Hospitals will go bankrupt with this (unless saved).
Almost every line that makes money in the hospital to keep it afloat financially - joint replacements, radiology, non-emergent cardiac caths, etc - has been shut down or nearly shut down to preserve PPE.
Taking care of COVID patients pays didly squat and is extremely expensive for the hospital and risky to caregivers.
Hospitals are desperately opening up new space for patients in their lobbies, parking decks, and accessory buildings. All that costs money, much more than will be earned during a short term crisis.
The idea that they will come out ahead is absurd. Please keep your uninformed opinions about doctors faking cause of death to yourself. These are the people risking their own life and health by walking in to a cauldron of virus every day, yet you denigrate them. Do you spit on soldiers too?
Come volunteer your time off to expose yourself to covid patients by helping first responders or volunteering in you local emergency department. Be a patriot and not a f’ing whiner.
This is a place to support the president.
If you want to criticize him, please take your new account and go elsewhere. You won’t have a hard time finding a welcoming crowd of your fellow Trump critics.
Which epidemiologists and virologists does you believe should be advising the president? Or should lay people who are sick of sitting at home be the ones dictating policy in combatting this plague?
Yesterday over 1000 Americans died with their lungs full of debris and virus laden cells. We have only had 5000 deaths total, but it is accelerating and showing no signs of slowing yet in the USA. It is not projected to peak until late in April.
Trump made the right call, as usual. If you don’t support the president, WTF are you doing at a 24/7 Trump Rally.
Edit: When we start losing 5,000 Americans per day, and maybe higher, will the naysayer still be claiming that Trump was wrong?
I have a 45 year old patient prone on a ventilator for the last 6 days fighting for his life with no comorbidities.
My calling is to preserve meaningful life.
This disease is plenty dangerous to healthy people. It just happens to be even more dangerous to those who are unfortunate enough to have diabetes, or atherosclerosis, or obesity, or cancer.
The president has chosen their lives over the beautiful economy he helped usher in. We should support him rather than challenge him.
Obviously not.
How about if millions were to die. If such a thing were projected by the best our scientists have to offer, and there was a way to prevent it, would you say no?
You are essentially challenging Trump when you complain about these measures. If that’s your goal then fine, plenty on old Reddit would support you as an ally.
If you have special qualifications or perspectives that are superior to the cdc people advising the president, then present those to the administration and try to get an audience.
I am a physician and an increasing number of my patients have this disease. I expose myself to it every day. So maybe I have a different perspective and perhaps it is real to me in a way that it is not to you.
I am not panicked about it. But this trend of people writing off fellow citizens who happen to have heart disease or diabetes or prostate cancer or obesity saying hey they were going to die anyway is disturbing. We are all going to die anyway. It is preserved meaningful life that we should fight for, even if that fight is frustratingly sitting at home.
They die because they are drowning in debris and virus laden cells filling their lungs. You can easily see it on imaging.
Their obesity did not cause their lungs to fill with debris and virus laden cells.
Their pre-existing conditions contribute to them going into multi system organ failure or having complications while their body and breathing is challenged by the infection.
But many are people who might have lived many years or even decades of meaningful life if not for the virus.
My hospital is nowhere near full.
But it is because we have stopped all elective procedures; have disallowed any visitors; and are waiting for the show to drop. Our peak is supposed to occur in late April. We have opened new hospital space in anticipation.
I have colleagues in other cities and they have prepped lobbies of hospitals and even parking garages as makeshift wards.
If this is a hoax it is on hospitals as well. We are preparing for an onslaught. New York’s peak is supposed to be in 8 days, that would be a good time to record and see (also knowing that their hospital specs has been massively increased).
The real question is, “would they have died now if not for COVID?”
The typical coronary artery disease patient might live for decades, and does not experience going on a ventilator with their lungs full of virus laden cells and inflammatory debris as a precipitating cause of death if only from their atherosclerosis.
If they die in that situation, blaming it on the coronary artery disease is misleading. The precipitating event that led to their multi organ failure and death was the infection.
2.2 million deaths modeled if no precautions. Let’s not pretend that’s comparable to a bad flu year. It’s well over an order of magnitude worse.
I don’t know if a seniors-only quarantine has been modeled or if it can be modeled. Would be interesting if some countries chose that path to give us some empirical data.
