COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

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The medical furloughs here are of personnel not involved with Covid-19 treatment. Our hospitals delayed elective surgeries and procedures to better concentrate on the virus response, and so far they're apparently doing very well with everything. It seems my State is reaching the apex part of the curve; not topped out yet but the rise has been steady instead of increasing. The hospitals here locally were/are very strong financially but that doesn't apply to everywhere; many small hospitals across the US have been closing in the last decade even without the virus. I'm far from being a socialist, but some things are best handled in that manner and medicine is one of those things. We already do it with with disaster response, roads, armies, and every Government program in general so the precedent is there. Something is very wrong when your life and health is considered worthless just because you're poor.

It's scary but the blurb about "The Onion" is right. Were it not for the very serious nature of things, what our President has been saying and doing all along would make for one of the worlds greatest comedies, and the political system here in general is only as good as a "soap opera" TV show these days. You'd be hard pressed to exceed the insanity of the reality here today. Before my eyes got old and I began using the internet I was a very avid reader, and I happened across several books which I feel should be a must-read for everyone before they are given the privileges of being an adult- especially the vote. In the original iteration of our Federal government only landowners had the right to vote, the reason for which was that most citizens back then were relatively uneducated while most landowners weren't, and that only intelligent people can make intelligent decisions. We allow the stupid to vote, therefore we get stupidity as the result of our elections. We have become a nation of the stupid- perhaps we'd do better to elect the staff writers of "The Onion" to do the job- they couldn't do any worse and they make no claims of sanity so at least they're more honest than what we've got now. And probably more intelligent too.

Denmark's tunnel and the "Chunnel" between the UK and France exemplify why Covid-19 (and any other communicable disease or transferable problem) gets out of hand so quickly now. Just like the speed and ease of international flight, you're rather obviously opening the barn doors completely with this stuff, and Covid-19 is proving that this may be unwise and in many cases unnecessary. It's going to be costly and other than convenience it may not be as beneficial as you might think. After the 'payoff' (which is only an estimate) you've got maintenance and repairs to keep up with forever, and you have to pay whatever those are or you'll lose the entire investment no matter that cost. You lose the ferries and cargo shipping that becomes redundant, and you increase the road costs due to increased wear and increased traffic. More air pollution possibly, with there being a concentration of that at the ends. With the UK being totally isolated by sea, there might be some sense in it but Denmark will probably find this to be a bad decision. Worse if it becomes a target for terrorism. Far worse if a design flaw or unseen geological issue discovered after completion causes the design to not work. It's taking a huge risk even with our advanced engineering knowledge and abilities. If you have the money, is there a better way for it to be spent instead? Never gamble with more than you can afford to lose and think very deeply about any commitment which you can never walk away from.

Phil
 
country_hick said:
Here are a few articles showing medical personell are laid off or have reduced hours.
Click to expand...
Should copy Denmark, reopen the schools and get the hospitals more normal levels of work, in fact much of the USA should never have closed the schools. In places with low density populations it was never going to spread fast enough to need them closed, prevention/cure can often turn out to be worse than the disease.

That was something Boris got right back at the start, although we did later on need to partially close them for a while:
www.telegraph.co.uk

Boris Johnson instructs schools to stay open in bid to keep NHS and economy afloat, prompting confusion among parents

Schools will not be closed despite the Government introducing a series of new social distancing measures
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 
SawMaster said:
Denmark's tunnel and the "Chunnel" between the UK and France exemplify why Covid-19 (and any other communicable disease or transferable problem) gets out of hand so quickly now. Just like the speed and ease of international flight, you're rather obviously opening the barn doors completely with this stuff, and Covid-19 is proving that this may be unwise and in many cases unnecessary. It's going to be costly and other than convenience it may not be as beneficial as you might think. After the 'payoff' (which is only an estimate) you've got maintenance and repairs to keep up with forever, and you have to pay whatever those are or you'll lose the entire investment no matter that cost. You lose the ferries and cargo shipping that becomes redundant, and you increase the road costs due to increased wear and increased traffic. More air pollution possibly, with there being a concentration of that at the ends. With the UK being totally isolated by sea, there might be some sense in it but Denmark will probably find this to be a bad decision. Worse if it becomes a target for terrorism. Far worse if a design flaw or unseen geological issue discovered after completion causes the design to not work. It's taking a huge risk even with our advanced engineering knowledge and abilities. If you have the money, is there a better way for it to be spent instead? Never gamble with more than you can afford to lose and think very deeply about any commitment which you can never walk away from.
Click to expand...
The Chunnel was a private enterprise, paid for mainly by shareholders, it had government support but didn't cost us much in taxes, and we still have a lot of the ferries.

