So, you let your Gilligans drive the bus on dealing with Kung Flu.
How's that working out for ya?
FL ICUs are at 98% capacity statewide.
TX has exploded. So has AZ, and 17 other states.
CA gov. Gabbin' Nuisance re-closed 30+ counties yesterday, all because of the morons that think wearing a mask is the Mark Of The Beast, and washing your hands is communism.
So, just wondering, how is everyone enjoying that footlong $#!^ sandwich all y'all are eating, just like we dun tole ya would happen?
We're now going to be dealing with this until New Years' at minimum, and probably more like next Easter.
Or, you could try wearing a mask, and washing your hands.
Dealer's choice.
Suture selves.
Does a mask help? Don't know, but it sure can't hurt.
ReplyDeleteI've used so much hand soap and hand sanitizer in the last few months that when I pee, it washes the toilet.........
As an aside, here's an interesting video about the St Louis couple who defended their home from BLM activists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sBgxJ0CbYQ
Termite
Confused. These numbers show ICU beds at around 80% capacity.
ReplyDeleteWhat am I not understanding here?
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1282415497447976965
What they fail to mention is the fact that a normal ICU census is between 80 and 90%. It's called business. They also seem to not mention that there may not be a single COVID patient.
DeleteI just had someone tell me today that their aunt who is a nurse said that masks don't work so that's how they justify not wearing them, but people like me who do wear them are responsible for all these states shutting back down.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to do about Gilligan. I really don't.
~Rhea
Depends on the State, population density really. Up here we are down to 112 ICU beds out of 198 and only 884 total beds out of 1.8k, the 22 COVID and PUI that are hospitalized aren't an issue. 26 out of 320 ventilators in use across the State, none for COVID. Test positive rate is creeping up, was ~1.3% at the beginning of the month, ~1.9% on the 12th. About 1/3 of the positive tests are cannery or fishing workers coming in from out of State. Different States have different people and different situations.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I feel that Trump is the best thing that has happened to this country since 1989. I sincerely hope that he is re-elected. If not, I fear that America, as we know it, is lost. Yet, I recognize the fact that Trump is a supreme egotist and narcissist.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, his refusal to wear a mask until this week was because he believed that doing so was a concession that things were out of his control.
In the Civil War ("I," not "II,"), it was often the case that officers would routinely expose themselves to enemy fire when the enlisted men were allowed to take advantage of available cover. Doing this was intended to give a good example to the enlisted men, and to provide incentive for them to demonstrate their own bravery when it was appropriate.
For example, in the Spanish American War, when Captain Buckey O'Neill was walking along the Rough Rider line at the Battle of San Juan Hill, a sergeant begged him to get down. His famous last worlds were, "Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me." Again, famous last words.
Now, so many Trump people are still refusing to wear a mask, seeing the matter as a badge of honor that indicates their political beliefs. I will bet dollars to doughnuts that anyone you see who is walking around a store without a mask, or who is walking around a store with a mask worn below the nose, is a Trump Republican. They broadly proclaim that being required to wear a mask is an infringement on their liberty and constitutional rights. Yet, my reading of the U.S. Constitution causes me to believe that a business owner/property owner's right to determine what a customer is required to wear when entering his business trumps that customer's right not to wear a mask. Frankly, a storeowner has the right to require that anyone entering the premises wear a top hat if he wants. Only a retarded conservative would claim otherwise and, if he did, he would be a hypocrite.
Personally, since each week's new study seems to contradict the last one, I distrust every person wearing a lab coat or a set of scrubs. A great number of researchers appear to be bought off by the sponsor of the study. Factors are baked into studies and we are left to figure out where the deceit is. Fauci himself admits to lying about the effectiveness of masks because he wanted to save the masks for medical providers. ("Masks work for healthcare workers, but not for you.") Just how could my buying a mask at Lowe's affect healthcare worker access?
I will keep wearing my mask, but it will mostly be because I see no harm un doing so, even though the next study may show that it doesn't help.
Here's one more example of why I don't trust people in lab coats and scrubs: https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/07/14/fox-35-investigation-reveals-inflated-florida-covid-19-numbers/
ReplyDeleteYou will recall that in the last 10 days, the WHO announced that it was ending trials of hydroxychloroquine due to the poor results seen so far.
The very next day, the Detroit News reported, "A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday."
A longstanding problem in America is the so-called "Marcus Welby syndrome." Readers of a "certain age" will recall the TV series starring Robert Young in which he played a physician who always did the right thing and who always used sound medicine with his patients. Too many Americans place blind trust in physicians, in general, not understanding how much of medicine was an art, and not a science.
