shoshin

I love #s but on some things, I have only anecdotes from home. My wife and her team are very close to the ICU people (lots of overlap). The ICU docs are saying that they feel like they've never seen anything like the last two weeks. They are not performing CPR in most cases because they can't take the time from other patients and they can't get into the positive respirators fast enough and the patients expelled so much fluid when they perform it. Ventilator patients are almost all dying. And we live in an area that is not "hard hit" with cases. So just because you may not be seeing lines out the door or hear that ventilators are running out, the humans on the ground dealing with this are under assault and we need to be really careful with our recovery.

There is definitely a shortage if you count people needing to re-use old masks and use makeshift PPE. That is 100% happening and until this hit, was considered unthinkable. It's what we have to do right now, but it is real. I don't have a doctor friend locally who isn't seeing it. And our healthcare for things that are considered "nonessential" procedures is in the shitter right now. Coming out of this, we will have a different kind of healthcare crisis where a lot of people are sicker than they were before this started from many other things. My wife's patients are starting to have really serious issues and getting triage treatments in their homes. It is a long ways from ideal. I'm not a doom-and-gloom guy on CV-19. I think it's under control and going away. But there are secondary effects coming. No rainbows and unicorns as we come out of this, and we have to be really careful this doesn't happen twice. My neighbor's 7 month old girl is having an open heart operation on Thursday, which if successful, will give her time to an age 7 surgery, which would be her last they hope. She will be hospitalized for two weeks. Best doctors in the world. Best health system in the world. But even still, the support around the baby will not be the same as an operation that took place when she was born. They've been told this.

The concern for me is not about this wave, which we've seemingly gotten under control (leveling phase now, with hopefully dropping in 2-3 weeks if we follow Italy and others), but what comes next. If we assume that we are underestimating the cases by 10X, for a rough number, then all of this will have occurred with only 1% of the population getting Covid-19. How we reopen is really critical to slowly getting back to a functioning economy without having to do this exercise twice or more. I have not yet seen a plan or projection about how to do this, but it would have to involve shitloads of testing and an ability to contact trace and do focused quarantines of people and small communities, that is, don't shut down NY State if only NYC has another outbreak, but on a smaller scale, don't shut down KEnmore Schools if a kid from Lackawanna HS gets it. Rapid serology tests and some way to track the outbreaks and contacts is vital to this effort.

No. This wave is mostly headed the right direction now. Peaking but trending right. What happens when we reopen is unknown but you can put away the doom and gloom for this wave heading way up. The distancing is working.

Not sure why someone would make that news a cynical moment. On the facts, this would be a problem if it's true that the US would be cut off from HCQ's manufacture. Mylan just fired up production of HCQ here in West Virginia, though I couldn't find an estimate for domestic production or when the drugs will actually start being produced. If Covid-19 catches in India, they will need anything that could help much more than us. India is like NYC+1.4 billion people minus our healthcare and diligence in enforcing quarantine. If you pray, pray it doesn't catch there. We will be OK, relatively speaking, compared to most places.

And others showing no results. This is not a political issue. It's an issue of data. Fauci has seen HCQ fail to treat other viral diseases after promising assays. He's coming at this from science. Trump on the other hand is coming at it from faith and trying to give people good news. Neither is wrong in their intent, but the idea that we have to villainize one or the other for their approach is so small right now. Fauci is not bad for being cautious in making statements about HCQ and Trump is not wrong to try to give people something to hope for.

This is junk all over Twitter when I was trying to find a quote from Fauci. Craziness, though on Twitter, it went 8 layers deeper. It's like saying Trump released the virus to stop a surging Joe Biden or Bezos released it so he could have a surge in profits at Amazon and Whole Foods.

We socially distance. Maybe we don't have a huge problem. "We overreacted." Maybe 1 and 2 were cause and effect, Stacy McCain. We didn't overreact in NYC.

If my aunt had a penis, she'd be my uncle. (This needs updating in our new world. A saying lost to the ages I guess.) February was a lost month, 2017-2019 were lost years. But here we are now. No responsible person is whining about HCQ. Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn't. In cases where it doesn't hurt a patient, it's worth a shot because of anecdotal evidence and because the virus is moving faster than the data. But we've already had conflicting actual preliminary tests about its effectiveness. That's not a political observation.

I'm not sure what you are asking. You made a point, I believe, that maybe people are being laid off for no reason. If I misinterpreted that, let me know. I was not attacking you.

