SARS-CoV-2: Electric Superflu

This covers a recent New England Journal of Medicine article on medical ethics related to dealing with the corona virus.

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https://medium.com/@CynicalXennial/unmasking-the-truth-cdc-and-hospital-administrators-are-endangering-us-all-b601012f81be

My friend in KC who’s a hospital nurse, running a fever, quarantined from her son, just posted this.

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Your friend in KC who’s a hospital nurse, running a fever, quarantined from her son, and just posted this is a fucking moron.

FWIW, the German government has been recommending all tourists to come home globally. That notice mostly says that military planes that are being used to bring people home will focus on countries where no commercial flights are available & that there are still commercial flights from New York and other places.

[quote=“suzzer99, post:6588, topic:1265, full:true”]Let’s say my totally unsubstantiated guess of 3-5x a bad flu season for 18 months is in the ballpark. So we’ll do 4x = 240k dead over 4 months. But for 18 months = about 1.1M dead in the US.
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People will flame me here, but my scorching hot take is that maybe we all need to take the regular flu more seriously from here on out. It’s like, when 60,000 people die of the flu, we barely notice because that’s part of the plan, but if 3x that die from COVID-19, we act like the world is ending.

What I’m saying here is that some of the skills we’re only now learning about hand washing and sick leave and not showing up to work when you’re sick and facemasks and shit are basic, commonsense ideas that need to be a constant part of our culture even when we don’t have zoonotic respiratory diseases floating around?

Look, I’m pretty good about taking sick leave when I need to, but I’ve definitely been in a spot where I felt I had to shownup to work when I was contagious like a trooper, that shit actually kills people’s grandparents even where there isn’t a novel virus floating around. Imagine if we’d practiced basic sanitation last year, how many people could have enjoyed a few more years. We should all be doing the facemask thing as a matter of course even during a regular flu season. How come Japan and SK are the only nations to figure that shit out?

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So out walking the dog earlier today and I don’t live on a busy block traffic wise. So all of a sudden when I get an intersection there is a fucking parade of cars honking their horns, and with a police escort. Like every car is waving out their windows shouting hi and waving miss you signs.

So eventually figure out this was a group of teachers from the local Elementary school. At the next corner there were some kids holding signs back to the teachers.

It was actually a pretty cool surreal little experience.

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The flu has a vaccine that millions take. That’s why it’s different. COVID-19 has the potential to kill tens of millions. Once a vaccine is developed, it will be taken as seriously as the flu.

I look at it as 2 different numbers.

Flu-Max 100K dead or whatever.
COVID-19- Max 100M dead.

Like, we can pass the Flu numbers in 2-3 weeks. And that’s with social distancing and taking precautions. We don’t do that w/ the flu. It’s 2 different things and needs to be treated as 2 different things.

What are you talking about? The article is about how front line healthcare workers don’t have enough PPE.

Yea sorry about that. The headline makes it sound like it’s a completely different story. Sorry.

Headline seems kinda clear to me. Maybe next time try confirming the article is what you think it is before calling my friend whose life might be in danger a moron.

I know we’re all tense right now. No harm.

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Don’t celebrate yet, there’s talk that Republicans are trying to make sure to cut them in on the next round of stimulus.

https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1243393843573055488

https://twitter.com/voxpopulx/status/1243394201791807493

Apparently this is from the Henry Ford health system. Michigan rocketing up the charts of could be fucked soon.

Can you elaborate on why?

Ask your pony

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From my nurse friend in MO:

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Just keep voting in those Republican governors America. Pain is a resource.

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damn man sorry that sounds fucking awful

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The federal government is not coming to save us. Let me repeat that for people. The federal government is not coming to save you.

Disaster response pretty much falls under the executive branch. Congress can give them money, but the executive branch handles it. Trump is in charge, ultimately. So he’s doing what he always does: bullshitting about how great he is while doing the minimal amount to make it look that way on TV.

Hospital ships look great, they’re fun to talk about, low-info people eat that shit up. “Holy shit! They’re bringing a navy hospital ship in! That’s awesome!” But in reality it does like jack shit. Then he talks about sending thousands of X, millions of Y, spending billions on Z, and the numbers grow every day, but that’s mostly bullshit, just like every other number he’s ever told us. Inauguration crowd, electoral college win, etc, etc.

We’re basically banking on the private sector. Dems in Congress should try to pass a bill sending response money directly to states so that they can use it as they see fit, and fixing prices on emergency and medical equipment relate to COVID-19. You get X for a respirator, Y for an N95 mask, etc. Stop the price gouging, give states money, and cut this administration out of the loop.

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I mean after reading that Medium article and realizing most hospital systems are reaching their breaking point when we are nowhere near the peak of this reality is really sinking in for me tonight.

My wife is an ICU nurse who has avoided this only because her surgery was much more major than originally expected. She has between 2-4 more weeks where she can credibly stay away. To say I am horrified and terrified would be an understatement.

And then there is the other part of this which is I am increasingly convinced we are about to lose hundreds of thousands of lives in this country and many of them will have been preventable. And I have had this sick cognitive dissonance with this whole thing. Like Trump fucking this up is the ultimate vindication of how dumb the Trumpkin class is. But I don’t actually want to face the consequences.

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Yeah but at least we’re not a shithole country, am I right?

Narrator: He was decidedly not right.

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Ugh I knew my friend worked in St. Joseph’s hospital in KC, but I didn’t realize she works for a family practice in the hospital facility.