Octopus Overlords

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:13 pm Anyone else get "President Trump's Coronavirus Guidelines for America" election postcard mailer today? My rage is palpable.

The first line was to listen to your Governor and local leaders. That doesn't sound like "President Trump's Guidelines."

malchior wrote:When are we officially one of Trump's shit hole countries? I kind of feel like we might have a case...

Sometime in 2018, when it became clear that our country as an entity lost the capacity to think rationally.

Or, you know, November of 2016, when it also was unable to think rationally. But I feel like 2018 is a fair point at which there was no longer any excuse for not having wised up. We don't deserve to be a world leader / the world's most developed / most secure nation anymore, and we're regressing to the mean on a daily basis.

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2020 11:12 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:13 pm Anyone else get "President Trump's Coronavirus Guidelines for America" election postcard mailer today? My rage is palpable.

The first line was to listen to your Governor and local leaders. That doesn't sound like "President Trump's Guidelines."

It's from the Center for Disease Control, but Ill Douche puts his name on all kinds of stuff that he didn't produce. I blanketed my route with those things because the advice is good, and maybe it will make the trumpheads take the pandemic slightly more seriously if it has 45*'s name plastered on it.

hitbyambulance wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2020 6:42 pm Michigan didn't take this seriously and now their infected rate outpaces Washington state.

We seem to be leveling out some, which kind of surprises me. Up until today, the populace of my city hasn't seemed to be taking it too seriously. I have a hunch the number of cases in my county are underreported, even with the 32 cases at a nursing home here.

News showed a single sentence from a guy in NYC. He was outside a coffee place with a coffee and had on a coat over scrubs. The assumption was he was a medical person in a NYC hospital..nurse / doctor or something. He said "People come into the hospital, get intubated, die, then the cycle repeats." He looked tired.

Very surreal last couple of days for us; we're the busiest pediatric transport system in the country (last year we did about 9000 calls) which averages out to about 24/day. Our numbers are that high bc most pedi transport teams typically only do higher lvl acuity patients while we will do anything: low acuity peds, maternal/fetal, even adults coming out of our own facilities. The last 48 hrs, as a dept we've only run 8 calls. I very much believe it's the proverbial calm before the storm; but it isn't just our facility that is slow. Our business is primarily taking kids out of adult ERs and the ERs around here are empty.
I don't quite know how to interpret that, but taking a wild guess, I'd say ppl are pretty scared to go to a hospital right now. At least on the adult side of the world; as far as kids go my guess is a combination of kids not being out 'doing stuff' so trauma is way down, and being out of school the infectious diseases are dropping way off. When the after action report comes out on all of this I'll be really interested to learn why we're seeing what we are right now.

We've asked about the possibility of helping out in the heavily affected areas of the country but the logistics are just too complicated, apparently. the fear that our area will spike in the next several days is another reason for keeping us close by. It's frustrating but one of my bosses made a good point to me earlier today that we have a Mission, and we have to honor that before anything else. We're working on rearranging staffing to see if we can send a few teams out but left to our devices (i.e. No federal direction) we have to determine on an ad hoc basis who needs help, what kind, how much, for how long, and if we can fill the need. and then there is the logistics of where do our teams stay, how do we get trained up on the hospitals systems, how will licensing work and curiously for a transport team, how do we get them there (heli, FW, ground ambulance?). And we have to do that for every hospital we think we can help or that we think needs help. Not to mention the costs associated with all of this, who foots that bill?
If only there were some higher level of governmental coordination that could figure these things out for us and then just tell us where to go. If only such a magical solution existed

So I've been thinking more about this data and the tests pending.

637 cases of COVID-19 in 57 counties across North Carolina
Average age is 41 for people with confirmed cases
50 current hospitalizations
2 deaths for people with COVID-19
15K+ tests are pending
More than 10k inpatient hospital beds, more than 5k empty
Information is Based on 75% of hospitals reporting

Is it likely that every state has a similar testing backlog? If so, how are the numbers we are getting in any way meaningful? People in my area are looking at the daily increase in numbers and making decisions. This is insanity as it is artificially limited to the number of tests that can be completed in a day. And my state keeps running out of the reagents (although private labs seem to be having no trouble). This is nuts.

