COVID-19 III: No Politics For Thee

[GregK]

1 hour ago, Guy Berger said:

If true, that's not the end of the world, though it would generate long run compliance problems... we know flu vaccine uptake is not great.

yes, that very well could make a bad problem much worse

[catesta]

I still find it interesting that the news reports can't/won't keep up. By that I mean, in the evening or morning, the headline reads "Covid-19 is straining hospitals in Arizona". Six hours later you read, Arizona data shows "outbreak is moderating and hospital visits have leveled off". Or, (insert state here) could surpass New York. I guess this is what happens when you report/track on a micro level.

 

[JSngry]

Reporting is by its very nature a trailing indicator, or used to be. Should be. "24 hour news cycle"...we all been pwned by that nonsense.

This reality shit moves fast!

[ghost of miles]

4 hours ago, catesta said:

I still find it interesting that the news reports can't/won't keep up. By that I mean, in the evening or morning, the headline reads "Covid-19 is straining hospitals in Arizona". Six hours later you read, Arizona data shows "outbreak is moderating and hospital visits have leveled off". Or, (insert state here) could surpass New York. I guess this is what happens when you report/track on a micro level.

 

Yeah, I don't know--I did a search for the latest articles about Arizona on Twitter after reading your post, and they didn't really reflect an improvement in the situation.  I assume you might be referring to these two AZCentral articles?

Arizona hospital numbers stay high, fall short of record

Arizona data shows "some encouraging signs" that outbreak is moderating

... but even those signs seem to indicate only a potential flattening after a number of record-shattering spikes.  So not sure there's much positive to report in that regard... just that it may not be getting worse, bad as it's already gotten?  Obviously that is good news, if they might at least be plateauing.  

From the first article:

For the second day in a row, none of the hospital-reported metrics hit new records. Over the past several weeks, at least one of the measures had hit a record nearly every day.

Inpatient hospitalizations, ICU beds in use, ventilators in use and emergency department visits by suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients all hovered near their highest recorded levels, according to Wednesday's hospital data reported to the state.

Public health experts have begun to notice signs Arizona's COVID-19 outbreak may be moderating, but more time is needed to know for sure. 

Identified cases rose to 134,613 and known deaths total 2,492, according to the daily report by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Thursday's dashboard shows 87% of current inpatient beds and 89% of ICU beds were in use, which includes people being treated for COVID-19 and other patients. Overall, 53% of ventilators were in use.

 

[ghost of miles]

Florida reports record single-day number of Covid-19 deaths.  Also second-highest day of new infections.

[aparxa]

I hope the rerouting of the data bypassing the CDC will not affect the trustworthiness of the future reports.

[jazzbo]

6 minutes ago, aparxa said:

I hope the rerouting of the data bypassing the CDC will not affect the trustworthiness of the future reports.

Ya think? I imagine they are being re-routed to become inaccurate (but you're probably being tongue in cheek).

 

[aparxa]

The gottiness of some people combined with the deafening silence of others are staggering.

[ghost of miles]

14 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

Ya think? I imagine they are being re-routed to become inaccurate (but you're probably being tongue in cheek).

 

Yeah, that was the daily outrage for yesterday.  Unbelievable, what's happening in this country.  But that's been an MO in more than one instance--instead of actually trying to do whatever's possible to significantly contain the pandemic, distort or downplay its effects by any means necessary.  

[JSngry]

Are the Standard Playbook Methodologies of Aspiring Totalitarian Autocrats (and their Toadyass Impotent Stoogeworms) considered a political subject or a business-model subject?

Because, you know, business discussions are TOTALLY ok here!

 

[Guy Berger]

3 hours ago, aparxa said:

I hope the rerouting of the data bypassing the CDC will not affect the trustworthiness of the future reports.

The good news is there are a lot of high quality data collection efforts that IMHO are superior to the CDC, for instance COVIDtracking.com.

But yeah, my assumption is that this is a ham-handed cover-up.  It won't work, people notice when they or those around them get really sick and die.

[Dan Gould]

17 minutes ago, bresna said:

Here is trumpeter Dennis González modeling his:

 

Isn't he the guy who has to date hung everybody out to dry on the BFT reveal for June?

[ejp626]

Looks like alcohol and COVID just don't mix.  A few flare ups across Canada, mostly linked to either reopening the bars or to house parties where the young'uns are congregating.  The last few days in Ontario, there has been a spike in new cases of people under 35.  I know for many of them the odds are that the symptoms won't be all that bad, but of course there will be the unlucky few and then always the risk of spreading COVID further.  Certainly, my preference is to more or less close down the bars permanently and push people towards consuming alcohol along with food.

I think we are at the point where a combination of complacency and COVID fatigue (the feeling that this will just never be over...) are setting in, and it just means the second wave will be worse than it needs to be.  The plans for getting kids back in school in Sept. feels incredibly ad hoc.  We're at the point where there really are no good options.  The negative impact on kids from not having in-person instruction (potentially for an entire school year) is going to be enormous and cannot just be dismissed out of hand, even in the interest of trying to limit the spread of COVID. I don't have the answers either, but I'm definitely feeling that the unacknowledged costs of the lockdown are going to be huge.