If the virus was massively widespread, we would not be seeing a surge of cases and deaths suddenly. We didn't shut down for nothing, and it would be GREAT if we shut down, controlled it, and can control it moving forward. This conversation is not on point in this thread but of course, we all do. Overpopulation is a problem in China, India, Pakistan, Indodesia and other areas. The best solution to overpopulation is the education of women. Not sex education, just plain education. The developing world is a constant petri dish of disease and strife because of too many bodies, and too few resources.

I feel like you're trying to engage in a climate change debate. I think anyone would admit that humans pollute the crap out of the earth and make a mess of it, especially the corner of it where about 3 billion people live. I am not advocating that we kill 2.5 billion of them, but India and China would not be such an environmental catastrophe if they didn't have so many people. The US and Europe have fewer issues.

Most people think fewer humans would be good for the earth in many ways. Not just ecologically although that's true but also economically long term. But depopulation by killing humans is a lot different than trying to find a way to birth fewer resource-consuming humans, especially for the issues he's mostly concerned about in developing countries. Gates's humanitarian efforts are praiseworthy and he has been talking about these flexible vaccine factories for a while to respond to outbreaks. He's not the only person and his investments are not the only companies that have this capability. He just gets more press because of who he is. If the early stage vaccine trials are promising, a lot of places will get started preparing in advance so we can produce sooner, even though that preparation could be a total loss if the trials don't work out. It's a risk we all are OK with.

Taking shots at Fauci for his reluctance to jump all in on HCQ is not called for. Fauci is not against trying it or prescribing it. He is against saying that it works. Covid-19 is a disease that most healthy people walk away from. HCQ, which has a lot of complications (that I've personally experienced), is often not given to people who have those complications...HCQ is usually given to healthy people. So doctors who have given HCQ to healthy patients are seeing good results. Or are they? Or are they giving HCQ to just younger people who tolerate it. OR older people. Or people who are on other medications...etc. The above is why we need studies to determine its actual effects. As a general anti-viral, it's been tried before and hoped many times to help against viruses. It's also failed many times. Fauci is a veteran of seeing those failures. Here's an excerpt from a paper on HCQ from 2015 that hints at what Fauci knows and most people do not: The above is for a dengue fever study...but note how cautious the authors are just because their assays looked good. They have seen this before. Show me where Fauci tried to roadblock anything except the claims that it is working. Navarro doesn't know science. He knows tweets and anecdotes, which is all we have on this. It makes sense that doctors will try it. Anecdotal evidence is all they have and HCQ is pretty widely available and well-studied. This is why they are prescribing anti-bacterials too. They are happy to throw anything at it they can. That doesn't mean it's working. And it also doesn't mean they should stop. Trump is pedaling hope, as he should. Fauci is pedaling science, as he should. Neither one is the bad guy. Discerning people should be hopeful but cautiously so on claims that HCQ can help.

It was a 2% increase over 2017 so there wouldn't be a giant herd immunity, and if a lot of those cases were COVID, there would have been different symptoms and ventilator usage. So again, a really poor piece of writing.

I hope the best for him. I was looking up news on him last night because we've heard so little. All I could find was that he had persistent fever. We have to assume he's getting the best care. The only place I can say for sure so far gets blame is

That thread is now a gardening thread.

We already knew this was a bad flu season. COVID-19 symptoms are not flu symptoms though. If there was an uptick in extended fevers, people on ventilators, and those people were not testing positive for the flu, this data might mean something. Based on that story, it means nothing. Further given that her "story" shows a big spike in Texas for flu, but Texas has mostly been spared Covid-19, it further looks like nothing. That's just some hack looking for headlines. Beware people trying to backfit data to theories.

A PR stunt but if they want to buy good will right now, that’s fine. Keep it coming. We will deal with them later.

The country has a Covid issue. NYC has a Covid crisis (maybe NO headed that way too). I’m not sure if distancing quickly Is the reason the rest of the country is having a different experience or if it’s distancing combined with way of life. I think the media and admin has been mum on it because they don’t want people to let up but the numbers don’t lie.

Ugh to all of this nonsense. Like the gardening talk though.

We all know this will be the headlines. I just choose to ignore it and care about who leads us well through it. We all vote later this year and can judge who did a good job then. Right now I can’t spend mental energy on the political blame game.

They may play but they won’t be playing in capacity stadiums.

Wait until the masked banditos come. “I know that the crime rate in New York City is down,” said Melissa DeRosa, the secretary to the governor. Mr. Cuomo said his office would provide additional crime data but and that anecdotally, there appeared to be lower crime around the state.

Who has energy to care. Just keep working to make things better. Both of them.