical for infected people to get the treatment they need and for health officials to accurately track the spread of the coronavirus. But it has proceeded far slower than experts say is necessary, in part due to a slow federal response.

That reality is playing out daily across the country, as Americans try but often fail to get help from their local governments.

The mobile testing clinic in Denver that Ms. Willingham attempted to access was temporarily moved by the Colorado Department of Health to the tiny mountain town of Telluride, six hours away; the state’s ski communities have been hard hit. Officials said they had no plans to reopen one in Denver and have pivoted to targeted testing of the most vulnerable individuals throughout Colorado. The state can process about 250 tests a day, but a backlog means results take as many as five days, a health department spokesperson said.

After initially offering widespread testing, Minnesota officials retrenched Tuesday, limiting testing to health-care workers, inpatients at hospitals and people in group living facilities.

Kris Ehresmann, commissioner of the Minnesota health department, said high demand made testing everyone who might be infected impossible. “Reserving these laboratory tests for the sickest individuals is the right thing to do,” she said.

The state was forced to freeze 1,700 samples due to a shortage of supplies, Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday. “We don’t have testing capacity,” he said.

On Wednesday, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem also said its state lab was forced to temporarily stop processing tests because it ran out of the necessary supplies.

Ms. Noem said they have been trying for weeks to get more of the chemicals used to process the tests from suppliers and had asked Vice President Mike Pence to help.

When the coronavirus first hit the U.S., all tests were initially sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was slow to make them available. As cases surged earlier this month, the federal government began allowing state and local authorities, as well as private companies, to conduct the tests themselves, hoping to speed the process.

But local rollouts have been slowed by a cascade of problems. Many areas lack enough test kits. Some are short on protective gear that providers need to conduct the tests. And the volume of people trying to get tested has become a logistical nightmare.

Anxious for help as cases rise, states including Minnesota and New Mexico have called on the federal government and manufacturers for assistance obtaining supplies such as personal protective equipment and testing devices.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has said it is shifting its strategy for containing the outbreak away from testing and toward social distancing.

The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal health officials have said in congressional testimony that they are aware there are possible shortages of chemicals used in the tests. They have said they have ramped up the deployment of test kits to states and are supporting efforts for more drive-through tests.

In Ojai, Calif., north of Los Angeles, Colleen Byrum tried in vain last week to get a test after she began running a 103 degree fever. At first, the 61-year-old was told by a receptionist who picked up the phone at Ojai Valley Community Hospital to come to the emergency parking lot for a test, she said. But when she arrived, she was told that wasn’t possible and she should see her doctor Monday.

Upset, Ms. Byrum called the emergency room back and was given a number for the CDC, which went to a recorded message telling her to call back Monday. After calling the ER again, she was given the number to the county infectious-disease response team, which also led to a voice message. The ER finally told her she didn’t meet the criteria to get tested because she hadn’t traveled to China, been on a cruise ship or been in contact with someone known to have the coronavirus infection. Finally, she was able to reach another local doctor, who said there weren’t enough testing kits to go around.

“It’s hard to advocate for yourself when you’re sick. It is not only physically exertional, it is emotionally exertional,” she said.

In some states, officials say capacity is improving and anyone who is sick should be able to get tested.

This week, New York City officials said their own testing capacity would be at 5,000 samples a day by Thursday, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state would test 6,000 samples a day as well.

But even private labs, which states are turning to for help, are struggling to catch up.

FoundCare, a drive-through testing site in Palm Beach County, one of the hardest-hit areas in Florida, had been collecting samples for days when it abruptly stopped.

A FoundCare employee who answered the phone said the clinic was no longer accepting appointments because of the “high volume of calls and no supply” of the tests.

Here is a good timeline.

TIMELINE: The Trump Administration's Decisive Actions To Combat the Coronavirus Pandemic

While the nation was focused on impeachment proceedings the snowball was building speed.

