Quote: @Havoc1649 said:
@ Ilovebigtd's said:
i blame this all on trump for his lack of readiness/being prepared. awful.
I hope you’re joking. China is 100% responsible. The WHO isn’t clean either. Even up to mid January the WHO was telling us there was no evidence there was human to human transmission. The US did not dawdle on this as much as sick people want that to be the case.
As for preparedness, that’s a topic much of the media doesn’t really want to touch:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/los-angeles-times-and-bloomberg-news-federal-stockpile-of-n95-masks-was-depleted-under-obama-and-never-restocked
The one “saving grace” for avoiding complete blame for the abomination that was our massive shortage of supplies, is that not much had happened the past couple of years either. I couldn’t even find evidence the admin had noticed how low the stockpile was. I don’t think they had a clue until it was needed.
Plenty of blame to go around, but there is no question there’s a primary group of people responsible. They happen to be the exact same people on tv the past couple of months trying to obfuscate their utter failure. For instance citing a NSC group that was “fired”. It’s not actually true of course. The duties remained, there was simply a shifting of responsibilities and some title changes.
The stockpile was Heavily depleted back in 2009 and most of the public hasn’t a clue. The sheer power of our media to set the narrative is incredible. In my opinion, partisanship will ultimately be our downfall.
lets get this thread back on the non political track. we have plenty of room for threads on the ST side to discuss the whos and whys, lets keep this one as politics free as we can please?
Quote: @Hidalgo said:
One of (probably several of) the local churches is planning an Easter egg hunt Sunday for the kids
The event should be cancelled and the organizers/church fined for endangering federal/state taxpayers.
Quote: @BigAl99 said:
Nope, wifey and I, were both symptomatic, mid March after a trip to DC a couple weeks earlier. They were only testing those they were going to put on ventilators, is what we were told. State, Iowa, had less than 600 test available and less capacity to process them.
My girlfriend is symptomatic and the only way she can get tested is to be hospitalized.
She works for a cancer center that's part of the biggest hospital in North Carolina.
Quote: @minny65 said:
@ Hidalgo said:
One of (probably several of) the local churches is planning an Easter egg hunt Sunday for the kids
The event should be cancelled and the organizers/church fined for endangering federal/state taxpayers.
threaten to take away their non profit status and the tax breaks to go with it... i bet they toe the line pretty quickly.
Quote: @JimmyinSD said:
@ minny65 said:
@ Hidalgo said:
One of (probably several of) the local churches is planning an Easter egg hunt Sunday for the kids
The event should be cancelled and the organizers/church fined for endangering federal/state taxpayers.
threaten to take away their non profit status and the tax breaks to go with it... i bet they toe the line pretty quickly. You take those away and suddenly I have a feeling their spin on faith will also go away 
Quote: @A1Janitor said:
But the numbers we see could have been prevented had our country had its shit together.
How so? It seems like we have done fairly well. It looks like the bed situation was just fine.
What should have happened was China shouldn’t have lied and WHO should have done their jobs.
For starters politicians at every level of government pretending like this was a big nothing burger. Meanwhile many at the federal level who knew it wasn't a nothing burger were concerned enough they sold off shares in stocks to get ahead of the negative financial impact. We still have dipshits running around like this is a hoax and not following any recommendations because government officials said in March it wasn't a big deal. See Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana putting tourism dollars above public health. Great, China lied, but we saw what was happening in Italy and dicked around for 2.5 weeks watching that unfold before acting. The intel was there in February, both parties had it and both parties essentially sat on it.
The US was not proactive in designing their own test kits, we are a month plus behind mass roll out of our own test kits. Yes places like Mayo and other large entities have designed their own, but those don’t do any good for Joe Blow in rural Arkansas as those kits are for affiliates only. Most nations with the technical abilities devise their own test as the WHO test kits are typically earmarked for developing countries. While the US didn't turn down the kits as Uncle Joe claims. The US also never asked for them, which they should have when it was clear our own kits were not going to be ready soon enough. Also for Trump to claim the WHO kits are "bad tests" and thus it was a moot point we didn't ask is patently false. The WHO tests have performed very well.
More over what are you basing your "it seems we have done fairly well" comment on? We still aren’t testing to a level we need to be, not even remotely close to determine that. Do you have any idea how difficult it is in most places to get an MD to agree to test you? But hey, got $6000 lying around you can out of pocket pay for a test from a private lab. This isn't influenza A, you don’t walk into your PCP and say I have a tickle in my throat and the sniffles and they test you willy-nilly. Nope, there are multiple check boxes that have to be marked off to even be considered. Heck to even get inside an urgent care, let alone ED in some places these screening questions are asked. Some states are resorting to if you don’t seem like a candidate for a ventilator they aren’t “wasting” as test on you. These "screening questions" are purposely designed in a way to discourage testing as we don’t have the number of tests needed. How do I know? I was on the preparedness team that helped design our regions screening questions and that was how we had to set it up.