I'm in NC, and today is day 8 on the test I'm waiting on. Anecdotal, I know, but most of the tests we've given are taking about that long. The irony is that now healthcare workers' tests can be prioritized to 24-hour turnaround, but only in cases where symptoms are evident. How did we get here when a quick turnaround is SOP in other nations? Rhymes with Chump.

CA has 50K+ pending. Yesterday it was 40K+. So unlike NY where Cuomo must have done his own thing you have states who don't have current data. In this environment you have to just assume it is spreading then and keep restrictions tight. Still this is ridiculous. We are supposedly a biomedical powerhouse but somehow everyone else outperformed us.

Formix wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:12 amI'm in NC, and today is day 8 on the test I'm waiting on. Anecdotal, I know, but most of the tests we've given are taking about that long. The irony is that now healthcare workers' tests can be prioritized to 24-hour turnaround, but only in cases where symptoms are evident. How did we get here when a quick turnaround is SOP in other nations? Rhymes with Chump.

I'm sorry to hear that. By the time your test comes back, hopefully you'll be over whatever you may have right now.

Boris Johnson just announced that he tested positive.

https://twitter.com/GovWhitmer/status/1 ... 6118521856

Does Trump understand that winning Michigan again is kind of important?

stessier wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:58 am So I've been thinking more about this data and the tests pending.

637 cases of COVID-19 in 57 counties across North Carolina
Average age is 41 for people with confirmed cases
50 current hospitalizations
2 deaths for people with COVID-19
15K+ tests are pending
More than 10k inpatient hospital beds, more than 5k empty
Information is Based on 75% of hospitals reporting

Is it likely that every state has a similar testing backlog? If so, how are the numbers we are getting in any way meaningful? People in my area are looking at the daily increase in numbers and making decisions. This is insanity as it is artificially limited to the number of tests that can be completed in a day. And my state keeps running out of the reagents (although private labs seem to be having no trouble). This is nuts.

I've read a number of people arguing that the most meaningful number right now is number of hospitalizations, and ICU capacity, both as it measures the spread of severe coronavirus cases and gets at the immediate health crisis (that hospital capacity will fill up and people will die as a result).

That said, the number of positive cases is significant, but needs to be looked at in proportion to number of tests.

El Guapo wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 8:49 am

stessier wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:58 am So I've been thinking more about this data and the tests pending.

637 cases of COVID-19 in 57 counties across North Carolina
Average age is 41 for people with confirmed cases
50 current hospitalizations
2 deaths for people with COVID-19
15K+ tests are pending
More than 10k inpatient hospital beds, more than 5k empty
Information is Based on 75% of hospitals reporting

Is it likely that every state has a similar testing backlog? If so, how are the numbers we are getting in any way meaningful? People in my area are looking at the daily increase in numbers and making decisions. This is insanity as it is artificially limited to the number of tests that can be completed in a day. And my state keeps running out of the reagents (although private labs seem to be having no trouble). This is nuts.

I've read a number of people arguing that the most meaningful number right now is number of hospitalizations, and ICU capacity, both as it measures the spread of severe coronavirus cases and gets at the immediate health crisis (that hospital capacity will fill up and people will die as a result).

That said, the number of positive cases is significant, but needs to be looked at in proportion to number of tests.

That was the conclusion I came to when I was talking to my brother about it this morning. Given the mess that is our testing "plan", it's the only data that is timely and ultimately what will matter when preventing unnecessary deaths.

The number of positive cases is really just a curiosity with the information they are releasing. In theory, people can get more than one test. To really be able to do anything with the information, we'd need to know how many unique individuals are tested and the results with the date of when the test was administered.

637 cases of COVID-19 in 57 counties across North Carolina
Average age is 41 for people with confirmed cases
50 current hospitalizations
2 deaths for people with COVID-19
15K+ tests are pending
More than 10k inpatient hospital beds, more than 5k empty
Information is Based on 75% of hospitals reporting

To compare, here is the data SC put out.

2 more COVID-19 related deaths reported in South Carolina, 9 total deaths
456 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in state
Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist: "Shortage of testing materials in SC, U.S. is causing delays in testing"
5,528 available hospital beds in state, 1,000+ ventilators available
State Public Health lab has backlog of 1,600 samples to be tested

There's no way this exchange actually happened...right? I mean, no one could possibly be that stupid.

https://twitter.com/MiriamElder/status/ ... 6209001472

Trump tells Hannity he doesn’t understand why Cuomo is asking for so many ventilators, which are expensive. He says some hospitals only have one (?). “Now all of a sudden everybody is asking for these vast numbers."