The Lame Steam Media and Russian Colluders (Democrats) need to be held accountable.
Where are the prosecutions for the crimes committed.
Where were the Republicans? All talk and no bite.

All we wanted was equal justice under the law.
They were just playing patty cake in Washington D.C. while this virus approached our open boarders.

quote:

Originally posted by f2:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/c...-america-11584618703
Coronavirus Testing Chaos Across America

As screening sites open and close, supplies run short and criteria for participation change, many can’t determine if they have the virus.

Meanwhile, the Michigan Dept. of Health and Human Services has been saying all along they've been able to get all the testing done they wanted to.

But, Michigan was one of the latter states to have the infection show up and hasn't experienced quite the rapid rise others have.

The problem is, if Trump doesn't act fast enough and the virus gets out of hand, the democrats will have a field day with him. If he acts early, it's going to hurt a lot of people, and I don't think he would've acted so early if it wasn't an election year.


NY froze rent indefinitely, what about all of the landlords. Not every landlord is ultra wealthy......Thank God I am in Florida, it's the only decent income I can count on right now.

I just noticed that Germany flew right by us on active cases. So maybe our measures are helping more than we think.

I was surprised to learn that we tested 100,000 last week alone, which is in the same or better ballpark as South Korea and explains the high national case count with low fatality rate so far. Seems a Berlin company got on the ball early on when this was still just another Chinese bug and developed a kit in cooperation with the Charité hospital which devised the WHO test protocol. They have since been cranking them out around the clock, now joined by many others.

When some of their staff had to drop out to care for their kids at home, an event organizer across the street helped them out with people to pack stuff in lieu of events to organize. They also had the foresight to stock up on ingredients in time. The only problems seems to be with labels, which are sourced from Poland and sometimes get stuck in jams over border controls now.

Current CFRs:

Italy - 4,032 : 47,021 = 8.6 %

Spain - 1,093 : 21,571 = 5.1 %

Germany - 68 : 19,848 = 0.3 %

US - 275 : 19,774 = 1.4 %

France - 450 : 12,612 = 3.6 %

South Korea - 102 : 8,799 = 1.2 %

Switzerland - 56 : 5,615 = 1.0 %

UK - 177 : 3,983 = 4.4 %

Netherlands - 106 : 2,994 = 3.5 %

Austria - 6 : 2,672 = 0.2 %

Belgium - 37 : 2,257 = 1.6 %

On that recurring debate about health care systems, I'm gonna open that spin-off thread I suggested earlier.

have been watching our state's confirmed cases trend over the last few days:

109 confirmed cases 3-21-20 1201am et 2 deaths
095 confirmed cases 3-20-20 1249am et
084 confirmed cases 3-21-20 0121pm et
055 confirmed cases 3-19-20 1200am et 1 death 0 recovered

quote:

Originally posted by f2:
local AF base just locked down - mission essential only and families. retirees can enter to pick up meds at the pharmacy. medical is off base.

update to ^ 3-16 post: commissary and gas station are open to retirees.

- - -

Is This ‘Good News’ List About the COVID-19 Pandemic Accurate? 3-19-20

This message has been edited. Last edited by: f2,

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
I don't know where the guy got his data from

The article stated that he got his numbers from 2016 data, and you posted more recent data.

Ohhh, I just went back to that link to research my next thread, and found you can select an "acute care" category as a subset of overall hospital beds, so there is still a difference by this definition:

quote:

This indicator provides a measure of the resources available for delivering services to inpatients in hospitals in terms of number of beds that are maintained, staffed and immediately available for use. Total hospital beds include curative care beds, rehabilitative care beds, long-term care beds and other beds in hospitals. The indicator is presented as a total and for curative (acute) care and psychiatric care. It is measured in number of beds per 1 000 inhabitants.

https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm

So "acute" care seems to exclude rehabilitative, long-term and psychiatric care, which explains the lower numbers used by the author. Though the point stands that he neglected to point out the US number is even lower than Italy's at 2.4 vs. 2.6 per 1,000 inhabitants (the other nations mentioned are the UK at 2.1, France 3.1 and Germany 6.0). The critical issue for current purposes remains the number of ICU beds per capita though, where the US and Germany are heads and shoulders above anyone else.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

I'm in the flatten the curve camp, but damn if we wrecked the economy over saving 5 or 10,000 lives I can't say it was worth it, and I'd include myself if I got the short straw on that bet.

