Taro T

Can't even put any blame on hospitals for wanting the higher reimbursement rates. But if we're getting faulty data because of that, then we won't come out of this crisis as smoothly as we could with good data. BUT, IF patients that don't need to be going on ventilators are going on them, then somebody needs to go to jail for blatant malpractice. They cause issues of their own for patients, but if you need to be on 1, the issue they solve is more acutely deadly than the issues they cause; so they are beneficial for some.

Once again, you and I differ on the details, but in general are on the same page. When things open back up, there will be additional cases but if done right, this won't exceed capacity. And if they've found effective treatments, whether it be hydroxychloroquine & zinc, or erythromycin, that new drug that they're testing, or something else, then we absolutely won't exceed capacity. Keep up social distancing protocols if necessary, but open businesses and society back up when this wave is past. Waiting for full herd immunity or a significant portion of the population to be vaccinated will likely be significant overkill. (Oh, and just because it hasn't been said in a while - #### the CCP and the bat they flew in on.)

Really wonder whether the governors of those states that are planning to stay on indefinite lockdown aren't hoping that places like Ohio that plan to open soon end up with a rebound in cases so they can have a "see, we told you so" moment. Hoping that's not the case.

@Magox, you're right in that we need better data but not sure how best to go about gathering the better data, which absolutely is necessary at present. (As you point out both to figure out how best to come out of this crisis and to prepare for a future event.) Because that all or nothing counting of cases and outcomes leaves us with very poor data. It is perfectly logical to assume a large percentage of increased death rates in places like NYC is due to COVID-19 and even some percentage of deaths from treatable / curable causes such as heart attacks that weren't treated because the hospital was too tied up with COVID-19 cases to have the resources that would normally be available to keep a particular patient alive but wasn't when the resources were needed. But that's only part of it, and like you say, they really need to be able to figure out with reasonable accuracy how many additional heart attacks happened, not because the patient had the virus but because the patient's blood pressure and heart rate climbed due to the stress induced simply by the fear of getting it? Right now, we seem to be seeing official #'s for strokes and heart attacks decreasing which can't be the case in reality. If we're undercounting those and overcounting virus induced deaths, there's no way they'll be able to minimize the TOTAL death count. Because somewhere the total combined deaths reaches a minimum as stress related deaths increase and virus related deaths decrease and vice versa. But if we're actually seeing stress related deaths go down by enacting measures that increase stress to reduce the spread of the virus and thus virus related deaths, we'll absolutely keep things shut down longer than necessary because the data us faulty. And reducing total deaths (through virus, stress, and other means such as starvation and related maladies or crimes induced by desperation) should be the major focus and a secondary and yet still very important focus is not forcing large portions of our nor the world's population into abject poverty which won't kill as many today as the virus might but could kill far more via war and famine down the line. The politicians have to be cursing their own fates at present because this ain't what they signed up for and there are no obviously good choices. People are going to die regardless, people's lives are going to be dramatically effected regardless and not in a good way. But there are right answers out there. But to get to them, they need accurate data. (And not going into at all how not all politicians want to see our society return to a semblance of "normal;" there are those that want society "tranformed." What they might consider the "right" decision won't be considered right by those that wants return to normalcy. That's a discussion for so many other threads we have.) If the decision makers have accurate data (and let's face it, the decision makers are politicians; their advisors are the ones interpreting the data and making recommendations and those are only as good as the data), we'll be lot better off than if they don't have it.

It's partially that and also the fact that the media are desperate to pounce on any mea culpa he might make. No way he gives his enemies anything that would make them that ecstatic.

Well, in fairness, the former is far more concise and just rolls off the tongue.

How does any of that make the original post you took exception to to be "almost all ... factually incorrect?" And whether the WHO offers the information on how to make the test or gets requests for that information (really don't see this level of semantics mattering and wasn't addressed in the OP either) doesn't matter as the US announced their own protocol the day the WHO (not Germany, the WHO) started pushing the German test. Not this this matters relative to the OP either, but how would the CDC have the German tests (which neither it, the NIH, nor the FDA had afaik done any testing of their own on) ready for use before they could remake their own blank samples which apparently was the CDC's test kit's issue?

Which is wrong? That the CDC said they had their own test when the WHO started touting the German one? Is it the part saying the WHO's test "which has distributed by early February more than 1 million tests to countries around the world based in part on the method developed by the German researchers" wasn't made in Germany which had made 1.4MM by the end of February? Sorry, guess saying the WHO's test was the German 1 rather than "based on the German" kit was wildly inaccurate. The WHO itself has said it didn't offer the German test to the US.

The tests pushed by the WHO were developed in Germany, but haven't seen anything indicating that they were actually MADE in Germany. (Certainly those used in Germany were, but those used elsewhere likely weren't.) As China was set up to most readily make large quantities of tests and they seem to have a strong working relationship with the WHO, it makes sense that countries that didn't have their own capabilities to make test kits (or at minimum couldn't meet their own full demand) would have their kits made in China. And as the German test was the WHO's recommended test, it makes sense that it is the same one. The US didn't use the German tests because the CDC said they had developed their own kits the same day the WHO told the world about the German ones. Considering the problem with the US kits was a bad blank, it wouldn't have been out of the question for US made German kits to have the same issues. The thing that might have helped our situation some that isn't totally hindsight would've been shutting down flights from Italy before the rest of Europe. But, don't know if our treaties would've allowed us to restrict travel from only 1 European Country and not the whole EU.

