Four more athletes test positive for coronavirus
The University announced Friday that four more athletes tested positive for coronavirus. Detroit News story here. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2020/07/17/four-121-michigan-athletes-tested-positive-covid-19/5459569002/
That guy blames covid deaths on BLM and Mexico. Both false, seems pretty racist. Says its proven kids dont transmit to other people, also false. Ignores the negative outcomes besides death. He's a radiologist. Stanford's head epidemiologist says the exact opposite.
Oh my bad. Didn’t know he was racist.
Disregard.
Any guesses, MGoBlog readers, on where "ThomasSowell" gets talking points? :)
What’s the name of Stanford’s Head Epidemiologist?
https://med.stanford.edu/epidemiology/epi-faculty.html
Google aint hard.
We are still talking about it because of guys like you. The sooner everyone takes this seriously the sooner we are all back to work, kids are in school and we are able to just talk about and watch sports.
I don't know if the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is 0.04% ---- but it IS fair to say that our estimates of IFR have generally gone down over time. We know that the Virus isn't as deadly now as we thought it was back in May, April, March, February, January ......
You're not wrong to push back against the poster (although language like "guys like you" rarely works in an argument), but I would also like to see the above conceded by some of the folk who express more concern about CoronaVirus.
Who's arguing about the death rate? It's true that COVID-19 won't be a big deal for the great majority who get it.
Keep your eye on the ball and be honest. Do you think anyone in NYC was concerned with the precise fatality rate in March? Do you think anyone in the greater Phoenix area cares about it if they have to go miles out of their way to find space at a hospital?
Oh, and maybe don't give the time of day to someone who names himself ThomasSowell and quotes a radiologist at the Hoover Institution. (You shouldn't listen to people who name themselves PaulKrugman, either.)
Since more than 0.04% of the US population has already died from Covid we can quite safely say that we know it is higher than 0.04%. Given the number of people who have died in NJ, we can also pretty safely say it is higher than 0.17%. Since we are still seeing new cases in New Jersey, we can also say they haven’t reached herd immunity, so suggesting it has to be at least twice 0.17% is not really going out on a limb.
Even with the pretty stringent measures we’ve put in place, we are pushing the limits of hospital capacity in multiple states during what was presumed to be the lull before a second wave. While I suspect you disagree, it is difficult for me to see how it wouldn’t be significantly worse without the measures we’ve put in place.
The numbers were for those under age 70...
No, the rate for mortality for those getting the disease is still high relative to clear cases. That 4% of confirmed Cases in Ohio have died is still huge. People want to keep moving off the verified numbers to percents made out of projections, downplay mortality among anyone “young”, downplay other health factors, and continue to quote non-epidemiologists trying to call this the flu. Why?
Who in their right minds, including news outlets, gets a benefit from a fear porn fest? Guess what, the media will make money on good or bad news, which is evidenced by the fake outlets mocking the pandemic and calling it a hoax is “good, positive news” for those who need the comfort of normalcy and who fear having to realize it is a major concern.
The world outside American politics exists, and that world is constantly grappling with the severity of this virus. That world doesn’t rationalize the death of “old people” and those “with underlying conditions” as meaning the rest of their country should go on with no protection. We aren’t the only country grappling with having to change how we live, but those who downplay seem to let honk we are—and would rather go have little Tommy play soccer until the whole team gets covid. And to still not see why that little outbreak harms larger society is a huge social failing. The more people infected, someone with “low risk”’will die and a few with higher risks will, too. And that is why all the rationalizing is terrible. More people, regardless of the percentages, are going to die from this disease because we cannot get it under control, follow health protocols, and look out for our fellow man in order to make the country safer for seniors and high risk folks again.
It doesn’t feel that way to a lot of people. It feels instead like “taking it seriously” in both actions and rhetoric results in experts and leaders only raising the level apocalyptic rhetoric and power-wielding actions. Put another way, many people have begun to feel like taking action and behaving in line with public health recommendations amounts to nothing more than giving ground that is going to be taken one way or another anyway, and that resistance is literally the only way to avoid a permanent state of an illness-obsessed society. I have felt that way at times. Part of me knows it is embracing a form of “deep state” train of thought, the other part of me knows that a whole hell of a lot of the information being provided about it is inconsistent, at absolute best.