From the numbers its looking like for every 10,000 infections that 1000 need to be hospitalized. Is that right?

Daehawk wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:27 am From the numbers its looking like for every 10,000 infections that 1000 need to be hospitalized. Is that right?

We think it's in that ballpark for positive tests - I've seen between 10% and 20% (so between 1000-2000 on your scale).

Note that positive tests is NOT the same as infections. We don't know the true number of infections.

GungHo wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 2:44 am taking a wild guess, I'd say ppl are pretty scared to go to a hospital right now.

I've had a screwed-up left arm for months -- serious pain from shoulder to elbow, and not confined to the muscles. I didn't see my doc before the crisis because I normally wait and see if any given malady gets better or worse on its own, and only seek care if it gets worse. Well, it's getting worse. In the Before Time, I would have my PCP take a look at it and probably refer me for xrays or MRI or both, and then expect that to lead to physical therapy or maybe even surgery. There's no way I want to risk any medical contact of any kind during the crisis, and I imagine that the medical establishment doesn't want to hear about my sore arm just now anyway. I'll just keep putting ice on it for another couple of months and hope for the best.

stessier wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:34 am

Daehawk wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:27 am From the numbers its looking like for every 10,000 infections that 1000 need to be hospitalized. Is that right?

We think it's in that ballpark for positive tests - I've seen between 10% and 20% (so between 1000-2000 on your scale).

Note that positive tests is NOT the same as infections. We don't know the true number of infections.

The problem is that not all states report hospitalizations. Covid Tracking Project has the following numbers:

Positive
82,286
Negative
458,432
Hospitalized
10,465
Death
1,199
Total test results
540,718
(Positive + Negative)

With the caveat that the totals include more states reporting testing and deaths than reporting hospitalization. Why there isn't national reporting is beyond me, just about every hospital gets Medicare money, it should be a requirement. Reading the data disclaimers for each state is crazy.

Eyeballing the states that do report, it's in that 10-20% range.


The really important number is hospitalizations in ICU, which isn't generally reported. These are the ventilator patients.

Also, a friend texted yesterday and told me to turn on the scanner. I usually don't listen but I do enough to know that it's usually boring stuff. I turned it and heard two "found dead of natural causes" in about 15 minutes. That's a lot. One a 50-yo woman found dead and decomposing in her bathroom. Officer noted asthma meds on the sink. The other was a young man (20-35?) found dead at home, no apparent cause. In both cases dispatch asked if it could be covid. Officers were like, "Maybe? How should I know? But probably." Very anecdotal but two obvservations:

1. CPD POs don't have PPE. They were issued one pair of gloves, one surgical mask, and on 2oz bottle of 10 year old hand sanitizer. They can't do their jobs like that. Or they can and will get sick. Which makes for an interesting law and order situation if this gets bad.

2. There probably a lot of unreported COVID deaths that will never be attributed. I don't see MEs going out of their way to check each and every "natural" death.

So I saw a couple of reports suggesting that the asymptomatic cases are about 50% of cases (It was one of the cruises where everyone got tested and one of the European countries that did a ton of testing that suggested that value). On the positive side, it means that the death rate is likely around half of what we think it is, but on the other, it makes it a lot harder to detect (without tons of testing) making it harder to slow down the spread.

I'd be interested to know if the asymptomatic cases are evenly distributed, or if it's mostly young people.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 10:58 amThere probably a lot of unreported COVID deaths that will never be attributed. I don't see MEs going out of their way to check each and every "natural" death.

I had an uncle that while traveling in FL died in mid February after severe respiratory distress. As it was described to me, even with supplied oxygen he was gasping for air. 82 years old and dead ~5 days after he was admitted to the hospital. I strongly suspect he had it, but I doubt it will ever be proven.

I'm hopeful when we are out of crisis mode and trying to piece this all together the data hounds do start combing through medical records from 1/1/20 and possibly earlier to identify probable cases.

It's also a given that people with mild symptoms are being told to stay home and self-isolate (with no tests.) The rates are likely skewed by a huge, huge number of people who get a cough, take some Tylenol Cold, binge something on Netflix, and go about their business.

