Keep clutching at straws. Don't take this as heart-attack serious.
Keep insisting that the people who analyzed this, and predicted exactly what you're getting now, are panic-mongers and doomsayers.
THAT will help.
It's not like anyone warned you this was a Shit Mardi Gras three weeks ago, or suggested it was going to go there a lot sooner than the soopergeniuses and soothsayers said it would.
And told you that when this exploded, you were going to lose all health care for everyone for the duration, anywhere it blew out society's safety seals.
O, waitaminute...
And, hey, LOOK!:
 |
| Show of hands: Anybody out there still think China's number of cases and deaths reported to the West was anything close to reality? Or was the sudden disappearance of 20M Chinese cellphone users after a month or two of crematoriums there running 24/7 perhaps a wee bit closer to the truth? |
So, does this mean that just maaaaaaaaaaaybe it's not
"Just the flu, bro" anymore?
Even among the sh*t-for-brains and cementhead demographic?
{Nope. They'll be repeating that the Titanic is unsinkable, and ride it right to bottom of the ocean, with one helluva surprised look on their faces. Pretty much like everything else in their lives.}
Those of you who didn't f**k around then, or even earlier, well done. Hope you ride out the pandemic, and the 57 layers of follow-on effect madness, which is the far bigger problem, and make it safely to the other side. This is going to be a much longer thing, and a lot harder, than most people have planned for, or even imagined. Steel yourselves for that reality, and the reaction of the Village Idiots when they realize you're okay, and they're screwed. And if the opportunity arises to redouble your efforts on anything needful, make the most of it.
The rest of you, well, Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes.
41 comments:
Normalcy bias running at 99.99% where I work. I'm the 00.01% outlier.
Bill Mitchell still can't give it up. At least as of 14 hours ago: https://twitter.com/mitchellvii/status/1243316452159107074
In my area, well, I got laid off (midlevel in an urgent care) when the census troughed. Good news: I had already been working a part time side gig, so I'm inconvenienced, not altogether screwed. In addition, TDW-Mark II and I are halfway preppers, so, therefore, we had been around halfway prepared.
Good news: our AAR will be a rich source of "process improvement opportunities".
Good News: I have already had a preliminary phone interview with a new gig. (Now, to see how that develops....)
Good News: this pimp-slap-upside-my-haid will provide the opportunity for me to get my fiscal head out of my ass, and build up the rainy day fund, again. This time encased in metaphorical glowing kryptonite.
Bad news: it does appear that enough folks are out of work, that both the unemployment website, as well as their phone lines, have been crashed. All week.
I can only pray that the reported approval numbers for Bad Orange Man, herald another term for him in office.
As well as breaking suction hither and yon, so that hospitals, among other mission critical infrastructure, actually employ the Aesop Version Of JIT Inventory (ie, rows of Conexs staged in the parking lot, filled with needful items, and the new stuff goes in one end, and the old stuff comes out the other, as each delivery is used up. Like, 90 days deep, Or more)
But, then, as an old street medic (and old ED Nurse), myself, my cynicism is generally rewarded, my optimism seldom so.
Aesop: Not particularly about this post, but more of a general question (and potentially blog-fodder for you, should you choose to accept it).
You're written quite a bit about how the number of ventilators isn't really the problem, it's the limited number of people who can use/monitor/maintain them and the length of time it takes to bring such people up to speed. In your opinion, would cross-training among specialties be a good thing? So someone isn't only a respiratory tech, but perhaps also a phlebotomist, EKG tech, etc. So your "normal" job may be taking blood samples, but in a crisis you can be pressed into service dealing with ventilators. I assume there's a good amount of commonality in the basic training (cleanliness, dealing with patients and families,handling contaminated materials, etc), isn't there?
I realize it's too late to put this into effect now, but is there any reason why one person couldn't be trained and licensed in multiple specialties, and am I wrong in assuming that teaching (say) an x-ray tech to work with a ventilator would take less time than doing the same with a person with no prior training in medicine?
Just spit-balling here, I am not a doctor, nurse, or any other type of medical tech, I don't play one on TV, and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Mark D
Best Wishes, Reltney.
