Coronavirus Impact III

I dont want to speak too soon, but it's possible that the US is coming down from its recent peak:

Screenshot_20210118-092348_Chrome.jpg

(At least until the new variants have their say.) In the chart, you can see a dip in reporting coinciding with Thanksgiving and christmas followed by steep rises. I dont think theres any reason why numbers would dip now, though. My guess is that the bump from xmas/nye has passed and now that people are holed up for winter, transmission may reduce.

I saw an article recently that NY has just dipped back below 6% test positivity after going above it in December. The doctor they quoted attributed it to passing the holiday surge and said that positivity rate is an early indicator that will precede what happens with hospitalizations and deaths.
 
Yikes: "18 family members get COVID-19 after holiday gathering in Pennsylvania"
https://nypost.com/2021/01/19/18-family-members-get-covid-19-after-holiday-gathering/amp/

Patients age from 1 to 62. 2 of them are in the hospital and will need oxygen when they come home. Crazy.

And here's a scary graph:

Screenshot_20210120-020807_Chrome.jpg

Over 400,000 people have died from the coronavirus in the U.S. as of Tuesday, per Johns Hopkins data.

Why it matters: It only took a little over a month for the U.S. to reach this mass casualty after 300,000 COVID deaths were reported last month. That's over 100,000 fatalities in 36 days.

What they're saying: “One in every 820 people in our country have died during this pandemic — often alone, typically away from family and friends — comforted only by physicians and nurses in layers of PPE," the American Medical Association said in a statement.
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https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-deaths-2029a1c8-1e2f-42f0-bf49-b6c0c5dd1ff8.html
 
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lambert said:
Guess I shared to much.
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Now that I can relate too haha. (I hesitate to even post this. Just joking. Gawd, everyone has to watch everything they say these days. :)
//self observation: "Wow. Aint my spelling getting gud?"

//Even the local newspapers are seemingly accepting improper spelling as 'good enough' these days. Thanks to 'Auto-Correct' which is always wrong.
 
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I know. Just kidding around. Gawd forbid. hahaha. Carry on. :) I know! I know! I know!. :)
 
Gord.T said:
Now that I can relate too haha. (I hesitate to even post this. Just joking. Gawd, everyone has to watch everything they say these days. :)
//self observation: "Wow. Aint my spelling getting gud?"

//Even the local newspapers are seemingly accepting improper spelling as 'good enough' these days. Thanks to 'Auto-Correct' which is always wrong.
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This ties in with the “You do You” culture being discussed in that thread.
 
Yeah that irks me. One of the things I appreciate about the NYT is how good their copy editing is. Even the Guardian will have copy errors now and then.
 
mcgeedigital said:
The reason the flu deaths are "down" is because hospitals don't get extra money for reporting flu deaths. Unlike covid.
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Thanks for sharing this speculation, I am curious to learn more.

I understand hospitals receive more money for COVID, and for good reason - it is novel and expensive to treat, so this seems perfectly reasonable. However, is there any empirical evidence of mass fraud here? Or only anecdotal evidence? I've seen things that indicate that - due to human error, or sometimes financially motivated intentional fraud - we may have some level of error rate here on deaths/case reporting - but it may be closer to 1%. Maybe 5% at most. Beyond conjecture, is there anything to indicate the error rate would be higher than 1%-5%? As I mentioned, given how high cases/deaths are, even if COVID data reporting on cases/deaths was somehow misreported and overestimated by an unprecedented factor of 2x (100%), it wouldn't alleviate concerns. And of course, any data and concern here in the USA must be held in light of international data and dynamics, which is currently indicating similar trends with COVID's transmutability, death rate, and toll on health systems.

Second, this seems like a non-sequitur - but perhaps I am misunderstanding. Even if one were for a moment to assume mass COVID fraud, why would this encourage a hospital not to report Flu cases and Flu deaths? Is the speculation that en masse, hospitals across the nation/world are reporting Flu cases/deaths as COVID instead? If so, is there any evidence of this happening at scale?
 
I read that the same thing happened during the SARS epidemic of 2003. In China and Japan, seasonal flu cases plummeted because flu transmission was defeated by the same measures they took to stop SARS. (And other infectious diseases diminished as well.)
 
filmguy123 said:
Second, this seems like a non-sequitur - but perhaps I am misunderstanding. Even if one were for a moment to assume mass COVID fraud, why would this encourage a hospital not to report Flu cases and Flu deaths? Is the speculation that en masse, hospitals across the nation/world are reporting Flu cases/deaths as COVID instead? If so, is there any evidence of this happening at scale?
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It's not the case in places like Australia where the flu rates are down AND these money questions don't factor because the health care system isn't run for profit in the same way it is in the US.

JB
 
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It may or may not be nonsense here in the US. It is true that reporting a death as a covid death gets the care entity a reimbursement from the Feds. Last August I had a feeling the flu might be way down because (despite the news) most folks are in fact wearing masks and this is good for curtailing flu and other respiratory viruses besides covid. I even made a comment to a friend who was worried about getting the flu, that the flu may not appear at all (it has, but just barely in our area (central MD, USA). But I also have three direct contacts in medicine who have been warned not to discuss the way deaths (due to covid or dying with covid from something else) are reported. There have also been a number of similar reports on various media (how widespread, I certainly do not know). Why the relief bill last March gave money for covid deaths, I don't know, but in the true American spirit, I fear many are trying to capitalize on it and may be "fudging" the death numbers for profit. Not saying the numbers would be that much different - don't have an opinion on that yet, but the facts are what they are and part of the reason discussion on this topic can get so weird. Nothing is easy - I just hope the vaccine works!

B
 
say_doyster said:
Last August I had a feeling the flu might be way down because (despite the news) most folks are in fact wearing masks and this is good for curtailing flu and other respiratory viruses besides covid.
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It is down, and from even earlier than August and its the same almost everywhere in the world, most of which has a very different medical system.

say_doyster said:
Not saying the numbers would be that much different - don't have an opinion on that yet, but the facts are what they are
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Which facts...?

JB
 
IMO, the flu went away when the handshake went away. No conspiracy theories or deep thinking necessary; people touch their faces, other people touch their hands, those people touch their faces, and voila - flu. No touching hands = no flu transmission. People washing their hands more frequently = no flu transmission. Sure, you'll get the random/rare sneeze situation, but masks have put the brakes on that. So other than that, the flu is history.
 
John Brawley said:
It is down, and from even earlier than August and its the same almost everywhere in the world, most of which has a very different medical system.



Which facts...?

JB
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That the US government pays additional money to the entity providing care an amount substantially more than if they did not die from covid.
 
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