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The Next Pandemic: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19


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Florida is finally making their Covid hospitalizations public. and the numbers are very worrying 

 

can't believe its July and they just made this info public. worst run state in the country by far. 

5 hours ago, wppete said:

 

 

 

there has literally been hundreds of peer reviews studies around the world that show the drug has little to NO effect on this virus 

 

stop posting fake information. its disgusting. 

https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/statement-from-the-chief-investigators-of-the-randomised-evaluation-of-covid-19-therapy-recovery-trial-on-hydroxychloroquine-5-june-2020-no-clinical-benefit-from-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-in-hospitalised-patients-with-covid-19

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Since any study in the USA is bound to have a knee jerk political reaction from either 'side' let's look at a study of over 1000 people in Marseilles France.

 

Source:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302179

This is from the Elsevier service, a source of stringent academic research.

 

Elsevier

hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: A retrospective analysis of 1061 cases in Marseille, France

 

 

Abstract

Background

In France, the combination hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and azithromycin (AZ) is used in the treatment of COVID-19.

Methods

We retrospectively report on 1061 SARS-CoV-2 positive tested patients treated for at least three days with the following regimen: HCQ (200 mg three times daily for ten days) + AZ (500 mg on day 1 followed by 250 mg daily for the next four days). Outcomes were death, clinical worsening (transfer to ICU, and >10 day hospitalization) and viral shedding persistence (>10 days).

Results

A total of 1061 patients were included in this analysis (46.4% male, mean age 43.6 years – range 14–95 years). Good clinical outcome and virological cure were obtained in 973 patients within 10 days (91.7%). Prolonged viral carriage was observed in 47 patients (4.4%) and was associated to a higher viral load at diagnosis (p < .001) but viral culture was negative at day 10. All but one, were PCR-cleared at day 15. A poor clinical outcome (PClinO) was observed for 46 patients (4.3%) and 8 died (0.75%) (74–95 years old). All deaths resulted from respiratory failure and not from cardiac toxicity. Five patients are still hospitalized (98.7% of patients cured so far). PClinO was associated with older age (OR 1.11), severity of illness at admission (OR 10.05) and low HCQ serum concentration. PClinO was independently associated with the use of selective beta-blocking agents and angiotensin II receptor blockers (p < .05). A total of 2.3% of patients reported mild adverse events (gastrointestinal or skin symptoms, headache, insomnia and transient blurred vision).

Conclusion

Administration of the HCQ+AZ combination before COVID-19 complications occur is safe and associated with a very low fatality rate in patients.

Edited by RocCityRoller
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BETSY MCCAUGHEY: How the Swamp mucked up America’s coronavirus response.

 

In a pandemic, government efficiency can make the difference between life and death. You would expect our civil “servants” to rise to the occasion. Some are. But the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog, is sounding the alarm that for the most part, Washington bureaucrats are dithering while Americans die.

 

In a report released this week, the GAO details dozens of dangerous failings in one government department after another — failings that needlessly put you and your loved ones at risk.

 

 

 

Read the whole, depressing thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
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53 minutes ago, Winston Zeddemore said:

Imagine how many lives could have been saved had the media done its job rather than purposefully lied to America and the world just because they have a real bad case of TDS... 

 

stop blaming the media. the media controls nothing. they run stories to get ratings, thats it. they have no say in legislation or health guidelines. 

 

the US government should deserve all the blame. 

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54 minutes ago, Penfield45 said:

Florida is finally making their Covid hospitalizations public. and the numbers are very worrying 

 

can't believe its July and they just made this info public. worst run state in the country by far. 

 

there has literally been hundreds of peer reviews studies around the world that show the drug has little to NO effect on this virus 

 

stop posting fake information. its disgusting. 

https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/statement-from-the-chief-investigators-of-the-randomised-evaluation-of-covid-19-therapy-recovery-trial-on-hydroxychloroquine-5-june-2020-no-clinical-benefit-from-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-in-hospitalised-patients-with-covid-19

 

Fully Attributed to CNN:

Study finds hydroxychloroquine may have boosted survival, but other researchers have doubts

150325082152-social-gfx-cnn-logo-small-1

By Maggie Fox, Andrea Kane, and Elizabeth Cohen, CNN

Updated 1:31 PM ET, Fri July 3, 2020

 

(CNN)A surprising new study found the controversial antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine helped patients better survive in the hospital. But the findings, like the federal government's use of the drug itself, were disputed.

