Covid-19

Laughing Grass

Laughing Grass

Well-Known Member
Dr.Amber Trichome said:
When all the ICU beds fill up......Houston we have a problem.

At least now everyone should have a plan in place and a stockpile of ppe ready to go.

if not your shit out of luck and jolly well fucked.
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I was reading an article that said there's 75,000 ICU beds in the US not including neonatal and pediatric ICUs. That doesn't seem like enough for 330 million people.

Singlemalt said:
I don't really know; if they do shutdown again it's political suicide for those who enact it, even though it's the smart thing and will save lives. It's become too partisan jumping out of the realm of health and expediency. Wearing any sort of PPE, if you aren't a worker required to do so, brands one as a sheep/coward/lefty even unpatriotic by many. This morning I went to Walmart for some things, I was amazed at the number of people in my age range, unmasked not adhering to social distance and dressed in typical Cali summer wear, pretty much beach wear. I'd imagine that once carcasses really start piling up and there's no room at medical establishments, folks will panic and there gov't will do something, but reactive vs proactive. Then there is quibbling amongst the authorities: some county sheriff says his dept won't "enforce" the mask mandate which tells me that the cops won't even caution or admonish or advise folks to wear them; then some Nevada mayor said Cali tourists shouldn't wear them when they visit. I'm fortunate in that my place is very rural, and removed from the cities and if needs be, can enforce social distancing to the tune of 1/3 mile
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The politicization of this makes absolutely no sense to me. I could somewhat sympathize if this was completely isolated to the US and not a global pandemic. I have strong opinions about your president and who I'd like to see elected, but the rest of the world wouldn't play along, sacrifice their citizens and economies to perpetuate a myth to bring down a president. It seems the further we get into the information age the stupider people have become. I wish we'd all get on the same page. With the spikes that we're seeing now the PM and Premier are facing a lot of pressure to keep the northern border closed for the remainder of 2020.

curious2garden said:
LOL yeah just like the CDC.

Oh @Laughing Grass one other thing we have is diversion. When ICU, ER, ORs get full a hospital goes on diversion and we transfer patients. That is something we use a lot and have a pretty robust network.
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Would this happen in states where the governors and other politicians have chosen to ignore the threat? Would they even have a say in how healthcare services are provided?
 
curious2garden

curious2garden

Well-Known Mod
Staff member
Laughing Grass said:
.......snip.......
Would this happen in states where the governors and other politicians have chosen to ignore the threat? Would they even have a say in how healthcare services are provided?
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It's already happening in those states. That's why they keep saying so and so place has 1 ICU bed because they are transferring patients.

Laughing Grass said:
I was reading an article that said there's 75,000 ICU beds in the US not including neonatal and pediatric ICUs. That doesn't seem like enough for 330 million people.
........snip...........
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You are looking at beds as designated by licensing and staffing. At any one moment in time we can have more or fewer beds. Essentially the shelter in place was to make sure that we contracted the illness at a rate that allowed for not overwhelming our medical system. It was to buy time to ramp up PPE and bring more resources online. To some extent we did that.

Every state's National Guard has stored hospitals. Those states can pop those up just as New York did. The ICU acuity can be lowered. For example now we are using ECMO to keep people alive. If we come closer to the edge we will sharpen our triage and stop using ECMO except for the Peds/NICU and depending on staffing possibly even there. Surgical intensive care nurses will flex to Medical ICU, step down nurses and OR nurses can work as ICU nurses etc..... Surgeons can work as ER doctors and Hospitalists. Obviously mistakes will be made and people will die from malpractice (mistakes) but we'll get through this. Specialization is a nice thing but you can and will practice outside your specialty when you have to. Everyone in the medical and nursing community has a general education to begin with.

We aren't in terrible trouble yet. We are not having to make those decisions yet. They came very close in New York but they made it through with many resources left relatively unused. The fact we are still using ECMO tells me we are keeping our heads above water. I've already signed up to go back if necessary. When they call me I'll begin worrying.