[ejp626]

I suppose this was inevitable but 31% of Americans simply no longer believe the number of COVID deaths (they think it is much smaller).  Not asked in the survey but clear from the context is that they think this is an intentional smear of the President.  This goes up to 62% of Fox watchers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/us-coronavirus-death-toll-public-opinion-poll-accuracy

Who knew you could bypass the 7 stages of grief* by simply denying that death occurred in the first place?  I'll keep that in mind for future reference.

* Of course, denial is actually the first step, but eventually people realize/accept that death has occurred.  Not for this cult.  They are in reverse.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by ejp626

[catesta]

Not so crazy. Here are the instructions for completing a death certificate. All probable causes and opinions are supposed to be listed. So if someone has heart disease and dies from it, the doctor can also say the Covid was a contributing factor or the other way around.

Instructions for Completing the Cause-of-Death Section of the Death Certificate Accurate cause-of-death information is important:

• To the public health community in evaluating and improving the health of all citizens, and • Often to the family, now and in the future, and to the person settling the decedent's estate. The cause-of-death section consists of two parts. Part I is for reporting a chain of events leading directly to death, with the immediate cause of death (the final disease, injury, or complication directly causing death) on Line a and the underlying cause of death (the disease or injury that initiated the chain of morbid events that led directly and inevitably to death) on the lowest used line. Part II is for reporting all other significant diseases, conditions, or injuries that contributed to death but which did not result in the underlying cause of death given in Part I. The cause-of-death information should be YOUR best medical OPINION. A condition can be listed as “probable” even if it has not been definitively diagnosed. 

ITEM 32 - CAUSE OF DEATH Take care to make the entry legible. Use a computer printer with high resolution, typewriter with good black ribbon and clean keys, or print legibly using permanent black ink in completing the cause-of-death section. Do not abbreviate conditions entered in section. Part I (Chain of events leading directly to death) • Only one cause should be entered on each line. Line a MUST ALWAYS have an entry. DO NOT leave blank. Additional lines may be added if necessary. • If the condition on Line a resulted from an underlying condition, put the underlying condition on Line b, and so on, until the full sequence is reported. ALWAYS enter the underlying cause of death on the lowest used line in Part I. • For each cause indicate the best estimate of the interval between the presumed onset and the date of death. The terms “unknown” or “approximately” may be used. General terms, such as minutes, hours, or days, are acceptable, if necessary. DO NOT leave blank.

• The terminal event (e.g., cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest) should not be used. If a mechanism of death seems most appropriate to you for Line a, then you must always list its cause(s) on the line(s) below it (e.g., cardiac arrest due to coronary artery atherosclerosis or cardiac arrest due to blunt impact to chest). • If an organ system failure such as congestive heart failure, hepatic failure, renal failure, or respiratory failure is listed as a cause of death, always report its etiology on the line(s) beneath it (e.g., renal failure due to Type I diabetes mellitus). • When indicating neoplasms as a cause of death, include the following: 1) primary site or that the primary site is unknown, 2) benign or malignant, 3) cell type or that the cell type is unknown, 4) grade of neoplasm, and 5) part or lobe of organ affected. Example: a primary well-differentiated squamous cell carcinoma, lung, left upper lobe.

[ghost of miles]

You can also factor in that deaths from Covid-19 are significantly underreported (not for conspiratorial reasons, though I have no doubt present U.S. leadership is trying to artificially lower the count for political reasons).  The toll is likely even higher than what the official numbers reflect.

[catesta]

20 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

You can also factor in that deaths from Covid-19 are significantly underreported (not for conspiratorial reasons, though I have no doubt present U.S. leadership is trying to artificially lower the count for political reasons).  The toll is likely even higher than what the official numbers reflect.

That may be, but many states have also gone back to verify death certificates from earlier on and added them, which now counts as new deaths for the current reporting period.

There are many articles from states (medical community) about the confusion of how to classify the cause(s) of death. So, while you can say there is under reporting you or I can also make the argument that some deaths have been counted as Covid, when that was not the actual immediate cause of death. After all, it can be just opinion.

[medjuck]

Whenever my father was asked what someone died of he'd reply, "Lack of breath".  Can you cite many examples where family members have complained that the deceased's death certificate was wrong and "just opinion"? 

[Guy Berger]

 

54 minutes ago, catesta said:

That may be, but many states have also gone back to verify death certificates from earlier on and added them, which now counts as new deaths for the current reporting period.

There are many articles from states (medical community) about the confusion of how to classify the cause(s) of death. So, while you can say there is under reporting you or I can also make the argument that some deaths have been counted as Covid, when that was not the actual immediate cause of death. After all, it can be just opinion.

I think you're misunderstand Ghost's comment.  Dead bodies are dead bodies.  There are a lot more of them piling up now then before.  There's no cause attribution involved in this measure.

The extra number of dead bodies in the United States since significant community spread began in late February is much higher than the historical baseline.  The timing of these deaths is super-correlated with the official COVID death count.

This phenomenon is apparent across the world, not just in the US.

