COVID-19 & US healthcare system

[Black Aeronaut]

Plasma for food money... Fucks sake... BA, anything someone over in Australia can do to toss some help your way?

Not much, I'm afraid.  What we really need over here is more income earners.  Fortunately, two of my brothers finally moved back home.  (In case you never heard, I have five of them, plus a sister, and I'm the oldest of them all.)  One of them is going to start looking into jobs just as soon as he's settled back in.

The other....  *SIGHS*  He's convinced that he can do some kind of freelance work doing custom world builds for authors and dungeon masters.  In a ways I can see it - designing entire worlds and even solar systems and galaxies isn't exactly easy.  But not many people are into that kind of gnitty gritty detail and usually kinda make it up as they go along.

I'm gonna go back to delivering for Papa Johns, because fuck Uber - they just shortchanged me for the second time on a mess someone made in my car.  (Their support people may not exactly read from a script, but I'll be damned if they don't have cue cards to go by.  Let me tell you, I've been extremely vitriolic with the support people.)  It's a shame because everything else about Uber is okay-ish.  The market where I live is pretty decent, and the earnings are good as long as I'm putting in the hours.  But when they "reimburse*" you only $80 for a job that cost $150, or only $150 for a job that costs $300?  Yeah.  I'm done with them, and I'll make damn sure people know why.

* - This isn't even any sweat off their backs - it gets charged to the customer that made the mess.

[Labster]

Good, Uber is a terrible employer, and everything I've read suggest it works out to pay much less than minimum wage, accounting for things like repairs, wear and tear on your car.

I can definitely send you some cash, though. I've had one friend evicted this month and would prefer not to have two. Hopefully they just want their money and don't also hate you, as it was in the last case.

Back on topic: In California, several counties up north have a shelter in place order issued today, which basically means people should not leave their houses for the next two weeks. Meanwhile, the next state over in Arizona -- it's election day! Everyone, head out the the polls to vote! I'm sure it will be totally fine and not at all dangerous for community transmission!

[Star Ranger4]

Unlike Ohio, who has decided to postpone voting for just that reason! *rimshot.mp3*

[robkelk]

Good, Uber is a terrible employer, and everything I've read suggest it works out to pay much less than minimum wage, accounting for things like repairs, wear and tear on your car.

I can definitely send you some cash, though.  I've had one friend evicted this month and would prefer not to have two.  Hopefully they just want their money and don't also hate you, as it was in the last case.

Likewise, BA. If you don't want charity, then I'll pay you $120 Canadian (that's slightly over minimum wage here) to stay home one day and write. (I can afford to do that for three days.) You're way behind in There's Nothing Better, so doing this would benefit me as well as you.

Back on topic: In California, several counties up north have a shelter in place order issued today, which basically means people should not leave their houses for the next two weeks.  Meanwhile, the next state over in Arizona -- it's election day!  Everyone, head out the the polls to vote!  I'm sure it will be totally fine and not at all dangerous for community transmission!

In all seriousness... There are places on earth where people risk getting shot if they vote, but they still go vote. Arizonans can risk making contact with a virus that can be killed by being exposed to soap for 25 seconds when they go vote.

---

This week's radio World Health Organization recipe is for Hand Sanitizer. Don't pay inflated prices for takeout.

[SilverFang01]

From the BBC, some tips about how to care for your mental health during this outbreak
Coronavirus: How to protect your mental health

Today it was announced that there are going to be mobile sites in the city to test for COVID-19, but they are still limiting to those who were on trips or has contact with someone infected.

[robkelk]

Today it was announced that there are going to be mobile sites in the city to test for COVID-19, but they are still limiting to those who were on trips or has contact with someone infected.

We were limiting tests for a while here, until we realized that "contact with someone infected" potentially covers the entire city. Now we have a drive-through test facility to take some of the load off the hospitals.

(I understand that one of the smaller towns nearby - I forget which one - is sending paramedics out to perform tests at people's homes so that they don't need to break self-imposed quarantines.)

[hazard]

Re: Arizona voting.

I'm pretty sure risks of infection could be managed better if there were more polling places spread across a larger area where people didn't need to line up for hours on end.

[SilverFang01]

Re: Arizona voting.

I'm pretty sure risks of infection could be managed better if there were more polling places spread across a larger area where people didn't need to line up for hours on end.

But then, how would they control who could and could not vote? They have to make sure only the right kind of people can do so.

[Black Aeronaut]

Thanks, everyone. I'll start a thread in the Fanfiction forum, but I will say this:

COVID-19 has, ironically, given me a reprieve.