A team at Henry Ford Health System in southeast Michigan said Thursday their study of 2,541 hospitalized patients found that those given hydroxychloroquine were much less likely to die.
 
Dr. Marcus Zervos, division head of infectious disease for Henry Ford Health System, said 26% of those not given hydroxychloroquine died, compared to 13% of those who got the drug. The team looked back at everyone treated in the hospital system since the first patient in March. "Overall crude mortality rates were 18.1% in the entire cohort, 13.5% in the hydroxychloroquine alone group, 20.1% among those receiving hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, 22.4% among the azithromycin alone group, and 26.4% for neither drug," the team wrote in a report published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
It's a surprising finding because several other studies have found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine, a drug originally developed to treat and prevent malaria. President Donald Trump touted the drug heavily, but later studies found not only did patients not do better if they got the drug, they were more likely to suffer cardiac side effects.
 
The US Food and Drug Administration withdrew its emergency use authorization for the drug earlier this month and trials around the world, including trials sponsored by the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health, were halted.
 
Researchers not involved in the Henry Ford study pointed out it wasn't of the same quality of the studies showing hydroxychloroquine did not help patients, and said other treatments, such as the use of the steroid dexamethasone, might have accounted for the better survival of some patients.
 
"Our results do differ from some other studies," Zervos told a news conference. "What we think was important in ours ... is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with Covid," he added.
 
The Henry Ford team also monitored patients carefully for heart problems, he said. "The combination of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors," the team wrote.
 
The Henry Ford team said they believe their findings show hydroxychloroquine could be potentially useful as a treatment for coronavirus.
 
"It's important to note that in the right settings, this potentially could be a lifesaver for patients," Dr. Steven Kalkanis, CEO of the Henry Ford Medical Group, said at the news conference.
 
Kalkanis said that their findings do not necessarily contradict those of earlier studies. "We also want to make the point that just because our results differ from some others that may have been published, it doesn't make those studies wrong or definitely a conflict. What it simply means is that by looking at the nuanced data of which patients actually benefited and when, we might be able to further unlock the code of how this disease works," he said.
 
"Much more work needs to be done to elucidate what the final treatment plan should be for Covid-19," Kalkanis added. "But we feel ... that these are critically important results to add to the mix of how we move forward if there's a second surge, and in relevant other parts of the world. Now we can help people combat this disease and to reduce the mortality rate."
 
Zervos said hydroxychloroquine can help interfere with the virus directly and also reduces inflammation.
 
Researchers not involved with the study were critical. They noted that the Henry Ford team did not randomly treat patients but selected them for various treatments based on certain criteria.
 
"As the Henry Ford Health System became more experienced in treating patients with COVID-19, survival may have improved, regardless of the use of specific therapies," Dr. Todd Lee of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues wrote in a commentary in the same journal.
 
"Finally, concomitant steroid use in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone." The steroid dexamethasone can reduce inflammation in seriously ill patients.
 
The Henry Ford team wrote that 82% of their patients received hydroxychloroquine within the first 24 hours of admission, and 91% within the first 48 hours of admission.
They wrote that in comparison, a study of patients at 25 New York hospitals started taking the drug "at any time during their hospitalization." But patients in that New York study, published in May in the Journal of the American Medical Association, started taking hydroxychloroquine on average one day after being hospitalized.
 
"Maybe there's a little bit of a difference, but it's not like patients in New York were being started on day seven. That's not what happened," said Eli Rosenberg, lead author of the New York study and an associate professor of epidemiology at the University at Albany School of Public Health.
 