The collective efforts to censure dissenting opinions instead of engaging them as real belief and having public discourse on them hasn’t helped either. I can tell that, despite the almost oppressive efforts that have been taken to convince everybody how real this is, easily 50% of the people I know when speaking frankly say that they believe they are being lied to in significant ways. They mask up, toe the line, and avoid controversy, but they also do not believe what they are being told. Whether that is a failure of their own logic, botched messaging, unrealistic expectations as to what “progress” entails, actual misinformation, or something different, I don’t know. These aren’t just “Trumpsters” either, it is people from both sides of the “spectrum.”
But it is easy for a lot of people to believe that seeing high levels of mask compliance, efforts made to socially distance, and other essentially “required” conduct at this point that all of those people believe what they are being told. Personal contacts and conversation on the other hand would indicate that close to a majority of people think all of this stinks to high heaven. I am not writing to advocate for that line of thinking, but it persists and it isn’t fading but strengthening.
Your first sentence is spot on ---- some people don't like to hear this, but CoronaVirus simply does NOT feel like an "existential threat" to a significant chunk of Americans any longer.
Me included, to be blunt. I like to think of myself as a rational person. The virus worried me significantly in March & April. But the various information since then has pushed me into the camp of "our current cure is worse than the disease."
i would prefer if you and john were much more fearful in your discussion.
Ha ha --- I am fearful of some things. For instance, James Franklin managing his timeouts.
I think an interesting question is this: "if we were able to transport folks from 1956-1957, who dealt with a flu pandemic in their own time that killed 120K Americans (which is still, for the moment, a higher death per capita rate than CoronaVirus), how would they react to this 2020 situation?"
Those folk from the 1950s, of course, lived under the fear of Soviet missile attack, literal annihilation. They were also not far removed from the horrors of World War II.
That's probably why they didn't shut down their own society in the face of their own pandemic. The pandemic was serious, but it wasn't nearly the threat as some other things. And I tend to think that, in my hypothetical, they would think we are/were being too fearful and cautious.
For better or worse, Americans in the 2000s haven't really faced any real threats. 9/11, yes, but even that "only" killed 3000 and in retrospect was just a one-off event --- albeit a VERY spectacular one-off event. We don't really have anything to compare CoronaVirus against.
I agree with everything until that last sentence. I'm not sure what you're saying is a "current cure". In most states, that "cure" is basically, no gatherings over 50 people.
Are you suggesting that in states like Texas that they shouldn't have closed bars when hospitals began to get an explosion of patients? Are they struggling without those bars open?
I don't understand why people think that if there weren't some measures, that everything would normal. That a lot people wouldn't elect to significantly change consumption habits (which we know to be the case even with things open).
Would people feel more comfortable going out when the hospitals get overwhelmed? What if doctors and nurses went on strike en masse because we showed no regard for them? Most restaurants and businesses wouldn't even stay open at half capacity or less. Not to mention if people didn't wear masks to keep workers safe (not unlike smoking in businesses).
The virus is the problem both directly and indirectly. We wouldn't be able to just pretend it's not there even if we wanted to. It's much more complicated than you're implying.
That's a fair response.
Here's one thing I see as an issue with the "current cure." The "current cure" includes incessant talk from some media outlets and Governors about "we reopened too early", "we're probably going to have to close again", "people aren't acting responsibly", "look at these folk who had this get together at a lake", etc etc etc.
Who wants to listen to that 365/24/7? It shows absolutely zero trust in constituents, and zero recognition for the various sacrifices and pain that the lockdown is imposing on many, many, many people.
From CNN and Gov. Newsom (America's biggest state) in particular, there are absolutely NO carrots, and all stick.
At a certain point, it's simply psychology. Some people are going to rebel against a message that is no carrot, all stick. That message decreases their desire to listen, and increases their possible resistance too.
