tdhoosier

I think it’s more so for the teachers and other employees but I totally agree. I know I always seem to be the cautious one on here, but I think it’s a little ridiculous that we are looking at this on a national or even state level. If cases are high in a particular area then by all means temporarily close schools until the case count is lower. Every district will be different. And not only are children less likely to get COVID and develop severe symptoms, more and more studies Acknowledged by the CDC are finding they are less likely to transmit it. I listen a lot to Donald McNeil, who’s pretty doom and gloom (but very often right), and he even says that teachers in school need to take precautions around other teachers, not necessarily the kids. I have some teacher friends who I very much respect that are weary about going back and I completely get that. I want to remind them that everybody, in every profession is dealing with this too and their jobs are more challenging as a result. Teachers aren’t being singled out. They may feel that they are being treated unfairly or have limited say in the decision, but so are people in other professions. It’s not necessarily right; it’s just the reality of our situation right now. Schools are a vital cog in our way life and when school starts teachers need to be as high up on that pedestal of appreciation as nurses, doctors and other first responders.

I'll take a stab at it. These are some things that I'd personally like to see from here on out: States completely ignored the federal government's suggestions and opened up early. Look at the position those states are in now. I feel at the very least we should learn from this. Don't necessarily need to point fingers, but learn and plan accordingly. Put as many resources behind testing as possible. Testing quickly and accurately is the key to contact tracing. Contact tracing (*that keeps privacy intact) should be the number one goal for this country because it allows the economy to re-open safely and almost completely. This goal should be as clear and as widespread as 'we are putting a man on the moon'. A contact tracing program should be ready to go, the second the testing is able to accommodate it. Just like many school systems are doing, put a 3 tiered plan into place, county by county, nationwide: Green (safe), Orange (take precautions), Red (dangerous). This way Santa Clause, Indiana isn't shutting things down based on numbers in Houston. Not only is this clear, it gives communities incentives to keep their spread lower. If in 'green' kids can go to school, we can go to the gym, eat outside at restaurants, etc. If a county slips to orange then extra precautions will need to be taken, but there will at least be an incentive to get things back to 'green'. I really feel like this would unite communities, get more people involved locally and keep R under control. The other things i can't say or @Hoosierhoopster will make me sit in the corner. 😀 I'm happy to PM you though @IUFLA.

Well, If somebody who has cancer gets the flu and dies, it's counted as a flu death. But why are we focusing on these anomalies? How many people who get into a car accident are asymptomatic with COVID? 2? 2 out of 135,000? If states want to change the way the report these outlier deaths then fine.....take them off the books. My point is, again, removing these outliers is not going to magically lower the death toll by tens of thousands and change the way we deal with the virus.

You can take that stance but in the end aren't you just arguing over crumbs? Why waste the energy, the overall narrative is not changed? Nobody disputes that there are outliers, but overall the increase of death when compared to previous springs approximately adds up to the cases being reported. The numbers reported aren't perfect but they don't seem that far off.....even with all these theories of hospitals or the department of health mis-representing numbers. You can pull all the articles you want. I'm not dismissing that there may be some bad actors or odd cases, but again, it doesn't affect the overall picture. It doesn't imply that the theory of misrepresenting deaths is systematic. There were approximately 125k 'non expected deaths' (based on previous years averages) since mid March - July 1. As of July 1 there were approximately 125k reported Covid deaths. Now, if the difference was off 50k, I'd say you have a point and this is something to be concerned about, but it's not. In this instance I think that outliers are being unproportionally magnified and used as ammunition to paint the whole system as corrupt.

How else do you suggest we do it? If you think there are minor disputes about what is and isn't a case now, what do you think it will look like when we leave cases open for interpretation? What if somebody with heart disease got COVID and it accelerated the symptoms, which caused his death. One doctor may say before COVID he only had 3 months live, so he doesn't think we should count it. Another doctor says that he had 1 year to live and we should have counted it as COVID. It would cause a huge mess. We are recording data and data needs to be binary. Context can be provided and should be welcome, but we need to have an accurate baseline to base the context off of. In regards to your question, I leave that up to scientists. But most polls have an error rate of +/- 3% and generally give us a pretty clear picture to what is going on. A 3% error rate is about 4,000 cases. I have not seen nearly that many called into question so far. Furthermore, the overall gross number of deaths since March is WAY higher than the average of the 5 previous years' deaths over the same span. So it's definitely not a 'ploy'....something is adding to that death total. Look at the chart below from the CDC. Compare those numbers with previous springs and you get pretty darn close to a 130k overage. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