If physicians were like lawyers, one fighting for the patient's interest, and another fighting against the patient's interest, doctors would be held in about as much esteem as lawyers are now. Firemen and policemen are about the same. Here's a line in a cop series in which a cop is whining about what he has been asked to do to his supervisor: "You want to be loved? Be a fireman. You want to be a cop? Do your job."
It has become increasingly apparent during this pandemic that, either due to incompetence, systemic negligence, or financial advantage, every doctor and medical researcher is not on our side, and that venality sometimes trumps everything else.
Here in FLA, the hospitals are not full of virus patients. Instead, they're full of people who didn't get medical care over the last 3 months. A number of them will die, no doubt. Maybe we can start counting "Covid-scare Deaths"?
ReplyDeleteShutting down America had health care costs as well as financial ones, and we're seeing those costs now. Blaming these on the virus is a big miss.
My ER is full, every night. Triage tent in the parking lot is also packed to the gills. I think your estimate is spot on, as usual. Too bad only smarter folks are listening, while others are doing their best to get high spots in this year’s Darwin Awards.
ReplyDeleteStay safe, Aesop. We all benefit from your guidance.
Chris
Sweden’s open for business and doing fine. And as for me, don’t have it, don’t know anybody that has it, and none of them knows anyone that has it.
ReplyDeleteI can only speak for myself and my small corner of the country. We aren't experiencing anything near what is being reported, and we're in one of the 'five states' that the governors are screaming 'we're all going to die if you don't wear a mask.'
ReplyDeleteThe only people seemingly having a hard time are those who are in generally poor health or have pre-existing conditions and eat unhealthily and don't take enough good supplements to keep their immune systems up to snuff, like Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Vitamin D3, Zinc, Selenium, and so on.
I'm not being contrarian, but our hospitals, contrary to our governor's, "we're almost at capaicty" blatant lies, and the amount of deaths attributed to COVID19 (natural cause deaths are being attributed to COVID), and the illogical areas 'closed' (except, of course, where she has HER summer home), provide me with anecdotal evidence that things, at least here, are being over blown. We've got 10 MILLION people in our state and 6K have died attributed to COVID 19. If my calc6ulator is correct, that's a 0.0006% fatality rate. Reported infection rates are invalid as an indicator because the recovery rates are NEVER reported.
So...again, not being a dick or contrarian, it's not too awfully bad here.
Still living out in the country, where no masks are required nor needed. Things are going just fine.
ReplyDeleteI hear it's tougher in the ant farms--oops, I mean cities. Play stupid, overcrowded games, win stupid, overcrowded prizes. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
--Tennessee Budd
This is absolutely affecting the cities and burbs more than the folks in BFE in Flyover Country. In other news on the DUH! Channel, that's where 75-80% of everyone lives, and there isn't a county in the country without cases.
ReplyDeleteIf it isn't where you are this minute, be happy.
You'll still be living with the consequences of the Gilligan's jackassical denial for the rest of 2020, and beyond.
NOW tell me how it isn't affecting you, unless you live on a self-sufficient farm you never leave, with the drawbridge up, and the walls manned.
I'll wait right over here while you 'splain that one to the class.
"You can ignore Reality. But you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring Reality."- Ayn Rand
@glen, Sweden isn't "fine". They have one of the four highest fatality rates PER CAPITA. UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, France and then the US. Sweden has 549/M, the US has 420/M.*
ReplyDeleteAs for the "I don't know anyone that has it", well I do. Sibling had it. Wife's co-worker and her husband had it. Neighbor's whole family has it. My sometimes business partner has it. For everyone who says "I don't know anyone" there are other's like me who can make a list.
Have people lied? Yes. Do they have agendas? Yes. This is nothing new. Every thing that comes down the pike looks like an opportunity to some people. Sandy Hook, Christchurch, Alameda, pick your poison. The fact that people lie and use things for their own advantage doesn't mean those things didn't happen. And it doesn't mean that they won't accomplish their goals and we won't pay the price. Arguing over whether the price is right or unfair or whatever doesn't help at all once the price is in place. We've still got obamma care fer pete's sake and agencies from the original great depression going strong. In other words, we've already been buttfukced by TPTB over this thing. Nothing anyone says or does is gonna be lube enough to make that comfortable. Nothing short of a shooting war or a huge die off is going to change any of what has already happened. So making any aspect of it political is just a waste of time and energy.
@DTG, you're correct that some groups will have worse outcomes than others. This has been true and acknowledged from the beginning. What we don't know is what the long term outlook for patients with even mild symptoms might be. There is evidence that this thing will get you the second time around, or that you'll have serious complications to lungs or heart, and possibly even nervous system. I don't want to roll those dice. Who would?