In a way, it reminds me of 8 years ago. There were a subset of Penn State fans who didn't want to accept the Freeh Report and JoePa's culpability. That subset of Penn State fans was also incessantly hearing from others who called them bad people, cultists and the like.
As I and we know, that didn't change their minds. They decreased their listening, they increased resentment.
Anyway, I'm not advocating full stadiums at sporting events yet - but 20% capacity, yes. Show some trust in folk. Give some carrots, don't wield the stick all the time. Be a light.
So governors “incessant talk” of being mindful and explaining their mandates is a “bad cure”? That’s where you are completely, objectively wrong. Governors like Hogan and Cuomo and event Abbott are, gasp, governing. They have a responsibility to daily remind citizens of low attention span and limited literacy but high on their own opinions just what is happening in their states.
Hogan has had to remind people daily of wearing a mask because our Maryland cases alphabets risen from a decent decline to near 250 a day back up to 1000 cases likely today (950 yesterday and about 900 for three day age).
You can blame people, and poor leaders, for the tug of war. Even countries who have mitigated their outbreaks are still having health protocols like masks and public limitations—and they have dissenters, but none that get equal air space for their clearly errored perspectives.
Too many Americans want to blame the actions that have saved many as having done nothing. And now spikes are caused by those idiots, which is harming healthcare workers in those hot spots.
The shutdowns didn’t cause baseball stadiums to be empty. The shutdowns didn’t cause schools to be a debate. The virus outbreaks have. The responses not “cures.” They are necessary precautions, like driving with your eyes open even if you think you have autopilot.
To use Donald Trump’s talking point rhetoric about “the cure” is to fall for his poor line of thinking. Masks, social distance, testing—they are not cures, but they are parts of solutions to dealing with a new normal to protect as many as possible. They mitigate damage the way Neosporin mitigates a small wound. The wound and the scar will happen, but to what extent do you let it go and risk infection?
The world outside America exists. They’re not talking about “damage caused by shutting down economy” as if it is more important than containing the disease. Everyday we pretend that we can rescue the wounds by simply moving on is another day of more wounds being opened and festering.
Self interest in pretending one is healthy and young enough to not be impacted or to not impact others, or not care if one does impact others—that is the damaging “cure” for those who “want to live now” and who mock those “scared of death.”
As Hogan said, people in Maryland better mask up and socially distance themselves because they’re causing the start of a spike that will cause more mandates. Those mandates aren’t a problem—the “needs” of bar hopping bros and tourist sardines on a beach are the problem. Wants are not needs, wants don’t define what makes form”loving.” Too many people see their wants as needs, and they are the ones to blame.
I agree. Let’s look at where there has been success in knocking down significant spread, see what they’ve done and then emulate it. Let’s figure out if there are any actions that we can all take as individuals that don’t require government mandates and all collectively take those actions.
I absolutely agree with you that it would be nice if we could be like Sweden where their officials trust their people to do the right thing because their people trust their officials to be honest and forthcoming.
Unfortunately, that's not the case here and I think the reasons are the exact opposite that you suggest. Our politics have incessantly discredited science in the name of short term profits, and have continued to do that here.
It's interesting that you see only incessant negativity (maybe you're overly obsessed with CNN and Newsome?) when there's been more blind optimism here than anywhere outside of Brazil. "Don't worry, it's all under control" and "it's just gonna disappear". To me, that's a far worse problem because we can see that they're wrong and so it feels like they're just marching us into peril in the name of profits once again. Our leaders aren't wearing masks we have governors disallowing mayors from requiring masks. So half of Americans don't trust scientists because they've been told not to, and the other half don't trusts leaders because those leaders constantly undermine citizens in the interest of corporate donors. We've done nothing but erode trust for 20ish years.
Your suggestion that they aren't putting trust in folks is misguided. All these measures are nothing more than guidelines. There's no way to enforce any of it. It's all based on trust (although I agree that there's probably not a lot of confidence that Americans will actually be smart). But yeah, there's no trust left.
I live in CA and not a lot of people are wearing masks. Even in Los Angeles I think mask compliance is reported at just 56%. I went to the central valley to visit family for the 4th. Went to multiple firework stands and no employees were even wearing masks there, despite being required to. They come face to face with hundreds of customers a day! But there are no consequences on an individual basis. There's no sticks.
