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Very droll Wraith ...
Covid-19 has some strange side-effects; yesterday I got people who signed an agreement to lease a vacant apartment before even seeing the place. In normal times the apartment is in a wanted location and it is heavily discounted, but to rent it without seeing it at all; that was a new one for me.
Speaking of rentals: my friend moved to a new place because their house is planned to be demolished in a few months. Since it wasn't going to be occupied after them they didn't bother so much with the state of the place (just empty), and put the laminate flooring on Ebay for anyone to break it out and take it. Then literally two hours after the floor was out they were contacted if they could leave it in, because the house is going to be used to house a couple who were on a long round-the-world trip but had to stop and no place to stay. Unfortunate timing for them, now they're in a house that doesn't even have flooring..
Meanwhile I can't find a roommate at all. Everyone balks when I request their current landlord as a reference.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
Rent here is $600-700 for a 2-bedroom. Just saying. :o
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Originally Posted by RandBlade
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Originally Posted by Timbuk2
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Originally Posted by Flixy
See my numerous posts about how little work I've had for the past couple of months—only partly due to extreme luck wrt scheduling. The first two weeks after mobilization in response to the Sthlm outbreak, we saw an sharp reduction in the number of neuro patients in the ER, and a reduction of like 30% for the ER as a whole. Acute care has begun to return more or less to normal, but the elective side of things is very different—almost all of our patients are in risk groups, so we've switched over almost completely to phone & video, and are relying more on primary care centers to help us with investigations. This has freed up a lot of personnel, so we're all just puttering about, on standby, while following up patients, reading, doing research, catching up on paperwork etc. Some of our most commonly used investigations have been postponed or cancelled on many occasions. From an intellectual perspective, this is a stimulating state of affairs, because it increases the importance of clinical skills & judgement. There's a value proposition for patients as well—apart from lower risk of infection and death, they are also spared many mostly unnecessary visits and investigations (we have a lot of those b/c of a tendency to rigidly adhere to routines designed to facilitate research and of course monitor quality of care—both of which are somewhat more beneficial to doctors & admin than for individual patients). So, all in all, here in the frozen north, things are still quite peaceful—for me, at least. The major difference is that everything I do requires more consideration and more effort—the former being pretty fun, and the latter just being incredibly wearisome (putting on and removing PPE over and over again, having to be much more aware of every action b/c of risk of contamination, etc).Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
My friends in the Sthlm region and in adjacent counties are working their asses off though, largely because most of them work in specialties that are directly affected by covid. In several counties, they've activated crisis deals or some sort of equivalent, leading to more work (often on short notice) but ofc. with increased pay and/or comp time. A couple of hospitals have been hit especially hard, necessitating transfers between ICUs, which is rarely ideal. ICU utilization is many, many times higher than it usually is, and it's been difficult to ensure adequate staffing even with support from staff freed up from adjacent specialties. ECMO resources have been pretty heavily taxed.
Wrt reduction in patients in ER, I know that my friends in other countries in particular have noticed an increase in patients who have delayed seeking care, and I'm certain Sweden has been similar in this respect (albeit perhaps a little less so than in eg. NYC). Common examples are patients with eg. appendicitis who've waited so long that they've had a significantly elevated risk of complications, patients with heart attacks or strokes who have waited (or who haven't been noticed by their usual caregivers), etc. I think we're going to miss many more pulmonary embolisms than usual, and see more patients suffer larger heart-attacks than they would've otherwise. Flixy's point re. delayed cancer diagnosis is also important. Officially, very little has changed wrt routines for cancer diagnoses, but obv. there will be delays due to changed behavior; difficult to say what the real-world impact of this will be. I'm more concerned about the impact on heart attacks tbh. Our ambulance services have mostly remained functional and I believe the effect wrt. stroke patients has been minimal (anecdotally confirmed—I've seen about as many stroke patients per shift as I usually do). There's been a massive reduction in trauma patients, presumably because people aren't out driving as much as they usually do. This is notable because my hospital gets neurotrauma patients from a very large area covering like half of Sweden, in which almost no cities/communities have had major outbreaks. People are staying put.