Lastly, no matter what the overall numbers are, wherever people have continued to work in groups or contact lots of people without precautions, people get sick. Somewhere around 15% of the workers at any one time seems to be pretty consistent in published stories. Some places it's worse, some better. So you COULD take that as a baseline, in any definable group, that is together with minimal precautions, 15% will get sick. If that is true, doesn't it make sense to limit the number of groups getting together at any one time?
Until recently we've had slow but steady increases. People go out, they get sick. Imagine if none of the restrictions were put in place and 15% of everyone got sick at the same time? THAT'S what we've avoided so far.
As a last thought, you want to get this as late as possible. Already we have several possible treatments, and much more experience dealing with the illness. Our ability to treat the symptoms and ameliorate the effects gets better with every day and every patient treated. There is no compelling reason to go out and play with this thing. It does kill people, even younger and in reasonably good shape people. Why take the chance? Let the other guys figure out that the flame is still hot.
nick
*that's leaving off a couple of tiny places that have really skewed numbers due to their size, and consider that if you left off NY and NJ the US would drop significantly in the ranks.
The unfortunate (I fear) reality is that this will be going on for a very long time indeed.
ReplyDeletePrepare yourselves that it is likely there will be no vaccine. There's a fascinating article by the President of Merck (https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/merck-ceo-frazier-says-covid-19-vaccine-hype-a-grave-disservice-to-public) in which he deplores the hype of a vaccine and notes that that in the last 25 years there have only been 7 new vaccines developed - so the odds are precariously against any sort of thing. If something does get to market, my fear is that due to the rush to get one in place it will not have the safety profile that is typically required of all drugs and will create even more health problems.
And if there is no vaccine, my guess is we are a long ways from any sort of herd immunity or control. The economic devastation will be absolutely awful.
A country full of dumb-fucks. Ass clowns. The Chinese are laughing at us...
ReplyDeleteIn Wichita County, Texas, reported cases are so far less than 0.5% of the population, so we're still in pretty good shape. That said, I know that larger Texas cities are in much worse shape.
ReplyDeleteAesop, I'll be very grateful if you would please address the controversy over the recording of COVID-19 cases. I've seen many reports that people are classified as COVID-19 cases even if their health problem has nothing to do with COVID-19, provided they test positive or if antibodies are found in their system. For example: someone comes in with a heart attack; they are tested for COVID-19 and found positive; and they're therefore listed as a COVID-19 case rather than a cardiac one. They may have no symptoms whatsoever, and not even be running a fever, but the official COVID-19 diagnosis stands. (It's rumored that hospitals get more money from the state for COVID-19 cases than for others, hence the over-classification.) The same goes for cause of death. In Wichita County, that's been officially confirmed as the policy:
"While many across the country question how many deaths were people with coronavirus who actually died for other reasons, local health officials said all Wichita County deaths are COVID-19 related, but not everyone died as a direct result of the disease.
Health Director Lou Kreidler said the county reports them as COVID related deaths because they were infected with COVID-19 at time of death.
Kreidler said the health district does not determine the cause of death which is the attending physician’s responsibility."
(From https://www.texomashomepage.com/news/local-news/covid-death-cause-complicated/ )
I think that official obfuscation is complicating efforts to get people to take COVID-19 seriously. They believe the authorities are lying, and therefore don't trust the official figures.
Thank you again for your warnings and observations. Being in a high-risk population for COVID-19, I take them very seriously, as do a number of others I know. You've probably helped keep some of us alive.
A lab that reported only 7% new positive test cases ended up having that # changed to 76%, etc. So the question is...who cooked the FL COVID #'s? NC's #'s likely fake as well. You can bet FL Gov.DeSantis will go BALLISTIC when he finds out the big spike in positive cases in his state, for which CuomoFo & other were loudly criticizing him, was due to somebody monkeying with the numbers.
ReplyDeleteLet's say everyone wears a masque. And the masques reduce the infection rate by a measly 10%. And a million people would have been infected with Kung Flu sans masques. So with masques, 10% of a million would be exempt. That's 100,000 customers. And let's say the mortality rate is one basis point, 1‰. That's 100 customers still kickin' around. Is all those masques worth it?
ReplyDeleteLike I have stated in a previous post, we have been self quarantined since mid February, because we payed attention what was happening in Europe. If and when we go out into public, we are masked and gloved. It is difficult to be isolated as we are, not being able to associate with friends, church brothers and sisters, etc, but, it is OUR choice.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for the ones who consider this to be nothing but the flu, but, that is their choice, and they must live (or die) with the consequences.
The gene pool has needed a major input of bleach into it, and I reckon that is what is happening right now.
