I will try to travel home once the case incidence falls to reasonable levels...mid or late May?...how much out and about I do after that will probably be minimal until it seems not much of a risk. I'm pretty paranoid.
For those of you that are going to brave it in Trump's reopened world here is an excerpt from a tense call between Mike Pence and concerned Democratic Senators.... and keep in mind this was not a made-for-TV Fox News event: "Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, told CNN that the administration's "new plan sounds like the old plan, which is to declare victory and engage in magical thinking to try to survive another 24-hour news cycle." The big concern they have is the fact Trump pushes states to "Liberate" etc. etc. but he has remained at a distance when it comes to getting the states the tests that they need to safely do it. So he says "liberate" and I say good luck to you guys......
I'm going golfing today with my group. Gonna share a cart with my buddy, hopefully take some pulls off the "Birdie Bottle", and then shake hands afterwards like we always do. That sounds liberating. Stick your head out the window, the worlds still spinning.
Boom! Precisely. Hysteria hoax. Antibody Testing Reveals Coronavirus 50-85 Times More Widespread Than Previously Known and Thus Far Less Dangerous Than Expected
Just got off the phone yesterday AJ with a 38 year old previously healthy client who spent 5 days in the hospital with Covid and was very close to being intubated and put on a ventilator. He said he didn't take it serious before he caught it but now of course is a believer in how bad it is. Before he went to the hospital I talked with him and I don't recall hearing a worse cough over the phone. So he is not part of the death statistics but man what a scare and a miserable few days he must have experienced and doctors are still testing him to see if he has any permanent side effects left over from the virus. This just isn't the flu.... and by the way speaking of the flu we are at 40,000 Covid-19 deaths in about 6 weeks of the pandemic whereas Trump and others like to point to 50,000 flu deaths over a 6 month flu season with many many less hospitalizations. Keep your head down and hit 'em straight AJ!
Look...I don't mean to compare this to the flu...I DO think it is more stealthy and deadly and quite frankly I am a little paranoid about it. However facts are facts and we should TRY to be honest about them and not distort them or use them for political purposes..."many less hospitalizations??"...there were 800,000 hospitalizations for flu in 2018 (fewer in 2019...maybe 125,000) There have been 78,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations. I keep watching the hospitalization curve as best I can because I think that is the best gauge of where we stand. Total cases will continue to rise as testing gets more widely available...and deaths are going to lag and start to decrease later because of the prolonged course for many of those poor folks. I'm glad your friend recovered, Dave...
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness6. The hospitalization rate in 2018-19 flu season for the US was about 1.4% of confirmed cases based on 35.5 million people getting it. The hospitalization rate for Covid-19 generally is about 20% of those that get it and with current cases in the US of over 700,000 that's about 140,000 hospitalizations. But even using your 78,000 number that would be a rate of 10% hospitalization for Covid which would be 3.5 million hospitalizations for the 2018-19 flu season based on the 35.5 million getting it. 40,000 deaths for 700,000 Covid cases is a rate of 5% which equates to 1.75 million flu deaths if 35.5 million had it in 2018-19. Keep in mind the Covid time frame is only 6 weeks so far compared to 5-6 months of the 2018-19 flu season. The difference in severity therefore between the two diseases is highly significant obviously.
ALL of the Covid stats are skewed (except possibly deaths) because they still don't know the infection rate. The study AJ references would CRUSH the 20% hospitalization rate you are throwing out there Dave. Keep using your anecdotal evidence to live in fear. Bottom line: at LEAST 85% of the pop is not at risk. They need to get back to living before you don't just have an economic crash, but a societal one as well. I'm sure martial law appeals to Dave and Co... until it's their door being kicked down.
Scott they don't know the extent of those infected just yet that's true but the deaths shown are at a minimum of actual because some have died at home and early on some were diagnosed with flu or pneumonia. And keep in mind these deaths have mostly occurred in only the past 6-7 weeks. When the Prime Minister of England winds up in ICU for days that catches my attention. When both the mayor and chief of police in Miami get it that catches my attention. When so many brave front line healthcare workers catch it, get sick from it and die from it that catches my attention. And it's that last group that catches the brutality of the carelessness of people who don't take this seriously because those people then turn to the healthcare workers to save them. That's pretty wrong. My wife who is an RN working from home is deathly afraid of catching it and I have to respect her feelings and fears and not take chances that I could bring it home to her. When 4 members of one family in New Jersey die from it after a family dinner that gets my attention. But good luck to those who want to go out and push through the phases as they outlined it the other day. Somebody has to brave it and help create that herd immunity. I just hope it is with minimal cost of human suffering and loss of life. My hope is that legions of brave souls go back into the mainstream and are in such good health and have so much fun being back into normal life that they make fun of my trepidation and caution. Please make that happen..... seriously!!!
