quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

No family, and I'm good to go for now (knock on wood).
A handful of co-workers got it. A few in my district and on my watch. Most of the guys are back to work.
Department wide, we're about 300 positive cases or so. 3 deaths.
Two I know had underlying health issues.

quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

I have a suspiscioun that I had it back in January along with several of my coworkers in the ER. We all had coughs that lasted for weeks, fevers, tested negative for flu & strep, and antibiotics did not help.

I personally know 3 people that tested positive. They were pretty sick for two weeks but have recovered.

I think starting to open things back up on May 1st is reasonable. NYC might be an exception, due to their population density.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Last fall, Harris County (the most populated county of Houston metropolitan area) elected an inexperienced Millennial to be their county judge (in Texas, County Judge is the emergency manager) by about 1/2% over the man who lead us through Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Ike, and Hurricane Harvey. She is a GDC lemming.

Today, she issued a mask in public order for 30 days. Houston's NBC affiliate added a little Sigmonkey inspired levity:

Masks may be the midle ground in this. We can't stay home, but need to prevent a spike. I'm not sure what good homemade masks do though.

quote:

Originally posted by Ackks:
Masks may be the midle ground in this. We can't stay home, but need to prevent a spike. I'm not sure what good homemade masks do though.

Even a homemade mask may lessen the distance that an infected person projects their “cooties.” Anything short of a properly fitted and worn N95 respirator is going to do little more for the wearer than remind him not to tough his face, but it may protect others.

A lot of it seems like COVID theater, much like the security theater that TSA practices.

The Surgeon General addressed the homemade mask issue at yesterday's briefing. He explained that the virus won't prevent you from getting the virus but it helps prevent you from transmitting the virus.

Realizing that cloth must be a one way fabric I'll make a homemade mask and wear it inside out, that way it can protect me from the virus. I have to find the guy that Jack bought his beanstalk beans form and get some one way cloth.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
The main danger from this virus? The lies surrounding it.

I don’t think truer words have been said.

A Silver Lining to the Pandemic Could Be Economic Distancing From China

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...a9fe28d1d9-238318549

The COVID-19 pandemic is going to have serious implications for how businesses think about China. Souring sentiment against the Chinese communist regime over the past few weeks may force many corporate boards to alter their whole supply chains in a very short time.

There will be a “forced decoupling” from China, meaning cutting off economic ties for national and strategic reasons, according to Kyle Bass, hedge fund manager and founder of Hayman Capital Management.

“The misery that China has brought to the rest of the world with this virus has really been shining a disinfecting light on global supply chains,” Bass said, in an interview for The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program.

“Think about this, we have Western democracies relying almost completely on a supply chain in a totalitarian, communistic nation. It’s actually insane when you lay it out like that.”

If there’s a silver lining to this pandemic, Bass notes, it will be the acceleration of the decoupling.

According to a survey in March conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce and consulting firm PwC, one in five large American companies operating in China reports that coronavirus will speed up the process of decoupling. They now indicate greater potential for economic decoupling between the two countries compared to a similar survey in 2019.

More than 40 percent of the respondents, however, still believe that it would be impossible to cut economic ties with China.

Bass criticized U.S. companies for turning a blind eye to China’s human rights abuses.

“Can you imagine if you explain to someone that you’re doing business with a regime that has more than a million prisoners of conscience locked up, and it is executing live organ harvesting on this population of political prisoners on a daily basis? And yet people like Blackstone can’t wait to invest another dollar in China. People like Sheldon Adelson can’t wait to open another casino in Macau,” Bass said.

“Because they just let money blind them to the blatant human rights abuses of maybe one of the most tyrannical regimes that have ever lived. It’s crazy.”
Holding China Accountable

Public opinion in the United States has shifted significantly against the Chinese regime in recent weeks, as most people blame the CCP for covering up the origin of the virus and withholding information about the scope of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

According to a Harris Poll survey conducted from March 14 to April 5, 72 percent of Americans blame the Chinese government for inaccurately reporting the impact of the virus in China.