The slide says 78% of ICU patients with COVID-19. It is not true that 78% of COVID-19 patient in general have comorbidities.
Another way of reading this statistic is that 22% of people who end up in the ICU due to COVID have no comorbidities.
Let’s please be clear.
Trump did not say coronavirus was a hoax.
He said the democrats trying to politicize it was a hoax.
There is a big difference and this is a distinction that Dems try to blur.
I’m glad they are doing this.
Health care workers ended up being 29% of the coronavirus victims in China (suspect data, I know, but still).
Nurses, docs, respiratory therapists, and others are going to be giving their lives for this calling. Some already have.
Hospital efforts to limit PPE usage will result in exposures of healthcare workers. We can never allow our supply chain of critical medical gear to run through countries like China again.
I agree regarding index funds and for the last 20 years that has been my major vehicle.
However, I believe it is possible to outperform indexes with long term investment in a carefully chosen well diversified collection of 30-50 individual stocks. If you have an advisor do it for you, the fees will eat up the benefits. There are, however, a bunch of good cheap subscription offerings that have a proven history of outperforming the indexes over the long term. For instance the Motley Fool’s StockAdvisor service is only $99 a year and has almost tripled the indexes over the last 18 years.
Indexes are nice though for people who want a set it and forget it way to grow their nest egg.
Fortunately, in my state we have castle doctrine, no obligation to retreat, and the criteria for lethal self defense is if you have a fear of being killed or sustaining great bodily harm; or being raped. For practical purposes, if an assailant has a lethal weapon such as knife or gun, you have every reason to fear for your life and thus defend yourself.
Now if some jerk starts a fistfight you certainly can’t escalate to lethal force.
I had the opportunity to spend a day tracking mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in western Uganda. Amazing experience. The gorillas are wild, although the groups that allow humans to approach are acclimated you human presence.
No gorilla fights. However a blackback male gorilla did approach our group (we are supposed to maintain a substantial distance but if the gorillas approach you, you are supposed to freeze and not meet their eyes). He ended up giving a playful shove to one member of our party who went flying into the brush. The gorilla chuffed a laugh and continued on his way. Damn funny video.
If some unarmed due is running off with your hubcaps, yeah shooting them would be potentially inappropriate.
But if armed people invade your home or business you have no idea what their intentions are. If they have a deadly weapon it is perfectly appropriate to fear for your life and take action to defend.
I hope the numbers stay low but this next 4 weeks may be harsh.
That’s a nasty rash but the world’s last case of smallpox even in the 3rd world was in 1977.
Yes, I know Russia and the US retained samples in protected labs. But a new smallpox case in the wild would have stolen headlines even greater than the coronavirus. Smallpox is one pathogen we humans have eliminated from the wild.
Any mention of all the closed buildings and theaters in Shanghai? Or the Chinese soccer league not playing?
If China has “beaten” the virus, why are they still closing things down?
MyPillow guy is retooling his factories to provide the very same PPE Francesca complains about not having.
What is Francesca doing to combat the virus? Provide solutions, not complains.
Prosecute every bad submission over the last 10 years.
Prosecute every judge who rubber stamped the approvals without deigning to pay attention to the deficiencies.
Punish the man who is supposed to oversee the FISA court and prevent such constitutional abuse.
Truthfully, the latter half of 4th year Med school is usually a blow off semester. Many students were traveling for residency interviews and match day just happened. The typical student just has easy clinics in the last semester.
We need these workers and they will be beginning their career in the crucible. 29% of those infected in China were the health care workers ministering to the sick who got sick themselves (yes I know China numbers are dogshit but we are seeing this in our own caregivers as well). We need these new docs.
This is going to be a shitty month if the models are correct.
I am now finding covid in the lungs of a fair number of people who had no clue they were infected. Hopefully they will stay asymptomatic but some will not.
If you want to avoid this virus, follow the president’s guidelines and assume that the asymptomatic people around you have the disease. Get even more paranoid about hand hygiene and not touching your face.
This crap is happening - 3800 USA deaths already and accelerating. Stay safe fellow patriots.
It’s not stupid at all. It’s a fact. We have not reached the peak.
Look at the graph.
Have we reached the peak?
No. No we have not. A 3rd grader could see that.
It’s shooting up like gangbusters.
That’s a fact.
Those are all real people dying. Another fact.
Where will it stop? Who knows. But I’m glad Trump values human life.