You've got skillz, and you'll land on your feet.
And none of us, (self definitely included) have this 100% wired out of the gate.
I learned last time I'm learning this time.
I'll learn next time.
But what I have done means there will be a next time.
@ Aesop: The Normalcy Bias people got a big shot in the arm with the report that the English researcher who predicted 2 million deaths here and 500K in the U.K. has dialed those back by a factor of 20. Pretty much ditto for the number infected. They have missed 2 things: first, he may be wrong again, this time by being too optimistic and, second, by not thinking AT ALL about the 2nd - Xth order effects. What say you about this revamp of the numbers?
our government had:
the WAR in Vietnam
the WAR in Iraq
the WAR against illegal immigration
the WAR on poverty
the WAR on drugs
the WAR on terrorism
do we really expect this WAR on covid-19 to turn out any better/different?
Well fwiw Denninger is pretty sure he has the numbers proving its a problem, but not a huge problem. In fact several folks, Ferguson in london and even Brix are dialing back their prognostications.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/wow-dr-fauci-in-new-england-journal-of-medicine-concedes-the-coronavirus-mortality-rate-may-be-much-closer-to-a-very-bad-flu/
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=238668
However wth are these Dem Governors doing blocking hydroxychloroquine treatments??
The problem is, anybody doing something we need, is doing something we need.
Everybody (not you, but in general) thinks that Scrooge McDuck runs any hospital, and swims in a vault full of 30' of gold coins.
The reality is, we're leaned out to the max, they flex people home now on light days, and the pipeline is so tiny for every job but floor mopping, you can't surge anyone or anything.
Not people, not supplies, not capacity.
If we could kick the shit out of the CEOs, and mandate no more than 50% capacity and still make a profit, we could deal with this sort of thing when a crisis hits.
Secondarily, we'd need to virtually require civilian service in medical or emergency response reserves.
Good luck with that.
The day I'm Emperor For A Day, Decree #1 is that nobody graduates high school without passing an Basic EMT course.
Anybody with any license from the state has to maintain that EMT cert, lifetime, or surrender their license to do anything: beautician, muffler repair, tax preparer, whatever. (Recert takes a weekend every two years, and costs about $100, BTW.)
But the civil libertarians would have a shitfit.
In this crisis, anybody in that camp should be triaged to the end of the line.
Choices have consequences.
Go be free, and pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
You can't be Amish your whole life, then want the English-speakers to send tanks to protect you from the horde when the invasion happens.
But if people had a basic reservoir of medical training, and you suddenly had 60M unemployed, you'd have one helluva talent pool to train emergency help when this kind of thing hits, from hurricanes, to floods, to fires, to riots, to earthquakes, to pandemics.
In fact, taken to its logical conclusion, you'd make a draft mandatory.
Graduate h.s., and make a choice: active duty military branch for 2 years, or two years in the Medical Corps. Every basic EMT, CNA, lab tech, phlebotomist, and any other entry level medical skill would be filled with 2-yr conscripts, and those who'd stayed on to make it a career. In return, you get a college loan for a 4 year degree when your 2 years is up, and if you want to stay on, or educate and promote up, that's fine. In return, the nation gets a yuuuuuuge cadre of talent to draw upon, forever.
Wanna go farther, and make it every occ field that has a military counterpart?
Carpenter, plumber, truck driver, heavy equipment operator, computer tech, whatever?I'm fine with that. Apprentice for 2 years, get a shot at college on everyone's nickel, or else apprentice a good paying trade, and still get an option on college down the road.
I'd put Mike Rowe in charge of it.
And instead of looking to Uncle when TSHTF, people would realize they were the solution to their own problems.
So that would piss off the socialists too.
Like I said, Emperor. One day, and irrevocable decrees.
That's all I ask.
RT is a 2 yr specialty. Anybody who could learn it, and had aptitude, would move up and out of being anything that paid less.
The most you might could do, is rob Peter to pay Paul, and poach people in the medical field who were suddenly idled to be RT Assistants, and put 2-4 of them under each RT, to surge vent-running capacity in the short-term.