All of Bexar County and San Antonio municipal courts are suspended. My eviction hearing just got pushed back by several weeks, and the property management company is willing to take payments so long as I'm willing to make them.

Now to get back into schlepping pizzas again... Pretty sure they're gonna be taking just about anyone that applies. And for my brothers, we just found out that good old Herbert E. Buttz grocery company (By and large known as H-E-B in these parts) is holding job interviews for anyone who wants to work in their warehouse in order to keep on top of keeping their stores supplied during this time of crisis.

Starting pay? $17/hour.

[Bob Schroeck]

Good luck with it all, BA.

[hazard]

But then, how would they control who could and could not vote? They have to make sure only the right kind of people can do so.

Let me make a radical suggestion.

If they are a US citizen resident in Arizona, they are the right kind of people to vote.


Yes, I know that that's never going to fly. It's a demonstration of the definite catastrophic failure state of the USA election system that it is so.

[robkelk]

The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China/Korea/Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what happens if the US does absolutely nothing -- if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course.

[Black Aeronaut]

Hmmm. Looks like either way, it's not good. Do nothing, and things go to shit. Do everything, and things go to shit.

[Dartz]

But it takes long enough for it to go to hell to the point that it'll probably be beatable. Or at least become innocuous and normal.

[classicdrogn]

There was a clip of some state governor on the radio earlier saying "we can't build 3,000 hospital beds in three weeks," and I thought "Why the hell not? That's exactly what China did, only in half the time." Funding, I guess? Maybe if it was, like, the NYC mayor instead, but that would more likely be a limitation of where to put it even then. Of course, you also need staff to tend the people in those beds too.

[Black Aeronaut]

But that sounds like *GASP!* SOCIALISM!!! </s>

[hazard]

Meanwhile in the Netherlands:

2051 people tested positive. Of them, 385 work in healthcare; they get tested more often and are exposed more often. 408 have been hospitalized in total. 58 of the victims have died, all of them between the ages of 63 and 95.

The RIVM has published an actively updated map that displays the number of people per 100 000 residents for each municipality whom were tested and showed positive for COVID-19. The map is entirely in Dutch, but the hardest hit municipalities are Uden (126.8 per 100 000 residents) and Boekel (179.4 per 100 000 residents) as of this posting. Just mouse over the map. Note that a number of the municipalities that show an infection rate of less than 10 per 100 000 residents may have literally only 1 or 2 confirmed cases in their areas. On the other hand, the more densely populated Randstad area (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht) show low infection rates (Amsterdam municipality only 7.5 per 100 000), but definitely have dozens of cases. The municipality of Amsterdam has in excess of 800 000 residents after all.

It appears that carnival indeed had a major impact on the spread of the virus.

[robkelk]

There was a clip of some state governor on the radio earlier saying "we can't build 3,000 hospital beds in three weeks," and I thought "Why the hell not? That's exactly what China did, only in half the time."

China built people-warehouses, not hospitals. There's no way they have oxygen lines to every room in those new buildings, to name one thing that hospitals have.

[classicdrogn]

I don't see why it couldn't, it's just another set of plumbing. Especially when the crisis that prompted it is an infection that causes respiratory distress. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual beds were just normal solid frames rather than the power-articulated kind, but that kind of physical infrastructure is ultimately a matter of throwing money at the problem, while staff need weeks to years for training.

[hazard]

For the most basic care?

A couple of weeks at most.

You definitely need an actually trained health care worker to take care of the jobs that's not just keeping things clean and making sure the meals go round, but for making sure things are clean and the meals go round? You don't need training in health care for that. Just training in the safety equipment.

[DHBirr]

You will undoubtedly be glad to learn that a "Christian prophet" who works with Trump's "spiritual adviser" Paula White has declared the coronavirus "illegal."  As the headline for the blog entry put it:  "Because Jesus."

She's described as also being part of an

initiative to reelect Trump and protect the president from witches and demons during the 2020 campaign.

To quote the blogger again:  "The stupid, it burns."

-----
God made me an agnostic — who are you to question His wisdom?

[classicdrogn]

Only in effigy, though it's hard to really say if that's fortunate or unfortunate. I mean, I know which one I'd like to call it, but I also want to be able to keep pretending I''m a good person.

[Rajvik]

Raj, keep the antisemític dogwhistles and your racism out of the thread.

Conservatives are always complaining about how their vision of government with their focus on deregulation and free market solutions to everything is what this country needs to always come on top. That the reduction of government services and its capabilities to manage crisis are a necessity in order to bring about a renaissance of a largely mythical past.