Another survey by Pew Research Center in March found that roughly two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China.

A growing number of legislators in the United States, the UK, Australia, and Canada have started talking about “reparations and getting the Chinese government to pay for their malign actions,” Bass said.

He noted that think tanks and law professors have already floated the idea of legal and financial liability of China for the outbreak.

“There are plenty of things the government can do here to make China pay for its actions,” Bass said.

He suggested that the U.S. government could go after the Chinese state-owned enterprises and take over their international assets such as properties in the United States and stocks issued in Western financial markets. The United States could even cancel its trillion dollars of U.S. Treasury securities held by China, he said.

China owned about $1.09 trillion in U.S. debt as of February, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. China is the second-largest U.S. foreign creditor, following Japan, at $1.26 trillion.

“What we can do is we can use the foundational bedrock of our countries, the rule of law, and we can exercise and enforce our laws on them for their malfeasance,” Bass said. “That is how we level the playing field against such a tyrannical, lying actor.”
Japan Offers Money for Decoupling

The Japanese government announced recently that it would support domestic firms that move production out of China. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is setting aside nearly $2.25 billion from the stimulus package to help Japanese firms in decoupling their supply chains from China, especially those in high value-added manufacturing.

Bass believes the U.S. government should do the same.

It’s a “moral imperative” for the U.S. government to set aside capital to help American companies leave China, he said.

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would help relocate medical supply chains from overseas to the United States since the outbreak exposed a dangerous level of dependence on China.

Bass said the pandemic has forced the U.S. government to revisit America’s over-reliance on China in medical drugs and equipment.

Many believe that the global dominance of Beijing in the manufacturing of medicine and medical equipment poses a national security threat to the United States and other nations.

U.S. companies, however, may face challenges in moving production away from China.

For the past few years, the companies operating in China have been blocked from transferring their profits out of the country, and for the past few weeks, the Chinese regime has started to require permits in moving supply chains, Bass said.

“Companies that do business in China, whether you’re Intel or Sony or BMW or Chevron, haven’t been able to get their dollar profits out of China since the fourth quarter of 2016,” he said. “And now we’re being told that maybe you can’t get your supply chains out.”
Moving Out of China

Most large companies have heavily invested in facilities and human resources in China to gain access to the Chinese market, and they have already “given up” their intellectual properties as a price of entry, says Steve Abbott, consultant at Patina Solutions, a supply chain consultancy.

Companies can move sourcing out of China “so long as contractual agreements do not prohibit the change of supply sources,” he told The Epoch Times.

However, breaking contractual agreements in joint ventures where contracts involve equity, revenue, or capital sharing will be heavy lifting for many U.S. corporations, he said.

Abbott believes governments can support resourcing to domestic operations by providing capital or low-cost loans to build domestic capacity. These funds can also be used to offset the penalties potentially imposed by China.

Without this kind of support, companies “will find it very difficult to walk away from these relationships,” he said.

Near 90% Mortality Rate in Intubated COVID-19 Patients in NYC

— Comorbidities appeared to play a major role

https://www.medpagetoday.com/i...isease/covid19/86101

Mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York City reached a whopping 88% for those requiring ventilators, researchers found.

Among all patients who received mechanical ventilation, the mortality rate was 76.4% for adults ages 18 to 65, and nearly all patients over age 65 died (97.2%), reported Karina Davidson, PhD, of Northwell Health in New York City, and colleagues, writing in JAMA.

By contrast, mortality rates among these age groups who did not receive mechanical ventilation were 19.8% and 26.6%, respectively.

Outcomes were assessed for 2,634 COVID-19 patients who died or were discharged from 12 New York City area hospitals, where 14% were treated in the intensive care unit (ICU), 12.2% received invasive mechanical ventilation, and 21% died.

Of patients who died, the authors found that those with diabetes were more likely to have mechanical ventilation or care in the ICU versus those who did not. Similar findings were seen for patients with hypertension.

The percentage of patients developing acute kidney injury also increased among subgroups with diabetes versus those without diabetes, the authors said. Among patients with outcome data, 3.2% were treated with kidney replacement therapy.