If only you had 100K state-of-the-art ventilators sitting around idle too.
https://www.takimag.com/article/how-do-we-flatten-the-curve-on-panic/
Well I hope it turns out like the war in Afghanistan, where the people fighting the war the virus to pieces in every encounter, and we just see the virus pop up as blips on the radar every now and then. The media and Americans will pretend like it’s still a pandemic, but in reality, the virus won’t matter anymore, just like the Taliban doesn’t matter anymore.
I just hope they do it a little cheaper...
Wait till you start reading whats in the 2 trillion dollar bill. If trump signs it we might as well all write in bernie for president. Sorry for that statement but this will get a lot worse. 3.2 million filed for unemployment last week and not a whiff in the market hardly. Batton the hatch hunker down. God Bless and God Speed to Aesop and all the real Americans.
I was elected, Mike Rowe would be in my cabinet. He might be my whole cabinet.
@Anon 7:45
Denninger, based on a fuckton of past experience, likes to think he knows something about the medical field, but the reality is he's a jackass who cherry-picks data to make his points, and ignores anything that doesn't fit whatever pet drum he's beating on at any given moment. IDK how he does with financial info, so I give him leave to bloviate there all he wants, but medically, he's an amateur analyst and a professional fool, who knows just enough to sound convincing and be dangerous.
As a rule, I pretty much ignore anything he has to offer, based on experience with everything he's ever put out. Caveat stulti.
Fauci has been a five star jackass since AIDS, and then again in 2014 re: Ebola. Anyone listening to him, including POTUS, has a jackass for a counselor.
And there were 21 authors of the Imperial College paper; only one has recanted, and now seeks to dial it back.
1) Hate speech is now a criminal offence in Old Blighty, and they use it against those who defy The Narrative, or upset the proles. cf. Tommy Robinson
2) It's rather disingenuous to publish a 21-person paper, and then afterward, pop up and say "Sorry! I lost my mind then! I was JUST KIDDING! Ignore Me!"
So I suspect the recantation of 5% of the study researchers owes more to pressure from TPTB, than it does to any genuine scholarly reflection.
YMMV.
Appreciate the info on the imperial stuff. I noted it over at CA's place this morning. I missed it yesterday because there is only so much orange julius (see the part about kissing the hospital ship for instance) a guy can drink in a weeks time before projectile hurling ensues. Birx at 50 minutes into yesterdays' drumpf dream team presser leaned heavy on the recant of fergie. Rolled out the 1 in 1000 number. Full court press to reopen half of murica for Orangemans election chances? Who the fuck knows.
This is Fergie's splainin thread:
https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1243294816777252865
's okay.
And I misspoke.
There were actually 31 authors in on it, not 21, including Ferguson.
So the recantation rate on it is now down from 5%, to 3%. ;)
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Over a year ago I set out to make sure I had more than the standard amount of the fam's scrips. Now we're up to, at the least, 6 months of everything.
Perhaps three months ago, when the China flu started to become news, I started in on getting a supply of antibiotics built up.
Now, I'm wondering if a viable alternative to the scrip antimalarial might be standard tonic water quinine.
You know TPTB are lying when their lips are moving.
1. COVID19 is real bad news for a small percentage of the population. If you don't know for absolute certainty that you're immune, DON'T CATCH IT!!!
2. TPTB will ride their gravy train to the very last station on the line. (That station is AFTER hyperinflation, helicopter money, government collapse and demise of the petrodollar)
3. NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US OR OUR WAY OF LIFE. In fact, the destruction of our 'way of life' is a feature NOT a bug to a large percentage of our government.
4. Our current circumstances aren't the main event, the current shit show is just in the warm up exercises. Maybe we dodge the COVID19 bullet, maybe we don't. It doesn't matter because it's the second, third and downstream effects that are gonna make or break western civilization. Stay ready. Build for the future.
Civilization depends on men planting trees, in whose shade they'll never sit.
Aesop, have you seen this?
https://texags.com/forums/84/topics/3102444
Sort of mirrors your post from the Doc in New Orleans.
