COVID-19 & US healthcare system: Flattening the Third

[robkelk]

Border's still closed - no re-opening today.

[LynnInDenver]

Yeah, we've got at least three counties that are slowly moving towards needing a lockdown here... mostly because there's a LOT of people in those places not social distancing anymore because "it's over, right?" and the numbers are starting to go up alarmingly now. Colorado is now officially moving towards the third peak.

[robkelk]

U.S. sets single-day record for COVID-19 cases during new surge

The spike of 84,218 cases — breaking the record of 77,299 set on July 16 — comes as University of Washington researchers forecast that the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 could reach a total of 500,000 by February.

Election-battleground states Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin also set one-day record highs on Friday.

The number of possible deaths could drop by 130,000 if 95 per cent of Americans would cover their faces, the IHME said, echoing a recommendation by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

One bright spot:

The Northeast remains the one region of the county without a significant surge in cases, but infections are trending higher. Boston public schools shifted to online-only learning this week.

So whatever it is that they're doing, the rest of you should do the same.

[classicdrogn]

Is it time for a remake of READ A BOOK! that tells people to wear a mask, wash your hands, and (replacing "wear deodorant" so it still scans) stay six feet apart? I feel like it's time.

Wear a mask! Wear a mask! Wear a goddamn mask! Cover up your nose and chin, wear a mask!

[LynnInDenver]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/healt...a406b74246

Just more confirmation, they don't WANT to do anything about it other than try to get us all out and infected to get it over with. The problem is, by not controlling it, it's controlling us.

Note that this is definitely confirming what we'd already voiced in my household... there isn't going to be a November gathering, or a Christmas holiday gathering, for us with our families. Recommendations for personal gatherings have tightened to "10 people out of TWO households maximum" in Colorado at Safer At Home ratings, which means we're at best holding two separate gatherings a minimum of two weeks apart. Yes, the fatigue has set in here for us, but it's manifesting more as a sense of frustration and beginning to morph into anger at the people out there who just will not even attempt to wrap their brain around the fact that this is a case of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

[Labster]

Yeah, the crazy thing here is that when asked to clarify his comments -- you can't really mean it right? -- Mark Meadows reiterated that the Trump administration strategy is not to attempt to control the virus. This is the last week of the election campaign, and the message appears to be that the virus can't be controlled, but because we did control it earlier we saved two million lives that Biden would have lost. Okay, sure guys.

And so we go on. We now have roughly the same death rate from the virus as we did in both theatres of the Second World War combined. We've exceeded the number of combat deaths in the US Civil War already. So it goes.

[classicdrogn]

Yeah. I did have a reason for changing my boards-other-than-here avatar to



(I mostly didn't do so here because I don't remember where that carbon atom came from and don't seem to have a high res local copy to put it back later)

[DHBirr]

Minnesota State Senate GOP members were warned of a COVID-19 outbreak among them.  They didn't bother telling the Democratic Farmer-Labor members.  So, if any DFL legislator or staff dies of it, isn't that negligent homicide?  Or is it maybe not "negligent" at all, but willful and malevolent?

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If you aren't paranoid, you deserve all the betrayals everyone in your life will inflict on you.

[nocarename]

Maybe manslaughter? Though I suspect that there has been some court case where it has been determined that having a disease and going to work doesn't count.

Minnesota Statutes 609.205 – Manslaughter in the Second Degree
A person who causes the death of another by any of the following means is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both:
(1) by the person's culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another; or

IANAL though, so applicability depends (as it so frequently does), on how willing parts of the system are to bring other parts of the system up on charges.

[Bob Schroeck]

Apparently someone in the Minnesota GOP is worried it might apply because they're backpedaling frantically about "political" reasons for not telling the Democrats. They're now saying something like "only Republicans were exposed that we knew of, so we didn't think we had to warn the Democrats".

[robkelk]

Why Trump's Operation Warp Speed is credited with helping accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development

Although they can't resist getting in a dig at the end...

[Labster]

One thing you probably don't know about me is that I'm a rodeo fan.  So today I want to talk a bit about the National Finals Rodeo, a ten day event going on now.  Because of the virus, its usual home in Las Vegas, Nevada is off-limits.  But hey, the Governor of Texas stepped up to offer Globe Life Field, the site of the baseball bubble, a place to have a big ol' rodeo, bringing people from all around the country to compete.  In a way, it's not quite a bad as it sounds, because there were so few rodeos this year that every one had the same set of professionals turning up to compete.