The greatest reduction—for my clinic—has been among those patients who are typically referred to the ER from primary care clinics. Patients who would otherwise have ended up in the ER for prompt (often overzealous) evaluation now have an easier time just staying at home and getting better on their own. An illustrative example is the reduction in the number of patients who are referred for headaches. If you have a headache, and you have to work, you want it evaluated and treated asap; if you don't have to go in to work, you can wait it out. My colleagues in pediatrics have seen a similar trend wrt their ER patients—new parents feel much more motivated to stay home and see how things go (obv. with easy access to guidance by phone). This pandemic has forced us to implement a form of watchful waiting on a very broad scale.
An important observation made by several commentators is that many western govts went all in on drastically increasing surge capacity in their healthcare systems (freeing up ventilators, opening up field hospitals, etc) when it's becoming increasingly clear that going all in on the distinctly medieval strategy of quarantine might've been much more effective. Almost all countries in the west immediately accepted a "virus wins, we lose" framing—and so the virus won on walkover.
Difficult to draw this conclusion due to unreliability of official case & mortality stats, but, even if that weren't the case, it's hard to argue that the date itself signifies anything special.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Other people will die :) especially black people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
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Originally Posted by RandBlade
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Originally Posted by Wraith
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Originally Posted by Loki
There are several putative explanations, but it's difficult to regard any of them as compelling until you have reliable clinical studies showing a significant disparity that persists even after adjusting for clinical characteristics. Before trying to determine which explanation is right, we have to determine whether there is something to explain! But I believe, even if you adjust for important clinical characteristics, there will be differences wrt risk of infection (which can no doubt be partly attributed to socioeconomic factors) as well as the risk of becoming severely ill, both from the infection itself as well as from medical problems secondary to the infection (notably exaggerated immune response and excessive clotting, both of which appear to major determinants of risk of death). We're still learning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
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Originally Posted by Steely Glint
This is a summary of the Swedish debate:Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
Critics: "We need to impose a strict lockdown starting two months ago, to save lives."
Literally every Tom, Dick and Harry: "Oh yeah? Well have you considered the lives that would be lost due to the economic crisis brought on by a lockdown??!"
It's the most obvious objection to a lockdown, and the dominant discourses in the public debate all implicitly frame the dilemma as being a choice between a) Reducing number of lives lost to covid, but tanking the economy, or b) saving the economy, but losing more lives—sooner—to covid. Of course, in reality, all scenarios come with a large helping of economic devastation. As Flixy points out, an out-of-control pandemic is not great for the economy. How do the numbers work out? We have little real-world evidence to work with, but a couple of analyses of the 1918 pandemic found that US cities that swiftly imposed strict suppression measures saw better outcomes both wrt lives saved as well as wrt economic recovery. Obviously there are caveats, and obviously the global economy looks different now than it did in 1918, but that's the most directly applicable real-world evidence we have. We can mitigate the harmful impact of an economic crisis exacerbated (if that's really how it plays out) by suppression measures; for example, you can pay people, you can check up on them, you can ensure they have access to various kinds of support. However, the only effective strategy we have for reducing the cost—in human lives—of an out-of-control pandemic causing a disease we can't effectively treat... is to control the pandemic and reduce the number of people who contract said disease.
Thing is, many Boomers are also financially vulnerable during this pandemic. There are 40 million "younger" Boomers in the US—ie. below retirement age—who are losing a lot of income. The broad label conceals a great deal of heterogeneity wrt socioeconomic resources.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Economic impacts of an unconstrained pandemic likely include:
* Downturn in the clubs, bars, restaurants, fast food, entertainment etc sectors
* Downturn in productivity due to large % of workforce being off sick
* Overwhelmed health-system
* Complete cessation of foreign tourism from non-dumbshit countries
* Outright travel bans from non-dumbshit countries
Waiting for a vaccine was never the goal! :donkey:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Stay-at-home policies were meant to slow the virus, spread infections over a longer time frame ("bend the curve"), protect hospitals from being overwhelmed, and preserve supplies of PPE. No US state had a full lock down; no one was under house arrest, and even isolation/quarantine was voluntary.