It's all on the honor system and we're failing miserably.
Oh, we "censure" (or censor?) but don't engage dissenting opinions?
Gimme a break. The vast majority of "dissenting opinions" is intentional disinformation from trumpy dumpy's nazi troll army. "what about the flu epidemic of 1847?!?" "Only 0.000001% of infected die" etc.
These people were following donnie doofus off a cliff from day one. my gop rep was railing against lockdown in march. not once has he said, after 100,000 died in a few months from it, that 'maybe it was a little more serious than I thought at the start'. The troll army had a traffic blocking gun waving protest at the capitol on April 15.
I mean, why should we engage with their propaganda when they won't do it themselves?
(For the record, I have responded to such trolls with civil, substantive discussion. It makes no difference, they stay in the delusional disinformation bubble. My blunt reflection on the mendacity of the trolls is not "oppression".)
Well, I'm no expert so someone can probably speak to this better than I can, but the issues seem to be:
- not overwhelming hospitals everywhere
- we don't understand what longterm health effects there are
- I've seen morality rates in the 0.2% range but let's say it's 0.04%. I find it somewhat amusing that there's a strong overlap between people who discount the disease because of the low fatality rate and people who still yell about the four american lives lost in Benghazi. Meanwhile, I stricter response to covid here would've saved thousands of American lives. I can't tell if American lives matter or not
As regards "overwhelming hospitals" --- we are now several weeks into this increase in cases in America.
So, have hospitals been overwhelmed anywhere? Have there been cases where a CoronaVirus patient did not receive the absolute best care possible, solely because of hospital capacity concerns?
I may be wrong, but I think the answer is no --- outside of perhaps the Rio Grande Valley (Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen).
i’m pretty sure the answer is yes.
For Covid - many hospitals are currently rationing remdesivir - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/limited-supply-of-covid-19-drug-doctors-face-hard-decisions/
This report from Houston doesn’t sound like people are getting the best care possible:
“Houston hospitals have been forced to treat hundreds of COVID-19 patients in their emergency rooms — sometimes for several hours or multiple days — as they scramble to open additional intensive care beds for the wave of seriously ill people streaming through their doors, according to internal numbers shared with NBC News and ProPublica.
At the same time, the region’s 12 busiest hospitals are increasingly telling emergency responders that they cannot safely accept new patients, at a rate nearly three times that of a year ago, according to data reviewed by reporters.’
There are plenty of people who are not receiving the best care for other health conditions since elective procedure have been postponed at many hospitals.
Thanks for the articles.
I saw the latter article back when it came out (on the 10th, it's a bit dated now). After that article, there have been folks tracking the TMC (Texas Medical Center)'s own website, in terms of number of available beds in their system. That number has consistently been tracking in the high 2000s for the past 9 days, not a ton of day-to-day variability.
https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/overview-of-tmc-bed-status/
That's just one hospital system, of course, but it's the big one in SE Texas and one that publishes data daily.
Maybe I (and others) am interpreting their numbers incorrectly, but that doesn't seem to couch with hospital overload for Houston/SE Texas as a whole.
As I alluded too, I think the greatest pressure in the state is down in the Rio Grande Valley. Which, theoretically, the Houston (and San Antonio) hospitals are a back-up resource for the RGV.
That's Houston and the RGV, but I think TX and AZ as a whole will be interesting to watch, because they might (key word: might) be reaching their peak in terms of COVID hospitalizations. A peak is usually best recognized with the benefit of hindsight, so I'm not calling it. But we could be getting there. We'll know more for certain in a week.
https://covidtracking.com/data/state/texas#historical
I do think that IF this is a peak in those 2 states, it will ultimately be THE peak, forever after. I will go on the record with that particular prediction.
As regards your initial article, we do need a better distribution system for remdisivir. Reading the article, the issue sounds more like distribution versus availability. HHS is distributing it and (1) it distributes it every 2 weeks, based (2) on numbers from 2 weeks previous. Some areas of the country have far more than they need, some areas (notably FL and TX) don't have enough.