The Danish one seems a bit risky to me, just needs a little earthquake movement along a previously unknown geological fault, or some faulty seals between the sections and the thing is flooded! Why not a bridge which must be much easier to maintain, even if it does require a bit more maintenance? They already have a road link, so this is only going to provide a short cut, and increase in capacity. The shortcut is not required for goods, just expanding rail capacity on the current network would do, so it is only going to be really useful for people who want to drive and save a bit of time. Seems like it is going to be a rather high price for that.
 
country_hick said:
When places like NYC are completely overwhelmed by corona doctors and nurses are in extremely high demand there. In other more rural areas where there is very little if any virus doctors and nurses are left with nothing to do.

Maybe I misunderstood but this sounds like more than those with jobs in administrative positions were asked to go home.
bangordailynews.com

St. Joe’s furloughs 100 workers as coronavirus takes financial toll on Bangor hospital

St. Joseph Healthcare has furloughed about 100 of its 1,200 employees — or 8 percent of its workforce — after suffering steep financial losses related to preparations for the coronavirus.
bangordailynews.com bangordailynews.com
While St. Joseph Hospital has admitted patients who tested positive for the coronavirus, it has never had more than two admitted at the same time, spokeswoman Kelly David said.​
​
At the same time, the organization has postponed many elective services in areas such as its surgical suite and in its clinical practices that normally help to pay the bills. Those areas of the organization have also been more heavily affected by the furloughs, according to David.​
Click to expand...
Yeah, I saw nothing in that article saying it affected doctors and nurses. 'Clinical' staff generally refers to lab techs, x-ray techs, etc. while doctors and nurses are categorized as 'medical' staff. We're seeing the same thing around here in that almost all elective procedures have been suspended for the time being and as a result that same thing is happening as that article reported - some staff with nothing to do if they happen to be working in those areas and don't have the skills/training to assist in the overwhelmed departments.

Some hospitals are reported to have contacted former employees and retirees to see if they're willing to come back on an interim basis.

I'm sure there's a great disparity from one locale to another as elective procedures are pretty much non-existent everywhere, and in an area not severely affected by Covid-19 the staffing impacts would be considerably different than it is in places like New York, Detroit, New Orleans, etc.
 
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Well our hospitals did cancel planned surgeries ASO at least none life threatening things, so if you was slated for a gastric bypass or something like that, well you have been put on ice.
Some political parties are also mindful to this, not least since hospital care are actually mandated by law here, for instance meaning if you can not get timely treatment on a hospital here, you can go to a private hospital here or in another country and send the bill to the government.
So they really are eager to get the situation on hospitals for non covid patients back to normal ASAP.
And i understand that Danes still get all the other nasty stuff.

The only people firing here are in the private sector, but most are home on full or very close to full pay, with the government just flooding tax money out in this manner ( 3 billion DKKr until now as far as i know )
So you could say that today there are 5.5 million ( out of 6 ) Danes on welfare. I am not sure any other country have taken that road, or can / will afford that.

Danes as usual are also totally mindlocked, Danes have like gazillions of DKkr in savings, but for some strange reason they are not spending a dime right now.
But i bet if you put on a TV show for the poor Covid patients they would collect a record sum, but think on their own accord and realizing that shops probably need someone to buy stuff, well we dont seem to be that smart.
And many little shops that have now opned, well they barely get people in the store, but they are walking past the store, just not going in there and spend money.
Me personally i am spending all i can, like i did during the 2008 situation, but mind you most of my money i spend in other countries, which i dont mind as the norm / plan seem to be run Denmark into the ground as soon as possible, so i go WTH i be a part of that too. ( as you know my national feelings / pride are not overly strong )

We do actually have earthquakes here, but it is rare and the all time record i think are a Ricter 2, i think it is agreed upon that it still to this day so many 1000 years later is the country rebounding from the pressure of a 1000 M thick layer of ice during the last iceage.
And as Denmark are all soft sediments with a few chalk ancient coral reefs poking out of the ground, the quakes here are pretty uneventful,,,,,, personally i never felt one.

The tunnel should be safe, the gaskets in between the segments are thick so even if the alignment in between 2 tunnel segments shift a few degrees it should not matter.

EDIT: https://earthquaketrack.com/p/denmark/recent

The biggest threat to us i think would be if a piece of Norway's coast slide off, that would give a major "surf up" event here, actually along the Norwegian Atlantic coast there are evidence of old massive landslides under water, estimated to have created massive tsunamis.
And Denmark are pretty flat.
 