Finally politicization of a pandemic is a foolishness I would have expected in much earlier times. The fact we are seeing not just Trump but Bolsonaro and Johnson (who stopped it after he contracted the virus) tells me the science deniers are selling an attractive message of simpler times. The intelligent people are wearing PPE when they leave their homes relying on themselves to protect their own health. At this point I keep hearing Lenin's message, "Better fewer, but better." I guess there's a price to pay to remove the science deniers from the gene pool and so it goes.
 
curious2garden

curious2garden

Well-Known Mod
Staff member
hillbill said:
32,000 new cases in one day in US.
Seriously, how are those all traced?
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They aren't and tracing is useless when you are going for herd immunity. Now it's about harm reduction. I was heartened to see that only 6200 people showed up for the super spreader event and I hope fewer still will show up today but I doubt it. But on the positive side the quicker we reduce the science denier gene pool the better off the fewer will be.

Wear effective PPE which includes eye and hair protection (assuming you have hair to keep out of your face when you remove your eye protection)
 
tangerinegreen555

tangerinegreen555

Well-Known Member
Laughing Grass said:
...The politicization of this makes absolutely no sense to me....
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Everything is politicized here now.

Culture wars, violent radicals, never ending campaigning, war on drugs, hate, systemic racism and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And social media, conspiracy theories and fake news exasperates the problem.

When I was growing up, there were 3 TV networks
that reported the same news every night. And AP and UPI covered the news papers with the same news.

Opinions were left to the editorial section, unlike today where opinions are the driving force in certain news outlets.

If you go on YouTube and watch an excerpt of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, you'll notice in a few minutes the stark contrast between today. They were polite to one another and complimented each other repeatedly. Nothing like today, not even remotely close.
 
hillbill

hillbill

Well-Known Member
tangerinegreen555 said:
Everything is politicized here now.

Culture wars, violent radicals, never ending campaigning, war on drugs, hate, systemic racism and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And social media, conspiracy theories and fake news exasperates the problem.

When I was growing up, there were 3 TV networks
that reported the same news every night. And AP and UPI covered the news papers with the same news.

Opinions were left to the editorial section, unlike today where opinions are the driving force in certain news outlets.

If you go on YouTube and watch an excerpt of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, you'll notice in a few minutes the stark contrast between today. They were polite to one another and complimented each other repeatedly. Nothing like today, not even remotely close.
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30 plus years of Limbaugh, Hannity, Fux News, so-called Talk Radio and constant horseshit out of the religious right have done real damage to the psyche and soul of millions.
So here we are, the by far wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation to ever exist with the most deaths on Earth.
That is the juncture of politics, extreme rightist ideology and the denial of even the hard sciences and a fucking pandemic.
 
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Laughing Grass

Laughing Grass

Well-Known Member
curious2garden said:
It's already happening in those states. That's why they keep saying so and so place has 1 ICU bed because they are transferring patients.


You are looking at beds as designated by licensing and staffing. At any one moment in time we can have more or fewer beds. Essentially the shelter in place was to make sure that we contracted the illness at a rate that allowed for not overwhelming our medical system. It was to buy time to ramp up PPE and bring more resources online. To some extent we did that.

Every state's National Guard has stored hospitals. Those states can pop those up just as New York did. The ICU acuity can be lowered. For example now we are using ECMO to keep people alive. If we come closer to the edge we will sharpen our triage and stop using ECMO except for the Peds/NICU and depending on staffing possibly even there. Surgical intensive care nurses will flex to Medical ICU, step down nurses and OR nurses can work as ICU nurses etc..... Surgeons can work as ER doctors and Hospitalists. Obviously mistakes will be made and people will die from malpractice (mistakes) but we'll get through this. Specialization is a nice thing but you can and will practice outside your specialty when you have to. Everyone in the medical and nursing community has a general education to begin with.

We aren't in terrible trouble yet. We are not having to make those decisions yet. They came very close in New York but they made it through with many resources left relatively unused. The fact we are still using ECMO tells me we are keeping our heads above water. I've already signed up to go back if necessary. When they call me I'll begin worrying.