Same here. Much of the containment is necessary.
However, much of the rest is over-reaction. Especially further depleting our future economy for temporary stimulus.
We can hunker down for 6-7 weeks and get past this.

This has been the hardest part for me--not knowing where to stand. What is the happy medium? I see my wrecked 401k. I see an unknown new virus taking lives. Trump is in the hardest position. He's hated by half the country and 90% of the media. He's got Fauci saying no matter how much of an overreaction it appears, it's still not enough. He sees his greatest economy ever destroyed. No matter what he does or says, it's turned back on him and made to look negative by the media. This will pass but it's hard to maintain patience. I live in Chicago and it is not easy to listen to the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard voices of Pritzker and Lightfoot. Yesterday was the first time I really started to get the blues about all this.

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:... If my job shuts down and I get laid off and I can't pay the loan off, they'll cash me out for the remaining balance OF WHAT IT'S WORTH TODAY!!!

If that happens, often you can maintain the account in their plan or rollover into an IRA. Just buy the same funds and you'll be back in (this scary market) at the same price.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm

So "acute" care seems to exclude rehabilitative, long-term and psychiatric care
...
The critical issue for current purposes remains the number of ICU beds per capita though, where the US and Germany are heads and shoulders above anyone else.

The ICU bed limitation (everywhere) is absolutely the most frightening thing about our predicament. Acute care beds are your traditional in-patient hospital bed/room. ICU or "critical care" will have the ability to monitor waveforms, and provide ventilator support. Without a flattening of the curve, there will be shortages, and horrifying decisions to make in allocation. Presumably based on age, as we have seen elsewhere already I believe. If you have 35 ventilators and 70 who need them (or 170), it's Armageddon for those at the hospitals. Both the patients, their family members and clinicians as well. Academic medical centers will have many more ICU beds, but they're also normally located near big populations. In rural regions where small hospitals barely have the resources to stay open, it's an extremely challenging predicament.

The perspective from the front lines is (based on locality and the stage of the breakout) that things are just getting started. Here's how it was explained to me by a brilliant late career Infectious Disease doc whom I've known for years and is simply a math guy, never emotional or reactionary. -- The mean incubation is 5.8 days so it will take 10 days for nearly all who've had contact to be sick. 30 days would provide three half-lives for an 82% reduction and 40 days gets a 90% reduction.

All of that assumes a very effective lock down to prevent spread. So long as anyone is still walking around with it, it just flares back up. This is the huge huge problem in my eyes. God willing, if we can flatten the curve and in a month be past the flash fire, those who blatantly disregard the precautions of this period may start an invisible smolder and cause this whole thing again.

NY state looks like the worst area in the U.S. for coronavirus

This plot just for NY state

I think we can deal with COVID-19 given our medical care. I do think we in the US got ahead of it with the travel ban that was put in place early on. It will be a changed world on the other side of this.

We've had conversations at work about details of what we're going to do if we have someone test positive. GM thinks he can just shut down for a couple days and call it good. I've told him there is no definitive data on how long the novel coronavirus can survive outside a host. Some info says up to 9 days. I'll probably write up something over the weekend and put it out as "this is what we're going to do" and leave it to him to nix it. But I've warned TPTB that with all the economic damage, in the aftermath there will likely be a lot of anger. And I'm sure there are many lawyers thinking up creative lawsuits to go after any corporation with deep pockets. So if we have a second wave case, and someone who knows that person's neighbors dog groomer also gets it, they'll claim they contracted it due to our 'negligence'. If we do some half assed measure, it won't end well.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
NY state looks like the worst area in the U.S. for coronavirus

This plot just for NY state

High density areas are naturally going to be the worst.