Stay safe and stay frosty. November is fast approaching.
1) The number of new cases means Jack and Sh*t (and are mainly a metric of widespread testing); ICU census and new hospitalizations, OTOH, are the entire point. And no, new ICU admits in FL nor anywhere else are "people who couldn't see their doctor for three months". The idea itself is recockulous. ERs were open 24/7/365, so anyone needing care could get it, just not office visits or elective procedures. ICUs are full now because of the overwhelming number of serious COVID cases, precisely because 80% of the population are medically ignorant fucktards, who've spread Kung Flu amongst the population like Typhoid Mary.
ReplyDelete2) What 1 (or 10) counties are doing in East Bumfuck isn't national policy. People are dying OF COVID, not WITH COVID, and someone with COVID who gets his brains blown out or hit by a bus is not getting spam-packed in with people dying from respiratory failure and pneumonia in an ICU with raging Kung Flu. Once again, the very idea is recockulous, and 3,000,000 health care workers aren't in on the conspiracy. Big cities, especially, are getting the literal sh*t kicked out of them, and almost exactly as I predicted/feared, the fucktards in L.A. are leading the pack to be the next NYFC.
3) Hospitals get paid by insurance companies and federal Medicare funds; if there was some soopersecret COVID slushfund paying out for every death with Kung Flu, OrangeMan, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and any one of 200,000 lesser lights would have broken the story already, with accounting ledgers and ambush video. Stop swallowing horseshit too stupid even for Alex Jones.
4) Lockdown I crushed the spread of this in the cradle, so much that for most of the country, nobody ever saw it. And yes, it also crushed the GDP and employment.
So when it was lifted, the Gilligans and the flat Earth fucktards saw their chance to pretend it never existed. Now governors (from BOTH sides of the political aisle) have had to backpedal and eat sh*t sandwiches, and start cracking down on stupid. Congrats to most of America for EARNING this smackdown.
5) Last time, folks were pissed about the lockdown and watching their businesses crushed. With Lockdown II either happening or looming in half the country, they're not going to be yelling at people without masks, they're going to get a baseball bat and start educating fucktards kinetically. But for 90% of the fucktards, they still won't listen until they either kill their own parents or grandparents, or until they need a full set of dentures due to acute loss of 17 teeth. Civilization gets a major pandemic every 100 years or so; instead of being happy this is such a mildly fatal disease (rather than, say, smallpox or Ebola), instead of paying attention, the entitled morons are ignoring reality, and group punishment, both by government, and by naked biology, are now being delivered with Darwinian inevitability.
6) The beatings will not continue until morale improves.
They will continue until group mean IQ improves.
People can take this lesson to heart; or they can bend over and take it about 2 feet lower.
The latter is going to leave a mark. As I told people over 6 months ago, "You aren't going to get what you like, and you aren't going to like what you get."
And you probably aren't even halfway to the seventh inning stretch yet.
It's not my job to make peoples' @$$#$ not sting by blowing sunshine up their skirts, but I'm happy to explain the source of their discomfort.
The pisser is the idiots driving the train are taking all of us off the cliff with them. No small number of them are Right-wing lunatards every bit as stupid as Congressmoron Evita Guevara-Castro.
You may now ROWYBS.
I saw where they are going to go ahead with the Sturgis motorcycle rally in August because they are getting 10 machines that can give 15 minute tests for Covid. I guess they plan to test everyone who shows up for the rally. If there is such a machine why doesn't every place have them? In my state you still have to wait one to two weeks for results. Is this just smoke and mirrors? Mary
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, back in reality, deaths have dropped to almost nothing.
ReplyDeleteICUs are supposed to operate at around 90% capacity. That's how the hospitals make money. This just means that people are going to the hospital again for normal things.
https://wmbriggs.com/post/31675/
Meanwhile, back in actual reality, deaths in the US are running at about 1000/day, as they have every day since June 1st. The almost 40,000 people who've died since Lockdown I ended would have a hard time reckoning more deaths than the entire first 6 years of the war in Vietnam since Memorial Day as "almost nothing".
ReplyDeletePerhaps looking up "almost nothing" in a dictionary and comparing and contrasting it with "almost 40,000" would help cure innumeracy, if not illiteracy.
The scene where Rainman thinks a candy bar costs the same as a compact car comes to mind.
@Mary,
ReplyDeleteThe machines exist.
They are not for sale on Amazon.
Methinks the organizers at Sturgis are talking out of their Fourth Point Of Contact, after huffing too much Hopeium, and banking on no one checking them on such facts.
"I will bet dollars to doughnuts"
ReplyDeleteSurvivorman,
Good bet. At our local supermarket, Deli doughnuts are $1.25 each.