That was my suspicion, and per the article below that is likely the case. (Still need to review CARES Act to see if that is the actual case.)

You do realize that the guy from the laundromat will now accuse you of wanting people to die because sarcasm flies way over his head, right?

As NY had already said last week it would start following this policy, curious if that accounts for at least some of the spike in reported deaths we saw yesterday. If people that did a month ago are getting added to the daily totals, we're going to see elevated death tolls until they've gone through the entire list.

One might expect that response, but the typical one is that this proves we need MORE government because clearly the problem was there wasn't enough government. Had there been more, these delays and crashes would've been avoided. And, it should properly be democrats rolling out the technologies used by government because they did such a wonderful job with the ACA Insurance Exchanges and the Iowa Caucus vote reporting.

IF this is how they've reported suspected deaths from flu and other illnesses then don't have a huge issue with it, but doubt that's the case. Every year, when the CDC reports flu deaths they provide a count but also report the upper and lower confidence intervals for that range. On the surface, it seems this new policy will cause the reported deaths to be extremely close to the high end of that confidence interval. Will have to look back through the CARES Act and see how the sections on medical aid determine how that is allocated. Expecting that it's based on total cases and this way NY is goosing the total cases. It'd also make NY's cardiologists and pulmonary care Drs. appear to be miracle workers as they'll've somehow reduced deaths from heart attacks and diseases such as emphysema and pneumonia down to record lows. Win - win. The state gets more CARES Act cash and also gets higher Medicaid/Medicare reimbursement rates as outcomes are improved.

At least in NYS hospitals already HAD such agreements to loan equipment to hospitals that have shortages if others had spare capacity. Which makes the Friday Cuomo press conference a week back saying he was calling in the National Guard so confounding. Of course, maybe somebody explained that to him over that weekend which would explain his about face on that Monday.

The media definitely helped Biden get through to the finish line of the preliminary race. But, ironically, their helping push 45 through HIS preliminary race back in '16, which backfired spectacularly for them in the General Election when their chosen one, the one that they helped through to the D's preliminary race back then, lost bigly to him, will end up dooming their efforts again in '20. They thought that The Donald was the 1 guy on the R side that absolutely positively couldn't beat Hillary in the General and pushed him hard early in the R primaries. They just failed to realize how frustrated a lot of people were with the Washington insiders and ended up pushing a guy that clicked with those voters and actually found the 1 guy that could beat the Clinton machine. Their putting their thumb on the scale isn't nearly as transparent as it was in the past. You definitely have reason to be mad at them. But, until 44 finally endored him today, thought for sure the D's would draft somebody (not named Bernie) to replace Biden at the convention. Now, expect that Joe's their guy until the gory end. How, out of ~100MM D's HE is their choice as the best choice, is simply boggling (until corruption gets added into the equation).

No wonder his ratings are down. If he doesn't listen to himself, then why should anybody else should listen to him?

Well, would say something about him once again demonstrating his followership or lead-from-behindship, but, in fairness he did get to endorsing Biden before Hillary did. Something he's done that she probably will never do. So, he's more of a leader than her at least. Once again.

If 45 tries to be the person deciding how/ when individual states will ACTUALLY be allowed to reopen; then will decry his actions right there with you. If, what comes from the administration is guidelines on how to do that, won't have any issue as that's what should happen. Rarely get worked up over his words, but do cringe a lot. Fortunately, for all of us, his actual actions have been far less cringeworthy and a lot have been beneficial over the past 3 years (generalizing beyond just this issue/ set of issues).

That one wasn't due to the 'no 2nd helmet's rule. That 1 was due to Levy not wanting to make the players break in 2nd helmets. Other teams went to alternate helmets that year - e.g. Houston went with the powder blues when they played Buffalo in the Bill's road throwback game that year. The Bills could've, they just didn't want to.

Been told to expect at least 3 weeks before those loans/Grant's start coming through. But also was told that when the applications actually work through the system that the funds are released within 3 days. That's for both the PPP & EIDL programs. Don't know much about the other programs the SBA is administering as they weren't remotely applicable to my situation.

Xi.

No idea who they're gonna draft (though guess is it'd be Fredo's bro), but just can't see them running Biden after their convention. He makes Mondale look electable.

Kissinger's still alive? TIL. Dude looked like he was in his 60's when he worked for Nixon.

Personally, my expectation is that we've and we'll continue to make this overblown by a bit, but due to our tendency as a whole to ignore guidelines, doubt that we wouldn't be royally ####ed without having shut stuff down. UK tried to use common sense with this trusting the citizenry not to be idjits, but it seems that last part was the unrealistic part of it. Still expect we'll be able to open back up sooner than later, but people will need to try to do the right thing on their own or all this tracking bull#### that people are proposing will actually happen and then we'll be ####ed way worse than we were. Seeing how bad NYC got hit and NO likely will has to be kept as a reminder of how not looking out for each other when stuff reopens will put us back where we were/are. (Because we can repeat that if we aren't smart.) We really are at a very real cross roads for keeping our freedom. Don't let the fascists or communists simply take it from us. Practice good hygiene and stay home from work if you're sick. Oh, and thinking China needs to forgive about $2T worth of our debt and probably a comparable amount around the rest of the world too. They've got the reserves to cover it and maybe next time their government will get their heads out of their arses rather than just let it get out into the world.