.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
The ICU bed limitation (everywhere) is absolutely the most frightening thing about our predicament.

Yeah, as I just noted in passing on the healthcare thread I started, we have about 28,000 ICU beds nationally over here, which are currently occupied to 79 percent capacity while we have very few critical COVID cases (the counter at Worldometer has been stuck at two for some days, though I find that a little hard to believe). Which means about 5,900 are free; let's be generous and say 6,000. Assuming that five percent of all cases will need ICU care, demand by other patients will stay the same and there's no capacity increase (though there are plans for that), that means we can afford no more than 120,000 acute infections at any time. And we have gone from 9,300 to 19,600 over the last three days. At this rate, we will be over the threshold in a week.

There are already indications that Spain and the UK are about to hit their limits.

quote:

Spanish doctors prepare to make difficult decisions if intensive care units reach capacity

Officials admit the worst is yet to come as Spain exceeds 1,000 deaths and field hospitals start going up across the country

Elena Sevillano | Oriol Güell | El País

Madrid - 20 mar 2020 - 18:35CET[/b]

Doctors in Spain are preparing to make difficult decisions as the number of coronavirus patients in intensive care continues to rise. Hospitals in hard-hit regions such as Madrid are quickly reaching capacity while the number of cases keeps growing and officials warn that “the worst is yet to come.”

By Friday afternoon, Spain had registered 1,002 deaths, a 30% rise from 24 hours earlier. And the number of people in intensive care had grown by 21.5%, for a total of 1,141 patients.

These two indicators are particularly relevant in tracking the spread of the disease, because the actual number of cases “is very likely” higher than what is officially reported due to a lack of testing, said Fernando Simón, the head of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Emergencies and Alerts, and one of the most visible faces of the crisis-management effort.

With nearly 20,000 reported cases, Spain is close to taking third spot on the global list of coronavirus infections. Of these, half have been hospitalized and 1,585 have been discharged following recovery. But with numbers expected to climb even higher in the coming days, government and health officials are preparing to see overwhelmed healthcare facilities.

“The worst days are coming,” warned Health Minister Salvador Illa on Friday, admitting that he did not know whether Spain’s aggressive measures to contain the coronavirus – the country has been on lockdown since Saturday of last week – will be effective. “We need to manage it, and we need to manage it as soon as possible,” added Simón. “The impact this is having on our society is not tenable for very long.”

Intensive care

In places such as Madrid, which accounts for most of the deaths in Spain, critical-care physicians are preparing to make difficult choices if there is a shortage of intensive care beds. The Spanish Society of Critical Intensive Care Medicine and Coronary Units (Semicyuc) has drafted an ethical guide to help doctors make those decisions. The text recommends that, given two patients, priority should be given to the one with the greatest life expectancy taking into account quality-of-life considerations.

Neither this document nor the contingency plan drawn up by the heads of intensive care units (ICU) at Spain’s hospitals mention any criteria of age. Instead, the ethical guide says that “chronological age (in years) should not be the only element to consider in assignation strategies.”

Fernando Simón said that there are around 4,400 critical care beds in Spain and that “they already had restrictive criteria” as to who may be admitted, but “much more slack than what they have now.” Because of the rise in the pace of hospital admissions, these criteria “have to become more restrictive.” Simón added that the Health Ministry is working on “establishing algorithms or admission criteria that are as homogeneous as possible.”

Field hospitals

The Madrid regional government and the Health Ministry on Friday said that a field hospital with 5,500 beds is being created inside Ifema, the city’s trade fair and exhibition facility, with support from the Military Emergency Unit (UME). Authorities have also erected an emergency shelter for homeless people at Ifema.