Overall, 5,700 consecutively hospitalized patients from March 1 to April 4 were included in the analysis. Patients were a median age of 63, and almost 40% were women. About 40% were white and 23% were African American. At triage, 31% were febrile, 17% had a respiratory rate greater than 24 breaths per minute, and 28% received supplemental oxygen. About 2% of patients had respiratory co-infections.

Similar to prior data, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes were the most common comorbidities. The authors noted that the median score on the Charlson Comorbidity Index was 4, indicating an estimated 10-year survival rate of 53% and "significant comorbidity burden" in this population.

Among 373 patients admitted to the ICU, the median age was 68, and a third were women, the authors said.

Length of stay was a median of 4 days, though 2.2% of patients were readmitted during the study period, with a median time to readmission of 3 days. The authors noted that readmission rates for patients discharged to a facility, such as a nursing home or rehabilitation center, increased for progressively older age groups versus patients discharged home. Notably, 3,066 patients remained hospitalized at the final study follow-up date, they said.

There were no deaths among patients younger than age 18. Among those with outcome data, 436 patients were younger than age 50 with a score of 0 on the Charlson Comorbidity Index, and only nine died.

Researchers also attempted to shed light on angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi) and angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) use by examining home medication reconciliation information from 2,411 patients who had been discharged or died. Of these, about 8% were taking an ACEi and about 11% were taking an ARB.

"ACEi and ARB medications can significantly increase mRNA expression of cardiac angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), leading to speculation about the possible adverse, protective, or biphasic effects of treatment with these medications," they wrote. "This is an important concern because these medications are the most prevalent antihypertensive medications among all drug classes."

Of the patients taking an ACEi or ARB at home, about half continued to do so in the hospital, while half discontinued their medication. Mortality rates for patients not taking an ACEi or ARB were 26.7%, while they were 32.7% for those taking an ACEi and 30.6% for those taking an ARB, but the authors cautioned these data were unadjusted for known confounders.

Limitations to the data included the New York City study area, that data were collected from an electronic record database and lacked detail of a manual medical record, and that clinical outcome data were only available for less than half of admitted patients, which could have biased the findings, the authors said

Apparently - intubation also plays a key role.

quote:

Originally posted by Redhookbklyn:
Have any Forum members or their family members caught this virus?

Yes.
We lost an otherwise perfectly healthy 30-year old to it; a cousin's son.

Did they die because they were on ventilators or Were they on ventilators because they were dying?

"correlation does not imply causation"

If true, good news for me!

“French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent - or lessen the effects of - the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.”

https://mol.im/a/8246939

https://www.breitbart.com/heal...leave-new-york-city/

USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that docked in New York Harbor earlier this month to provide relief to hospitals overrun by an influx of Chinese coronavirus patients, is ready to return to its Virginia home port.

The ship, equipped with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, and 1,200 personnel, never came close to reaching its capacity during its assignment

The vessel was docked at Pier 90 on the west side of Manhattan for three weeks

the Comfort had treated 179 patients as of Tuesday, with 56 still on board at the time. The New York City health system has handled about 36,000 coronavirus hospitalizations since the start of the outbreak.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo offered to have the ship deployed to another hard-hit area during a Tuesday meeting with the president.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Did they die because they were on ventilators or Were they on ventilators because they were dying?

"correlation does not imply causation"

The experts who have lied to us all along would have you believe otherwise.
Wasn't there informatin about ventilators making things worse, rather than preventing deaths? I seem to recall some information that people on oxygen rather than ventilators recovered better.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
If true, good news for me!

“French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent - or lessen the effects of - the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.”

https://mol.im/a/8246939

A week or more back, Tucker Carlson made a passing reference to smokers faring better with the virus. With all the adulterants in tobacco products, I was hoping the one common thing being nicotine would show promise. Crossing fingers on this news.

^^^ Speaking of Tucker....

Tucker Carlson Questions The Wisdom of The Lock-down Approach...