Yep, that’s why I would bet!
DeleteAnyway, it’s like “that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.” The last time that happened was in the 1930s.
Here's just another example of why the "trust in those wearing lab coats" is risky: http://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2020/07/fox-35-investigates-florida-department.html
ReplyDeleteIf they botch the tests in this case, why should we trust them in other, unrelated matters? For chrissakes, am I required to get my cholesterol level checked by three clinics and take the best two out of three?
When people were comparing the number of Covid deaths to the number of seasonal flu deaths, someone pointed out that the number of flu deaths were equally suspect because no one does a serious inquiry to see how accurate those flu numbers are.
I am not dismissing Covid. I'm just pointing out that there is good reason, given the track record, for the Average Joe to look at that bantam rooster Fauci and say, "A plague o' both your houses!"
Only a brick wall and a squad of soldiers will solve many problems in this country.
"Annual flu deaths" have been SWAGuesstimated since ever.
ReplyDeleteThey're purely a work of fiction, with no pretense of accuracy nor relation to reality, and no one takes them seriously who knows any better.
They make the math behind "deaths from second-hand smoke" and the temperature entrail reading from globull warmist hoaxing look like Einstein's relativity theorems by comparison.
Some sources told us in the Spring that SARS-CoV-2 tended not to flourish where the weather is hot and humid. They said US states in latitudes, oh, 38 to 44 would continue to suffer until Summer. Well, it's been over 100 degrees in South Texas lately and cases and fatalities are still climbing. _Daily New Cases_ have been going up since about June 17th. So much for the "Heat and Humidity cure".
ReplyDeletehttps://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83
@Aesop RE your number 3) above.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the funding stream & machinations that get it to the provider, there is plenty of anecdotal information (and in my case first-hand from horse's mouths, 2 county 1 state) that there is guidance at levels of government to create what was described for purposes of information given to the public. May or may not affect which "pot o' gold" the money comes out of but the public has been reguarly getting inflated death numbers for some time. Positive test may not trump physician-assigned COD but it impacts the reporting.
Well this is interesting.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jpost.com/health-science/hebrew-u-scientist-drug-could-eradicate-covid-19-from-lungs-in-days-635028
So is this:
https://fee.org/articles/why-sweden-succeeded-in-flattening-the-curve-and-new-york-failed/
Termite
1) The weather is hot and humid in Australia, Singapore, and Ecuador, and Kung Flu flourished just fine in all those places since months ago.
ReplyDeleteSunlight kills the virus, but heat and humidity simply ring the dinner bell for it to flourish. Anyone opining otherwise is and was a raving idiot.
2) News of promising vaccines is press release crapola and propaganda.
Call me when one actually works, >90% of the time, with no major adverse effects, and a six month track record under field conditions.
Nothing exists currently, the odds are against anything ever working, and until that exist in the here and now, press releases promising something are hopeium, hokum, and horsesh*t, in equal parts.
3) Sweden didn't succeed. Last I read, their per capita death rate was horrendous. They're merely a country with a tiny population in a big space, do their absolute case rate is commensurately smaller. Well, so are the case rates in Pigknuckle and Podunk.
Why NYFC failed is because they never locked down, held a 500,000 person open-air Chinese New Year Sh*t Mardi Gras IN Chinatown, when it was loaded with recent travelers from China with the virus, they had the subways open 24/7, never disinfected them for months, and jammed COVID-positive patients into ill-capable convalescent homes, and killed swaths of the most susceptible potential patients.
When you elect Gilligan, and follow what he says, that's what happens.
This ain't rocket science.
By contrast, I've worked directly with dozens of seriously ill COVID patients for 5 months and yet don't have it, with the simple expedients of mask, gloves, a cover gown, and soap-and-water handwashing.
Almost as if Pasteur's Germ Theory from the mid 1800s was true or something.
@Badger,
ReplyDeleteI would never bet against some prople, in multiple domewheres, trying to jark with and fornicate the numbers on this for their own wicked ends; that's pure human nature.
But in a global pandemic, the net effect is equivalent to trying to turn a fully loaded supertanker moving at flank speed, with a canoe paddle.
It's stupid and pointless, and the people trying (on BOTH political sides) are idiots, but the net effect on the numbers is negligible overall.
That's not to say horsewippings should not be doled out liberally to those caught.
Ideally, with nails in the whip ends.
I am more then tired of the story that there's some secret conspiracy that means doctors get more money for diagnosing Kung Flu. From whom? The health insurance company I had coverage through honestly gave me the impression that they would prefer to not pay for any type of health care I receive, ever. I'm sure the new company will not be much better.