Finally politicization of a pandemic is a foolishness I would have expected in much earlier times. The fact we are seeing not just Trump but Bolsonaro and Johnson (who stopped it after he contracted the virus) tells me the science deniers are selling an attractive message of simpler times. The intelligent people are wearing PPE when they leave their homes relying on themselves to protect their own health. At this point I keep hearing Lenin's message, "Better fewer, but better." I guess there's a price to pay to remove the science deniers from the gene pool and so it goes.
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Thank you, that was a really good explanation, I didn't know how that system worked. I've been using the john hopkins university trend tracking system since this started and the US had been trending the right way since April. It's really since June that things have gotten scary for an outsider looking in.

tangerinegreen555 said:
Everything is politicized here now.

Culture wars, violent radicals, never ending campaigning, war on drugs, hate, systemic racism and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And social media, conspiracy theories and fake news exasperates the problem.

When I was growing up, there were 3 TV networks
that reported the same news every night. And AP and UPI covered the news papers with the same news.

Opinions were left to the editorial section, unlike today where opinions are the driving force in certain news outlets.

If you go on YouTube and watch an excerpt of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, you'll notice in a few minutes the stark contrast between today. They were polite to one another and complimented each other repeatedly. Nothing like today, not even remotely close.
Click to expand...
It's a cancer that's spreading around the world. Our current opposition leader is a mini trump wannabe that Canadians rejected in the last election. There's a broader appetite for that type of politics in Western Canada where religious conservatism and hate is its strongest. I remember when John McCain was holding a rally and an older woman said Obama was a Arab and he took the mic away and defended Obama, without tiptoeing around her nonsense. It wasn't so long ago that people were somewhat civil to each other.
 
H G Griffin

H G Griffin

Well-Known Member
Laughing Grass said:
There's a broader appetite for that type of politics in Western Canada where religious conservatism and hate is its strongest.
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As a lifelong Albertan, there is a lot of bigotry here, but there are a LOT of progressive people here too.

Unfortunately, oil and agriculture money gave a lot of economic power and political voice to a lot of uneducated, ignorant rural folks who spend their entire lives in an echo chamber. I was raised in that echo chamber and was well on my way to being another Ugly Albertan before I moved to a city thirty-some years ago. I met people from different backgrounds and realized that, holy shit, these were actual human beings just like me as opposed to the demonized, one-dimensional others that the country folk fear and hate.

For those of us who are progressive, it gets frustrating when constantly confronted with the eastern stereotype that we are all cowboy hat wearing, homo hatin', cross-burners. Just sayin'.
 
raratt

raratt

Well-Known Member
H G Griffin said:
As a lifelong Albertan, there is a lot of bigotry here, but there are a LOT of progressive people here too.

Unfortunately, oil and agriculture money gave a lot of economic power and political voice to a lot of uneducated, ignorant rural folks who spend their entire lives in an echo chamber. I was raised in that echo chamber and was well on my way to being another Ugly Albertan before I moved to a city thirty-some years ago. I met people from different backgrounds and realized that, holy shit, these were actual human beings just like me as opposed to the demonized, one-dimensional others that the country folk fear and hate.

For those of us who are progressive, it gets frustrating when constantly confronted with the eastern stereotype that we are all cowboy hat wearing, homo hatin', cross-burners. Just sayin'.
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SO, the midwest extends north of the border also...
 
tangerinegreen555

tangerinegreen555

Well-Known Member
curious2garden said:
I grew up gleaning lima beans after the pickers harvested. They'd give us a week or two before plowing under.
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The worst I ever did was take apples from my neighbor's tree.

But she told me it was OK if I shoveled her sidewalk in the winter which I always did after our house.

I noticed she did chase some kids out back in the day, lol. The good old days.
 
Singlemalt

Singlemalt

Well-Known Member
curious2garden said:
I grew up gleaning lima beans after the pickers harvested. They'd give us a week or two before plowing under.
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When I was in grad school, after the mechanized pickers got the tomatoes, farm workers were like used car salesmen calling folks in to glean, 2 days after they'd disc in the fields. Used to go home with shopping bags of tomatoes, a great deal for poor college kids
 
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