That is certainly a major factor as well
So are there some states where everything is shut down right now? What are the actual measure in place at the moment?
If you mistake my statement as being pro hoax, l haven’t made my point clear.
I was saying elective procedures were put on hold for expected covid onslaught. When allowed again, media didn’t differentiate that increase in hospitalization was also these being done.
I am speaking to a ‘fog of war’ that makes it uncertain as to covid’s actual influence.
ICU beds are getting maxed, but there are still space to expand from what l read.
Even a couple of weeks ago, covid was 1/4 of the occupied beds in Texas. There are numerous google citations if you wish to look.
as someone who lives in one of the worst cities in the country to be in right now with Covid (Dallas), and owning/operating a manufacturing company here, it’s a VERY real question for me.
I’ll separate home and work life to break it down:
Work is tough. Covid cases are through the roof as compared to what they were when we shut down earlier this year. My company would be considered an ‘essential’ business (we are in the coal mining supply chain), but I chose to halt operations for almost 6 weeks anyway. I’m facing some really difficult decisions now. 1. Compliance with mask wearing and social distancing is a nightmare, because the majority of my employees straight up don’t believe covid is a thing. Or that they’ll be fine if they get it. Or whatever. 2. There is no promise from the government that if we shut down, we’ll get bailed out. That sucks, because now we are forced to operate under conditions that are far more dangerous than when we were shut down. My customers around the world expect me to stay open on top of that, because we are not being forced to close. It’s a brutal marketplace right now, and I can be certain if I shut down for a month the way I did earlier this year, without it being forced on me, my company (which has been thriving for 40 years) would end up shutting our doors permanently. Ooof. 3. If a single employee at my company DOES get sick, and I strongly suspect it will happen, I will close my doors for 2 weeks, without pay for anyone. Hoping that possibility makes my employees think twice about being idiots inside and outside my facility. My father, who I see every day, is over 70, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be putting him at any unnecessary risks just because I want to stack some cash.
home: I haven’t been to anything, even a grocery store or restaurant, since March I come to work, I sit in my office alone, I communicate to my employees via intercom and texting. I don’t intend to change that. But there are VERY few people coming anywhere close to this level of social distancing. And because everyone else is being stupid as fuck, I’m forced to be this careful… basically indefinitely.
I’ve given up on trying to change peoples’ minds. When Abbott sided with the salon owner for breaking Abbott’s own rules, I realized how fucked we are. He can’t win now. A stay at home order wouldn’t be followed. The mask order is being disregarded by more than half the counties in the state. This monster is just too big for anyone in Texas to tackle now. I’m just lying low and hoping my loved ones do as well.
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I’m not sure what media. That’s why I asked for a source. You cited a specific number, that 80% of new hospitalizations, at one point, were ‘procedures put off because of covid’. I’d like to see where that was reported, and where those hospitalizations were mixed in with covid hospitalization reporting in some way.
I’m trying to interpret why anyone would end up confused by that concept, so I’d have to see where it was reporting, to get an idea of who has read that, how many people have read it, etc. I’m just wondering if it’s anything more than a meme or something.
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That’s a big number. Nobody has suggested that covid would ever be, say, the majority of hospitalizations.
Most major hospitals run, on a regular basis, at 70-80% capacity in terms of beds. If you have a novel virus that is now taking up 1/4 of the beds, that didn’t exist previously, that shoots that 70-80% up to 100+ quickly. That’s the real issue. So yea, 1/4 is certainly alarming.
It’s absolutely true that, right now, most hospitals are not 100% capacity. But look at the numbers. They are spiking, not leveling. Just because we’re not at that point now, doesn’t mean we won’t be in, say… a week? maybe 2?
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Projection of 21 million hospitalized and 4.5 million needing ICU level care.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200317.457910/full/
That wasn’t the criticism of your post, that was just me saying I’m not going to go on a crazy rant off topic haha. I think your post was on topic but I am tempted to drag it off lol.
I would too, but good luck getting that approved or accepted. I agree it’s very needed.
I have too, as philosophy was a major interest of mine growing up and remains a minor hobby. IMO, most people don’t understand induction because they’ve never had to really think hard in school. But I admit I’m biased.
That is actually a really good point lol.
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Thank you for both the personal and business/personal aspects (a business is an extremely personal thing, especially when one puts their heart and soul into it). I’m sure I’m speaking for everyone here when I say “Hang in there…we’re pulling for you…”
Projections (like @2busy posted):
The “fakers” have jumped on early projections as “proof” that anything and everything is just “made up”, because the Pandemic has not reached anywhere near earlier projections. I say two things (and I welcome the input of others more expert on statistics):
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Projections are just that…projections…or models to help us in eventual planning. Public Health projections are also not meant to be comparable to business planning which tends to be much more conservative. (Note: even business planning does not have the greatest history in terms of accuracy though. Ask Sears, J.C. Penny, the Gap, etc.). Get caught with your pants down and you’re dead.
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Most importantly…COVID has not run its course, that is clear.
While I am praying everyday that the projections like @2busy posted are “wrong” (if that’s even correct to place “right” of “wrong” on projections in general)…we simply do not know how widespread COVID will become.