ReplyDeleteSome people need to stop checking their brains at the door.
~Rhea
Meanwhile, the county in which I live, population 150k, about an hour outside Chicongo, has yet to crack 30 deaths. And when it was in the low 20s back in May, the paper here reported that 17 of those were short-termers in hospice care, some expected to pass within the week of their "underlying conditions" like emphysema and lung cancer. But because they were short of breath at the time, they got reported as COVID.
ReplyDeleteLook, I get it. This might be a big deal in cities. Too many Gilligans won't take Ol' Remus' advice to avoid crowds...
Rhea,
ReplyDelete"I am more then tired of the story that there's some secret conspiracy that means doctors get more money for diagnosing Kung Flu."
Yes, everyone has heard this allegation. Yet, what is your occupation? Where do you work? What information do you have to say that doctors (or, more importantly, the hospitals) don't get more money in connection with COVID deaths? As with so many opinions floating around the internet, why should I pay attention to you unless you have the proper qualifications?
Survivorman,
ReplyDeleteYou're not getting that information. And honestly, given your allegations above, it's a pretty bold thing to say. By what metric should your opinion matter? Do you have proper qualifications?
What I will say is I am presently dispute in with my insurance over a treatment. In light of the trivial reason they said they would not cover it, they will not be handing out a bundle of money to any medical professional who diagnosis me with Kung Flu.
Our esteemed host noted that Medicare does pay more for a Kung Flu diagnosis where formerly they only paid hospitals a pittance for any treatment. Not all insurance. Just Medicare.
But just like with Pizzagate, in spite of a lack of solid evidence, I still endure people who tell me that there's a nationwide conspiracy to diagnose Kung Flu for the sake of getting more money for doctors. Still waiting for actual proof on that front.
~Rhea
Rhea,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "I am more then (sic) tired of the story that there's some secret conspiracy that means doctors get more money for diagnosing Kung Flu." You conceded in your response to me that Aesop had already said that Medicare paid more for Covid patients. Yet you call it a "secret conspiracy" for some to believe this?
In any event, I never said one way or the other whether I believed that doctors received more money. I was simply questioning your assertion that they didn't, given that you never revealed any foundation for that opinion. Do you handle some particulars hospital's billings? Do you handle accounts receivable for a medical facility? Do you work for Medicare? Do you work for a health insurance company?
You then wrote, "The health insurance company I had coverage through honestly gave me the impression that they would prefer to not pay for any type of health care I receive, ever. I'm sure the new company will not be much better." Insurance companies always prefer not to have any bills for treatment presented to them. Collect premiums and hope that no claims are filed is the optimum result for any type of insurance company. What company of any type wants bills to pay, regardless of which business they are in?
You ask me, "By what metric should your opinion matter? Do you have proper qualifications?" I have NO qualifications in the matter, but I was not the one who offered an opinion about the "secret conspiracy" or lack of it. I was simply asking if YOU had any facts to support your opinion that doctors don't receive more money for treating Covid cases. Obviously, you don't or you would have cited them in your response.
One of my clients is a senior guy with a regional health system in Houston metro. He says he wants all the wuflu patients OUT of his hospitals. They get paid more for the covid, but it still isn't enough to cover their care.
ReplyDeleteIf you are hospitalized with covid you need a lot of expensive intervention.
He says they lose money on every covid patient, and he needs them gone to get back to doing profitable procedures.
Take it or leave it, I only share what he told me. I've known the guy and been in his house, and met his kids and grandbabies over the last 10 years. For him, in his system, as of two weeks ago, they were handling it fine, and desperately wanted to go back to normal- so they could start making money again.
n
Let's be clear: I said private insurance and Medicare are the only ones who pay far ANYTHING. For reference, Medicare typically reimburses 2-3 cents on the dollar for all care delivered, take it or leave it. (Now see if you can guess why most doctors aren't accepting new Medicare patients any eight days of the week.) That's also part of why, if you're insured, your Tylenol got billed at $40@. ( The rest is uninsured deadbeats, homeless winos and addicts, and illegal aliens, along with covering the cost of pharmacists, phramacy techs, inventory, refrigerators, air conditioning, etc., which are reimbursed in no other way by socialized BigGov Medicine...genius, right there.)
ReplyDeleteThe idea the anyone anywhere is cooking COVID diagnoses because they're getting kickbacks from some soopersecret black helicopter conspiracy slush fund remains simply recockulous.
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "The idea the anyone anywhere is cooking COVID diagnoses because they're getting kickbacks from some soopersecret black helicopter conspiracy slush fund remains simply recockulous."
I reviewed the reader comments again. Who suggested that notion? Why did you take the discussion there?