Looks like republican in KY named Massie is still trying to stop the stimulus. Whats in the water in KY...they're pretty stupid it seems. Someone pee in their gene pool?

Massie is what happens when you boil down your base and populate it with "true believers".

I really thought he was just doing it to score a few sound bites for his derpy base, then he'd relent. I'm a little surprised that he's actually going to see it through and make everyone get on a plane.

What an asshole.

https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/stat ... 2405857290

Hillary Clinton wrote:

Chelsea Clinton wrote:

Hillary Clinton sending pizza to feed local hospital staff is

My first thought was gratitude for hospital staff everywhere. My second was, of course she did. My third, I admit, was the pizzagate folks are going to go into overdrive to fit this into their conspiracy theory. And, I love my mom @HillaryClinton.

We all have to do what we can to help. And it’s important for the conspiracy theorists to have something to distract them too...

Some good news:

https://twitter.com/amyklobuchar/status ... 1733220353

I do wonder when we're going to get the first "high profile" / VIP coronavirus death or near death. Certainly there have been a number of high profile positive results, and VIPs are going to disproportionately get all necessary care, but given the volume (and given some high age brackets), I would assume that someone very high profile is going to die from this.

A letter from a Michigan hospital system details who would get life-saving resources if equipment runs short during the coronavirus pandemic

Because of shortages, we will need to be careful with resources," reads the letter, which is addressed to patients, families and the community. "Patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority."
"Patients who are treated with a ventilator or ICU care may have these treatments stopped," it says, "if they do not improve over time."
The letter goes on to say patients with severe heart, lung, kidney or liver failure, severe trauma or burns, or terminal cancers may be ineligible for a ventilator or ICU care. These patients will instead receive "pain control and comfort measures."
"This decision will be based on medical condition and likelihood of getting better," the letter says.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also....................

White House reassessing deal with General Motors and Ventec Life to produce ventilators over timeline and price tag concerns

Amid the negotiations, President Donald Trump attacked General Motors in a series of tweets Friday saying "as usual with 'this' General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed ventilators, 'very quickly'. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke 'P'." Trump clarified in a later tweet that he was referring to the Defense Production Act.

Daehawk wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:14 pm

Also....................

White House reassessing deal with General Motors and Ventec Life to produce ventilators over timeline and price tag concerns

Amid the negotiations, President Donald Trump attacked General Motors in a series of tweets Friday saying "as usual with 'this' General Motors, things just never seem to work out. They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed ventilators, 'very quickly'. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B. Invoke 'P'." Trump clarified in a later tweet that he was referring to the Defense Production Act.

"Top Dollar." What kind of dollar was Trump getting in Scotland for housing staffers and secret service at his hotels a few hundred km out of their way? Always projection with this fuck.

El Guapo wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 8:47 am https://twitter.com/GovWhitmer/status/1 ... 6118521856

Does Trump understand that winning Michigan again is kind of important?

And now this little gem.

After President Donald Trump issued scathing comments about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, saying she's "not stepping up," and "doesn't know what's going on," she told WWJ 950 the state is having trouble getting the equipment they need to fight the novel coronavirus.

"What I've gotten back is that vendors with whom we've procured contracts -- They're being told not to send stuff to Michigan," Whitmer said live on air. "It's really concerning, I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on."

So his new plan is to kill residents in states run by governors that he takes exception to?

Paingod wrote:So his new plan is to kill residents in states run by governors that he takes exception to?

And also in the red states by re-opening too soon.

Really everyone.

Zaxxon wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:45 pm

Paingod wrote:So his new plan is to kill residents in states run by governors that he takes exception to?

And also in the red states by re-opening too soon.

Really everyone.

Well, the plan is to intentionally kill people in blue states, and unintentionally kill people in red states, just to be clear.

El Guapo wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:52 pm

Zaxxon wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:45 pm

Paingod wrote:So his new plan is to kill residents in states run by governors that he takes exception to?

And also in the red states by re-opening too soon.

Really everyone.

Well, the plan is to intentionally kill people in blue states, and unintentionally kill people in red states, just to be clear.

Fair point.

And then blame it on the blue states.

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:53 pmAnd then blame it on the blue states.

Because they didn't take his advice to go back to work sooner.

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:53 pm And then blame it on the blue states.

Don't forget foreigners as well. And darker-skinned Americans.