60 Minutes from a week ago ran a story on a young woman who just graduated with some bio-tech degree, first in her family to go to college, trying to hold her Staten Island family together while her father is in the hospital. Her sister and Mom both need in-home dialysis.
Edit: looks like they’re putting stories online now:
The day after their interview the dad died so they did a follow up over skype. Absolutely heart-breaking. They couldn’t be there with him. They just had to wait for phone calls from the hospital. She got to see him in the hospital after he died. She said the nurses and doctors were all crying.
The dad was 50 and kind of overweight but not terribly.
Two things about the “it’s mostly olds who are dying anyways” angle:
There is a common metric, QALY or quality adjusted life years, which I believe has been highly standardized for population mortality analysis. If we had more aggregate data on the deceased readily available, these calculations are not difficult to perform; like, it’s something that can be done with a lot more authority than a number of guesswork calcs done by the likes of the National Review, but I’ve yet to see any.
If there are ongoing complications as a result of COVID-19 in younger people, such as Nick Cordero having his leg amputated or permanent lung damage among younger people, this will have a large (bad) impact on QALY losses due to COVID-19. Potentially a larger factor than the actual mortality from the disease.
I’m going to be a nitty pedant and point out that most of the people who work in assisted living facilities aren’t nurses. They also get paid terribly.
Even in an actual nursing home the majority of the people providing care will be at best LPN’s. Typically there’s one actual RN per shift, possibly covering multiple wards.
I don’t think this is right. Young people mean cheaper, more flexible labour and net contributors to the government’s coffers. Old people are the opposite and, political considerations aside, are expendable as they’re a huge drain on pensions and health resources that could otherwise be spent buying votes with tax cuts.
Yup, and in the US this means the people caring for olds are disproportionately transit-dependent people from larger than typical households with other family members who must work and who live in denser, more confined areas than single family houses.
My wife is a supervisor at an assisted living facility. We’re doing a LOT less to quarantine than the rest of you as a direct result. We know we’re getting it sooner or later (probably sooner) because getting takeout or starbucks is like 1/1000 as risky as her going to work literally any given shift. None of her coworkers can afford to do social distancing in any way shape or form. Kids are staying with random family members, buses are being ridden, and life is proceeding pretty much as normal in the world of extremely poor healthcare workers who work with the elderly.
The only good news really is that the families can’t come in any more. If we added a bunch of them to the mix it would come even faster.
I definitely agree, and I don’t think that “uncounting” is appropriate either. I just can’t tell if I’m just an ageist asshole that deep down in my black soul simply doesn’t care as much about a 90 year old in a nursing home who was about to croak for any number of reasons dying as a “healthy 40 year old” or whatever that even means.
Continuing my data series from Cuomo’s press conferences
Daily hospital and nursing home deaths in New York State since peak
April 8: 799
April 9: 777
April 10: 783
April 11: 758
April 12: 671
April 13: 778
April 14: 758
April 15: 606
April 16: 630
April 17: 540
April 18: 507
April 19: 478
April 20: 481
April 21: 474
April 22: 438
Is there any point to buying one of these vs. a regular thermometer? I keep getting online ads for one. Unless you’re screening lots of people, it seems pointless.
I think we’re on the same page. As @TheNewT50 mentioned, we’re basically trying to get at the loss in QALY due to the virus. I have no problem with that approach - I think it’s a good one. I’m just concerned that it’s going to be weaponized by people who want to downplay the severity of this by downwardly-adjusting the COVID numbers because they’re skewed toward the elderly, without doing the same thing to the other causes of death that they’re comparing to.
21.2% positive is .56% IFR for confirmed deaths only, .84% for confirmed + the big block of presumptive they have.
Obviously more are infected now than people who have antibodies. But deaths also lag. So it seems plausible that the lag of both cancel each other out - at least somewhat.
Looks like NYC could be at 25% or maybe 30%? when the first wave is over.
Yep, agreed. We were already hearing plenty of “I can’t get this!” from the dummy Spring Breakers. But I can’t help but admit I feel myself getting a bit more lax about things as a healthyish 40-something in a not-decimated part of NY seeing Cuomo’s daily numbers trending downward, so I’m sure this sentiment is going to only ramp up in those that aren’t the slightest bit introspective. Still not planning on licking stuff in the grocery store for a while though.
That NY study is probably a slight overestimate for all the reasons stated but that seems like mixed news to me (probably lean slightly good). On one hand if 10% or so have had it they are well on their way to herd immunity and at probably 15-20% in nyc they are even farther. On the other hand 1.3% of the entire state has actually tested positive. So getting a 10-15% antibody test is not that surprising considering.
Also if you say they are 1/5 of the way to herd immunity that means there will be roughly 100k dead just in New York barring something else happening.