Aesop,
ReplyDeleteA little background:
On either January 24 or 26, I sent an email to dozens of people, suggesting that they purchase N95 masks while they were still available. I even ordered more gas masks to hand out because I believed that what I saw happening on TV in China was merely the precursor of what would happen in the US, and that the fatalities would be every bit as extensive here as some "experts" said it would be. (You will recall predictions of 10 million dead by some.) Except on two occasions at restaurants who practiced social distancing, I have never gone into a business since late February without wearing an N95 masks.
By now, however, I have WuFlu fatigue. One so-called expert conflicts the next one. One research study contradicts the next one. I am coming to the determination that way, way too many who wear a lab coat are, to use your expression, a "fucktard." If anyone ever thought that the practice of medicine was a "science," the past six months seems to drive home the point to the Average Joe that it truly is simply an "art." (Be of good cheer, at least no one has proposed the we begin bleeding Covid patients--so far.)
Take a look at this: https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/07/voortrekker-sends-why-face-masks-dont-work-according-to-science/ I don't believe this fellow has any medical credentials, but he is quoting what appear to be legitimate studies into the efficacy of masks.
For now, I will continue to wear my mask, but a great many people are getting sick and tired of people like Fauci who appears to be too damned narcissistic and vain to admit that he has no clue about the situation. He offers advice, and then reverses direction 180 degrees. He would have more credibility with the public if he simply said, "Your guess is as good as mine."
And as for the WHO, that organization doesn't appear to be operating in the same universe that we are. It has become the punchline of jokes.
FYI, I found this: https://www.foxnews.com/health/hospitals-medicare-patients-cost-coronavirus
ReplyDelete"We report. You decide."
Survivorman,
ReplyDeleteYou will not be getting an explanation from me. We're discussing this because you saw a comment someone made that you didn't agree with and we were off to the races. As for your opinion, you said above that too many people are too trusting of doctors. You got proof of that? Because that is just your opinion.
See how this goes?
It is not my job to prove or disprove the crackpot allegations made by people who don't believe Kung Flu is real. When I point out to people things like hospitals being full of Kung Flu patients, some nearby moron assures me that that's because hospitals get more money for Kung Flu patients.
Because things like insurance fraud charges and Medicare fraud charges don't exist. There's a nationwide conspiracy going on with doctors sitting in their offices and scheming how to make every diagnosis into a Kung Flu diagnosis so they can have more money.
Makes perfect sense.
~Rhea
The suggestion that Kung Flu numbers are cooked because of financial incentives has been bandied about by the Internet Gilligans since nearly the outset. Months later you've still got jackholes all over spouting it like it's a proven fact, instead of black helicopter fucktardery.
ReplyDeleteToday Limbaugh quoted WOFL for uncovering that 1 - ONE - whole motorcycle death was added to FL's COVID deaths. (Great, Rush; so what about the OTHER 900 or so deaths yesterday? And the day before that? And the day before that? Crickets chirping...).
People (on BOTH political sides) are monkeying with the numbers for political ends. All they've accomplished is to destroy the credibility of everyone and every fact with everyone, just as with you.
Now you've got idiots in lab coats telling people to re-open schools because
a) kids don't get it (horseshit)
b) kids don't get that sick from it (generally true)
c) kids don't pass it to other (MEGA horseshit).
Kids are the biggest vectors in any and EVERY pandemic, because they're little pigs, touch everything, everyone, cough and sneeze without covering anything, and stick their fingers up their nose, in their mouths, wipe their noses with their hands, pick their asses, then go back to touching everyone and everything else, 2000 times a day. Thee idea that they don't pass on a virus that's twice as transmissible as influenza has more undisguised bullshit in it than the Chicago Stockyards, yet grinning idiots on show after show burp out that whopper reflexively because some idiot in Eurostan with a lab coat and a middling 80 IQ farted it out one end or the other, so "it must be true". And because it advances somebody's political agenda; never mind that it's so prima facie ridiculous only a child would buy it.
The level of actual common sense loose in modern society is so low they could put it on the Endangered Species List.
I'm far more tired of that "new normal" than I am of Kung Flu, and I was over the whole Kung Flu nonsense by March.
BTW, in case after case, the Fatality Rate continues to run at right around 3%, just as we guesstimated based on average coronavirus mortality at the outset.
ReplyDelete3% of 330M is...? Anyone? Beuller?
That would require 100% societal penetration though.
Despite earlier bogus "studies" with flaws big enough to drive a pandemic through, my suspicion, when we hit 100,000 deaths, was that this thing had probably only penetrated a miniscule fraction of society. NOT the farcical 25% being touted by the lab coat "It's just the flu, bro" Gilligans.