OG is right about the other things, including people traveling across borders and between states to get "concierge" health services. It's not just Snow Bird seniors going to Florida, but wealthy people with second homes and vacation homes going to the Hamptons or the Carolinas, etc.
And you really don't understand how our fee-for-service and private insurance healthcare system works if you're surprised that nurses and doctors have had their hours cut, or were furloughed during the pandemic. Many physician groups are owned by private equity firms or hedge funds, and they aren't thinking of public health (or the public good) but their own profits....which come from elective *non-emergency* procedures. :bored:
Nothing like a bunch of rich old men pontificating about socio-economic inequality and 'manifest unfairness', huh. :bored:Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
On the flip side -- why should the young and poor (or heavily in debt with school loans) continue to work in the service or hospitality sectors, or the gig economy *which benefits those rich old men more than anyone* when they don't have health insurance, paid sick time, family leave, hazard pay, and can barely afford rent, let alone Child Care?
The "essential workers" lives have been discounted for decades. The fruit picker, farm worker, grocery store clerk, bus driver, janitor, nurse's aide, restaurant cook -- they're valued for their *work* but it's not reflected in their wages/income, so they have to work 2-3 jobs just to keep up (running in place but still falling behind).
They're treated as expendable human beings. That's not just tragic but paradoxical, since the "professionals" who can work from home are the "non-essential" workers, easily replaced by computers and virtual reality. :bulb:
Don't forget that Boomers have more expendable income than any other generation, which helped to "expand" the service/hospitality (and healthcare) industries in the first place. They're the ones who have vacation homes, take cruises, travel the world, spend money in hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc. Many have private employer retirement pension plans that include health insurance for life (vs Medicare), and don't need to live on SS (but they'll take it anyway). On top of that, they also get senior and AARP discounts for all sorts of goods and services, regardless of income. :bulb:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
They have a large political lobbying influence, too. And since most of congress is comprised of rich old (white) men....
It may not be *genetic* but rather if hypertension is diagnosed and treated equally among *racial groups*. Confounding variables within healthcare delivery systems and socio-economic groups.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2763803
Absolutely fucking despicable:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...101_story.html
What a fucking wuss he is.
Banana Republic or Failed State? *cough*
Wow I didn't know you followed me on TwitterQuote:
Originally Posted by GGT
I don't follow Twitter. But it's not the first time I've posed that question after one of your (Twitter) posts in this forum. ;)
Who isn't? :oQuote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
I think there is a genetic element as even controlling for elements like that there is still a very clear statistical difference it seems. The NHS is now being advised where possible to move black doctors and nurses off the front line if they can.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...1fc_story.html
A stupid person might read that article and think, "What would any other president have done differently? The hypocritical liberals are just attacking Trump for doing what any other president should've—and would've—done." Of course, there are no stupid people here, so everyone is clear about the devastating impact of the spectacular incompetence of this useless president and the morons enabling him.
This dumbass is just such a fitting representative of the dumbass contingent:
Twitter Link
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...s-us-by-state/
South Dakota seems to be doing all right despite resisting hyper lockdown measures.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-security.html
She's an idiot. So are you.
First silver lining ... NRA Cut Backs
A new effect of the virus has been discovered in Russia where the virus is making Russian doctors 'accidentally' fall out of windows.
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2...allen-windows/
Hahahahaha "cubic model" :haha: :haha:
I swear, as dumb as Trump is, the idiots around him may actually be even dumber :haha:
Meat prices up 20%.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Meat prices are up due to supply problems. All indications are that we have deflation, not inflation.
Exponential curves are not intuitive.
But if you use logarithmic scale, it becomes a line.
This chart will be interesting to you.
Most of countries follow the same line, unless they mitigate.
https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
If they let things lose, line becomes parallel to the original and go back to out of control. If the line becomes steeper, there is massive infection.
Here you can see all countries and compare and see what news are not telling you.