HHS does need to do a better job there, yes.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/10/houston-coronavirus-emergency-rooms/
This article is from the same time. It seems to suggest that TMC may not have quite the ability to ramp up as they claim to. That may be why you are seeing so little fluctuation in the numbers, they are at their peak.
“While Houston’s top hospital executives have repeatedly said they can add hundreds of new intensive care beds to meet the demand, at least for the next couple of weeks, the number of patients being treated in emergency rooms demonstrates the difficulty of executing those plans in the midst of a rapidly growing crisis, officials say.‘
“A daily status report prepared Wednesday by the SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council, which coordinates the Houston region’s emergency medical response, showed multiple hospitals running out of immediately available nonsurgical ICU beds, including both of the city’s top-tier trauma centers, Ben Taub Hospital and Memorial Hermann’s flagship hospital in the Texas Medical Center.”
Yes, that article is from the same time - it's the exact same article. :-)
Not to repeat myself, but I think this week will be very telling, particularly for AZ and TX but perhaps for the country as a whole.
From June 1 onward, there was consistent growth in state-wide COVID hospitalizations, the exponent on that growth rate was consistently high. But within the last week, TX has sort of flattened out as regards state-wide COVID hospitalizations.
Is that an actual flattening trend, and the beginning of downward movement? Or is it just some noise in the data?
We'll probably know more for certain 7 days from now.
"Have there been cases where a CoronaVirus patient did not receive the absolute best care possible, solely because of hospital capacity concerns?"
Were you under a rock when NYC was getting blitzed by this? Did you read any of the stories? Clue: It wouldn't take a very broad definition of "hospital capacity."
Intended for "NittanyFan." Outlines are funny in this thread.
You didn't quote my 1st paragraph --- I guess I needed to be more clear, but I was talking solely in the context of the recent wave of cases (the increase that started in early June).
As for NYC in the spring, of course the hospitals faced significant pressure then. But even Andrew Cuomo is on the record saying this: "There were no preventable deaths. Everyone who passed away, we did everything we could."
For one, "everything we would could" doesn't come close to meaning the best care possible. If a hospital was full and a patient had to be transferred to another one (which absolutely happened in NYC) and died along the way or deteriorated, that's doing all you can with what you have but it's not ideal.
For two, Cuomo also interpreted a survey question that asked patients where they were living when they were hospitalized as a question about whether they were sheltered at home (which it wasn't). So, he's not exactly adept at interpreting data.
And three, he's a politician that of course has to say he and his state did everything they could.
The flu is also not a particularly high risk disease for people under 70. It also doesn’t kill over 130,000 people in 4 months. Finally, have you ever seen hospitals in multiple states get overwhelmed by the flu?
Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about, talking about and dealing with Covid 19. In Feb we were told not a big deal, live your life. March, wash your hands and social distance. Then shut everything down, that will bend the curve. Now it's July, spiking in the south and still nobody really knows what the hell is going on as back to school is approaching. Train parking lot in my town is usually full at this time, might have 5 cars in the lot. Watch the shot up 6th Ave near Radio City that Fox shows, hardly any cars, usually bumper to bumper.
Right there with you.
Piece of advice though, take any and all personal steps to accept the current existential reality as a semi-permanent manner of existence. There are a lot of things baked in the Covid-19 world at this point, many of them not entire related but inseparable in the public consciousness right now. Many are "watching the numbers" closely but this isn't a numbers game anymore. This United States is similar to the United States of February, 2020 in name only.
Oh, boy. Better shutdown the state!
In related news, WMU Vice President Diane Anderson told me this today, via email:
"We strive to be transparent with our University community while balancing the need and desire to maintain student privacy. This includes the privacy of our student athletes. Sharing health information, including COVID-19 status, is problematic, because even without mentioning names, it can be possible to identify individuals when information is provided related to their team, position, year in the program or other characteristics."
I specifically asked them to commit to being transparent about the status of infections on campus as students, including my child, return to school in a few weeks. The above is all I got. It's utter bullshit.