With widespread drive-through testing happening in SoCal, the current rate of positives is 10% (bearing in mind most of the people going for testing are either symptomatic, or have been exposed to those who are), so even that 10% is a function of sick/exposed people, and driven higher accordingly. AND that's within the mosr highly populated megapolis in the country, running nearly 200 miles from Ventura to the Mexican Border and inland halfway to Las Vegas and the Colorado River, and comprising more than 10% of the population of the entire USA in one giant suburban sprawl. IOW, the numbers and percentage of people exposed for any 20-30 STATES will be dramatically lower than 10% exposure.
So our current 140K dead? This could easily go to 10-20X that toll, depending on how widespread it gets, whether infection confers immunity (L.A. has already documented people on their second infection), and if - if EVER - any effective vaccine is developed.
All exponential growth insures is that deaths will increase over time, so that with the current blossom, in 14-28 days, we should be climbing right back to the hellish period of 2K deaths/day, unless time, mutation, and viral load starts mitigating the virulence ans severity of this bug.
So cheer up: we're going to be playing COVID games all year, and maybe far longer.
These may BE "the good old days".
Keep stocking water, food, ammo, and money.
Kung Flu, like Col. Frank Slade in Scent Of A Woman, is "just getting warmed up!"
I believe, as part of LA's 'backyard'; part of the rise is Clark County/Las Vegas area; is due to the weekly inflow and outflow of Angeleños... perhaps not, but weekend traffic on the 15 doesn't seem to have let up much.
Delete
ReplyDeleteRhea,
As I said, "In any event, I never said one way or the other whether I believed that doctors received more money. [Of course, the Fox News link I posted said hospitals did, but what do I know?] I was simply questioning your assertion that they didn't, given that you never revealed any foundation for that opinion. Do you handle some particulars hospital's billings? Do you handle accounts receivable for a medical facility? Do you work for Medicare? Do you work for a health insurance company?"
You wrote, "You will not be getting an explanation from me." So you have taken your sword and shield and left the discussion? May you have "fair winds and following seas."
PSA:
ReplyDeleteFYI, no further comments to this post will be posted.
You may instead continue on at the next post, as you feel the need, but anything coming here will linger in Spam-purgatory forever, and never be seen by mortal man.
I live in San Antonio. Our county (Bexar) got caught over reporting cases....by the thousands. I don't know a single person who has gotten seriously sick from Covid. I do know someone who said it was the same as having a cold...but not as bad. I travel all over the state......it's the same everywhere I go. We've had our share of elderly die......but nothing we couldn't have handled by properly screening staff at nursing homes and hospitals. A lot of hype over nothing from where I'm sitting.
ReplyDeleteSurvivorMan wrote: "my reading of the U.S. Constitution causes me to believe that a business owner/property owner's right to determine what a customer is required to wear when entering his business"
ReplyDeleteSo, you think that Constitution still holds? BAKE THE CAKE, bakerman! Deny earned entry into college or a job, so "some other American (or non-American)" can have the spot that was rightfully yours, NOT on merit -- or ... oh... here's some old-timey talk: because FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION!
If the STOREOWNER wanted to lay requirements on his store -- that's literally his business. When the govt threatens to CLOSE HIS business DOWN and possibly jail him if HE doesn't act as an enforcer for the govt's NON-Constitutional 'mandates' -- then, no he does NOT have the "right" to tell me what to wear!
But, you go ahead and BTFO and give up your rights the instant the govt tells you to. Me? Not-so-much! The govt lies, and lies some more. Even the CDC has snuck out and mentioned, uh,. well, yeah... mostly folks died IF they have multiple comorbidities...
And no, I'm not saying "kill granny." FFS, I AM GRANNY! I'm mid-60s and have at least 3 comorbs; and the mask-shit is just that! "We" are destroying this country with methods and demands that don't work WELL ENOUGH to be worth destroying the country for! Cost-benefit analyses never seem to take into account the COST if we don't do what something that will bring some benefit.
Sorry Aesop; I know you're front-line and all, struggling to save lives.... but life is a sexually transmitted terminal illness. Old folks die. More old folks die in a bad flu year than die in a less-bad flu year. But ALL old folks die. (And, it looks like a helluva a lot died from venting -- NOT from covid.)
And funny, isn't it -- that the "bad flu year" we were undergoing DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY once COVID showed up. NOT ONE PERSON has died of "flu" since then. But lots of folks WITHOUT covid have died "of covid" ...
Continuing to destroy this county pretending it will save lives because the govt lies and lies some more and all the numbers are fake and manipulated ... wearing a mask IS submitting -- and I'd rather die!