Seems like by the time you need a ventilator, you're baked. I've read others like this that said they've never seen anyone come off a ventilator with this. If that's true, someone should fess up. That's a more powerful message than what they are doing.
Seems to me, the risk of getting it this serious is low, but it's pass/fail with a hard fail.
Don't get this. If you do, and have to go to the hospital, go early, because if you wait, you'll die.
So don't get this.
I guess that much candor would make it worse.
Feel the same on Denninger pathological in his need to be right AND appreciated, a man should be wrong and know how to deal with it occasionally. Wife is in a MN ER on 12 hours shifts now, RN. I feel the pain or at least hear what she is going through, the ever shifting directives, lack of PPE, stupid decisions forced down RN, Dr.'s throats by idiots at the Dept. of Health.
The Chloroquine directives from Governors are surreal, the TN directive more so...
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/.
"Though here in Tennessee the state health department sent out a rather odd letter to providers, telling them that the hydroxychloroquine/Z-pak treatment was unproven and that they shouldn’t use it, and also that they shouldn’t hoard hydroxychloroquine and Z-paks because they were needed by patients and providers."
Tonic water with a jigger of gin makes the medicine go down. Hey, whiskey and honey *supposedly* worked for the schoolteacher Brit in Wuhan. I'd like to know how Mr. Reed is faring today... especially the condition of his lungs.
just to add, there are a lot of respiratory therapists that are state certified that haven't touched a ventilator in years, certainly not newer models....trust me i know this as a FACT.
"they shouldn’t hoard hydroxychloroquine and Z-paks because they were needed by patients and providers.""
--there is a perfectly good explanation, just need to adjust your foil chappeax
-- there aren't enough doses extant for all the elites that want them, so current doses must be saved for those guys in the club. It's a big club, but you ain't in it.
a bit like the "your wasting those masks that we need so give them to us..." messaging earlier.
n
Another note on the believability of the Chinese numbers, there was a report on some site I visited on Weds. about the correlation between Chinese death numbers and cell phone usage. Apparently between Dec 2019 and Feb 2020 two MILLION Chinese cell phones went "dead", i.e. cell phone numbers no longer being used actively as they had in the past.
Haven't seen this anywhere else so I don't know if its reliable.
Probably some spook leaked NSA surveillance or outright propaganda to counter the rampant Chinese Kung Flu propaganda.
But, what if it's true and if it is, we'll probably never know.
Nemo
Trying to transition say, a phlebotomist to a respiratory therapist is not very different from transitioning housekeeping staff to respiratory therapist. Even an outpatient clinic nurse would be out of their element. An ER nurse or an ICU nurse would make the transition without too much difficulty, but they would be more needed as an RN.
And while some may insist that the Kung Flu is no more lethal than the regular flu, let's hear them explain why New Yawk is swamped - and getting worse, with no end in sight. Britain downgraded the Kung Flu: expect them to be buggered stallion-style.
SE New England: Went out yesterday for the weekly perishables trip. Store was hit hard but generally well stocked except for paper goods of any type (well, there was one pallet of store brand paper towels). Cleaning aisle hit hard - zero bleach.
Traffic was light but still idiots on the road. Too many NY plates for my liking.. and driving like typical NY'ers. Wondering if they were running from NYFC area.
@Anon 1001: The Chinese #'s make even less sense now. Just thinking statistically does it appear reasonable that the US (~325 million) has more cases than China (1.4 billion) when US has put at least some controls in place but the Chinese were caught cold and tried to hide the situation? This could be the case but it seems highly unlikely.
Nemo, that was 21 million not 2 million phones going dead.
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/24/21-million-chinese-cellphone-users-disappear-in-three-months-of-pandemic/
That would change the mortality rate a wee bit, donchathink?
And better match both the exponential curve, and as a percentage of population, and the anecdotal data on vans full, and cremations running round the clock, and the severity of the eventual response.
WRT cleaning supplies-- check the pool section at Lowe's/Home Depot. Mine still had two pallets of bleach, and at extra strength. Don't buy anything with added mildew/algae/bio- cide.