Young and perceived healthy, not tested. Meanwhile more and more "young and perceived healthy" people are coming down with this than anticipated globally. Give it 2-3 weeks and as happened in Italy we will see a spike in young infected and young deaths. Meanwhile places like Mayo are running antibody tests and finding out that people who were ill and thought to just have the regular old flu in late December, January and February had COVID-19 back then. Significantly more people than you want to admit have already had it been sick and recovered, battled it for a while then recovered, or died and it's all been chalked up to the regular flu casualties and deaths.
The bed situation is just fine? Should I trust your information over that which my organization is getting from CDC, local, state, national health officials and the former ranking CDC official who is an adviser for us? Beds are fine now because most states haven't hit their surges yet. We aren’t anticipating our surge in my part of Iowa to even hit until early to mid-May sometime, and the projections we get for statewide hospital overload are for June. I'd be interested to hear what your expertise on either computer simulated epidemiological models or epidemiology in general is. Because if it trumps that of my organizations advisers I’ll gladly listen to you and ignore them.
We have 1 ICU bed per every 900 Americans 60 and over in this country. Sounds like a rough start, especially if we aren’t ignoring this is impacting way more than that 60 and up demographic we were initially lead to believe it was only going to impact noticeably. Next factor in its not as though these are evenly distributed nationwide. Live in rural parts of the US? Chances of getting an ICU bed when this hits are not good. How about this for stark reality, 47% of the counties in the US have only 1 ICU bed. Only 29% of US counties have more than nine. No big deal now, but when the surge hits could very well be a big deal. Being a respiratory illness time is critical, people having to be transported around, and in some instances long distances due to lack of ICU beds is an issue.
If this hits as expected we as a nation do not have the operable ventilators nor the meds to keep people on vents. Hospitals nationwide have decided to save a quick buck by not maintaining their vents and the government has allowed for lax regulations. This has been going on for years, regardless of which party is in power. And Americans have let it happen. As an example per capita hospital A and B both "should have" 12 vents, both have those 12 vents. But due to how regulations have been re-worded hospital A has 6 operable vents and 6 on site in storage that have not been maintained over the years. Hospital B has 4 operable and 8 in storage. But hey, 12 vents is 12 vents right? What does it matter, you can always borrow or rent from another hospital right? As for meds there has been a shortage since March on the sedatives, anesthetics, painkillers, and muscle relaxants needed to keep people on vents. Without them venting folks is going to turn ICU's into a pretty gnarly scene.
When I was speaking to the country not having its shit together, this example and countless more along these lines is what I was talking about. Not what team Trump or team anti-Trump said or did. Frankly I don’t give a damn about your team or the other team. As a someone who works in hospitals and clinics I don’t chose who I help based on which side the patient is on, neither do the MD, nurses, and millions of other professionals working healthcare in this country. When people are wheeled in and unable to breathe on their own, let alone speak to ask their political affiliation, no one is thinking, "man what if this guy voted for Trump" or "what if this guy is a "Bernie bro".
Quote: @"BarrNone55" said:
@ BigAl99 said:
Nope, wifey and I, were both symptomatic, mid March after a trip to DC a couple weeks earlier. They were only testing those they were going to put on ventilators, is what we were told. State, Iowa, had less than 600 test available and less capacity to process them.
My girlfriend is symptomatic and the only way she can get tested is to be hospitalized.
She works for a cancer center that's part of the biggest hospital in North Carolina.
That's why when this all said and done, we will be at a loss for information here in the US. People who die at home are not being diagnosed, there is no postmortem testing. You see the debate already of who should be counted, just cause they had it doesn't mean they died of it. It's all going to be left to uninformed speculation and debate, just chaos.
'A lot of pain.' NY has biggest 1-day jump in virus deaths By MARINA VILLENEUVE , KAREN MATTHEWS and MICHAEL HILL Associated PressApril 7, 2020 — 12:50pm NEW YORK — New York state recorded 731 new coronavirus deaths, marking its biggest single-day jump, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.
The state's death toll since the beginning of the outbreak last month grew to 5,489.
The alarming surge in deaths comes even as new hospital admissions have dropped on average over several days, a possible harbinger of the outbreak finally leveling off. Cuomo said the death tally is a "lagging indicator" that reflects the loss of critically ill people hospitalized earlier.
"That's 731 people who we lost. Behind every one of those numbers is an individual. There's a family, there's a mother, there's a father, there's a sister, there's a brother. So a lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers," Cuomo said at a briefing at the state Capitol.
The state has been recording more than 500 new deaths a day since late last week. The number of confirmed cases — which does not include infected people who have not been tested — is close to 139,000 statewide.
While Cuomo said New York could be reaching a "plateau" in hospitalizations, he warned that gains are dependent on people continuing to practice social distancing.
"This is a projection," he said. "It still depends on what we do, and what we do will affect those numbers."
Minnesota hits 1,069 COVID-19 cases, 34 deaths one month after reporting first case State passed 1,000 confirmed cases only one month after announcing Minnesota's first case in an 80-year-old Ramsey County individual. Exactly one month after reporting its first case of COVID-19, Minnesota now has 1,069 confirmed cases and 34 deaths due to a highly infectious coronavirus that has spread worldwide.
The latest state figures were provided Tuesday morning by the Minnesota Department of Health, and include four newly reported deaths and 83 cases — the highest number of confirmed cases reported by the state on any single day so far in this pandemic
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-co...569440222/
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