For the “fakers” to have been 1 1/2 months into a Pandemic and to shout “FAKE PROJECTIONS!” always seemed very short-sided to me.
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I think this is also a good time to post again what I feel will be the “COVID Post Mortem”:
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There will be some things that were done RIGHT.
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There will be some things that were done WRONG.
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There will be some things that we CONTINUED to do wrong in the face of mounting evidence, and
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Some things will be looked at as being completely FUBAR from the beginning.
The “fakers” won’t be wrong about everything…nor will governmental and Public Health officials.
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ok… you realize that this doesn’t say that many people simultaneously, right? Those are projected numbers, from March, over a 6 month span, and also under the assumption that we do nothing to flatten the curve. Soooo did you just share this to catch me on a technicality? And even so, I don’t know what percentage of beds in ICU’s across the world this would account for at any point.
It projects the curves and oversaturation of hospital beds based on a 6, 12, and 18 month spread of the infection rates.
From the article:
If the infection curve is not flattened and the pandemic is concentrated in a 6-month period, that would leave a capacity gap of 1,373,248 inpatient beds (274 percent potentially available capacity) and 295,350 ICU beds (508 percent potentially available capacity). If the curve of transmission is flattened to 12 months, then the needed inpatient and ICU beds would be reduced to 137 percent and 254 percent of current capacity. However, if hospitals can indeed reduce current bed occupancy by 50 percent and flatten the transmission curve to 18 months, then the capacity needed would be reduced to 89 percent of inpatient and 166 percent of ICU beds. If the infection rate is only 20 percent (low end of current estimates), we would largely be able to meet the needs for inpatient care if we flatten the curve to 12 months.
What needs to happen for the world to return to its pre-COVID state? At what point will everything be permitted to reopen? At what point will people not need a reason to not be at home? When will the vast majority stop wearing masks in public? Will all of this happen again next time there’s a communicable illness without a vaccine?
Has anyone given concrete answers to any of these, or is reopening just a carrot being dangled in front of the public?
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IMO, if we all wore the masks from the beginning that we would be in a really good spot, and aside from wearing masks, things would be mostly open. If we look at a country like Japan which had heavy mask use all along, they were not as impacted as the US has been.
Do you think the mask wearing should ever cease, or should it be normalized?
From the look of things, we could very well end up with masks normalized. Even if there is no 2nd wave in the fall then the flu and whatever other colds and viruses are more reasons to wear masks, plus the flu vaccine is typically around 40-60% effective. We will see where it goes, but a lot of what is being done is really the wrong thing at the wrong time.
That’s not to say that wearing a mask is not a good idea in places where there are large outbreaks, rather that it’s pointless in places with few cases or none. You would have had more chance of catching hepatitis or herpes from drinking out of a glass in a restaurant while they were still operating as normal.
Yes this is true. But they also should not be media fodder because inevitably the media a) misunderstands it or b) doesn’t provide ANY of the context that was accompanying the original study therefore misleading people or c) picks the worst possible projection for clicks and views and ratings. Generally all three of these things are done, as they were here. Once that happens the people who don’t understand it or have ulterior motives will immediately go straight to “fake!1!1!”
There’s a reason scientific models are published with full text studies explaining them. I’m not even a fan of models because of all the assumptions that have to be made, but in some cases there’s no reasonable alternative (like novel infectious disease…).
Edit–obviously I accept models, I’m just an empirical guy at heart. Comes with bench work.
Well, I guess I don’t think it is an opinion thing. I take the position that we should go with what science says, balanced with what economists are saying. I certainly don’t want to wear one indefinitely, but would take that over closing down (if those are the options).
Personally, I don’t see the mask as a huge deal, but others really don’t like them.
I did partly read that wrong, but my point is still correct. This is not a prediction THAT the curve will not be flattened, or THAT it will flatten to x y or z numbers. These are if statements. The last of which allows for a scenario that is pretty plausible even now.
This seems to suggest an array of possibilities, not an assertive prediction of any single one. So I’m not sure how this contradicts what I said originally in any meaningful way.
Why would you think this would be a forever thing? No previous pandemic lasted forever. Why would you even consider the possibility that the coronavirus would be the first, particularly considering advancements in medicine since the last one? This seems like such a bizarre question to ask.
Modern medicine and technology actually gave us the opportunity, for the first time in human history, to truly minimize the spread, and deaths, related to a worldwide pandemic, and here in the US, we basically said ‘yea but fuck it. Freedom, y’all.’
The most general response to this is ‘when there is a vaccine that has been widely made available’. It’s not an absolute guarantee that we will have one, but it’s nearly a certainty. So, that would be what we’re working towards now.
If a vaccine does not happen, then the answer might very well become ‘well. guess a lot of people are gonna die’. And we just hope we can flatten/have flattened the curve enough to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Which is the best thing to do already until there is a vaccine.
Not everything will reopen. We probably need to reassess the plans and strategies we have in place for dealing with this in the future. The notion that so many people have that ‘we have to return to our previous normal’ seems pretty silly to me. A couple planes hit a couple buildings in New York nearly 20 years ago, and we spent YEARS not being normal. Normal changed after the spanish flu. Normal changed after the civil rights act. Normal changed when slavery ended. ETC. So maybe normal changes again, and we don’t go back to things being exactly the way were.
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