Sweden and Russia were in the same situation one month ago. Sweden did heavy mitigation (despite fake news claiming the opposite) and Russia did not. So Russia is what happens without mitigation and Sweden with mitigation. This is why Russian doctors are comitting suicide.
USA also has done a great work, it is like steering a huge ship.
News: Virus researcher dead in suspected murder; Leaked documents show coverup; Scholars warn 2nd outbreak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2LJy639j8Q
And also you may like to watch WION from India
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_g...dPW9K1g/videos
No American or European fake news.
A recent seroprevalence survey in Sthlm estimated around 10% infected in Sthlm around the end of may. The test itself is very good—assuming it's the one I think it is; by my reckoning, under a wide range of estimates for prevalence—and a less wide range of estimates for true sensitivity and specificity—a person who tested positive at the time should've had a roughly 80-90% likelihood of actually being positive, and it should be over 95% for testing conducted from now on. I think that the test is more likely than not to underestimate—rather than overestimate—seroprevalence, given the methodology used in the study.
The Swedish Medical Association's official journal published an opinion piece by a reasonably esteemed professor, in which he predicted that we'd have 50% infected by the time we reach 3,000 deaths. The same professor asserted, a month prior to that, in Sweden's largest newspaper, that it'd be 1,000 deaths by the time we have 50% infected. In both pieces he took a few digs at people he believed were making uninformed forecasts that were obstructing the political response and making health-economic calculations impossible. According to the most optimistic estimates from his own friends, we're now a week or so from 50%. Officially, we now have 2,941 deaths (but, accounting for reporting lag, probably around 3,300). Even if you only consider officially attributed deaths—ie. disregard people who die of covid without being tested, roughly 10-15% in Sweden if we're being charitable—we'll have more than 4,000 covid deaths by then. Now that's both tragic and embarrassing, but life is full of surprises, and not even the most knowledgeable people can get everything right, but it doesn't end there. The same professor twice misrepresented the reports from Imperial College, suggesting that their later forecasts (which had been revised sharply downwards from the horror-forecast that caused the UK to change tack) had been revised downwards because they'd previously grossly overestimated the infection fatality rate at 1%, and that non-pharmacological interventions were irrelevant. This is simply false—the later report he cites assumes an IFR of 1%, and attributes the lower estimated death toll directly to NPIs. This isn't just annoying—it directly undermines his central argument about the uselessness of NPIs (never mind the questionable move to use an argument that he himself then attempts to completely invalidate—this borders on fallacy).
Finally, he—unbelievably—suggested that there was no need for our ministry of health & social affairs to release any of their work so that it can be assessed by experts all over the world, because only Swedish epidemiologists are capable of assessing Swedish epidemiological work and nothing of value can be gained from letting others see their work. There are, of course, several reasons why sharing this work—and letting it be assessed by other experts—would be good for everyone, in Sweden and elsewhere. His position on this last matter is as comical as it is disgraceful, but obv. you can't say that openly to such an esteemed figure, so I haven't. Nor can you say any of the other things I've said here, it seems; I and others have tried to point out the factual errors he's made, and also tried to present very courteous and substantive rebuttals to his claims about the value of peer-review in scientific work even when it pertains to ongoing policymaking, but all of these comments have been either censored to remove these points—leaving little more than expressions of gratitude, with no sign that the comment has been censored—or outright rejected. I have never before seen such behavior from this journal—they've always been fairly laissez-faire about publishing critical comments, even aggressive ones that aren't substantive—and it is deeply unsettling, because it indicates that disputing any element of our pandemic response is not permitted. It shames our entire medical corps. Yuck, gross. smdh
Does it cheer you up if I tell you that in most comments I read in the press (USA, UK, Netherlands and Germany) the Swedish model is described as actually not very successful by any metric, and that its justifications are mostly based in a particular brand of Swedish arrogance. Finally it mostly didn't turn Sweden in a circle of Hell because the majority of the people may not be inclined to question authority but actually used their common sense even if that meant erring on the side of caution.