For almost 40 years, conservatism has been able to implement their policies and ideas with minimum interference and sometimes the willing cooperation of the Democratic Party establishment. As a matter of fact, the election of Donald Trump was seen as a way to implement those changes faster, because a big sector of the electorate had run out of patience with the slow approach.

Well? This is the big test. The time to prove without a shadow of a doubt that you were right. That only you knew the road to the promised land.

I would have expected that Wall St. would have been cheering with the display of how effective hands off government is. Everyone naturally acting according to their self-interest without any need for government action.

Reality shows that is a failure. That Reagan was wrong. That the most terrifying words in the English language aren’t “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” but “You got to help me! I don't know what to do. I can't make decisions! I'm a president!”

When asked about firing the CDC pandemic response team in 2008? “I’m not responsible. That is a nasty question.”

This crisis is showing that crisis management is a crucial part of the president’s and government’s job. It’s not exclusively about media narratives, legislative fights, ideological struggle, and culture wars. When your primary qualification for the job is someone who will shake things up and show those bureaucrats and elitists who is boss?  You get the mismanagement seen during Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and now this.

You are mad because we are questioning Trump and his administration’s response to the crisis? If dear leader can't be criticized, can't be questioned, can't be asked for clarity, without you immediately and reflexively screaming in outrage...

...you're not in an a political movement. You're in a cult.

Now, SilverFang, What exactly in my post sounded like an Anti-Semitic Dogwhistle to you? I don't see anything there and i would love for you to point it out.

Also, if you think for one damn minute that the last 40 years has been a conservative walkover of society, then you need to leave, because if anything it's been a constant battle of balance. The democrats promised to build a barrier on the southern border twice, in 1986 and again in 2009, both times congress IMMEDIATELY defunded the project. The Clinton administration, gods where do i begin, but at least he saw at least some sense (more likely the writing on the damn wall) and worked WITH congress after 1996. W,  while not my favorite person, tried to work with Nancy Pelosi when she became speaker, (of course that got us the GM bailout that only bailed out the corporate masters and the union officials, not any of us little people that held GM stock, no) Then we have OBAMA. 

Now, looking at CDC records and a quick google search of the origins of the disease, H1N1 Influenza also came out of China and then moved into Russia, (here) but other than a minor outbreak in Fort Dix where USAMRID is based, we don't see anything about it until 2009 when there is an outbreak, starting in Mexico, and then having it's first US case in California, (timeline here) The reaction of the Obama administration was to effectively ignore it until August when someone was finally able to get them to talk about it, (outside the CDC and HHS offices) then they finally got around to having a meeting about it in September. Effectively they left it wo the rest of the world to handle. 

Comparitively: The timeline on Covid-19 is a bit more tight in the US.
December 31, 2019-WHO raises the issue that something is funky in China, the Chinese, (who we have found had actually been hiding it for over 2 months already) say nothing is wrong, they have it under control.

January 7,2020-WHO Announces that there has been an outbreak in the Wuhan Province specifically around the city of Hubei.

January 31, 2020- Trump announces a travel ban on all persons from China and is lambasted in the mainstream media for doing so, being called xenophobic, racist. Here are a couple of examples
Washington Post
Democracy Now (she actually makes my damn point about Globalism)

and then over the last 6 weeks he was proved right to have done so. Now, has the Chinese, and EU gotten pissy because of the travel bans, yes. SUCK IT UP! and even though Chuckles Schumer is saying that "the Administration took to long to wake up to the issue" as i have shown you, they acted a hell of a lot faster and better than Obama did. also note, Obama never instituted a travel ban, to anywhere, whereas three weeks after the WHO said something, Trump had one in place. 

now, since i have spent an hour and a half going through you tube clips to find what i needed to, i'm going to go to bed and i will address the rest of you either tomorrow or saturday.

[SilverFang01]

Several GOP senators and Dem. Senator Dianne Feinstein sold stocks ahead of the stock market crash: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli...882006001/

I believe this should be investigated. Specially after this came to light yesterday: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535...n-covid-19

[Labster]

Why investigate? Senators are immune from insider trading laws.

But let’s put this in a different perspective. The WHO declared a global health emergency on 31 January. All of these senators are accused of selling stocks in February. Anyone could have seen this coming. I saw it coming.

What makes this bad is only if, in cases like Senator Richard Burr, they lied to the public about the direction of the market. Violated their duty to the people for their own benefit. But as we saw earlier this year, this is no longer an impeachable offense, so if this offends you: vote them out.