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One of the big hospital 'chains' here is restarting some elective procedures, with the others saying they'll do the same soon when they feel the time is right for them. Though you really can't totally prepare for a pandemic, the hospitals here have a very good system for dealing with emergencies. The main problems they've had have been in sourcing PPE and in the fact that the usual regional 'sharing of resources' didn't work when nobody else had any supplies to be sharing. There is a limit to what you can sustain in preparing for a rare event when the actual needs cannot be predicted well. The timing of this pandemic is very fortuitous for the world, happening while the season is milder everywhere; had it been deep into winter/summer a shortage or disruption of energy or other seasonal necessities could have been a calamity all by itself.

Word from the Governor's aides here is that our "State of Emergency" will be officially extended Monday, but he's apparently still on the fast track to reopening businesses. To our south, that State is moving more quickly while to our North they announced an extending of closures. It will be interesting to see what the differences are in the outcomes of the different approaches as none of us have reached the peak yet. If there's a resurgence of cases to the south but not to the north, our Governor and his political party had better be preparing for losses in the next round of elections as the people here have long memories and a deep-rooted concern for the well-being of our neighbors. We take care of each other here (at least the natives do) and we take great offense when someone causes them unnecessary harm. If there's something all the world needs to take away from this it is that our governments all need to be better focused on the people as there's no economy or politics when there's no people left to administer to. The BS about the cure being worse than the disease is simply an excuse by those who stand to lose investments as a means to sustain them; the vast majority of people are already living daily much closer to what they'd do in an economic depression and won't be affected as much. Us poor are used to it; the affluent are not.

Denmark and Germany can do as they wish with their tunnel; any effects it has will hardly reach me no mater what happens. But I build things for a career, and in that I have a great understanding that nothing that we can construct at such levels will endure. At best we may get a couple hundred years usage from our efforts and it's usually around half that time before what we do becomes obsolete enough in some way to lose it's contemporary value. This effect is becoming more evident in America's infrastructure, much of which has reached the point where it's neither sufficient for today's needs nor is it worth rebuilding or repairing as-is. Some things can be designed for easy future expansion, but not under-sea tunnels. With those you begin at it's limits so things cannot possibly get better- only worse. And if history does as it seems to have always done, some act of mankind will destroy it or it's benefits one way or another. We humans seem to excel at that sort of thing.

Phil
 
Well the Germans still haven't allowed for the tunnel to come ashore down there, and they have had protests from tree huggers and local people, thats one reason it is 9 years delayed before starting to build the damn thing.
But the go ahead from the Germans should arrive in October.
Also i dont think it is a 50/50 venture, it is probably the Danish tax payers that will pick up the bulk of the bill.
 
SawMaster said:
In the original iteration of our Federal government only landowners had the right to vote, the reason for which was that most citizens back then were relatively uneducated while most landowners weren't, and that only intelligent people can make intelligent decisions. We allow the stupid to vote, therefore we get stupidity as the result of our elections.

Phil
Click to expand...
A large reason for only allowing landowners to vote was also that they would not vote to create government spending unnecessarily as they would then have to pay higher taxes to pay for that increased spending. Now with the larger voter base many people who pay very little taxes themselves often cast votes hoping to create higher taxes on others so they can get a larger government check.
 
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Apparently some people still do not fully understand the concept of virus transmissibility. The news story covering a New York small brewery should be about how a business owner misunderstood how to keep people safe. Instead this story celebrates a potential new way businesses can transmit the virus to others through the repeated use of canines acting like a sponge to gather and hold the virus. If maintaining distances between people and not touching anything that might be contaminated is required to prevent future infections then this approach of doggy delivery is potentially dangerous. How could the news story be presented without understanding the potential public health threat from repeated physical contact with these dogs by a large amount of potentially infected people?

Watch the video in this news story. This approach of having dogs deliver beer is potentially more dangerous than having a delivery driver leave beer on the doorstep. You can see the dogs are handled with bare hands by the company owners and the customers. If someone has corona (virus not beer) on their hands the dogs fur would carry that virus to make it easily transmitted to others.

At 26 seconds the dog is rubbing against the owners jacket. At 31 seconds the dogs run up to people who pat the dog and remove the beer around the dogs neck. At 46 seconds other customers reach out to touch the dogs. At 1 minute 11 seconds another customer pats the same dog. At 1 minute 18 seconds the owner pats the dogs. This pattern of multiple people touching the dogs without gloves (or with possibly contaminated gloves) repeats itself throughout the video.