During his opening monologue today Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlines how the Wuhan Virus has led to an authoritarian police state without any real basis in science.

“It is easier to be fooled, than to convince people they have been fooled.” Mark Twain.



What Carlson alludes to, though he didn’t specifically connect-the-dot, is the reality of how some sectors of the U.S. economy (the supermarket industry) have continued without issue. That factual reality doesn’t reconcile with the doomsday claims.

No other business segment within the economy is as exposed to the population as the retail food business; and yet supermarkets operated without issue.

There are few high-traffic businesses more densely populated than grocery stores. In fact, within the U.S. economy retail supermarkets have the highest foot traffic of any business sector in the entire economy; that’s just an empirical fact…. and the coronavirus impact increased that foot traffic by an average of 40 percent. Now, stop and think about this logically & apply a large dose of common sense. Think about human-to-human interface.

♦First, with approximately 90 percent of the total U.S. population penetrating through grocery outlets; and with 100% of that massive number of consumers going through checkout lanes; if the COVID-19 viral strain was as significant as claimed by the worst-case data, then supermarket cashiers would have been the highest exposed profession of U.S. workers in the entire nation. There wouldn’t even be a close second place.

Considering that metric; and considering the overall population penetration & density within the business operation; there has not been an employee-based business disruption due to the coronavirus. Put another way: the coronavirus has not stopped the function of the highest human interface occupation in the entire U.S. economy.

♦Secondly, think about the businesses that are closed; perhaps think about your job that may have been shut down…. now frame your risk based on the supermarket example as highest human interface and highest population penetration in any business field.

If the #1 at risk industry has operated, essentially without disruption and with almost zero substantive mitigation, while carrying the largest population exposure rate, then all other less-exposed business operations would have significantly less operational risk.

Why would anyone be concerned about opening their business?

If you take the factual outcome of the retail food industry as a measure, it would follow that other than a few proximity businesses which may need prudent modifications or remain temporarily closed (ex. modified airplane seating, concerts, stadiums or capacity seating venues etc), then all other businesses should immediately resume operations.

No other business segment within the economy is as exposed to the population as the retail food business; and yet supermarkets operated without issue.

So why shouldn’t all businesses immediately get back to work?

Perhaps a few initial modifications might be needed; but not much, and not for long.

https://theconservativetreehou...pproach/#more-189841

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I'm waiting for the antibody test to see if I had it back in December.

I’ve wondered the same thing. All the signs of this plus the eye infection that has been reported in some cases. This all came within a week of seeing my Cardiologist for my regular six month visit, his office at the time was in the professional wing of a hospital in Metro Detroit. And the time frame was the first week of December.

I had the respiratory effects of it into January, whatever it was.

Can someone knowledgeable look at the charts posted in the link and tell me if this article is accurate. I'm hesitant to believe a lot of things even if it supports my suspicions.

quote:

The Y-axis starts out small, with just 0.5 cases per 100,000 residents. It then increases to 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500. Visually, the spacing between 0.5 and 10 is almost the same as the spacing between 20 and 500. Because the Y-axis numbers do not increase proportionally, the shape of every line is distorted, making it seem as though every state is on a similar path for COVID-19 cases. Just look at Minnesota: our state’s confirmed infection rates look to be about half as bad as New York when it actually has about 1/30th of the reported COVID-19 cases.

This is why Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) created new graphs with a consistent Y-axis scale. Using publicly available information on COVID-19 cases in each of the same states as the misleading MDH graph, our graph shows a very different picture of the current status of COVID-19 cases.

Minnesota's Covid-19 Graph Distorts the Truth

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:

quote:

Originally posted by ryan81986:
I'm waiting for the antibody test to see if I had it back in December.

I’ve wondered the same thing. All the signs of this plus the eye infection that has been reported in some cases. This all came within a week of seeing my Cardiologist for my regular six month visit, his office at the time was in the professional wing of a hospital in Metro Detroit. And the time frame was the first week of December.

I had the respiratory effects of it into January, whatever it was.

Yeah I had fever, chills and cough and a persistent dry cough that lasted 2-3 weeks.