Also look for Mold Armor- it's a listed virucide and is widely still available.
Pool supply stores, if open, are likely to have bleach and bleach tabs, but again, be careful of additives.
nick
Forgot to mention. While in Lowes yesterday looking for a chest freezer totally sold out with few coming in missed the days shipment but the service person said FEMA now has locked up all the orders. I will keep checking and ask followups on that theory.
PS home depot had pallets of clorox bleach.
The good news is that the longer this goes the better the data become. The death rate is dropping, because we know better (not well, but better) how many people caught the bug. It's looking like the death rate is going to be below 1% for sure, and maybe below 0.5%.
The bad news is that 0.5% is going to be a lot of folks, and they're going to swamp the hospitals exactly like you've been saying for a month.
The other bad news is that the chance that The Powers That Be learn from this that they need to increase hospital capacity is nil. "It's too expensive" they'll say as they pass another $2T "stimulus" bill.
There is no mathematical way to PREDICT a mortality rate when you have no idea how many people have this or will have it in the near future.
We will only know the true mortality rate if we test everyone in the country, including all deaths by other means and that's once this thing passes.
We don't need to know the overall death rate to follow the curve of actual deaths. Only need to know how many have died and over what time span.
That trend is doubling every 2-3 days in most places, once it gets going.
Rate would help with policy decisions maybe, but the critical number is how many are actually dying, and how quickly that's increasing.
Then the only policy decision is what to do to reduce that number and rate. If we are honest about cause of death, then that is a good number and can be used as needed.
That one number alone says we're F'd as soon as the hospital system saturates, and the only question is how soon it saturates, not "if".
n
(in other words, it doesn't matter if 1% or 10% of the population get sick. We count the ones that do actually get sick enough for this to kill them, and project that number in time, and we get to a point where a whole lotta people die. After that, it's a question of what the TOTAL deaths will look like (can't predict because we don't and can't know the % that don't die), after which we can divide by population and get a rate. After the fact, or with enough statistically valid testing for antibodies, then we'll get a rate.)
Not good - now it's 26% of health care workers. Ohio/ Cuyahoga county is not near peak cases yet.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/03/26-of-cuyahoga-countys-coronavirus-cases-are-health-care-workers.html
"What happened to all the Flu Hoaxsters..."
Not quite sure what this question means?
It's almost the end of March, the JH graph shows that folks are getting this flu -- so? Does it show how many people in the 2019 - 2020 season got the other non chinese-flus? Does it show the growth rates? Death rates of the non-chinese-flu?
Wouldn't those "bubbles" be ALOT bigger?
Herr Cuomo still beating the Chinese flu drum out this way. Death rates still a rounding error. People defying the curfew -- folks milling all over the parks and open spaces today (another beautiful sunny day here). If this thing was serious, we would all know of folks that died or are in the hospital right now from it. THERE IS NOTHING HERE.
EMT trucks parked outside of the uptown/mid-town hospitals. - no activity .. The Javis Center is still a ghost town on the outside - no lines of cars, EMTs, etc. The EMT radios are quiet - you can check for yourselves by listening to almost any of them on the web.
BTW - the stores are getting back to normal here. The fruit stand guys are out and have lots of stuff on their carts, the subways are insanely packed, etc.
I'm not sure about the rest of the country -- but here in the "EPICENTER" its a snoozer
'
Gotcha.
So it's all lies, and the ICUs aren't really full there either, because you're still waiting for the DEATH RATE to be a problem, on a virus that doesn't kill more than a few percent on its worst day.
And FTR, the number of people who are guesstimated to have died this past flu season is 50K. 20K this year.
Which, over 12 months, did absolutely nothing to impact the nation's hospitals.
Thanks for being one of the clueless, and I'll leave your remarks here for people to stare at in open-mouthed astonishment.
I was at the local Market Basket (southern NH). Without an exhaustive & rigorous survey, I'd say most things are coming back. The only still-denuded aisles were pasta and TP. They had some cleaning supplies though they were still hit hard. Most everything else was getting restocked pretty well.