Rosenberg also pointed out that the Detroit paper excluded 267 patients -- nearly 10% of the study population -- who had not yet been discharged from the hospital.
He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was. Those patients might have still been in the hospital because they were very sick, and if they died, excluding them from the study made hydroxychloroquine look like more of a lifesaver than it really was.
"There's a little bit of loosey-goosiness here in all this," he told CNN.
 
Both the Detroit and New York studies were observational: they looked back at how patients did when doctors prescribed hydroxychloroquine.
 
While helpful, observational studies are not as valuable as controlled clinical trials. Considered the gold standard in medicine, patients in a clinical trial are randomly assigned to take either the drug or a placebo, which is a treatment that does nothing. Doctors then follow the patients to see how they fare.
 
Two clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19, one in the US and one in the UK, were stopped early because their data suggested hydroxychloroquine wasn't helpful.
 
The US trial, run by the National Institutes of Health, enrolled more than 470 patients.
The UK trial, run by the University of Oxford, enrolled more than 11,000 patients.
 
"We have concluded that there is no beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalized with COVID-19," the Oxford doctors concluded.
Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter. But a White House official praised the Henry Ford team's study.
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, said the study shows hydroxychloroquine works if given early enough. "This is a big deal," he told CNN. "This medicine can literally save tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of American lives and maybe millions of people worldwide."
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1 hour ago, Penfield45 said:

Florida is finally making their Covid hospitalizations public. and the numbers are very worrying 

 

can't believe its July and they just made this info public. worst run state in the country by far. 

 

there has literally been hundreds of peer reviews studies around the world that show the drug has little to NO effect on this virus 

 

stop posting fake information. its disgusting. 

https://www.recoverytrial.net/news/statement-from-the-chief-investigators-of-the-randomised-evaluation-of-covid-19-therapy-recovery-trial-on-hydroxychloroquine-5-june-2020-no-clinical-benefit-from-use-of-hydroxychloroquine-in-hospitalised-patients-with-covid-19

Worst run state is NY, followed closely by California, Oregon and Minnesota, we're just fine here in Florida, we're much better off with DeSantis then that meth head who loves male prostitutes

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16 minutes ago, Penfield45 said:

stop blaming the media. the media controls nothing. they run stories to get ratings, thats it. they have no say in legislation or health guidelines. 

 

the US government should deserve all the blame. 

 

I can't help but notice the difference in the use of language in a scientific journal's abstract (Elsevier and Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease) and CNN's 'reporting' on an article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

 

I'm trying to find a way to access the article, or at least the abstract of the Detroit team's article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

 

Let's face it, most people are not accessing Elsevier or scholarly journals for facts. They rely on the media for a summary of facts to inform and form opinion on pressing topics.

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18 minutes ago, RocCityRoller said:

 

I can't help but notice the difference in the use of language in a scientific journal's abstract (Elsevier and Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease) and CNN's 'reporting' on an article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

 

I'm trying to find a way to access the article, or at least the abstract of the Detroit team's article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

 

Let's face it, most people are not accessing Elsevier or scholarly journals for facts. They rely on the media for a summary of facts to inform and form opinion on pressing topics.

 

ok? that still doesn't explain the fact that people want to put the blame on the media for how poor the US is handeling the virus. thats a piss poor take. government officials are the ones making the rules and had Texas, Arizona, and Florida taken a global pandemic seriously like many other states they would have saved more lives. 

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2 minutes ago, Penfield45 said:

 

ok? that still doesn't explain the fact that people want to put the blame on the media for how poor the US is handeling the virus. thats a piss poor take. government officials are the ones making the rules and had Texas, Arizona, and Florida taken a global pandemic seriously like many other states they would have saved more lives. 

 

 

You covering for these teleprompter reading scumbags is heart warming...

 

...and clearly misguided...

 

...watch and listen, if you dare commie...

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Penfield45 said:

 

ok? that still doesn't explain the fact that people want to put the blame on the media for how poor the US is handeling the virus. thats a piss poor take. government officials are the ones making the rules and had Texas, Arizona, and Florida taken a global pandemic seriously like many other states they would have saved more lives. 

and New York and New Jersey, right?