Numbers show that the following nations did a better job to contain COVID when compared to Sweden: Togo, Vietnam, Taiwan, Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Thailand, Serbia, South Africa, Costa Rica, just to name a few.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
If you get infected there are two outcomes. Dead or recovered. If we think the sum of those is 100%, here are the mortality rates a few days ago, if we use that number as 100%. Sweden second worst.
Norway 181 deaths, 32 recovered. Mortality 84.97%
Sweden 1580 deaths, 550 recovered. Mortality 74.1%
Finland 98 deaths, 2000 recovered. Mortality 46.7%
USA 42518 deaths, 72389 recovered. Mortality 37%
Italy 24114 deaths, 48877 recovered. Mortality 33%
Mexico 712 deaths, 2627 recovered. Mortality 21.3%
Spain 20852 deaths, 80587 recovered. Mortality 20.5%
Japan 263 deaths, 1239 recovered. Mortality 17.5%
Argentina 142 deaths, 737 recovered. Mortality 16.15%
Canada 1690 deaths, 12586 recovered. Mortality 11.8%
Russia 405 deaths, 3446 recovered. Mortality 10.5%
Denmark 364 deaths, 4312 recovered. Mortality 7.78%
China 4632 deaths, 77123 recovered. Mortality 5.7%
Germany has 4862 dead, recovered 95200. Mortality 4.85%
Costa Rica 6 deaths, 124 recovered. Mortality 4.6%
Uruguay 11 deaths, 313 recovered. Mortality 3.3%
Taiwan 6 deaths, 203 recovered. Mortality 2.8%
Iceland 10 deaths, 1362 recovered. Mortality 0.7%
Don't know where the heck you got those figures from but they're clearly nonsense.
Far, far more than 2130 people in Sweden have been infected :rolleyes:
Hi, sorry, you've made a basic error here, that relates to the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) principle. Your argument rests on the incorrect assumption that we know how many people are infected, how many of those have died, and how many have recovered. We know none of those things, because only a small fraction of those who are infected are tested, and the criteria for testing—and, therefore, the coverage—as well as clinical practice wrt who gets hospitalized vary greatly from one country to the next. The metric you've calculated is meaningless when it comes to assessing how different countries have fared in comparison to one another, and a basic plausibility check wrt. Norway and Finland would've tipped you off to this. In more general terms, you're calculating the ratio of garbage to stinkier garbage, and, as a rule, when you divide by garbage... you just get more garbage.Quote:
Originally Posted by ar81
Moreover, your numbers are wrong. As of today, Sweden has registered 3,040 covid deaths—not 1580; taking reporting lag into account, the official death toll up until today is likely to be close to 3,400, and a few hundred more are likely to be missed altogether because they haven't been tested (although they may be adjudicated as likely covid deaths later).
Official case figures for many countries are likely off by an order of magnitude—and then some.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
The numbers for developed countries are not entirely reliable. Certainly the number of infections and recoveries can't be trusted. The idea that Third World countries, especially the dictatorships among them, have either the ability or the will to report accurate figures is dumb beyond belief.
Garbage comes from WHO figures.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Many panic buyers were CCP people who smuggled goods to China, either to resell domestically under excuse of donate or to reexport.
China's Supply Chain Domination: CCP Directed, U.S. Assisted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkBYeKAsbxg
The figures are those reported by each country. The countries themselves formulate and implement their own testing policies.Quote:
Originally Posted by ar81
Just look at the figures and think about them for two seconds before spreading them. Did you really think all but 550 Swedes had died? Preposterous on the face of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ar81
I'm concerned you're making that kind of genetic/racial correlation before all the facts are in. At this early point in understanding a *novel* virus, that "seems" like racist and/or xenophobic confirmation bias against immigrant (black) doctors and nurses (by your NHS) more than anything else. :bored:Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Trump will be tested *daily* since one of his military valets (close personal attendants) tested positive.
But testing doesn't make sense for the rest of the US. Even CDC guidelines are too restrictive. Wearing masks and social distancing is for schmucks.
This "War Time" president has given up the fight against covid-19, and designated low-wage workers as the "Warriors" who should sacrifice their lives for the sake of the larger economy, ie the financially privileged. Welcome to the United Corporations of America, folks!
Covfefe lol