Covid-19

[D-West & PO-Z]

[QUOTE=;676307]

Good points. I think this is an example of where our hyper-partisan political system is leading us. This think almost immediately turned from a public health issue into a political issue with both sides repeatedly doubling down on their bullshit. If you are on the left this is the end of days, one life lost is too many, and we should all stay home until we have a 100% effective vaccine. If you are on the right the entire thing is 100% fake and concocted to take away their rights (as if the government wants to crash the economy). The reality, in my opinion, is that this is a complex public health issue that has not been managed particularly well by anybody.

I also think that a more effective and coordinated Federal response would have helped. For example: The Federal Government should have quickly put a plan in place to backstop the states (particularly hot zones) and move Ventilators and PPE around the country as needed to combat flare-ups and stop the feeding frenzy for supplies and hospital space.[/

The biggest mismanagement in my opinion was not protecting the elderly and people with compromised immune systems and shutting everyone down. I mean we were told millions would die. It’s not even close to that and to me that seems a success. Maybe if they would have just isolated older and health compromised people and took extreme caution with them, we would have cut the deaths by at least half if not more. Playing the Monday QB is always easier though.

You do realize who takes care of older people and immunocompromised people though right?

[D-West & PO-Z]

I agree. I also think it was a problem that they told everybody NOT to wear masks for the first 2 months of the outbreak. I never understood that one. How could it hurt? They were so worried about people buying up all the masks that they let it get in the way of good policy.

This was a HUGE mistake. They did it because they didnt want everyone to buy them all up but in the process of doing that they said they wont help anyway which was not true (overall not true, true in some sense) but they said it to get people not to use them. Fatal mistake.

[D-West & PO-Z]

A few weeks ago the NBC Nightly news had a piece on reactions since partial openings. They reported that Georgia cases had “surged 64% since partial re-openings” with a giant red arrow pointing straight up. What? I’m looking at the chart and the peak was in the distant past and cases were dropping sharply as seen on the 7 day moving average of the number of cases. But THAT doesn’t scare anyone! Oh, OK, the total number of cases was more than it was at the time of reopening, but let’s just twist things around to deliberately mislead people to keep them tuned for more news. Total horse shit!

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news-full-episodes

About the 5:30 mark.

.

On a side note.....Wedding or no wedding?

[Muskie in dayton]

I agree. I also think it was a problem that they told everybody NOT to wear masks for the first 2 months of the outbreak. I never understood that one. How could it hurt? They were so worried about people buying up all the masks that they let it get in the way of good policy.

Even Mitch McConnell is advocating the mask wearing:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/27/mitch-mcconnell-plea-face-masks-285272


Refusing to wear one is juvenile and stupid - like the teenager who won’t wear a seatbelt because their parents keep telling them too.

[xu82]

On a side note.....Wedding or no wedding?

Small parents only church wedding remains mid-August in Sarasota, FL. The BIG WEDDING at Grove Park Inn in Asheville was moved just today to April 30, 2021. They may miss the 25% employee discount if she is no longer an Omni employee (currently on furlough), but nobody will blame you for killing dad or granny, I hope. Family>money.

Thanks for asking!

[noteggs]

But that's a great reason to be wearing a mask, especially indoors. It sure seems to have worked for Taiwan.

Completely agree masks seem to be very beneficial even tho Dr Fauci gave us a couple different answers (borderline absurd) before. My big question is why haven’t we looked at transmission data before now? We’ve had 80 years to adjust and prepare.

[D-West & PO-Z]

Small parents only church wedding remains mid-August in Sarasota, FL. The BIG WEDDING at Grove Park Inn in Asheville was moved just today to April 30, 2021. They may miss the 25% employee discount if she is no longer an Omni employee (currently on furlough), but nobody will blame you for killing dad or granny, I hope. Family>money.

Thanks for asking!

Glad they were able to come to a decision, hope they feel good about it. Probably will be much more enjoyable experience not being worried about it at least.

[Masterofreality]

[QUOTE=boozehound;676331]

What does attention and assistance mean? I'm talking purely financially - they pay more to the Federal Coffers than they receive.