I don't know about the ICUs anywhere else, only in NYC. The ICUs on any given day for the average hospital in the USA is about 50 to 60 percent utilized. Average ventilator usage is about 30 during that "average occupancy time" These aren't my numbers, the are from the gubberment - I think the data was from about 5 years ago. I will find the link and post it here if it even matters - it sounds like people have made up their own minds - with or without data.
Here in NYC - the issue is not what you are hearing. I have friends that work at a downtown and mid-town hospital (they are physicians). They don't know what Cuomo is talking about. The streets aren't taming with EMT vehicles - no one knows what the heck the union leader for the city's EMT union is talking about -- I personally pass 2 hospitals on my way home -- the trucks are outside for show - they rarely move! I'm not making this up.
I'm sure old/sick/young vaping drug-heads are getting sick . But, on average, over 150 people die from disease, in hospitals, in NYC EVERY day.
I'm not quite sure what death rates you are seeing or what hospital utilization rates you are referring to right now...unless it's Cuomo, or Lightfoot or any other crook looking for us to pay for their years of healthcare infrastructure neglect...
Cellphone data is tricky.
First off, wuhan has 12m people. Considering the monkeyfuk that they had there the death rate is higher. A conservative .2% Of the infected is 600k alone, with shitty hygiene and healthcare. Clearly they are lying.
That said, of those 21M, we don’t know how many cannot pay since they cannot work. They aren’t all dead.
"They aren't all dead."
We know this...how, exactly?
And so it goes......in my small dot of California, 2 folks in my immediate community of 300 people are sick with KungFlu. Yes, in a gated community with its own private park, no stores, and maybe 8 dog walkers a day-including me. Yet, 2 people this week have been tested positive. The community center closed all activities 2 weeks ago, so it isn't the monthly potluck. No one is in the hot tub, the pool, or anywhere else. In the air? Not enough yoga? Who knows? I still say, wash your damned hands, and take your vitamins! I wish it wasn't called KungFlu/Covid19/ChinaVirus, etc. This is a respitory illness. We should have called it Drowning Syndrome. Then maybe folks would take it seriously.
"I'd put Mike Rowe in charge of it.
And instead of looking to Uncle when TSHTF, people would realize they were the solution to their own problems."
Oh Aesop, you write that is if America was still the nation it was in the 1950s -- not the one filled with immigrants who neither speak nor read English (or, for some, nor read their native language!) AND have never had any schooling beyond 4-5th grades in the own countries; with veterans dealing with physical or mental ailments that prevent them from working -- or even from choosing to not commit suicide!; with retarded and mentally damaged folks who, since the progs closed the asylums now live and shit on the streets; with drug addicts whose only goal is more drugs, and whatever it takes to get them.
Add in the huge proportion of the 'native' black population that cannot figure out how to live a civilized life in a civilized country! If you cannot even get them to finish school -- on what possible planet could you get them -- and would you TRUST them -- to handle sick folks! How many hundreds of suffocated seniors are they figuring so far, murdered by just ONE immigrant black murderer?! TRY to imagine training HIM in the details of how to save life, which naturally includes how to TAKE one?!
We no longer live in the 95% White AMERICAN (posterity) nation that could have handled -- or even thought of -- such a plan to protect the members of the "genetically related very extended family" as Steve Sailor defines "nation." We live in a fraught multiculti smash-up *country* of various *nations*' each with WHOLLY different more's and patterns, cultures, and willingness to help ONLY other members of their own nation, not the ones they're parasitizing!
{sigh} There. You've depressed and educated me, and also strengthened my sinews for what's to come. You've shoveled truth at us; and I doubt there's a pony in there! I'm returning the favor (?) by cutting out one of the necessary legs under your pipe dream of how to create -- in this wreck of a civilization? -- a healthy society (a NATION) with the desire, ability, and willingness to create what we need; what we once had!
Prepping to get through this pandemic has occurred, certainly amongst your readers and followers; now it's time to expand our prepping to how to survive the end, and then recreate our society, civilization, and nation AFTER it blows up in blood and fire.
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