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9 minutes ago, Penfield45 said:

 

ok? that still doesn't explain the fact that people want to put the blame on the media for how poor the US is handeling the virus. thats a piss poor take. government officials are the ones making the rules and had Texas, Arizona, and Florida taken a global pandemic seriously like many other states they would have saved more lives. 

 

I'm not 'blaming the media' for how the USA is 'handling the virus'. Nowhere did I say that. I did say that the media, by the language it uses, forms and shapes opinions of the public. Given how much we the GP are at each other's throats and don't trust anything, I would say it has been a colossal failure. Read the posts above, read them. Look at the difference in language used in the CNN article, and the published medical journal.

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Looks like deaths are beginning to bottom out for this wave.  Right at around 500 deaths per day 7 day rolling average.

 

my hunch is next week we begin to see it rise to around 550-600 7 day moving average by the end of the week.

 

 

 

Wouldn’t be surprised to see it peak in about a month around 750-800 a day and then head back down again.  

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

 

Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators

Michelle Rogers
USA TODAY Network

The claim: Hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19, and on ventilators

Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota, was interviewed by "The Ingraham Angle" host Laura Ingraham on April 8 on Fox News and claimed hospitals get paid more if Medicare patients are listed as having COVID-19 and get three times as much money if they need a ventilator.

The claim was published April 9 by The Spectator, a conservative publication. WorldNetDaily shared it April 10 and, according to Snopes, a related meme was shared on social media in mid-April.

Jensen took it to his own Facebook page April 15, saying, in part:

"How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars. Already some states are complaining that they are not getting enough of the CARES Act dollars because they are having significantly more proportional COVID-19 deaths."

On April 19, he doubled down on his assertion via video on his Facebook page.

Jensen said, "Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."

 

Jensen clarified in the video that he doesn't think physicians are "gaming the system" so much as other "players," such as hospital administrators, who he said may pressure physicians to cite all diagnoses, including "probable" COVID-19, on discharge papers or death certificates to get the higher Medicare allocation allowed under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Past practice, Jensen said, did not include probabilities.

 

He noted that some states, including his home state of Minnesota, as well as California, list only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses. Others, specifically New York, list all presumed cases, which is allowed under guidelines fro

Provision in the relief act

The coronavirus relief legislation created a 20% premium, or add-on, for COVID-19 Medicare patients.

There have been no public reports that hospitals are exaggerating COVID-19 numbers to receive higher Medicare payments.

Jensen didn't explicitly make that claim. He simply suggested there is an "avenue" to do so now that "plausible" COVID-19, not just laboratory-confirmed, cases can be greenlighted for Medicare payment and eligible for the 20% add-on allowed under the relief act.

m the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of mid-April and which will result in a larger payout.

Jensen said he thinks the overall number of COVID-19 cases have been undercounted based on limitations in the number of tests available.

 

The initial $30 billion – out of $100 billion – in the grants dedicated to health care providers to address the pandemic was disbursed according to 2019 Medicare reimbursements.

The second wave will focus on providers in areas more heavily affected by the outbreak, according to Kaiser Health News, giving rise to Jensen's concern that hospitals could exploit the CDC's guidelines allowing presumed cases.

Jensen did not return an email request from USA TODAY for comment about his claim.

USA TODAY reached out to Marty Makary, a surgeon and professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about the claim. Makary said in an email April 21 that "what Scott Jensen said sounds right to me."

Makary did not elaborate, answer additional questions or respond to a request for an interview.

USA TODAY reached out to the American Hospital Association and Federation of American Hospitals on April 22, but as of publication had not received a response.

How does Medicare pay? 

Snopes investigated the claim, finding it's plausible Medicare pays in the range Jensen mentions but doesn't have a "one-size-fits-all" payment to hospitals for COVID-19 patients.

As explained by nurse Elizabeth Davis in her piece for verywellhealth.com, each hospital has a base payment rate assigned by Medicare. It takes into account nationwide and regional trends, including labor costs and varying health care resources in each market.

Then, each diagnosis-related group, which classifies various diagnoses into groups and subgroups, is assigned a weight based on the average amount of resources it takes to care for a patient. Those figures are multiplied to determine the payment from Medicare. A hospital in one city and state may be paid more or less for treating a patient than a hospital in another.