If the first person to touch the dog around the neck had corona (the virus not the competing brand of beer) everyone who touched these dogs around the neck later as required to get the beer could have been infected.


www.cbsnews.com

New York brewery uses dogs to help deliver beer while social distancing

With the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing encouraged, dogs across the country have also been put to work. Some small businesses are now using their four-legged employees to help safely deliver goods. Dana Jacobson tagged along with a New York-based brewery to see how their team has...
www.cbsnews.com
 
Brownies made without flour and with beans? Yes it really exists.

 
Some dollar trees have a scarce commodity you might be in need of.
They are probably not consider to be an essential business even though they sell food and tp.

 
country_hick said:
If this is correct herd immunity is an impossibility.

www.reuters.com

"No evidence" that recovered COVID-19 patients cannot be reinfected: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that there was currently "no evidence" that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second coronavirus infection.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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"No evidence" that recovered COVID-19 patients cannot be reinfected: WHO

That is almost as bad as Trump's science!

If people didn't become immune, then they would die instead of recovering!

Also, the infection curves would not have leveled off, and certainly wouldn't be decreasing, the only reason they are decreasing is that there are a decreasing number of people who are still not immune, the virus is struggling to find new people who can be infected, there is some level of herd immunity, enough herd immunity to wipe the virus out given the current level of help from lockdown.

The only real question is how long the immunity lasts for, and there seems to be a lack of evidence to suggest it will be any different to other coronaviruses. With other coronaviruses people do sometimes get reinfected after ten years, but it is then only a mild infection since the bodies immune system still remembers how to make the antibodies when a new infection is detected.

They do have a point with the passport immunity stamps though. If you are going to be visiting a country like China or New Zealand which has chosen to wipe the virus out instead of developing immunity, then they will be at risk if you happen to take a very mild infection of no consequence to yourself into their country.
 
My mother was hospitalized today, but i do think its another aneurysm in the brain, she not been getting better but today after getting to my little sisters place she just hunched over and was pretty much unresponsive.
At least all her kids and all her grand kids was there too, i have serious doubts she will see her next birthday which is May 11.

Not much hope on this one, but that is okay too, i have been preparing mentally for this for years, just hope she find what she would like, which i do believe is peace.
 
kamkar1 said:
My mother was hospitalized today, but i do think its another aneurysm in the brain, she not been getting better but today after getting to my little sisters place she just hunched over and was pretty much unresponsive.
At least all her kids and all her grand kids was there too, i have serious doubts she will see her next birthday which is May 11.

Not much hope on this one, but that is okay too, i have been preparing mentally for this for years, just hope she find what she would like, which i do believe is peace.
Click to expand...
We hope all of you find peace during this time. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your Mom.
 
THX Gabacho.

I hope things will pan out as she like, meanwhile i just praise myself i have been standing in her light for so many years. ( her YOB is 1945 )
Its not just cuz she is my mother, but really i have rarely met or seen as generaous and helpful a person like her, all her own life she also worked with the elderly and sick caring for them, even when government and cutbacks made that hard to do as she thaught it should be done, so doing the job off the clock are also something she have pulled off quite a few times.
 
Well, this didn't take long....:arghh:

NYC Poison Control Sees Uptick In Calls After Trump's Disinfectant Comments

"The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said that in an 18-hour period ending at 3 p.m. Friday, the poison control center recorded 30 cases. These included nine "specifically about exposure to Lysol, 10 cases specifically about bleach and 11 cases about exposures to other household cleaners," department spokesperson Pedro F. Frisneda tells NPR. That compares to only 13 cases for the same time frame one year ago."


 
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Dashmellow said:
Well, this didn't take long....:arghh:

NYC Poison Control Sees Uptick In Calls After Trump's Disinfectant Comments
Click to expand...
That was not the only NY line that saw a large amount of calls.
Apparently asking people to call the state to report something some people found offensive was not well appreciated or accepted.

www.dailymail.co.uk

De Blasio's NYC snitch hotline suspended after being flooded by pranks

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio unveiled the controversial scheme on Saturday, urging New Yorkers to text 311 to report anyone violating the state's social distancing rules or stay-at-home orders
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

www.insider.com

New York City had to shut down its social-distancing 'snitch-line' after it was flooded by trolls brandishing penis pictures and Hitler memes

NYC Mayor de Blasio's text service, meant for calling out those who didn't follow social distancing guidelines, became a target for online trolls.
www.insider.com www.insider.com
 
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