It is, pretty obviously, a conservative culture around the sport.  The opening prayer hoped for the safety of Our Troops, but didn't mention healthcare workers.  Since it's Texas this year, they naturally make a spectacle of how awesome Texas is, even including a rock anthem crying "God bless Texas!"  Of course, it's mathematically 40% less awesome than Vegas, because the prize money only $6 million instead of $10 million.  And here I thought Texas was full of millionaires!  But in fact, people are doing pretty good about wearing masks in the arena, which is great!

But what I really wanted to talk about was the Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem.  She's pretty bright, gives a good speech, and has a state facing among the worst rates of infection and death in the nation right now.  So what does she do?  She gets on a plane, goes to the rodeo, and makes a big public appearance about how much her state helped the rodeo in this difficult year.  She seems smart enough, so I'm forced to the conclusion that she thinks it will be politically helpful to her to leave her state in its hour of need to attend a sporting event.  What does that say about us?

[hazard]

A sporting event in a different state. Where she had to get to (along with her staff) in a closed metal tube for several hours, where the ventilation is at least partially cycled through the pressure cabin multiple times.

[Labster]

She could have driven a car, it’s only 938 miles. Rodeo cowboys drive that far in a day all the time; they are far more likely to be killed on the highway than in the arena. But that’s beside the point. Where I see an lapse of judgement, she sees a chance to pander. She abandoned her state when people were dying. But she guesses, probably correctly, that her voters will see: governor leaves state amidst fake news Democrat flu to sew flags, bake apple pie.

We’re at the point that public health advice has changed so much that officials don’t know what they are talking about, and should be ignored. Confidence in public health measures are at an all-time low, just as the mass death begins. This is fine.

[robkelk]

And some people wonder why we want the border kept closed.

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Here's who has tested positive for COVID-19 in U.S. President Trump's inner circle

Does anybody have a similar list for the other party?

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't think one exists.

Not that one hasn't been made -- I don't think there's anyone to put on it.

[classicdrogn]

Guess that's what happens when you don't make a policy of downplaying or ignoring public health risks and prevention guidelines, eh?

[SilverFang01]

Almost 300,000 thousand dead, thanks to these morons.

‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal

Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House's approach to the pandemic. “Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus," HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified in a hearing before the House coronavirus subcommittee on Oct. 2.

[Black Aeronaut]

The fucked up part about this is the fact that herd immunity is not possible at all without a vaccine. Otherwise, highly infectious diseases like polio and mumps would never have been a major fear in the past.

Oh, look! Looks like they’re back because fucking idiots aren’t vaccinating their kids!  Gee, herd immunity sure works, don’t it? </s>

[hazard]

Ehm, regarding polio?

Herd immunity very much was a thing. Nearly everybody got infected by polio when still a baby, at a time where the virus couldn't do a lot of damage to the child. It's only because cleanliness standards at home increased that most children no longer got infected at a time the disease was mostly harmless to them that it got so dangerous to the population.

Of course, that just basically meant that before those standards changed everybody acquired immunity to polio in a manner not unlike a thorough vaccination campaign...

[Labster]

This virus spreads so fast that herd immunity from infection alone could definitely be a thing. I mean, three million Americans would die in the process, but meh, amirite?

[hazard]

That's the lower bound estimate, IIRC. And hey, looking at the number's you're already at at least 10% of the population having made it through the disease, and it only took a year.

Just 9 more years of a semi controlled epidemic and it'll be fine.

[Bob Schroeck]

Plus it's a very economical solution that doesn't upset the vitally important anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist demographics.

[robkelk]

Time for equivalent-to-1000-words, plus captions:



Source

[Black Aeronaut]

I think Labster phrased it better than I could.

Yeah. Sure. Technically it is herd immunity. Just like how the Titanic and her sisters couldn't be sunk. But hey, one out of three ships surviving is a good thing, right?

Really, the kind of "herd immunity" we had in the 1800s should not be the kind of herd immunity we desire for the modern age. There's no excuse for not taking measures that could have prevented hundreds of thousands from dying - and that's to say nothing of the impact the virus has had on those that have survived it, economic and otherwise.