Two hotels, the Ayre Gran Hotel Colón and the Marriot Auditorium, have already been converted into emergency wards for people with mild symptoms. Over 40 hotels in Madrid have offered their facilities, with room for nearly 9,000 people, according to the Madrid Hotel Industry Association.

Field hospitals are also being erected elsewhere in Spain, even in areas without a significant amount of reported cases such as the Valencia region, in preparation for what could come.

[...]

https://english.elpais.com/soc...-reach-capacity.html

quote:

Coronavirus: London hospital declares ‘critical incident’ as intensive care overwhelmed by patients

Northwick Park hospital calls for help from neighbouring hospitals as NHS England rushes to free up 30,000 beds

Shaun Lintern Health Correspondent | 17 hours ago

A London hospital declared a critical incident after its intensive care unit was overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, part of the London North West University Healthcare Trust, sent a message to staff on Thursday night warning that it had run out of critical-care space.

The hospital said it called on neighbouring hospitals for help to take on additional patients. The incident was stood down after 24 hours.

Six patients who tested positive for the coronavirus infection have died at the hospital.

It comes as the NHS rushes to find an extra 30,000 bed spaces in order to establish makeshift intensive-care units ahead of an expected surge in coronavirus cases over the coming weeks.

In an email sent on Thursday night, first reported by the Health Service Journal, staff were told: “I am writing to let you know that we have this evening declared a ‘critical incident’ in relation to our critical care capacity at Northwick Park Hospital. This is due to an increasing number of patients with Covid-19.

“This means that we currently do not have enough space for patients requiring critical care.

“As part of our system resilience plans, we have contacted our partners in the North West London sector this evening to assist with the safe transfer of patients off the Northwick Park site.”

The London North West University Healthcare Trust has been approached for comment.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...k-park-a9414311.html

quote:

Originally posted by TigerDore:

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
NY state looks like the worst area in the U.S. for coronavirus

This plot just for NY state

High density areas are naturally going to be the worst.
.

I heard someone from CDC state that the numbers are going to be chaotic. Not to rely on the raw numbers until maybe the middle of next week. It's only this past week that test kits are becoming widely available. And NYC was one of the first areas where they've become available. So now that more people are being tested, we're likely to see a huge spike in "confirmed cases". Wait until about Thursday and see what the numbers say. But we will see a spike in numbers.

Although this may seem like sarcasm, it really isn’t.

I keep reading about all the people who die from seasonal flu, not to mention everything else that kills us but which don’t generate the sorts of concerns and draconian measures that this virus has. Those comparisons are of course valid, so why do we care about a death rate that may be higher, but is still part of the human condition? Okay, we’ve run out of ventilators and we must decide whose life is more important and likely to be saved, therefore why not, “No ventilator for you, old man”?

In all my (admittedly low level) medical training, it’s always been stressed that in some situations triage and deciding who gets treated and who doesn’t is a basic principle that must be followed. This pandemic and our response to it has already been described as a war; well, in wars people die, and sometimes lots of people die. If an amphibious landing that will result in many deaths is necessary to fight the war, then why not permit business as usual despite the fact that it will result in more deaths than establishing strict quarantines?

At this time those questions are more rhetorical than serious, but they won’t be for very long. As many of us here and even The Wall Street Journal are already pointing out, the lockdowns that were recently imposed are simply unsustainable. Reversing them will take great political courage and will then be used to attack those who made those decisions. Very unfortunately, they will also likely result in significant changes of the political landscape, but things can’t continue as they are at this moment.

quote:

At this time those questions are more rhetorical than serious, but they won’t be for very long.

Yep.

Yeah, looking for H1N1 data, it looked to be far worse than COVID-19. But NOTHING like what we're seeing now. I don't recall people being panicked over it. Over 12k deaths from H1N1. I don't recall entire states taking quarantine measures. The level of freak out is odd and IMO out of proportion.