That Colorado man did test positive for COVID, by the way. So there was no wrong doing. If you test positive for COVID when you die it’s marked as a COIVD death even though (in this case) it was most likely alcohol that killed them. This is just how it is reported. The instant you leave results open for human intrupretation is when they get skewed. There needs to be a constant that can’t be manipulated with human bias, in this case it is a positive or negative test. And while you may fairly determine this particular case is not accurate, it’s a small outlier. While it should be considered, it doesn’t have a greater influence on the overall picture.

Wait, are the doctors getting money or hospital systems getting money? And it is about money. As many have pointed out above, it’s not in a hospital’s financial interest to inflate death numbers. It’d actually be more financially advantageous for them to suppress the numbers. They make more money on the elective surgeries that are getting cancelled.

The question should be are enough doctors lying to significantly impact the numbers, to the degree that death numbers tell a different narrative then what we are being fed. Is that what you believe? I’m not saying all doctors are good or bad people, but I’m not going to let a story from a friend of a friend of a poster I’ve never met in real life (love you Scott) make me not believe ALL the data collected.....or ever a vast vast majority of it. That’s how all these stories seem to start: “I heard that my cousin’s, friend’s, step Dad died in an auto accident and the they marked it as COVID.” Maybe some are true. Maybe some lack context. Maybe some are lies. The fact is there is no tangible proof of hospitals or doctors manipulating birth certificates. It’s all speculation based on hearsay that has never been followed down and reported on. Especially when many media outlets would be chomping at the bit to expose a story like this.

I'm sorry but I take those stories with a grain of salt. A) it's too easy to prove that the doctors are doctoring (no pun intended) causes of death. B) Doctors lying about this crap is against the hippocratic oath and would put their medical license in jeopardy. c) Are doctors going to lie about this for a hospital system when they themselves don't stand to benefit from all of this extra money flying around.....and risk their career at the same time? And the nurses are going to go along with this lie too? Hospital administrators are going to go along with this lie? Grieving families are going to go along with this lie? I'm sorry, it doesn't add up. A cover-up of this magnitude takes too many consenting parties to keep it a secret.

I've seen ours and some other districts school re-entry plan. Bottom line is it's definitely going to be a challenge. I've seen a few complaints, but I need to give props to the school board and superintendents who need to write these things. They are between a rock and a hard place drafting guidelines that are not going to appease all for a variety of reasons. How do you plan for the unknown? How do you appease the extremely cautious and people who think we're over-reacting at the same time? How do you appease both the parents and the teachers? You just can't. That said, our plan built its guidelines under three different scenarios: red (high spread), orange (moderate spread) and green (low spread). The gist is that red means everything is shut done and the kids remote learn. While in orange they move to a hybrid schedule and go to school every other day and remote learn on their off days; they also have to wear a mask in school when 'orange. Green still has minor precautions but the kids can go to school everyday. At the very least I like that this incentivises responsible behavior within the community. Let's face it, if we aren't in green it's going to mess up parent's work schedules and make our lives that much more complicated. Maybe this will have people second guess their decision not to wear a mask in public or go to an indoor bar. On the flip side, I sure hope that parents don't send their child to school who if they are 'on the fence' because the parent doesn't want to miss a day of work.

If there are any Morning Jacket fans on here, their new album is pretty darn good. And they finally record a killer jam that takes you back to their earlier stuff.

At least put up a pic.

Anybody have songs, that when listened to closely, just boggles their mind? For me, there’s the harmonies on Good Vibrations ...and The Strokes early stuff is just incredible. Every time I hear the chorus on Retililia, I just can’t wrap my head around how busy it is, without sounding busy.

I got one in the back of the throat? Then my wife went a week later because she was required to take a test and got jabbed in the brain.....said it was awful and her eye was hurting for a couple of hours after. I was watching a doctor on TV that said labs are working hard to produce an accurate test that only requires you to spit in a vile. Hope this comes sooner rather than later.