[catesta]

 

47 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Whenever my father was asked what someone died of he'd reply, "Lack of breath".  Can you cite many examples where family members have complained that the deceased's death certificate was wrong and "just opinion"? 

Well, taking into consideration a death certificate allows for "best medical opinion" or "probable" it certainly can happen. Family members don't determine the cause of death and whether or not people complain about it was not my point. The person is still dead.

These days people seem to be under the misconception that science is always definite but it's not.

Since you brought it up....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/12/study-nearly-half-of-all-death-certificates-are-wrong/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5692167/

https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/SO17p26.shtml

https://www.archivesofpathology.org/doi/full/10.1043/1543-2165%282005%29129%5B1476%3ADCEAAA%5D2.0.CO%3B2

https://www.texmed.org/Template.aspx?id=50991

https://www.mdedge.com/familymedicine/article/60314/cause-death-certification-not-easy-it-seems

https://connectingdirectors.com/53879-incorrect-death-certificates

 

4 minutes ago, bresna said:

If a person gets COVID-19 and dies from complications caused by it, even if they had a pre-exisitng condition that would eventually kill them, that person died from COVID-19.

I do get that if someone gets hit & killed by a car and that person had a mild case of COVID-19, then yes, the cause of death should be "hit by a car". But that is not what is being called for by some of the voices on Fox. They are saying that any fatal pre-existing condition should be the cause death, not COVID-19. It's the opposite of above. They're saying that if someone has terminal cancer and gets hit by a car and killed, their cause of death should be "cancer" and not "hit by car".

Look, if someone has heart disease and was diagnosed or at least in the "best medical opinion" of the attending physician had Covid-19 and dies. Why would you only list Covid-19 as cause of death?

[Rooster_Ties]

1 hour ago, catesta said:

Look, if someone has heart disease and was diagnosed or at least in the "best medical opinion" of the attending physician had Covid-19 and dies. Why would you only list Covid-19 as cause of death?

Not counting any of the deaths of people who had Covid and some other underlying condition is a way of “keeping the numbers down”.

It’s also a way to blame the people (the dead) for having died not because of Covid, but because of those other underlying conditions.

The “real” overt impact of the epidemic are Excess Mortality Rates. And the great majority of those who died well above established statistical norms over the last 5 or even 10 years - are most typically a direct result of Covid, though yes - often in combination with other underlying factors.

Some smaller percentage of those numbers may be heart attacks or strokes where patients didn’t seek/get help in time, or may have been denied needed help because hospitals were full, lack of ICU facilities (for non-Covid conditions).  But from everything I’m hearing/reading, the great majority of deaths will have been Covid related (directly).

Excess Mortality Rates are pretty undeniable, in terms of the overall impact of Covid - even if in any one individual case it may not be possible to determine one or more (multiple) causes of death (if Covid testing isn’t done, and there’s no autopsy).

Just because you can’t suss out specific causes in individual cases, that doesn’t mean that a huge spike in “excess death” is somehow magically unrelated to Covid.

For instance, when there’s a massive heat wave, and (literally) hundreds of people die - and it’s PRIMARILY people with other underlying conditions, that doesn’t mean that those underlying conditions were solely to blame (and not the heat).

Another term for Excess Mortality is “Mortality Displacement” - see link below, which cites pandemics (and epidemics) as a common cause.

None of this should be controversial, unless of course you have an administration that “wants to keep the numbers down”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_displacement

Edited July 22, 2020 by Rooster_Ties

[Guy Berger]

1 hour ago, bresna said:

Because if they did not get COVID-19, they would still be alive. COVID-19 symptoms killed them, therefore, they died of COVID-19. Again, if you have terminal cancer but get killed in a car crash, they don't list "cancer" as the cause of death. It's "blunt force trauma" i.e. the car killed you.

I think the "died with COVID / died because of COVID" debate is ill-served by being too binary:

A person has pre-existing condition X.

Getting COVID significantly increases the chance of somebody with pre-existing condition X dying.

When we look across the population we see a lot more dead people with a pre-existing condition X.

For any individual dead person who had pre-existing condition X, it might be hard to 100% attribute their death to COVID vs. pre-existing condition X.

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, catesta said:

These days people seem to be under the misconception that science is always definite but it's not.

Well of course it's not. It keeps paying attention and evolves it's truths as it learns more things.

But these days there are too many idiots who think that because science is not always definite that it just shouldn't be trusted, and that wishful thinking and cultural projections are just as good as actually knowing, limitations and all. That type of thinking is more dangerous than any disease.

Hell yeah, science is not always definite. It would be scary if it was otherwise.

[medjuck]

We all have a pre-existing condition. It's called "life" and if you have it, eventually you will die. 

[Michael]

Talked with a neighbor this morning and she told me that her sister was in an auto accident a few days ago and apparently contracted Covid while in the hosptial ER.   The neighbor inferred that the hospital was at fault for not putting a mask on her sister while she was in the ER and that her sister likely was infected by the visitors who were in the area near her.   Interestingly, I spoke with her husband, who is a DJ, last weekend and he downplayed the whole Covid thing.  He explained that at an outdoor wedding he was DJing, a couple guests from Florida told him that things aren't bad down in Florida because 'it's just the flu."   

So it goes......