COVID basically affected 6 states: New York, New Jersey, Washington, California, Michigan, and Illinois. The overwhelming majority of the impact was in just NY and NJ. I don't think that helping to facilitate an agreement to share resources across state lines is 'unchecked Federal Power'. They don't need to pass any laws, just help to develop a framework for reciprocity. People obviously disagree on the role of the Federal Government vs. the States though, and that's fine.

I don't know what subtweet means.

Sorry if this was posted somewhere on here before but the reason that New York and New Jersey AND Ohio haven’t fared so well is because those states absolutely ignored Quality Data from Stanford University scientists and Epidimiologists plus experience from Korea about guarding Nursing and Assisted Living Homes. Florida did not ignore it. Rather than anything the Federal Government did not do, it was SOME Governors’ arrogance against believing solid data from Stanford and Korea that exacerbated this mess & deaths. Luckily the Assisted Living Home in the Atlanta area that my 98 year old Mother is in followed the same guidelines that DeSantis laid down. DewActon and Cuomo not so much.

.https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot.../#6635d7e974cd

[Lloyd Braun]

Luckily the Assisted Living Home in the Atlanta area that my 98 year old Mother is in followed the same guidelines that DeSantis laid down. DewActon and Cuomo not so much.

Serious question because I have not followed every state’s restrictions, but are you able to expand on this? Specifically what the Governor or Florida did to prevent long term care facility deaths that was different than Ohio. I don’t know about New York but Ohio did instill most the same restrictions, and a few days earlier than Florida.

https://www.leadingageohio.org/aws/L...431687?ver=961

Only recently did Florida instill this change, and has seen recent spike in nursing home deaths which account for almost 50% of COVID deaths in Florida. Last week it was 42% so it is increasing. It has hit the old folks homes hard everywhere, and the source of transmission is almost always staff and not a sick resident.

The lockdowns in Ohio are essentially lifted with the exception of mass gatherings. Many businesses (especially restaurants and bars) unfortunately will continue to suffer in spite of lifting restrictions. Their capacity may still be legally restricted but lifting that does not make people confident enough to restore volumes needed to thrive. Paid sick leave is a reasonable strategy to implement to keep sick people home, and may restore consumer confidence. Continued rapid widespread testing is still way behind where we need it to be, which is insane. That is on the federal government not the states.

Quick story: My neighbor is about 24 years old, no medical problems, no known exposure to a positive contact and recently became mildly ill (cough/body aches, no fever). He works in a restaurant that just reopened, and was told to stay home from work for minimum 10 days, and not return until he is symptom-free for 3 days. He actually went to work the first day he had symptoms and worked an entire shift because he was not convinced he was sick. He went to work because he, like many, need money to live. The domino effect of him going is unknown, assuming he has COVID. But we don’t know because he doesn’t meet the current criteria for testing! How is this the outcome? Now I’m sure if he went to enough urgent cares he would eventually run into someone that would test him, but he was informed via teleconference with his doctor to stay home and that he doesn’t meet priority testing requirements. And if he doesn’t have COVID, he is missing more work and may actually have a false sense of immunity since now he believes he has it. I can’t imagine this is a unique scenario.

I find the discussion interesting as opinion varies wildly on this. I know I see lots of old folks dying from this and that’s scary for many of them. To toss the their numbers out and say “if we exclude deaths from those over age 70” etc. is cherry picking stats in the worst way. Why should we count their deaths? They’re just gonna die of something else anyways sometime soon, amirite or amirite?

[Lloyd Braun]

I won’t sift through 2000 posts but at some point there was a discussion on reporting of flu and flu deaths. Well you can pretty much take this years flu data with a grain of salt because of how it is reported. I meant to find this at that time but these are the markers for how impactful the flu is for Ohio:
1) Influenza-like illness outpatient data reports (essentially visits to select facilities for flu symptoms).
2) Thermometer sales!
3) Fever and influenza-like illness ED visits
4) Constitutional ED visits
5) Confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations
6) Outpatient medical claims data

So here is the dashboard for the week COVID was confirmed in Ohio.

Thermometer sales went up by almost 200% compared to the previous week. Confirmed flu hospitalizations went down. I thought initially that this years flu season numbers would be inflated similar to how this report looks. However, flu hospitalizations were down essentially the rest of the flu season, and social distancing apparently works very well for the flu too.