PolitiFact reporter Tom Kertscher wrote, "The dollar amounts Jensen cited are roughly what we found in an analysis published April 7 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading source of health information."

Ask FactCheck weighed in April 21: "The figures cited by Jensen generally square with estimated Medicare payments for COVID-19 hospitalizations, based on average Medicare payments for patients with similar diagnoses."

Ask FactCheck reporter Angelo Fichera, who interviewed Jensen, noted, "Jensen said he did not think that hospitals were intentionally misclassifying cases for financial reasons. But that’s how his comments have been widely interpreted and paraded on social media."

Ask FactCheck's conclusion: "Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment, but there is no evidence of fraudulent reporting."

Julie Aultman, a member of the editorial board of the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics, told PolitiFact it is “very unlikely that physicians or hospitals will falsify data or be motivated by money to do so.”

Our ruling: True

We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.

Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it's considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases.

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So why did I bring up the post above again?

 

I have been banging on about the veracity of COVID counts for months now. There is no point in arguing 'COVID numbers increasing or decreasing' when no one knows: what is a COVID infection? What is a COVID hospitalization? What is a COVID death? The media now says COVID is on the rise. What COVID numbers?

 

I've done a poor job framing my concerns about the 'stats'. Each state is allowed to determine its own metrics. This makes comparisons difficult at best. States such as NY and CO have been reported in multiple sources as adjusting their numbers as testing ability has improved, as methodology has improved, as definitions have improved and adjusted. That is fair and just. I'm not sure I've seen a comprehensive report as to what a COVID positive is, a COVID Hospitalization is, or a COVID death is. I would like to see how each state defines these terms without any spin.

 

If a man has a heart attack after years of eating bad food, and no exercise, but tests positive for COVID at the hospital is that a COVID hospitalization?

 

If a woman overdoses on sleeping pills, tests positive for COVID in her system, and dies in the hospital is that a COVID death?

 

Different states will tell you different answers. Why?

 

I work for a University/Health System in NY State. As of our last staff call last week, we are now facing a $350,000,000 shortfall due to suspension of elective procedures. This does not include $21,000,000 in University refunds and fees lost. 4/10 of a billion dollars is a lot of money to lose, when definitions are not clearly applied. Full furloughs and rotating furloughs have been in place since May, including all medical staff. Ironic given the suspended elective procedures were intended to provide more medical staff and resources for COVID.

 

Let me also state that our ICU ward, the common measure of the hospital 'stress test', was regularly 'stressed' at 75-110% capacity before COVID. When extra emergency beds in NYC were made available on a naval ship, and a 'medical tent unit' in NYC were barely used, but 'COVID Hospitalizations were on a dramatic rise', I started to have some doubts regarding 'the numbers'.

 

How could any politician, Democrat or Republican, vote against the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act? That would be political suicide. Here is the rub, CARES included an edit to the Medicare payments received by medical systems for COVID patients.

 

When I call into question the reporting of statistics, especially in states hit early by COVID, I have some questions about ill defined numbers. I don't think that a huge number of NY hospitals would willingly post irresponsible numbers. However the fact remains that NY hospitals, like mine, are $350 million in the hole due to suspension of elective care by the governor, and were at the same time monetized to report COVID numbers. Que Bono? Who benefits? Follow the money.

 

Some NYC ICU's were severely taxed early on. No doubt, but why was there no huge overflow to the Medical ship in NY harbor, or to the other temporary units? Why was there a dramatic increase in 'COVID numbers' after the Governors ban on elective medical treatment, but not in actual ICU beds needed?

Edited by RocCityRoller
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Did DeSantis release FL hospital data today? I don't see it (and can't find it). All I see is this chart that shows spiking hospitalizations by day. Is there anyplace that shows bed usage and capacity? I'm asking here because I believe Magox lives in FL and maybe others too. We probably are only seeing the beginning of hospitalization rises in FL and I'd like a good source to watch. 

 

 

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