6 mile long lines for food banks that may soon have to ration food. The unemployed are desperate but there's those insufferable self-centered folks who only think that they should starve to keep them safe. 'We may have to ration': US food banks face shortages as demand surges
So as I expected Trump is becoming easy to read. First and foremost he is concerned about his image and his chances of being re-elected in the fall. He has pushed everyone ahead into what his base especially is pleased with and that is an early re-opening of the economy and life in general. Of course if by some miracle it works out with minimal Covid disruption and death he will be a hero and the Democrats are toast in November. If it backfires and many people get sick and die then he has positioned it and continues to position it in every daily news briefing that the Democratic governors were derelict in their state's testing.... so the failure of reopening efforts is all their fault not his. This even though they the Dem governors and several GOP governors also are telling him they are not ready because they are woefully short on the ability to test and track as will be needed and they need federal assistance in getting ramped up to do it successfully. But his answer now is that it's all on them.... or that they have plenty of testing capacity thanks to him but even though they and medical experts on his team are saying that's not true. So it becomes apparent that he would rather play a political game....and protect his image for November instead of listening to those experts and governors and working hard to help get them set up to be successful with reopening. He's playing with American lives in the process of pushing his political agendas forward.
Hot off the press this morning: "Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said the lack of testing is the number one problem in America and "has been since the beginning of the crisis." "The administration I think is trying to ramp up testing. They are doing some things with respect to private labs but to try and push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren't doing our job, is just absolutely false," Hogan said.
Piers Morgan is supposedly a friend of Trumps but this was his opinion during an interview on Sunday and it precisely reflects my own observations from watching these daily debacles: "Morgan was particularly critical of the president's performance at near-daily White House briefings, which he said he has watched "with mounting horror." "He's turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him -- almost like what's more important is winning the election in November," Morgan said. Then he addressed the president directly: "You will win the election in November if you get this right. If you stop making it about yourself and make it about the American people and show that you care about them over yourself, you will win. And, conversely, you will lose the election in November if you continue to make it about yourself, you continue playing silly politics, continue targeting Democrat governors because that suits you for your electoral purposes."
Perhaps if every question and every story wasn't unfairly negative about the response to the virus, he wouldn't feel the need to be constantly giving the other side of the story. He's allowed them to disregard any respect of the office and common courtesy. After weeks of hearing over and over again "where are the ventilators" (of which the need for those was largely overblown by governors) we're now in the "why don't we have enough tests" phase. The CDC and FDA really screwed the pooch at the start and put testing behind. To hear the questions, you'd think that tests were made by Trump in the West Wing during his free time.
Gipper I guess we will find out about the tests shortage question when people venture forth again into the world. I hope Trump is lauded as one of our greatest heros because his gut instinct has it right over the advice of the medical community and we get back to normal fast without more victims than we should otherwise have if we stayed put. However.... if it fails and the virus infects the community with a renewed vengeance he will be viewed by 70% of Americans as THE worst president in our history. The other 30% will just buy in to his lies and blame shifting to infinity.
Here's what a reopen protester said in Indianapolis this weekend: "In Indianapolis, protester Andy Lyons said he understands the health risks. But he wants the government to back off. "If I get sick, then I am going to bear the consequences of my getting sick," Lyons told CNN affiliate WTHR. "If anybody else gets sick, they bear the consequences of their free choice without government coercion to do so. That's what this is about." If he would have finished the statement with I'll go home and stay home if I get it and die alone without infecting healthcare workers or people I know then what he said would be more acceptable except even that's not fair to those that got it from him because they didn't know he had it when they cashed him out at the grocery store etc.
I'm hearing that Georgia is opening up this Friday many different businesses without any real changes in their testing etc. etc. So I guess Trump and the Georgia Gov have decided that it's time to hit the beach? Damn the torpedoes full steam ahead? Everyone has cabin fever Trump says..... so we all want to get out there.... get back to normal. Good reasons to throw caution to the wind.... along with the medical advice. That's true Donald that the want to is there...... just don't blame one ******* other soul if it backfires....not the Democrats..... not the Chinese..... not WHO.... not the democrats in the Georgia state representative contingent.....not the media.... and certainly not the GOP Georgia governor.