This was the point I was trying to make a couple of pages back. I think because now we have the capabilities to, many are taking test to confirm negatives. Sure, there may be some hypochondriacs out there, but employers are testing to ensure safe return to work and hospitals are using them to confirm people don't have covid before having elective procedures. And based on the re-entry plan I received from the school yesterday, kids will need to test negative if they want to come back before 14 days after showing symptoms. All of this is good IMO. Every expert I've heard talk about this says more testing is good....even if the negatives are high. It's better to know than not to know. It seems like the next obstacle is getting results back quicker and finding a test that's easier to administer. I'm telling you, if I take my kid to get that swab jammed up their nose I'm not sure I'll get them to take another medical test again.

Just saw this chart on John Hopkins, but another factor was added and it brought me back to this post. The number of positive tests (dark orange) is listed on this graph in correlation to total tests administered. I think it just give a better visual into how testing is influencing the overall case numbers. Testing more does play a slight factor in the increased case numbers, but not as much as some may think. The degree of change for tests administered far outweighs the degree of change for positive tests. link: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/usa

Never said that...of course less death is good overall. But I get the impression that some (not you Fouls) use a temporarily low death count to justify them taking things less seriously right now. Or as evidence to loosen restrictions when the case count is rising. I'm saying we can't ONLY look at the death toll. (That said, the deaths have started to go up as expected and in a week or two this conversation will be moot.) There are also other factors than just death. Namely hospitalizations, long lasting effects and economical impact. And because it spreads so quickly, it will run through a factory/warehouse/office space, forcing sick people to take work off (whether they die or not), diminish productivity and effect the supply chain. High case counts alone will affect the economy. Beyond this being more deadly than the flu, it hospitalizes more than the flu, it's more dangerous than the flu, it lasts longer than the flu and it spreads more quickly than the flu. So equating it to the flu (even if the death rate lowers) is comparing apples and oranges. Furthermore, hospitalis have taken the seasonal flu into account when determining their capacities, which typically run close to full. Hospitals did not factor in COVID to their capacity because it didn't exist before. It's like a game of Sink The Biz....the glass is the hospital, the beer in the glass (90% full) is the expected capacity and COVID is your drunk friend who can't control their pour. Even if deaths numbers drop we still are going to have to be careful for this very reason.

I was chewing gum to avoid this. Out of habit, I blew a bubble....it got a little sticky after that.

Thanks for the insight. This is a great example of why we can’t simply point to a low death rate and say it’s going to be ‘alright’. Transmission alone (even without government mandated shutdowns) is going to continue to devastate this economy. It was only last week when United said that air travel is going to turn around, then this spike continues to get out of control and today they’re announcing that 36,000 employees are going to be furloughed. We may not completely be able to control R, but our actions can keep it down. If we keep it down, it makes it much easier for this economy to operate, it makes it easier for kids to go back to school, it makes it easier for sports to resume, it reduces the strain on hospitals and healthcare workers, etc., etc. But let’s throw that all out the window because the death rate is temporarily down, or masks takes away your freedom or are just too uncomfortable 😢 , or your ‘over’ precautions. We’re just digging ourselves into a deeper hole to climb out of.

I was reading that one thing that we as a country need to be careful of if/when we are getting closer to herd immunity is that we don’t over shoot it. Just because we get to, say, 70% doesn’t mean the virus is going to stop reproducing exactly at that time. We need to approach that ‘herd immunity line’ (whatever it may be) slowly. It’s like rolling a boulder down a hill. If you want to stop it at as soon as it reaches level ground then you will have to slow it down before it gets to the bottom.

Getting trendy Mile!

Never have been to Pizzano's; there wasn't one near me where I grew up in the NW burbs, but have heard good things. I need to remember that next time I'm in the city, which seems less and less often as I'm getting older.

Would you say a study should be called in to doubt if: It was not randomized and double-blind, meaning doctors can select who they gave the drugs to and knew which patients they were administering HCQ or a placebo to? HCQ was treated with other medicine, which could impact the findings? If it excludes patients who had not yet been discharged from the hospital?

Palermo’s is pretty good.